Here is a song I was lucky enough to have an online friend, Bill Davies, play piano on. It's a slow, moody song about being separated from my loved one, mixed in with some lyrics about current events.
Still working on those singing lessons.
Donations gladly accepted.
Can anyone tell me if this Amy Winehouse person has any talent and if I should be worried about her every move?
I can't keep up anymore.
My friend Phil Sparks will be performing his masterful jazz guitar work on Saturday evening at 7 p.m.
He will be playing for free at Backstreet Buzz Coffee House, 234 SW Market St., Reidsville. 348-2899.
I am here to tell you that if you like jazz or the guitar, Phil is the man for you.
I met him two years ago at the local music shop. I saw this guy working the fretboard in a way I had never seen in person and had to let him know how impressed I was. Phil is as humble and friendly as he is talented.
Backstreet Buzz is Reidsville's new coffee house and is a great place to get that big city feel in this little old town.
For my 15 or so readers in Greensboro, this event is well worth the 25 minute drive up US 29.
If you need directions, just leave me a comment.
If you like music as much as I do, may I suggest you check out IranianRadio.com and their podcast stream on I-Tunes. I'm specifically referring to their Traditional channel, which plays Persian sonati. Very cool.
Updated: Even better is Putamayo Radio, a stream of a weekly radio show from the Putamayo label, purveyors of the best collection of world music in, well, the world.
Guess I don't have to listen to Simon at work anymore and thank God for that.
Take a break from the grind and go see Chick Corea and Bela Fleck on Monday night at the Carolina Theatre.
If any bloggers are going, I'd be interested in meeting you briefly before or after the show.
According to Chick Corea's management company, Chick and Bela Fleck will perform as part of the Eastern Music Festival on March 17 at the Carolina Theatre.
This unique duo has produced an album, Enchantment. Listen to audio clips, here.
There is no other mention of this date online, but it was included in an email newsletter from chickcorea.com.
My guess is it is a recent add. Either way I am quite excited about the opportunity to see Chick live. I have just recently begun exploring his work in-depth and find it astounding.
My work life's been pretty good since my brother gave me the I-pod shuffle he found lying amidst the grass in his neatly tailored Charlotte neighborhood in late December. Between the podcasts and the music, the mindless work floats off in the distance.
Even more so since I've taken to exploring Return to Forever. I've been meaning to write a deep post about the used I-pod and the hours spent listening to Chick Corea and company, but I just haven't got around to it. Spending too much time reading the ever increasing Wray Fray drama.
But, see, I signed up for e-letters from chickcorea.com last month because I heard that RTF is gonna tour this summer.
Anyways, I got an email today that said Chick and Bela Fleck will play in Greensboro on March 17. The date has not been added to his tour list on the website, but it was on the email.
Does anyone know about this, or is it a recent addition.
Seeing Chick Corea live would be a dreamy experience.
After dinner I settled in and was flipping channels about 10pm when I caught the tail end of a great show on A&E, "The First 48". I was hoping another episode would come on, but something even better happened.
Paul McCartney walked out from behind a curtain and sang Blackbird.
It was an hour-long set filmed at the historic Olympia in Paris.
McCartney, as everyone knows, is awesome. The older he gets, the better he seems. I'm not gonna get all gushy, because I'm only 37, so my introduction to the Beatles was old lp's stacked in my parents closet in the early 1980s and a "Best of" tape I came across a few years later.
Well like many I could write forever about each of my favorite Beatles songs. I could go on and on about how crazy I am over Wings. I love Wings!
McCartney released a new album this year, Memory Almost Full. I've not heard it, but he went through several of my favorites last night, including:
Got to get you into my life
Band on the Run
Hey Jude
The program runs again on Dec. 29, and most of the clips are available on Youtube for now.
I've got another song in the top 20 chart at Soundclick. It's at No. 11 today.
How about helping me get some exposure via some clicks and listens.
The song is called Best of Everything and includes a solo done by a guitarist in Connecticut I collaborated with via the web.
I've got a new song up on my Soundclick site.
It's called "Covered Everything"
If you like the song, please tell a friend about it. If not, please consider a donation for singing lessons.
I'm about 80 percent done working on a 10 song cd I hope to publish and give out to friends for Christmas.
I've got two exciting collaborations going with musicians I met online at the Cakewalk songs forum, which is provided by the manufacturer of the software I use, Sonar Home Studio.
More on that soon.
So, I'm like, listening to Exiles from Disc 1 of King Crimson's Great Deceiver box set for like the 938th time in the last month and I'm wondering, does anybody else love Robert Fripp as much as I do?
Man, these internets are awesome. I recently decided to look up some old school chums on the My Space and damn if I didn't find two of them right off.
David Boyles I met in a beginning guitar class my second year in college. We pissed off the instructor because we got too busy trading Metallica licks to pay attention to his lesson on Greensleves.
That same night, my other friends were playing a small gig across campus and we walked over and talked for a while. As the college years went by, David grew from a metal foundation to embrace funk, soul and fusion and create a style all his own. If I remember right, he played in Nuclear Jesus and Space Monkey with my best of friends, Brooks Butler.
Brooks and I were roommates off an on for a few years and I have no bigger influence on my guitar abilities than him. I can't say enough how much his friendship meant to me.
After getting his MA at UT, he lived in Berkely for a while, then Miami and now back in Asheville, making the scene in several combinations, but giggin hard with a band called Rafe Hollister.
I haven't seen Dave in more than a decade. In fact, the last time I saw him was after he played a show, singing lead and playing the five-string bass like nobody's business for hours. We migrated back to Brooks' house and as I left, Dave was asleep on the floor. I didn't get a chance to tell him how awesome he was that night, and I new I was about to embark on a forced exile, so I didn't know when I would see him again. So I left a note in his hand or under his pillow with the word "fluid".
I am happy for you guys.
The rest of you should check them out. Their divergent styles speak volumes about the breadth of experiences I've tried to take in in my short time here.
A while back I posted this song and told you I hoped to record it with a vocalist by the end of the year. Well, we got 'er done last week.
It's a rough take for now, but Jessica's voice is so good, I thought I would share it with you.
Click here to listen (mp3 stream)
We will be retracking it soon, I hope, and I plan to add this to my 11-song collection I hope to release next month.
Music and lyrics copyright 2007 Mushy Mind Music and Jessica Reed.
David Crosby (CSNY)
Almost Cut My Hair
Deja Vu
Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It was getting kind of long
I could have said it was in my way
But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
And I feel like I owe it to someone
Must be because I had the flu for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking into a mirror and seeing a police car
But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cos I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone
When I finally get myself together
I'm gonna get down in some of that sweet summer weather
I'm going to find a space inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff
Cos I feel like I owe it, yeah
Said I feel like I owe it, yeah
You know I feel---- like I owe it yeah to someone
When I grow up I want to be just like David Gilmour.
(Graham Nash and David Crosby singing back-up, in case the mind blowing guitar work isn't enough for you.)
The Alan Parsons Project
Apparently, I'm getting old. My old school dawgs Rage Against the Machine played a packed house on Aug. 24 and I knew jack about it until today.
I never heard of them until I went to Lollapalooza in 1993 on a whim to see Fishbone and Dinosaur Jr. We went early and were 15 people deep from the front of the stage, talking and smoking until I looked around and I was surrounded by 15-20,000 people. I was cool with it. Rage began the day. I'd never heard of them but was in a mood to mosh, so I gravitated to the pit. I bounced around a few people until I saw this one skinhead dude, about 5'10" and pudgy, stomping on kids and thought I need to slam him. So we bumped each other and he moshed across the pit. I looked at him and he came raging at me. This was my first pit. I braced and we slammed each other and he flopped on the ground, which marked me as the bmoc. Next thing I knew I was getting moshed by about 10 people. I knew if I went down I was dead, so I was grabbing belts and shoulders and anything I could until I got my balance. Then I gravitated away from the pit, battered but not broken.
It was a rock and roll frenzy, as my friend Scott would say.
Here's a clip of Zach enticing the crowd to burn down the office of every Democratic senator who doesn't vote to pull troops out of Iraq yesterday.
Queens of the Stone Age opened. Wish I paid attention.
More clips via YouTube.
Modest Mouse
The View
Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Your gun went off.
Well you shot off your mouth and look where it got you.
My mouth runs on too.
Shouts from both sides,
"Well we've got the land but they've got the view!"
Well now here's the clue.
Life it rents us.
And yeah I hope it put plenty on you.
Well I hope mine did too.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer.
Well it feels pretty soft to me.
And if it takes shit to make bliss,
then I feel pretty blissfully.
Your gun went off.
Well you shot off your mouth and look where it got you.
My mouth runs on too.
Shouts from both sides,
"Well we've got the land but they've got the view!"
Well now here's the clue.
We are fixed right where we stand.
Life it rents us.
And yeah I hope it put plenty on you.
Well I hope mine did too.
We are fixed right where we are.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer.
Well if feels pretty soft to me.
And if it takes shit to make bliss,
well I feel pretty blissfully.
For every invention made how much time did we save?
We're not much farther than we were in the cave.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer,
and it feels pretty soft to me.
And if it takes shit to make bliss,
well I feel pretty blissfully.
If life's not beautiful without the pain,
well I'd just rather never ever even see beauty again.
Well as life gets longer, awful feels softer.
And it feels pretty soft to me.
For every good deed done there is a crime committed.
We are fixed.
For every step ahead we could have just been seated.
We are fixed.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer.
Well it feels pretty soft to me.
And if it takes shit to make bliss,
well I feel pretty blissfully.
We are fixed.
We are fixed.
We are fixed right where we stand.
King CrimsonFishbone
Unyielding Conditioning
Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe
Unyielding conditioning
Tune out from all thats happening
Nobody deserves empathy
Nobody feels for me
Weve all been trained by our worlds
I cannot see no one but me
No one can feel my emptiness
Everybody must fend for themselves
There is no openness
Weve all been claimed by our worlds
But I have heard of ways
That say theres light beyond the darkness
And everyone can keep their children warm
And togetherness will guide us safely
Through all storms
Unyielding conditioning
Remove all trace of memory
No one needs justice anymore
No voices raised in anger
Weve all been tamed by our worlds
But I have heard of ways
Where people topple all injustice
No one lives their lives on bended knees
And all bigotry is like a disease
Drowned in the sea
And all can hold their head up high !
Pearl Jam
Dissident
Vs.
She nursed him there, ooh, over a night
I wasnt so sure she wanted him to stay
What to say...what to say
But soon she was down, soon he was low
At a quarter past...a holy no...
She had to turn around
When she couldnt hold, oh...she folded...
A dissident is here
Escape is never, the safest path
Oh, a dissident, a dissident is here
And to this day, shes glided on
Always home but so far away
Like a word misplaced
Nothing said, what a waste
When she had contact...with the conflict...
There was meaning, but she sold him to the state
She had to turn around
When she couldnt hold...she folded...
A dissident is here
Escape is never, the safest path
Oh, a dissident, a dissident is here, oh...oh...oh...
She gave him away when she couldnt hold...no...she folded...
A dissident is here escape is never, the safest path
Oh, a dissident, a dissident is here, oh...
Couldnt hold on...she couldnt hold...no...she folded...
A dissident is here
Escape is never the safest place, oh...
A dissident is here
Smashing Pumpkins
Muzzle
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
I fear that I'm ordinary, just like everyone
To lie here and die among the sorrows
Adrift among the days
For everything I ever said
And everything I've ever done is gone and dead
As all things must surely have to end
And great lovers will one day have to part
I know that I am meant for this world
My life has been extraordinary
Blessed and cursed and won
Time heals but I'm forever broken
By and by the way...
Have you ever heard the words
I'm singing in these songs?
It's for the girl I've loved all along
Can a taste of love be so wrong
As all things must surely have to end
And great lovers will one day have to part
I know that I am meant for this world
And in my mind as I was floating
Far above the clouds
Some children laughed I'd fall for certain
For thinking that I'd last forever
But I knew exactly where I was
And I knew the meaning of it all
And I knew the distance to the sun
And I knew the echo that is love
And I knew the secrets in your spires
And I knew the emptiness of youth
And I knew the solitude of heart
And I knew the murmurs of the soul
And the world is drawn into your hands
And the world is etched upon your heart
And the world so hard to understand
Is the world you can't live without
And I knew the silence of the world
