Saturday, October 30, 2010: The Specials - Ghost Town

I usually don't blog on a Sunday, but since tomorrow is such a special day, then I think I just might make a rare exception.

Let's set the stage today, however, with some top notch creepy, atmospheric mood music, with eerily frightful background vocals, some of the coolest horns ever, and a song which could have been written yesterday.

Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?

It's Saturday. It's Halloween Weekend. It's The Specials.

Enjoy

Friday, October 29, 2010: Sparks ft Jane Wiedlin - Cool Places

It's Friday. It's Halloween Weekend.

Let's shake off the dust from the week and go out and try to find those Cool Places.

Where's the Cool Places?

Thursday, October 28, 2010: The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger - This World Was Made For Men

The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger is a product of two people, American model and actress Charlotte Kemp Muhl, and Sean Lennon, the only son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

There are a million things I could write about these two, individually and as a couple. I could blog about these people for a month.

But, gentle reader, on this rare occasion, discretion shall become the better part of my valour, and I'm more than happy to let the rest of the blogosphere spew out all their skewed verbage about this couple.  And onto this project.

This will allow us to listen to this delicate, lilting, glorious song together.  Unfettered and uninterrupted.

Bliss.  Just like this song.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010: Wall Of Voodoo - Mexican Radio

When I started this blog I was afraid I was going to do too many 80's songs.  However on balance, I think I've been quite restrained. Maybe too restrained, if I'm honest.

The hesitation comes from this problem I have with 80's songs: Do I want to blog them because they are cool, or do I want to blog them simply out of nostalgia.

It's a fine line. However, I'm sure that todays selection is not only cool, it oversteps firmly into the very cool category.

I found a wonderful article at Mixonline.com which details pretty much everything you would ever want to know about this classic track.

Also, the video for Mexican Radio is very cool indeed, but all the good versions had the embedding disabled, so if you have a moment, please check out this wonderful 80's time capsule here, here and here.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010: TWOfer Tuesday - The Mahavishnu Orchestra Edition

No other band has rocked my world the way the Mahavishnu Orchestra has.

I first listened to their album Inner Mounting Flame when I was living in England. It's there that I started to frequent the large and well stocked Millennium Library in Norwich, where I was living at the time.

I've mentioned before on this blog how libraries are great places to try out music you've never heard of risk free.

I don't know why I would have picked up Inner Mounting Flame.  Maybe it was the name, Mahavishnu Orchestra probably sounded exotic enough for me to give it a listen.

I certainly didn't know that much about jazz-fusion.  Or John McLaughlin.  It's times like this when I really wish I would have kept a diary.

Anyway.

The reason Mahavishnu Orchestra rocked my world can be compared to why I have problems with Star Wars and why I love the 1982 classic movie Tron.

Please don't get me wrong, Star Wars is a great movie, one of my favourites, and I think the first two (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back) are outstanding accomplishments. But, when the advertising kicks in and the voice-over says that a film promises to take you to another world....well, that's not exactly true, is it. I mean, when watching scenes on Tatooine, you know you're not in a galaxy far, far away. Rather, deep down in places we don't like to talk about at parties, you understand it's just some desert somewhere. Tunisia, specifically. Or when they are on the planet Endor, it's really just the forests of Northern California. And so on.

But, when I first saw Tron, featuring some of the most ambitious, large scale computer effects ever created at that time, I was blown away. Tron didn't muck about, it literally took me to another world. A world where I had never been before. I spent that entire summer at the Capri Theater in West Covina watching Tron.

Listening to the Mahavishnu Orchestra was like that.

Up until that point the music I had listened to was fairly straight forward. A broad spectrum, to be sure, but still fairly structured. Look at the song structure of Johnny B. Goode, for example; Intro, a couple of verses and a chorus, some slick guitar riffs, rinse and repeat.  Now, you have a good template for most pop music since whoever wrote After The Ball.  Which didn't have slick guitar riffs, obviously, but you get my meaning.

And most all other music I've ever listened to had followed variations of that formula.  Hence the Star Wars analogy.  As much as people boasted about how I had never heard music like ______________ before, I was usually pretty confident I had.  And I was usually right.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra was like an atomic bomb going off in my head, willfully destroying all my preconceived notions of what music was about.  Structure, meter, rhythm, space, hell even the length of songs were thrown into question.  Yes, the song below is almost 10 minutes long.  And it is glorious for every single second.

Again, I hadn't really been exposed to any sort of fusion, and the only jazz I had really known was whatever I had read about in On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra rocked my world.  Like no other band, before or since.  Yes, they introduced me to jazz-fusion, for which I will always be grateful.  And encouraged me to get to know more traditional jazz far better, which has become a lifelong passion.

But, more than that.  The Mahavishnu Orchestra showed me how limited my expectations were.  How small my musical horizons were.  How little I really knew about music.  And, even more than that, they played with an energy, passion and musicanship that, for me, stand unsurpassed.  In any genre.

You think some of these new-fangled death metal guitarists are loud and fast?  I guaran-frickin-tee you John McLaughlin is louder and faster.  And cooler to boot.

Sadly, most of the music I listen to now has returned to that standard pop music structures.  Riffs, verses, chorus, maybe a bridge, more riffs, blah blah blah.  Yes, sometimes it's cool, and hopefully CSOTD succeeds in bringing you the best and dumping the rest.

Still.  I'll forever be looking for another band that can blow my mind the way TMO has.

If you've seen them, let me know.

Monday, October 25, 2010: Dilated Peoples ft Kanye West - This Way

Mondays are usually about the same old grind.

Same old job. Same old scenery. Same old drama.

Sometimes you just want to wake up and say, "I can't live my life this way."

So...

Mondays can also be the start of something new. A new week. A new outlook.

A fresh start.

Here's your song for this new week.

Make it a good one.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

No blogging on a Sunday.

See you Monday!