February 14, 2008

"The Birds and the Bees"

Saw this video on YouTübe and liked it (the lead singer plays the clarinet!):

Posted by Steven at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2007

Ruby Returns to ZBS!

I was delighted to discover that ZBS Productions has put The Adventures of Ruby back on it's catalog (in CD and MP3 format). The main page for Ruby is here.

Posted by Steven at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2007

The Orchestra - A Review

I finally sampled and put the album No Rewind by The Orchestra on my MP3 database. Those of you with access can look for it under "The Orchestra". This is a surprisingly ELOesque album, and I encourage any ELO fan to seek it out.

Three of ELO's original artists contributed to this album, but most importantly Lou Clark, who did the arrangements for ELO's legendary orchestral sound, contributed to this album. Mik Kaminski's violin is also prominent in the performances, while Clark's synthesizer provides the missing cellos and other strings. Vocals by Eric Troyer and Parthenon Huxley sound close to the original Jeff Lynne sound. This album comes across much more like an early ELO album, complete with a eerie remake of The Beatles' Twist and Shout.


I found this review on line and it gave me pause to consider what I was holding in my hands: a rare CD that captures the original ELO sound (well, the '77 - '80 sound).

... Rechristened The Orchestra, the band continued touring, also booking studio time out of their own pockets on several tour stops to lay down tracks for a new album. The result, which the band proudly proclaims was created without a single cent of money from any labels or outside benefactors, is No Rewind, which marks an incredible reinvention of the group’s sound.

The band’s new blood - Huxley and Townsend - asserts itself right off the bat with “Jewel And Johnny”. Kicking off with a beat not a million miles away from the fun, jaunty gait of “Mr. Blue Sky” itself, Jewel and Johnny shows that the new recruits have, in fact, brought The Orchestra that much closer to the sound of old-school ELO. (It’s worth noting at this juncture that Huxley is from the same pool of reared-on-the-70s L.A. power pop talent that has also given us Jason Falkner and Jon Brion.) There were tracks on both of ELO Part II’s studio albums that faintly irritated me because they made it sound like the group was trying to bring a hard rock sound to the table; not so with No Rewind. The songs here are finely crafted pop-rock with a Beatlesque sensibility, which is, ironically, what Jeff Lynne was always trying to do with the original ELO. And the songs featuring Huxley on lead vocals are a real treat, because it sure doesn’t hurt that Huxley’s versatile baritone isn’t a million miles away from the voice of the aforementioned Mr. Lynne. Whether consciously or not, there seems to have been a reassessment of what made the original ELO what it was; the songwriting is sharper this time around, both musically and lyrically, with fantastic results.

Joe Bob sez "Check it out!"

Posted by Steven at 06:42 PM | Comments (1)

September 20, 2006

"White and Nerdy"

"Weird Al" Yankovic is back with a vengance. His latest video is better than It's All About the Pentiums (if that is possible). Leave it to Al to make me like rap songs!

PS. Watching the video, I was alarmed at how white and nerdy I really, truly, sadly am. Right down to the Kirk vs. Picard and mowing the yard. Really.

Posted by Steven at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2006

"This Is Your Brain On Music"

I ran across a review of a new book called This Is Your Brain On Music on Salon.

The review of the book hits on some of the big revelations, but the bottom line is that a lot of experience I've had with music since my early teens has been studied by the author, and he finds strong correlations between my personal experience and what they've deduced from scanning brains.

Humans are incredibly good at parsing music. It's an extremely complicated task, and only part of that is speech recognition. There are other issues involving acoustic analysis and other esoteric tasks that most people never "think of" when they are enjoying a song. I found his discovery about music and teens to be extremely reassuring:

Humans prefer music of their own culture when they're toddlers, but it's in our teens that we choose the specific sort of music that we'll love forever. These years, Levitin explains, are emotional times, "and we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to 'tag' the memories as something important." In addition, our brains are undergoing massive changes up until the teen years -- after that, the brain structure becomes more fixed, and it begins to prune, rather than grow, neural connections. Consequently it's in our teens that we're most receptive to new kinds of music (in much the same way it's easier to learn a new language when you're young than when you're old).

The author also explains one of those things that drives me (personally) nuts, that of the "song stuck in your head":

One more thing on the connection between memory and music bears mentioning, if only for the name: the "earworm." This word, from the German "ohrwurm," describes the annoying feeling of having a song stuck in your head. Alas, Levitin says relatively little research has been done on the phenomenon -- all we really know is that musicians and people with obsessive compulsive disorder are more prone to getting earworms, and that for most people it's small bits of songs, rather than entire songs, that we keep repeating.

I get this all the time ... in fact, I'm rarely not 'hearing' some song in my head at any time of the day.

The reviewer brings it all home with this pithy (and personally "too close to home") comment:

If you want your potential mate to remember you, you serenade her, or at least get Peter Gabriel to do it.

I don't think I could put it better (and Anne probably would prefer the Gabriel serenade).

Posted by Steven at 01:14 AM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2006

AEIOU But Always Y

Another inexplicably odd video from the Golden Age of Videos™, AEIOU Sometimes Y:

Posted by Steven at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2006

Lux Aeterna Composer Dies

Gyorgy Ligeti died today at the age of 83. He was the Hungarian composer whose work Stanley Kubrick used extensively in 2001:A Space Odyssey. His material was primarily used in the sequences involving Dave Bowman being transported and transformed by the aliens who placed the monoliths on the Earth and Moon, as well as the sequence when the astronauts first visit the Monolith. His music is haunting, eerie, and ethereal. I rather like it, but it's like some kinds of electronic music that was composed in the late 1970's (even though it was achieved by using analog techniques).

He was a genius.

Posted by Steven at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2005

Dr. Bob Moog, RIP

I'm still in shock after reading that Bob Moog passed away at the age of 71.

I can think of few engineers who have had as much influence on my life as Bob Moog. Perhaps Steven Wozniak, but he's the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Bob gave us the first usable synthesizer, and from that came Walter Carlos, Switched on Bach, the soundtracks of two Kubrick films, and of Tron. He revived the Theremin, and brought a new sound to the 60's music scene that helped define an era. He was one smart dude, too.

Have a listen to Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire from SOB and hang your head for Bob Moog.

We recommend this superb New York Times obitutary of Robert Moog.

Posted by Steven at 03:04 PM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2005

Les Sans Culottes

Check out this NPR story about Les Sans Culottes, a faux French rock group that reminds me of Shonen Knife.

Posted by Steven at 03:16 PM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2004

Moody Bluegrass

NPR did a story about a bluegrass rendition of The Moody Blue's classic songs including The Voice, Nights in White Satin and Rock and Roll Band. Unlike earlier country parodies of rock songs, this is actually a tribute and a fresh rendition of classic rock songs. The examples played over the air were surprisingly fresh, elegant and of course, oddly familiar.
The project is miles away from the standard tribute. The Moody Blues, who got their start in Birmingham, England, turned out some of the first concept albums and were innovators in studio production techniques. Their sound has been described as "symphonic rock" because they supplemented electric guitars with string arrangements, synthesizers, and lush vocals with lots of reverb and overdubbing.

Much of that fell by the wayside for the Moody Bluegrass album -- as a wealth of singers and instrumentalists converted the material into the bluegrass vernacular. The symphonic sound is now based on mandolins, fiddle, dobro, guitar, string bass, and banjo -- with some of Nashville's best voices chiming in with close vocal harmonies.

Joe Bob sez check it out.

Posted by Steven at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)