Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive. ~Maria Popova
05 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: don mclean, sittin' on top of the world
Don McLean: “Sittin’ On Top of the World” (1973)
Yeah, it’s the “American Pie” guy, doing the old folk-blues chestnut. McLean released a now-impossible-to-find covers album in 1973 called Playin’ Favorites, on which he showed the roots of his music in folk and early rock n roll.
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/04/26/songs-you-may-have-missed-399/
See also: Songs You May Have Missed #702 | Every Moment Has A Song (edcyphers.com)
05 Apr 2012 Leave a comment
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: may the road rise, roger mcguinn
Roger McGuinn: “May the Road Rise” (1996)
McGuinn puts a melody to the old Irish blessing.
04 Apr 2012 Leave a comment
in General Posts, Toward Better Sounding Music
It’s just a shame that this kind of thing falls to Neil Young, and no one at Sony or Apple has bothered doing it years ago. Here’s hoping Neil succeeds in helping us reclaim the other 95% of our music!
03 Apr 2012 Leave a comment
in General Posts, Toward Better Sounding Music
Any music consumer who cares about the audio quality of what he listens to ought to give half an hour’s time to the interview Neil Young did at The Wall Street Journal’s Dive Into Media conference.
We’re losing the battle for great-sounding music because of the assumption that we must choose between audio quality and convenience of use. In the 21st century there’s no reason we should have to choose between the two. And no reason to settle for digital sound that’s nowhere near that of 1970’s analog. Most of us haven’t heard music the way it’s supposed to sound for decades now. Some of our children never have. Why have we demanded ever larger, higher-resolution TVs but settled for the backward trend in audio reproduction? Because we think we must sacrifice great sound for the portability we want. The truth is: what we demand will be what is produced and sold, even made affordable. We just have to stop settling for a false compromise–we can have both convenience and high-resolution audio.
Neil discusses that issue and touches on a few others too, such as audio piracy, the presumed demise of the album, and how 5.1 Surround failed because women wanted furniture–not five boxes–in their living rooms.
The point Young makes in the very last minute of the interview is key: the larger and higher-quality the sound system, the better it will reveal the difference between a high-quality music file and the skimpy 5% of the music that an mp3 actually contains. And that’s why a DJ should never rely on mp3 audio to entertain wedding guests, unless his goal is to make an early night of it.
An informative and provocative 30 minutes.
03 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Recommended Albums Tags: Flying Colors, mike portnoy, neal morse, prog, steve morse
Flying Colors (2012)
In 1982, four estimable musicians, each of whom had been a member of a highly regarded progressive rock band, joined forces to release a record that sounded less “progressive” and more like mainstream arena rock than any of their previous work. Though critics were underwhelmed, Asia went quadruple-platinum and was number one for over two months.
Thirty years later, five of the most revered members of progressive rock’s current scene have teamed up in releasing a CD that is similarly more accessible than any of the members’ previous bands’ prog-niche music. And while I wouldn’t predict a number one album–much less multi-platinum sales–this might just be the best new rock album I’ll hear all year.
Drummer Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), keyboardist Neal Morse (Spock’s Beard), guitarist (and no relation to Neal) Steve Morse (Deep Purple, Kansas), bassist Dave LaRue (Dixie Dregs) and vocalist Casey McPherson (Alpha Rev) have created what sounds like a classic rock album from days past. If you’re looking for first-rate musicianship, it’s plentiful here–minus a lot of gratuitous showing-off of chops. Nor do proggish tendencies hold sway: only one song clocks in at a prog-like 12 minutes. Most of these songs are concise and radio ready. Solos are about note selection and melody rather than flash and complexity. The ace vocals of pop singer McPherson give the album the final push into mainstream rock territory. Influences are diverse enough with five songwriting contributors that nothing sounds blatantly derivative. And while it’s hardly Christian rock, you may notice some positive messages and family values subtly seeping through too.
Hopefully Flying Colors will be better received by critics than Asia were. Of course, these guys don’t carry the weight of the reputations of legendary bands such as Yes, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. As for fans, their response is already overwhelmingly positive, and with good reason. This is a remarkable collection of pop/rock songs by five guys who sound like they want to come out from the shadow of their legacies and step into the bright lights. Can they find a mainstream audience, chart success, maybe a hit single? As Asia sang 30 years ago, only time will tell.
Listen to: “The Storm”
Listen to: “Everything Changes”
Don’t miss: “Fool in My Heart”
Listen to: “Better Than Walking”
02 Apr 2012 Leave a comment
The great bluegrass banjo player Earl Scruggs died (last week) at the age of 88. Shortly afterward, Steve Martin sent out a tweet calling Scruggs the most important banjo player who ever lived. “Few players have changed the way we hear an instrument the way Earl has,” wrote Martin earlier this year in The New Yorker, “putting him in a category with Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, and Jimi Hendrix.”
Martin writes of Scruggs:
Some nights he had the stars of North Carolina shooting from his fingertips. Before him, no one had ever played the banjo like he did. After him, everyone played the banjo like he did, or at least tried. In 1945, when he first stood on the stage at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and played banjo the way no one had heard before, the audience responded with shouts, whoops, and ovations. He performed tunes he wrote as well as songs they knew, with clarity and speed like no one could imagine, except him. When the singer came to the end of a phrase, he filled the theatre with sparkling runs of notes that became a signature for all bluegrass music since. He wore a suit and a Stetson hat, and when he played he smiled at the audience like what he was doing was effortless. There aren’t many earthquakes in Tennessee, but that night there was.
In November of 2001 Martin had the opportunity to play the banjo alongside his hero on the David Letterman show. They played Scruggs’s classic, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” with Scruggs’s sons Randy on acoustic guitar and Gary on Harmonica, and a stellar group that included Vince Gill and Albert Lee on electric guitar, Marty Stewart on mandolin, Glen Duncan on fiddle, Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Glenn Wolf on bass, Harry Stinson on drums, Leon Russell on organ and Paul Shaffer on piano.
(Reprinted from Open Culture)
Every Moment Has A Song 