All posts for the month February, 2010

Thoughts on New AvA Record

Last night, I downloaded ‘Love,’ the new one from Angels and Airwaves. The band is offering the record for free, with the option to contribute what you wish.  I chucked in $10. I figured that’s what the price would be on iTunes, and I definitely would have paid for the record on iTunes, had it been available. It was worth the contribution, for sure.

‘Love’ was called ‘prog’ by Rolling Stone Billboard, but  I wouldn’t use that term for these guys. All their songs sort of sound the same to me. The use of synth, the vocal phrasing, the chord changes: musically, it sounds to me not far off from their first and second records. Here are my thoughts on that.

1) So what.

2) Maybe it’s deliberate? It’s not that they don’t have depth; they’re just aiming for a consistent sound. Like AC/DC – do one thing, do it well.

Another thing: something intrigues me  about this band. What is it? I’m a sucker for pop music? I’m a sucker for uplifting material? AvA has an original approach? Tom DeLonge is cool? Probably all of the above. They’re playing at the 930 Club in May. I think I’ll go for tickets.

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by Gillies on February 18, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 18, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/18/thoughts-on-new-ava-record/

Blog Commenter Can’t Just Enjoy the Vegetable Orchestra

Bonne Nouvelle is a blog I check out now and then. Run by Le Monde, the blog’s mission is to highlight good stuff – things that make you feel happy and hopeful about life. As they put it, “1001 petits trucs qui peuvent rendre la vie plus gaie.”

Recently, the blog put up a post featuring a video of the Vegetable Orchestra.

The post didn’t sit well with one of their readers, who proceeded to rip the blog for basically being full of shit.

Bref vous êtes à l’avant-garde du journalisme-twitter, micro-information relayée, pertinence 0.

I liked the response from the blog’s proprietors:

eh oh! du calme!

1 Comment
by Gillies on February 17, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 17, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/17/blog-commenter-cant-just-enjoy-the-vegetable-orchestra/

His iTunes Library Filled Several Hard Drives

Recently, I’ve come across two remarkable magazine stories that share three themes: Illinois, movies, and music.

The first one is a Esquire item on Roger Ebert.

Ebert always had music playing in his hospital room, an esoteric digital collection that drew doctors and nurses to his bedside more than they might have been otherwise inclined to visit. There was one song in particular he played over and over: “I’m Your Man,” by Leonard Cohen. That song saved his life.

Next, a Vanity Fair story (flagged by Peter Lattman) on John Hughes.

Indeed, apart from farming, music was Hughes’s most consuming passion. It pained him that he was so identified with the 80s alterna-pop of his teen films, since that music represented but a thimbleful of the many genres and idioms he enjoyed. His iTunes library filled several hard drives, and he planned the playlists for his sons’ weddings as carefully as he had the soundtracks for his movies. In recent years, he took to dispensing pre-loaded iPods to people he liked, much as he’d assiduously compiled mix tapes for Ringwald and Broderick in the old days. The last time he ever saw Hughes, in November 2008, Chris Candy, John Candy’s 25-year-old son, was the recipient of such an iPod, “an incredibly eclectic four-gig, thousand-song mix tape, basically,” Candy says.

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by Gillies on February 16, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Artists, Cinema, Music
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Posted by Gillies on February 16, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/16/his-itunes-library-filled-several-hard-drives/

Folks These Days Got It Easy

Thanks to YEMBlog, I found the 2/9 Trey show for download, which someone (thank you!) has posted up on SendSpace. I paid $3 for a SendSpace day pass, and now the show is in my collection. That process still amazes me, perhaps because I grew up listening to hissy, who-knows-what generation-of-copying bootlegs on cassette.

Right now, I’m giving the show a listen. Outstanding. Love the big riff at the end of “Valentine.”

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by Gillies on February 15, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 15, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/15/folks-these-days-got-it-easy/

Watch Out Where the Huskies Go

  • Digging out my back yard today, I shoveled a bit of yellow snow (where the greyhounds go). I found myself humming, “Dreamed I was an Eskimo…”
  • One of the tuning pegs on my old Yamaha acoustic is shot, and it slips when I tune it above a certain pitch. So I’ve tuned the guitar way down, which has lowered the action quite a bit. It’s a lot more fun to play now.
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by Gillies on February 14, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 14, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/14/watch-out-where-the-huskies-go/

Carl Sagan – ‘A Glorious Dawn’

Via Doug at galaxy rise Tide Rise:

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by Gillies on February 13, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 13, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/13/carl-sagan-a-glorious-dawn/

You’ve Been Posted!

I found plenty of bloggable stuff out there on the Internet today. Here are a couple of bits and pieces.

  • Peter Gabriel. According to AP, he’s bailing on Genesis’s induction next month into the rock hall of fame, citing his upcoming European tour. Sort of harsh, no? Maybe they do some sort of video link.
  • Carl Sagan. NPR quotes the scientist on the view of Earth from 4 billion miles away.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

When I was little, I watched “Cosmos” on public television – that show kind of blew my mind. I might have to Netflix that action.

“As a bonus you’ve been probably bobbing your head all along and not just because you might have a contact high,” says Click Track.

Ha ha ha! Stoners getting high at the Trey show! Ha! Only I didn’t see or smell pot or any other drugs (besides booze) once when I was there. Maybe the blogger did, but he didn’t elaborate. Then, from hackneyed to casual racism: “The two forays into light-reggae were about as successful as you’d expect from a band of seven white folks led by a dude from Vermont.” Yeeeucthh.

Reminds me of this:

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by Gillies on February 12, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Artists, Deep, Music
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Posted by Gillies on February 12, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/12/youve-been-posted/

The Blogger with the Good Taste in Music

Along the lines of the friend with the good taste in music, there are a couple of professional bloggers out there whose sites I read regularly and whose taste in music I appreciate and generally agree with. One is Bob Cesca; another is John Cole.

Ah, but music tastes rarely match up 100 percent. Yesterday, Cole posted this.

Here is the question: does anyone know where I can get album art for Dead bootlegs. And please, I’ve dealt with about 500 emails today asking about the website, I don’t need 40 of you coming in here telling me the Dead suck. On a related note, I am also uninterested in hearing how much you like Phish.

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by Gillies on February 11, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 11, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/11/the-blogger-with-the-good-taste-in-music/

Notes on Trey Gig at 930 Club

It was hairy to get to this show. When I set out at 8pm for the club, snow was falling heavily, and there was an ominous feel out there on the streets of DC. Not much traffic out on the slick roads. I got a cab pretty quickly, though, and we set out slowly on our way.

We hadn’t gone more than a few stoplights when I realized that I had forgotten my motherf’n tickets at home. The cab driver was understanding, and he took me back, even waiting for me with the meter running on M Street while I scurried to grab my tickets.

Anyway, I thought the harsh conditions were going to thin the herd over at 930. Wrong. Place was packed! As full as I remember it being the last time I saw Trey there (in 2006).

The band had already started when I arrived – they were playing “Gotta Jibboo.” The mood for that song was the pretty much what was evident throughout the rest of the gig (at least the part that I stayed for; I ducked out about midway through the second set). I would call it “relaxed tight.” Trey was energetic but not hopping all over the stage. He directed the band ably, and they held things down very steadily. Musically, I found it a much different vibe than a Phish show, where the four band members are collaborating pretty much as co-equals.

I’m looking forward to downloading this show someplace. Here’s a video snippet.

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by Gillies on February 10, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Music
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Posted by Gillies on February 10, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/10/notes-on-trey-gig-at-930-club/

#Trey: Night Speaks to a Woman

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by Gillies on February 9, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by Gillies on February 9, 2010

http://gilli.es/2010/02/09/trey-night-speaks-to-a-woman/

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