I Love Music: Example #1

It amazes me what people can do with music sometimes. Videos like this make me feel worthless on the music front but at the same time makes me want to play so much more.

Thanks creative-music.org for showing this video.

I love music. Enjoy.

In With The New, Out With The Old?

As much as I like to recycle, there's always a tipping point. And I speak of music here of course. Last year, I wrote of reusing old tunes in my overall effort to rid the world of musical pollution in my post "Going Green By Recycling...Old Tunes." But lately, I've been cruising through my old Moleskines and my tried and true technique is feeling a bit over tried and a lot less true.

It is true that a lyric I wrote down 5 years ago might not have worked back then yet fits perfectly with a new riff that I pumped out yesterday. But overall, I've found that I was in different place in 2005. Not only do I now live half way across the country, but I hang with new people, I've had a myriad of experiences, and maybe most decisively, I'm not going through a colossal break up.  I bet you can imagine how depressing, boring and whiny every line of these books feels today.

Life events like break ups give major inspiration. Some good tunes come from them but from my experience, it's mostly just cry baby drivel. Who wants to hear that? I don't. And I don't want to perform it either.

So where does that put me? It makes me a regular Sly Sludge, reveling in my skills to pollute and plunder, leaving a trail of unused, discarded lyrics and guitar riffs in my wake. (Keep up with the random Captain Planet reference.) But you know what? I'm ok with that. The last thing I want to be remembered for is being that guy that people couldn't stand listening to because of his outdated, unimaginative lyrics that just made everyone want to shoot themselves. I've decided that picking a line from here and there to get things moving isn't a bad thing, but I also have to live in the now and work with events going on around me in 2010. There's no shortage.

The hardest part is giving up all that work from back then. But since I'm looking for new as well as more fulfilling lyrics in my writing, good riddance. Here's to upbeat and rockin' songs that don't make people cry. Unless that's what I'm going for of course.


Rock on!

Yet Another Show and No Guitar?

We hit another live show last weekend. Hell, that's all I seem to write about these days. But to be honest, hitting shows is the only interesting thing I seem to have going on right now. Besides a trio of Red Sox games I plan on catching in Kansas City in early April, the only other thing I have to be excited about in the very near future is another show which I paid a pretty penny for. But we'll talk about that one later.

Last weekend, KJ and I caught the VD Party (Valentine's Day Party, get your mind of the gutter) in DT Kansas City. The motivation for this show wasn't so much for the bands playing but the price. It was absolutely free, well, minus the gas money and the parking garage....and the meal we ended up having at Chipotle which was scrumptious. (Yay, tacos.) But anyway, the show itself was free and you really can't pass that up.

The headliner was OK Go, a band I've never really listened to. Going in, I thought I only knew one song, turns out I know two. The band I was looking forward to seeing was Company of Thieves who we caught at the free Halloween show with Our Lady Peace. (Refer to Slutterfly, Slumblebee, Slirate, and Our Lady Peace.) It was quite a bit different not seeing them in their Wizard of Oz get ups but they put on another great show and busted out a few new tunes.

The band I was really impressed with was called Crash Kings. I'd never heard them and had no idea what to expect. When they first came on and I saw they were a three piece I was a little skeptical. From my experience it seems that a lot of three piece bands, especially up and coming bands, sound too hollow and incomplete without those layers that I so crave. My skepticism went up a couple of notches when I noticed there was no guitar player, just keyboards.

But they proved not to need one. Hell, half the songs sounded as if there was one, or two. With the crunching bass, drums, one hand rocking the rhythm on one keyboard, and the other hand rocking the solo (The thing even had a giant whammy bar! I know it's nothing new for a keyboard to sound like another instrument, but damn, it was still pretty cool to watch.) they filled out really well and were actually pretty heavy sounding in some places. The recorded versions, not so much, but I recommend checking them out anyway.

Maybe I'll go play some guitar now that I have the place to myself for a little while longer. I'll probably just end up falling asleep on the couch with the Olympics on. Not so rockin', but it's been a long week.

Rock on!

Scales, scales, they're good for your skills...

...the more you play, the more it kills.

Scales are one of the major building blocks of playing any instrument. I remember having to memorize and play then in high school band as warm ups every class...and I hated them. Scales are just so boring and I wasn't very good at memorizing them.

I couldn't get myself to play them when I was tooting on the trumpet back in my high school, brass rockin' days, and the same applied in my transition to the strings. Being a self-taught guitarist, I always figured learning scales were one of the best ways to learn the fret board, to strengthen my fretting hand, and to work on my alternate picking, among other things. Unfortunately, it never caught on. I skipped to the fun part, searching the internet for guitar tabs of songs I wanted to learn and strumming away.

So here I am, close to 9 years since I first picked up a guitar and the scales are coming back to haunt me. Still running with the self-teaching philosophy, lately I've been disgusted with my lack of knowledge with what I'm playing. (That and learning other people's songs. I know Good Riddance by Green Day yet I don't know some of the most basic theory!) I've written dozens of songs, I've been in a band, I play my guitar most every day, but if you were to ask me what I was playing, beyond the basic explanation of, "this is a G-chord", I'd probably talk like I just picked up a guitar yesterday.

Last week I pulled out an on old book, part of the K-I-S-S series of books (Keep It Simple Series...or Keep It Simple Stupid for someone like me.), for a starting point, something to jump start my thirst for guitar learning goodness.  The scales section popped right out at me and now whenever I'm just sitting around I tool with every scale I can literally wrap my hand around; major, minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, chromatic, pentatonic....it just goes on.

As simple and straight forward as some of the stuff in this book seems, having played for all this time, I think spending some time going over this mind-boggling music theory stuff will do me good. It's not the most fun thing in the world, I mean, let's play some songs! (Write some songs is more like it.) But that's what happened 9 years ago and I think it's time to get a little more serious, no matter how much is hurts.

See You Soon Conan

This is sad, at least for me. Conan O'Brien is off The Tonight Show after only 7 months. I love Conan, I never disliked Leno, but I always struggled to stay awake through Jay's show so I could catch Conan on Late Night.

Below is the link for the final episode of Conan's version of The Tonight Show. If you don't watch the whole thing, at the very least watch the last 5 minutes or so. It's a very rockin' and incredible end to a show cut too short.

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien - January 22, 2010 on Hulu

Ending The Year With A Bang...Not So Much

The fact that I'm just now writing this post about my New Year's Eve says quite a bit. This new year was supposed to be different, not the same 'ol hum-drum, sitting in front of the tv to watch the ball drop and pretending that I enjoy drinking a few. (Which I really don't.)

I mentioned in my post, "The New Year's Eve Let Down", back in November how ringing in the New Year is never what it's cracked up to be. Though the transition from '09 to 0-Ten (definitely doesn't sound right when you say it out loud) wasn't the same kind of let down, I'm thinking I hyped up this year's celebration a little too much in my head.

KJ and I headed to downtown Kansas City to catch a rock show put on by 98.9 The Rock featuring local band Red Line Chemistry, Cavo, and Rev Theory. Overall, the show was decent, Rev Theory was definitely the highlight, with Cavo almost putting me to sleep and Red Line Chemistry being pretty impressive. No offense to Cavo, they have some great tunes, but they followed the local opener who came out ripping as a 5-piece group (2 guitars, bass, drums and lead vocal), as a 4-piece (only 1 guitar) which was a major step down the intensity meter.

Compounded with a long, short week at work, it being way past my normal bed time (I'm usually in bed by 10:00 at the latest), many more drunk people in comparison to other shows, and the countdown being a little bit of a dud (you need to work on that for next year 98.9) I was most definitely ready to hit the door once Rev Theory finished their set.

So as for ringing in 2010, the new decade, this show was a major step up from most other countdown nights of my adult life, but I feel that it could have been a little better, even with my insane expectations.

What's the moral here kiddies? I enjoyed myself and that's all that really mattered. I have to quit with all the hype and enjoy things for what they are from now on, I think that will make all the difference. Rock on to 2010!

Oh, and the hell with resolutions! Let's just write some tunes and leave it at that.

Let me know how your New Year's Eve went!