Category — Music

Sunday, I watched an episode of the Simpsons (something I should do more often but don’t) called “Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind”. As usual, it was another excellent episode of this long running show (20 seasons apparently). There was one scene that I was throughly fascinated with and it was the one where we see Homer progress through the years.

I like the montage effect but what got me was the music behind the piece. A very Philip Glass-like piece of minimalist instrumental. So I looked up the episode to find the source of the music and I found it was written by Carly Comando as the soundtrack to one of the most popular videos on Youtube, Everyday by Noah Kalina where he takes a picture of himself everyday, starting from the year 2000 through to 2006 but as a project is one that he maintains on his own site. To do this for several years, requires plenty of discipline but he has managed to do just that. A remarkable blend of music and video.

So I found my music which was available on iTunes and found something else truly wondrous to watch.

This  weekend is the annual Heavy Rebel Weekender here in Winston-Salem. While the main focus is showcasing the various bands that are on stage from Friday night to Sunday night, for me it is the cars that are as much of the event as anything else. Saturday from 9am-4pm, cars from custom jobs, classic vehicles, from all eras will be on hand.

Band Schedule:

Friday

4:45 p.m. SouthPaw
5 p.m. Atomic Drops
5:30 p.m. Wink Keziah & Deluxe Motel
5:45 p.m. Blue Diablo
6 p.m. The Keepers
6:30 p.m. Pete Yorko
7 p.m. Drop Tops
7:30 p.m. Dead City Dealers
7:45 p.m. Kings of Hell
8 p.m. Gojira-X
8:30 p.m. Hick’ry Hawkins
8:45 p.m. Motorpsychos
9 p.m. Reverend D-Ray and the Shockers
9:30 p.m. Los Rudos
9:45 p.m. Blacklists Royals
10 p.m. the bo-stevens
10:30 p.m. Jimmy and the Teasers
10:45 p.m. Guitar Bomb
11 p.m. Crank County Daredevils
11:30 p.m. Lords of the Highway
Midnight Dexter Romweber and The New Romans

Saturday

9 a.m. to 4 p.m.: HRW Car and Bike Show, Mud Wrestling
5 p.m. High Rollers
5:30 p.m. Bad Mothers
5:45 p.m. Mean Mean Man/Brass Knuckle Band
6 p.m. Filthy Rotten Sex Machine
6:30 p.m. Soul Reapin’ 3
6:45 p.m. American Speedway
7 p.m. Joecephus/George Jonestown Massacre
7:30 p.m. TBA
7:45 p.m. Luxury Pusher
8 p.m. Mad Tea Party
8:30 p.m. Big Spank
8:45 p.m. The Butchers
9 p.m. Wet Wifebeater Contest
9:30 p.m. Designer Drugs
9:45 p.m. The Cheats
10 p.m. Speed Crazy
10:30 p.m. Uncle Scratch’s Gospel Revival
10:45 p.m. Sasquatch and the Sickabillies
11 p.m. Red Hot Poker Dots
Midnight Rocket 88

Sunday

2 p.m. Nanner Puddin’ Eatin’ and Beer Drinkin’ Contest 2:30 p.m. The Black Knots
2:45 p.m. 220 Short
3 p.m. Adam the First Real Man
3:30 p.m. The Defilers
3:45 p.m. The Big Bad
4 p.m. Deadneks
4:30 p.m. The Flat Tires
4:45 p.m. TBA
5 p.m. Upright Bass Slapdown
5:30 p.m. Locke and Load
5:45 p.m. The Hottdamns
6 p.m. Crossroads Guitar Contest
6:30 p.m. Sandanistas
6:45 p.m. The Buzzards
7 p.m. Psycho Devilles
7:30 p.m. Matt Walsh
7:45 p.m. Lust
8 p.m. Killer Filler
8:30 p.m. The Straight 8’s
8:45 p.m. Pee Wee Moore
9 p.m. Truckstop Preachers
9:30 p.m. BuzzKills
9:45 p.m. Billy Joe Winghead
10 p.m. 7 Shot Screamers

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While I still not have the leap to go to High Definition for video even though my television is quite capable of handling it, there may be other reasons to consider Blu-Ray.

One reason to switch to Blu-Ray is its ability to handle high definition music. It is no secret that MP3′a, iTunes downloads even many CDs are inadequate to reproduce the fidelity of the original recordings. Compression in its many forms compromises quality in most respects.

Blu Ray discs along with some solutions coming our way , allows as a virtue of its high storage capacity to accommodate more bits per tracks especially to those notes and tones which are virtually undetectable to the ear yet unconsciously we can hear them giving the music its warmth and depth.

That is the one thing I have been missing with the music I have been hearing of late. I download plenty of music these days yet after listening to it for awhile, mainly for the novelty of hearing a new song, I rarely return to the music. It always felt lacking.

At work, as I code away, I listen to my iTunes library but instead of listening to it directly from the computer, I send the signal through another device that attempts to restore some of the sound that was lost in the translation so to speak. It is very good and it really makes listening to the music quite acceptable.

In the car, it is not quite the same though the extra wattage of sound along with an impressive bass reflex does compensate. But the sound is not same.

Now with DVDs and Blu-Rays able to handle more music and reproduce it better, we may be in a new age of music appreciation and start to hear the music as it should be.

When Salon.com dropped its daily download feature last year, I was really bummed out by it. It was an incredibly good source of new music and from it I learned about such acts like New Pornographers, Arcade Fire, Bloc Party and so on. The tracks they offered were not throwaways either but solid pieces that were featured as Single cuts later on by the acts.

Indeed, it was the loss of this feature that decided for me to drop my annual subscription to the site. I rarely visit the site as it was for its articles and political commentary as I moved onto other sites which offered the same for free.

Still I missed that source. I still get free music from my monthly subscription from Paste magazine. iTunes was also pretty decent but they had only 2-3 songs a week with one of them always a Latino act of some sort. But it is not enough for me to satisfy my desire for new and exciting acts from any genre.

So it was gratifying when I came across the free MP3 feature from Crave through MP3.com. Apparently, this was a new feature that was added a few months ago but one I never noticed in my infrequent visits to the site. It was like being the proverbial kid in the candy store when I saw all of these songs. It took me about two days to download them all, about 90 so far. it did not matter who they were or what genre they were classified, any free music was worth listening to at least once.

After going through the list once, the quality was consistent with what I have experienced before with Paste magazine CD’s: two or three top cuts interspersed with a dozen mediocre or uninteresting songs. I figure that our of the 90 songs, there are a dozen I really like and would listen to again and again. M83’s We Own the Sky is a killer track for me with its synth beats and ethereal vocals. Jenny Lewis’s country rock tracks were uniformly good all around especially Charging Sky. While I am not a fan of hard rock, the many free tracks of MudHoney were appreciated. I like the hard driving chords of the Straight Life.

On the downside, after listening to the Flight of the ConChords, I do not know why they are such a hit among critics; Jimmie Reign’s R&B tracks just were not my thing along with Ghislain Porter electronica version of hip-hop.

All in all, a decent mix of indie rock and electronica have found a home on my playlists and for that I am appreciative of Crave and MP3.com

As we approach Christmas, the television holiday specials are on and radio has a more festive playlist. Songs will be diverse from traditional religious songs like Silent Night, holiday classics like Jingle Bells to more newly written songs by artists which tend to be forgotten relatively quick but does allow for a break from the umpteenth rendition of one of the Christmas standbys.

I enjoy singing holiday songs especially in Church with my weak voice masked by the voices of others in the Church. But after the Epiphany is celebrated, these songs are never sung again until another Christmas season. Yet, outside our doors, it is still wintertime with months of snow, ice and bone-chilling weather still ahead of us.

So why do songs like Winter Wonderland which are about the joys of winter without mentioning Christmas at all in thelyrics are scarcely sung after Christmas. We hear them constantly in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I venture to say that if you break out a rendition of Jingle Bells on a car drive through the falling snow, the kids will say something like why you are singing a Christmas song? Christmas is now over!

That is not right. No other season has as many songs ascribed to it, songs people are familiar with, expressing the joys and wonders of the season yet the season has barely started (remember it is not officially winter until December 21st) and we cease to sing them ever again. These are secular songs with no mention of religion but of things like snow and crackling fires to toast chestnuts. Embarrassment is the last thing we should feel when we sing these songs.

So I am going to try an experiment this season. I will download or rip various classic winter songs of a non-religious nature to a CD and play them in the car or at home so that when the weather is a bit more wintry than usual, the music will help lighten the mood. It will be in keeping with the season and the fact is that these songs are great traditional songs that we can take great pleasure in by listening or even singing along with them.

These songs deserve their place during winter. Maybe I can start a trend that in instead of complaining about the season, we can enjoy it and one way to do that is by singing the songs of the season.

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