The Return...

I am finally back from the edge of the world. It was actually a five week road-trip across the country. We didn't get to check out any music. The closest we got was when we arrived in Buffalo next door to where Old Crow Medicine Show was playing. Unfortunately the concert was halfway over and we felt nearly dead after hours of driving. The trip was great, but very tiring mentally and physically, which are actually the same thing when you break it down to basics (glaring at Descartes in a mental image). We have been busy doing things around the house because of the time we spent watching HGTV while trapped in California when our fuel pump was being repaired. Getting back to work might actually give me a break, since I have the whole summer off and have no excuses to prevent me from working.

I actually bought a cd out of a store, something I haven't done in a year or two. I usually buy used cds or download them because I refuse to pay more than $13 for a cd since they hardly cost a thing to manufacture and produce. Chris Cornell's latest album magically appeared in the dreaded Walmart we were shopping in while in Wyoming. I was excited to hear that Audioslave broke up because Euphoria Morning was one of my favorite albums ever. This new disc didn't come close to matching up to his first one. The cover of Billie Jean just killed me. Why? Why? Some of the other tracks were worthy of a listen more than once including the latest James Bond movie theme, but it was a generic album that lived up to its Rolling Stone review.

I am currently watching the CMA music festival. Taylor Swift's debut cd was actually a good release. "Tim McGraw" isn't annoying and the rest of the album is worthy of a listen when I'm washing dishes.

Something smells like cabbage and carnies...

Ever wake up and just wonder if somewhere, someone is watching your life (i.e., The Truman Show) in real-time? It freakin sucks to feel like that. To actually wonder if someone is watching and laughing his or her butt off at you and the situations you get yourself into over your lifetime. Irony would probably make the screen turn blue to the person watching my life. Sometimes things just really suck and it seems like someone has to be watching for it to all actually make sense. I hope that it's someone other than God, because if it's just him watching, I am ticked off at him again and I hate it when I feel that way. He's God, it's not very wise to push your luck with him about most things because he has the final say and authority. Some things just don't make sense to me. Life would be a lot easier if it was more like handling a loaded gun. You know when you pick the thing up, the weight of the choices you can make with it. Waving it around would be totally stupid and irresponsible, just handling it seems somewhat safer. It doesn't come that easy most of the time for some reason in the real world regardless of how safely you handle the gun. This leaves me wondering if there is just something that I did to bring certain things upon myself. My thinking is going way beyond the simple behavior/consequences relationship which I consider to be a no brainer. There are just some things that couldn't have been foreseen by Gandalf or Merlin regardless of their skills and abilities. These things seem to materialize like beings boarding the Star Trek Enterprise and I know that rarely ever do things appear like this, but sometimes they do. They can seem totally unrelated to anything that proceeded them and I think they may actually not be connected in a major way at all. It's hard to not find minor connections, but major warning signs don't always manifest themselves even to the parties in question. It almost seems like God or the observer just decided to see what would happen if one variable was altered. How might things change if A=1 rather than A=6? It's like I think I hear laughing somewhere, but I know it's not actually there on a conscious level. It's in the preconscious somewhere barely spilling from the deep, dark depths of the mind. Elliott Smith, how is Miss Misery? I don't think I want to know. Expectations aren't a good or bad thing, however, how you handle not having them met successfully can turn you into something else entirely different. Boeings look great when they are flying high in the sky, but the same plane looks like some scary, grey bohemith on it's way to explode against the ground. Where am I right now Kubler-Ross?

Maggie Austin: Georgia Clay Road

Maggie Austin
Georgia Clay Road
Gulfwind Records

Rating: 85 out of 100

The debut album from Maggie Austin, Georgia Clay Road, can best be described in four words: good, clean, country music. This is independent country music at its best and should have listeners wondering why Maggie Austin isn’t a well-known name already. The album is definitely a great one for the shuffle setting and could stay in the CD player for days at a time.

All of the songs are well interpreted by the musicians and listening to the album proves that they weren’t micro-managed while recording. There is not a bad song on the entire album, but overall “That’s Me” has to be one of the best ones because of the slide guitar and the chord progression of the song, especially during the chorus.

Most of the time albums start with their strongest albums and gradually start to die off at some point before either totally dying or coming up for a last breath at the end with a decent track. This album doesn’t do this at all. The last four songs are among the strongest on the album and show such variation in styles. The variation of styles among the last four include bluegrass mandolin (“Rain on a Tin Roof”), blues infused rock (“What Do I Do with Me”), a pop ballad (“I Wanna Be That Song”), and pop/country (“This Is Forever”). The song selection for the album is great and it keeps the album flowing well, never bogging down on the road in one mood.

Austin has a really clean, alto voice that handles each melody with a playful energy on the upbeat songs. Her vocals on the more emotional songs sound great when relating to pitch, but she misses some of the emotional content. It doesn’t sound like she is singing about things she can relate to on “Does Anybody Love Anymore” and “No Good in Goodbye” even though it’s obvious she has experienced those types of feelings. If she just took more chances in expressing the feelings people experience while in those types of situations, she would be hitting the nail on the head with the slower songs.

Family albums that are worth listening to are so much easier to find in country music today than in the past. Georgia Clay Road is one of these and is definitely one worth having in your collection. It’s not another generic country release and it’s hopefully a great beginning for Maggie Austin. It will be interesting to see what happens with her career in the future.

Ryan T. White

Found out more about this album at: www.maggieaustin.com

Found out more about Ryan and music at: www.thelaterrye.blogspot.com

stressed

It's been a while since the last post. The university, my school, and everything else have kept me supremely busy. I have been feeling lots of stress lately and haven't been coping with it very well. I pick up the guitar when I feel like it and put it back down within a few minutes, unable to believe anything I play on it is worth anything. I last played the bass during the Crabb gig and just picked it up for a singing Saturday night at a church. We were the only group on the sign, but we had to wait behind a group and then a soloist before getting on the platform. The crowd looked dead and only responded to one song without prompts. The other song they responded to was an acapella number and I was the one prompting. It was quite disappointing and I didn't get home until really late. I have been somewhat sick and just tired. I get home and just plant down on the couch, doing nothing but watching tv and listening to music. I can't even remember what all I have been listening to lately. Counseling, school, and taking a couple of college classes is not a great combo to take on, but it's possible. Things will be winding down after we get back from the trip, but then I will be worrying about where I will be working next year. The job I have will be refilled like a prescription next year, so I pray a counseling job at a decent school will be mine.

We leave for London a week from tomorrow and I am really excited about it. It's definitely going to be a different experience for us and a real break from home and the U.S. Planning is still going on for the road trip, but it's looking like it will be lots of fun. For some reason I have thought about checking into the possibility of getting endorsements from companies, but I will probably be too lazy to actually fool with it. It's a cool idea though, imagine getting paid to display a logo while doing what we want to do anyway and not having to pay for portions of it.

Brazzaville: Welcome To...Brazzaville

Brazzaville
Welcome to…Brazzaville
Web of Mimicry Recordings

Rating: 78 out of 100

Welcome to Brazzaville is a compilation release of selected tracks from Brazzaville’s three prior albums Brazzaville 2002, Somnambulista, and Rouge on Pockmarked Cheeks, plus two previously unreleased tracks. Mimicry Records released the album as a way to introduce the band to new listeners. The band’s sound features bossa-nova grooves, dirty rock, laid-back club jazz, and even some elevator music in the style of “The Girl from Ipanema”. Think of Ed Harcourt fronting Los Lobos in an opium den with Wes Cunningham’s stylings.

David Brown seems to be very aware of his influences and has blended them together for an eclectic world sound diverse it its elements, but balanced. The instruments are well-placed in the arrangements. It seems like a live show would be quite a task considering all of the instruments that would need to be present to try and duplicate the studio versions of the songs.

“Christmas in E.C.” features kaleidoscope keys and acoustic guitar arpeggios floating over a bossa-nova groove which rides on a snare back-beat. A horn section fills out the sound and even features a trombone solo which melts into the sound. “Motel Room” sounds like a guitar arrangement that Lindsey Buckingham would have written with Ed Harcourt singing along to staccato bursts of organ and teases of sassy violin. “Queenie”, with its lush synths, gliding guitar arpeggios, Santana-type lead guitar, and haunting background vocals, should be playing on the radio with the likes of Beck’s Sea Change. “Sewers of Bangkok” features dirty distorted power chords, searing synth sounds reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine”, and lyrics that are spoken sometimes as a whisper at times rather than sung.

All fifteen of the tracks fit into one of the categories listed above, but the categories themselves get a bit repetitious by the end of the album. Brown’s lyrics mostly stay depressive and dirty throughout, covering themes of love, drugs, and loss from different corners of the world. His voice is on the verge of mumbling on some tracks and understanding the lyrics gets even more confusing in some places considering that Brown is multilingual without warning on some of the songs. This album would be a good pick for anyone, especially those liking a mix of different world influences and good old rock and roll.

Ryan T. White

For more information:

http://www.webofmimicry.com/

http://www.brazzaville-band.com/

Greetings from India!

Saturday night was an interesting one. We went with some friends to India Night, featuring the food, dance, and flavor of India. My wife and one of our friends wore the outfits the Indian women normally wear, and I just looked like I had escaped from church. We started things off by checking out the Spring selections from the Indian Mary Kay and all of the other propaganda. After about an hour, the appetizers finally made their way out to us. They were really good, but not very filling. Within 30 minutes, we made it to our table and then waited for the food to make it onto the buffet. The food was awesome, filled with lots of Currie and spices from Houston. The ice cream was a little odd, since it was mixed with different types of nuts. I haven't really had Indian food or deserts before and I wish there was somewhere nearby that cooked the food. We then moved into the theatre to watch some Indian dances. This turned out to be the worst part of the evening. The whole thing was so disorganized. The light guy and sound guy must have never gotten together to practice. They started the first dancer off with the wrong song. She ran off of the stage and then came back when the right one started. She did two songs and didn't move around that much, so I got fairly bored quickly. A dance line of young girls came out and had a difficult time staying together, which was funny, but sad at the same time. Two guys dressed in red came out and danced together. It was like synchronized swimming, but on stage legs rather than in water. They started and then ran off of the stage and then came back out again. The highlight of the evening featured artist, musician, and master of confusion, Tony Dupois. He started a soundtrack of a thunderstorm, before starting to speak and not be heard. As soon as he stopped talking, he cut off the track and then began to breathe into the microphone loudly. Next, he stretched himself and yawned into the microphone. We sat confused and contemplated the situation. He then began to make strange noises. My wife and many other people started laughing loudly. I couldn't blame them, but I was trying to figure out what Tony was trying to do musically. Then, James Marshall joined in making noises also along with Dr. Ram. All three of them joined together in noise before Tony started playing with some bowl. Then all three of them stopped and Tony began to bang away on his keyboard, doing some type of fusion of jazz and Indian music. He was joined by James on Congas and Dr. Ram on his tiny drums while pieces of his artwork were shown on the power-point screen behind him. This went on for a while and was a mixture of scary, funny, and sad: just a giant pot of confusion. The whole 'cast' then came out and began petting the dog and reaching for the sky. The whole event started at 6pm and we didn't make it out until 11pm. it was quite a long night and we were really worn out. I don't think I will make it back to India anytime soon. Hopefully the next event will be organized a lot better, which means some planning.

Take It Easy

I recently ripped Don Henley's Actual Miles and have been listening to either it or The Eagles' Greatest Hits 1971-1975 ever since. It's a really great cd, one worth leaving in the player for weeks at a time. The progression from heavy country influences to the Joe Walsh rock era is quite interesting and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert with all original members would be surreal. For some reason I didn't think Don Henley was the original drummer, but I was wrong. I hope they get back some of their grit when putting out the new album. What I have heard on the radio so far sounds like something Richard Marx would turn out if someone would actually let him into a studio to danced around for a bit.
I may not be able to see the Police this summer, due to a trip I have already promised my wife. This is a great disappointment, but the truth is that I never thought that I would ever see them get over their egos and get back together again anyway; go figure.
Harry Connick, Jr. was another artist I hoped to see somewhere near LA, but since he moved to MA he can only land in NO and can't figure out how to get himself around the rest of the state. When my friend Mark and I saw him in '95, somehow he wandered into LSU and played a show for a few hundred people. If LA and music is so close to his heart, why can't he make it to major population centers in the state to perform? Hmm...
Maybe I will actually get to see Crowded House then, 1 out of 3, nevermind.

Back to the iPod. Today's letter is C. C is for can't, in the sentence, "I can't get my shift key to stop sticking."; frustrating.

Caedmon's Call used to be one of the top independent, unsigned bands in the country. Just Don't Want Coffee and My Calm/Your Storm were two of the best independent albums I had ever heard back in the mid 1990's, but when their eponymous debut for Warner Bros. came out, most of the reworked songs were trashed with gapped arrangments which left out intriquet guitar work and instead velcroed in string players holding single note movements. "April Showers', "Forget What You Know", "This World", "Jar Of Clay", and "Coming Home" are some of my favorites from the two indie albums.
The Cardigans' "Lovefool" is one of the funkiest, funniest songs I have ever heard. I have lost count of the movies and commericals featuring the song and I can't get it out of my head when I hear it. First Band On The Moon was a great disappointment, but someone gave it to me.
Carey Ott's Lucid Dream is a confusing album for me because of all the different versions available for download. There was the orginal 4 song ep, then the iTunes version with 2 bonus tracks, and the emusic version with 2 other bonus tracks. I actually downloaded all three, so I have 16 tracks for the 12 track Lucid Dream cd. My favorites are "Am I Just One", which I heard before it ever made it to Grey's Anatomy, "Mother Madam", "Daylight", and "I Wouldn't Do That To You". It's a great pop album with so many different influences. I love it when I discover great music on my own.
You can't always trust Zach Braff. I learned this the hard way a couple of times. I first heard "Blue Eyes" while watching Garden State and instantly fell in love with the song. I got the soundtrack and loved it so much that I bought Cary Brothers' eps All The Rage and Waiting For Your Letter. I was instantly disappointed and felt stupid for wasting my money and time on the albums. The music wasn't bad, it was just nothing special and I couldn't connect to it.
Chaos Is The Poetry is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's difficult to describe the concept album because it is full of influences. Lanny Cordova was the brains behind the project and he got together with some friends from Magdalena and some studio musicians to record the album. It's full of rock anthems, piano ballads, pop, funk, and even a track with a rap on it. There's not a bad track on the album, but ebay and half.com are probably the only places that have it since it is out of print.
I have never been a Cheap Trick fan even though "The Flame" and "I Want You To Want Me" are two great songs. I checked out Rockford from the library and got excited. It's hard to find good pop-rock and the album was full of it. The first three tracks, "Welcome To The World", "Perfect Stranger", and "It Takes A Lifetime", make up one of the best 1,2,3 punches I have heard in quite a while.

The Gin Blossoms: Live from Vinton!!

My ears were still ringing last when I got home from the concert. I had to turn up the tv to be able to hear and I really hate it when that happens. I already don't have the best hearing from playing and listening to so much music over time, so each time that happens I fear I am slowing turning into my dad. There was no opening act for the Gin Blossoms and the concert started about 20 minutes late. I enjoyed the concert, but found it kind of sad. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be at the very top, opening for Toad The Wet Sprocket, traveling the country while ruling the charts, then not being able to cope with success and the death of a friend, only to hang it all up to start back at the bottom, playing for 200 people at a horse racing track. They may be playing bigger gigs somewhere else, but playing at Delta Downs can't be a high point for any band in a career. The drummer was the only band member not around from the New Miserable Experience Tour. Robin, Jessie, Scott, and Bill sounded just as good as ever when they were making a full effort, which was most of the time. For some reason Robin got a kick out of singing into peoples' cell phones while on stage and going into the crowd. It got really annoying and he seemed to have difficulty concentrating on some parts of songs. He had a bad habit of flashing the 'peace' and 'rock on' bullhorns after every little thing he did and somehow managed to play tambourine on almost every single song. One of my friends actually got a picture with him and got to play the tambourine for several songs. She said that he had definitely been drinking and seemed kind of drunk. Who knows, maybe this is the normal concert experience. I usually don't get to sit close enough to see those kinds of things. I was less than 20 feet from the stage and Robin was all over the front of it. The set was a mix of songs from New Miserable Experience: "Allison Road", "Found Out About You", "Hey Jealousy", and "Lost Horizons"; Congratulations I'm Sorry: "Follow You Down" and "As Long As It Matters"; Major Lodge Victory: "Learning The Hard Way", "Come On Hard", "Someday Soon", "Heart-Shaped Locket", "The End Of The World", "Long Time Gone", "Super Girl", "Let's Play Two", "Curious Thing", and "Fool For The Taking"; and what was probably the favorite of the night, "Til I Hear It From You". That's a lot of songs and would seem like a long concert, but keep in mind that most Gin Blossom songs are pop gems, that last just long enough to be nice and then end. The combined time of the concert was 75 minute, which included an encore of two listed songs, a weird, unannounced Robin bathroom break/band jam session, and a drum solo that never went anywhere in particular (Louie Weaver would have kicked his butt easily). For some reason the band decided to run the only song I have ever hated from them, "Heart-Shaped Locket" into the ground over and over again. I wanted to hose them off or throw something at them, but wussed out because who in their mind would do something stupid like that at a casino with so much security? Bill Leen's bass playing was quite entertaining. He would dance with his bass in semicircles, never missing a beat or note with his trusty pick. I have never seen someone play that thoroughly with a pick. The guitarists were both quite capable of playing complex guitar parts, but John Hampton's production during New Miserable Experience gave the band a 'jangle' rock sound, almost ripped straight from Peter Buck's Document era. The arpeggios killed me. Why does one guitarist have to continue to hammer the same pattern out through an entire song while the other guitarist plays mainly power-chords to carry the songs.
Once again, live concerts are always fun for me and getting to see a good band again was a great experience. I just wish Robin would have left the cell phones out of it.