All posts tagged Washington Post

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.

Click Track. The Washington Post music blog reviews half of the 2/9 Trey show at 930 club.

“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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2 Comments

by Gillies on February 12, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in Artists, Deep, Music

Tagged Carl Sagan, Concerts, deep thoughts, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Trey Anastasio, Washington Post

Posted by Gillies on February 12, 2010

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

Go-Go

The Washington Post magazine has a cover story this week about Chuck Brown, the guy who created go-go.

Blending syncopated Latin beats with elements of jazz and African rhythms, Brown produced a sound that also derived directly from the music of African American churches. The inspiration led Brown to slow down the up-tempo of disco, which was popular during this period. “I just cut the beat in half,” he says. And to compete with the DJs, who were able to keep people on the dance floor continuously, Brown ignored the traditional stops in a set and began dropping percussion interludes between songs, twining them together so that there were no breaks. He called his new music go-go, “because it goes and goes,” he says.

There’s material in that story for a much longer post, but I don’t have the energy.

Elsewhere on the topic of go-go, there was a lively thread last night over at Balloon Juice on the best in 1970s funk. Someone nominated this one from Trouble Funk.

Joy!

I downloaded “Joy” this evening, and I’m excited to give it a listen. Dude, I may even have to buy my children “Joy” t-shirts.

It seems like reception to the album has been very positive, including this Associated Press review from today.

I have to do a little calling out on the first paragraph of that story, though.

The finicky fans of Phish have never been much satisfied with the Vermont jamband’s studio offerings — if they were, they wouldn’t go to such extremes to catch the band live.

Hmmmm. That’s bullshit.

Here’s a sort of related thought from the Washington Post’s recent write up.

No band’s success is less related to the popularity of its albums than Phish’s.

Well, that’s less bullshit, I suppose, but not entirely accurate either. A friend of mine worked at Elektra Records back in the day. I think I remember him telling me that one reason Elektra liked Phish was that their records consistently sold a decent amount (can’t remember what). Not gigantor, but consistent. I also remember friends of mine who worked in the record biz telling me that one key to getting signed was the proven ability to sell tens of thousands of records. Phish had that ability. So in that sense, the popularity of the band’s albums has indeed been related to its success.

Robert Cray: “I like my strings a little off the fingerboards.”

Uploaded to Flickr by dynaglyde99

I noticed this morning that the Washington Post has a music blog: Post Rock.

This post on Robert Cray caught my eye.

“Everybody has their own likings; really, it’s just the feel. I like my strings a little off the fingerboards. I use a little bit heavier string than most people. I don’t use a whammy bar. I just like a pretty good workhorse. Then, you know, when it really comes down to it, as anyone will tell you, it all depends on the player that gets the tone out of it.”

“I still use a variety of different guitars in the studio. They could be anything from Silvertones to Gibsons. I have a couple of James Trussart guitars, some older Strats. Or some really cheap, cheap, cheap $50 guitars for what they offer.”

Maybe, for blogging purposes, I’ll try and dig up a college paper I wrote on Robert Cray. Paper was for a classics course called “Dreams, Love, and Confession.” MPomy, what was the full title of the course again? It was taught by this guy, and it was outstanding.

Paper will either stand the test of time as refreshing bit of undergraduate thinking, or it will be completely embarrassing. Blog fodder either way.

Anyway, here’s Cray’s “Strong Persuader.”

Gillies

All posts tagged Washington Post

You’ve Been Posted!

Go-Go

Joy!

Robert Cray: “I like my strings a little off the fingerboards.”

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