MOG - RyRy's Posts

the beatles get mashed

RyRy — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:32:51 GMT

the best cd of 2006 was released today, and it was recorded 40 years ago.

how can something so familiar be made to sound so new? so fresh to the ears...im not going to lie, i got a bit emotional listening to The Beatles LOVE, a new cd produced and mashed up by george and giles martin for the cirque de soleil show in vegas.

one of the most depressing things i recognized in listening to LOVE, is that the class of 2006 pales in comparison to the work done by four lads from liverpool oh so long ago. the album opens with an acappalla take on "because" from let it be before quieting out for that unforgettable first struck chord from "a hard days night", with the drums of "the end" crashing in, only to mix paul mccartneys "get back" in before we outro with lennons "glass onion". the effect throughout works wonderfully. youll notice the guitar solo from one song replacing the guitar solo from another song. it really is like a game of name that tune.

now we've all heard beatles mash ups before but, trust me, not like this. the surround mix of "i want to hold your hand" has the studio version in the front speakers and the live hollywood bowl recording in the rear! the wave of nostalgia that washed over me listening to LOVE was overwhelming. and its worth having if for no other reason than this is the only remastered hi fi version of any beatles cd available. the beatles catalog was originally remastered in 1988, when cd technology was in its infancy. you can actually hear fingers scrapping guitar strings and backing vocals as if they were raining down on you from a mountaintop. and the real winner in all of this is ringo starr, with thunderous fills in "strawberry fields" sounding like they came from the chemicals brothers. the remastering shines a light on one of the most underappreciated drummers in rock history.

thank you george martin, songs we've heard so many times, now sound so new.

damien rice "9"

RyRy — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:06:59 GMT

damien rices new cd "9" is due out in a few weeks and it probably wont disappoint any fans of his first release "O". "9" is full of the kind of songs melancholly 15 year olds with an affectation for scruffy troubadours will lock themselves into their bedrooms and pine over incessently.

the dynamic hasnt changed, soft acoustic/vocal/cello/light percussion. the order in which this takes place varies from song to song but the dynamic remains the same. that is to say, there is not much in the way of dynamics. my problem with damien rice and "9" is the feeling that i have to listen to each song a number of times before i like it...finding the repeating melodies, something to get your hooks into...but when i like it, i REALLY like it. im a sucker for singer/songwriters.

news of the wierd and rockstar movies

RyRy — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:20:12 GMT

Country star () BILLY RAY CYRUS has penned an emotional tribute to the three members of LYNYRD SKYNYRD who died in a 1977 plane crash, after a phone conversation discussing the tragedy with drummer ARTIMUS PYLE. Cyrus was chatting to Pyle about the accident, which cost the lives of singer RONNIE VAN ZANT, guitarist STEVE GAINES, his backing singer sister CASSIE GAINES and road manager DEAN KILPATRICK. Pyle told Cyrus how he clambered out of the wreckage in Louisiana swampland and staggered to find help with several broken ribs, only to be shot in the shoulder by a farmer who was frightened of the long-haired and bearded rocker covered in blood. And Cyrus was so moved he immediately wrote THE FREEBIRD FELL - named after Lynyrd Skynyrd's epic track FREEBIRD - for his new album WANNA BE YOUR JOE....

this would be much more interesting if we could replace the words BILLY RAY CYRUS in the above article with MY MORNING JACKET or DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS, but i guess the truckers already did their skynyrd tribute.

i remember watching some vh1 doc about how the other surviving members of the band were all hating on artimus pyle for abandoning them in the wreckage to save himself or some such nonsense, and all i could think while watching it was, wow, these guys are really some backward thinking rednecks! they couldnt even properly articulate their beef with him, but seemed to be looking for someone to blame for the tragedy and somehow chose to scapegoat him.

now, i am by no means a skynyrd fan, i chose neil young...but ronnie van zant actually seemed like a cool guy from what i have seen/read and i just cant believe he would be happy with the majority of the surviving members behavior in the past 30 years...and also, wouldnt the skynyrd story make a great hollywood movie! i mean, im surprised it hasnt happened yet, what with the seeming money hungry lust that some of the band members and family members seemed to have based on the doc i saw.

i can add this to the top of the list of rockstar movies that hollywood needs to get made:

1) jimi hendrix-COME ON! i know casting has been an issue, laurence fishborne, lenny kravitz, and will smith have all been rumored...but this needs to get done!

2) syd barrett/pink floyd-who wouldnt pay to see that?

3) lynyrd skynyrd

who else? im thinking not so much of movies that i WANT to see, but movies that NEED to get made.

rationalizations

RyRy — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:35:08 GMT

i hope i made the right decision. i passed up on the opportunity to see the strokes, and sent my wife in my place. she was supposed to get pics and report on the show but she couldnt get the camara passed security (amature) so i just got a "it was good, they played a marky mark song for the encore..."

what?! marky mark!?

i later found out it was take a walk on the wildside by lou reed, but she remembers the sample from a marky mark song...sheesh

i passed up on seeing the strokes for a few reasons: 1) i already saw them at the same venue on their last tour 2) im not a big fan of the new record 3) i have a 15 month old daughter and finding a sitter to watch her until 2am is a bitch. if only one of us could go...id let the wife 4) the opening act was some unsigned band from richmond va. they covered bittersweet symphony. my ears cant handle that. 5) death cab for cutie is coming and ive never seen them. the thought process for me was: if i can only go to one show, id prefer DCFC. ive never seen them live, and though im not as big a fan as i used to be, i thought i should catch them at least once 6) ted leo is opening for dcfc. nuff said...

this was how i worked it out in my head anyway

stuck in a moment...

RyRy — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:24:39 GMT

im still here,just...a great philosopher once said, "life is what happens when youre busy making other plans"

are U2 the only rock band we allow to be sincere? i watched the monday night football game where they teamed up with green day, ready to catch a case of third party embarressment, but i found myself kind of in awe, again, at how appropriate U2 can be in moments like that. i mean, they played beautiful day, but... there were a number of songs they could have chosen that wouldve encapsulated the moment...thats the kind of band they are.

i think coldplay gets compared to U2 alot, not because they actually sound like them, but because they are one of the few other bands we allow to be THAT sincere, all the time...though i believe they have a ways to go before they reach the level of absurd self-important grandiosity that U2 have achieved.

not that theres anything wrong with that. but i will still never forgive bono for the lyric : "and a man needs a woman/like a fish needs a bicycle" i mean, come on, that was just bad!

and forgive the spelling and such, i havent had my coffee yet.

Austin City Limits

RyRy — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 01:08:30 GMT

FYI, You can stream select performances from the Austin City Limits Festival all this weekend over here

I am already clearing my schedule tomorrow to catch performances by The Secret Machines and Iron & Wine.

My iPod won't update! Thank You iTunes v7...

RyRy — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:37:56 GMT

The good news: U2 have entered the studio with Rick Rubin in the producer chair. Rubin has produced some classic CDs by the RHCP, The Beastie Boys, & Johnny Cash. He also likes the guitars to be loud and the beat to be big. This could be the U2 record they have been threatening to make for a long time...a good one. I doubt it though. It probably just means we can look forward to a guest rap by LL Cool J.

The bad news: U2 is teaming up with Green Day to cover an obscure Irish punk song. They'll be performing it on Monday Night Football on the 25th.

The good news: Nigel Godrich, the sixth member of Radiohead and uber producer extraordinaire, has shot a new series for TV called Up From the Basement that features an incredible line-up of bands including Thom Yorke, Jack White, and Beck amongst others...Godrich says, "MTV destroyed the art of music television, ironically, it took it, held it somewhere, and then actually destroyed it. It turned it into this news magazine. It’s very shallow and uninteresting.” Up From the Basement will also be available as a video podcast, which is very important when you consider...

The bad news: Up From the Basement is due to air exclusively in the UK. Damn Brits.

The good news: Modest Mouse has teamed up with guitar hero Johnny Marr (you know? The guy who wrote all those Smiths songs?) to record We were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, the new CD from Modest Mouse. According to Isaac Brock, Marr co-wrote the CD with him and is now a fulfledge member of the band, so expect to see MM and Marr on tour together very soon. We Were Dead...is due to be released Dec. 19, 2006.

The bad news: It hasn't leaked yet. Expectations for this collaboration are so high, it can't help but be a letdown. But my fingers are crossed...Hope, Hope.

I wanna be with you in paradise, and it seems so unfair/I can't go back to paradise no more/I killed a man back there

RyRy — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:59:55 GMT

My intention this morning was to write a bit about the Audioslave record, but after listening to it, twice...im too depressed to get into it.

Instead I'm gonna point you in the direction of a great article in The New Yorker about a new Bob Dylan book entitled The Essential Interviews:

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/060904crbo_books

And with the official release of Modern Times just a mere hours away I thought id give my thoughts on it, but...why? What can I say about a Dylan album? Other than that its somewhere between Love and Thefts up-tempo rock-a-billy rave-ups, and Time out of Minds moody, swampy meditations. They'll say "another trilogy of masterpieces to match Bring it all Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde...Blood on the Tracks, Desire, and Street Legal". Hell, Rolling Stone is knockin' us all down to be first in line to suck at the sceptor of DYLAN, so I'll just slide to the left and get out of that long line.

“I don't know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years,” says Dylan. He thinks his songs on Modern Times sounded much better in the studio than on CD.

Really!?

Didn't you produce this one Mr. Frost? This sounds like horseshit to me. If he doesnt like the sound quality of the cd, release it on vinyl only? I mean, he's got the clout to get it done. Is Modern Times even seeing a release on vinyl? This sounds like the kind of statement an artist makes when he's not happy with his work and is looking for excuses to cover his ass in the case of emergency. I know Dylan doesn't like to labor away in the studio for months to perfect his work, but don't come out trashing everyone else because your attention span for recording has always been brief. How about recording analog like the White Stripes? No? Anyway....

Its an onion. Modern Times. Peel away over time to reveal new layers.

The Greatest American Band In Existence Part II (or, Typical Me, Typical Me. I Started Something, And Now I’m Not Too Sure)

RyRy — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:53:06 GMT

Thanks for all the comments, suggestions, ridicule of my alternative lifestyle…

One thing I had left out of the “Criteria” was one of the more important elements. And it has its origins in one of the other lists we had tossed around, THE GREATEST BAND IN ROCK HISTORY. After compiling this list myself, and listening to the list compiled by others, it became apparent that the UK has cornered the market on Great Band Rock.

Go ahead, make you own list, but remember to try and be as objective as possible, and you’ll will step back and gaze upon a list loaded with the likes of The Stones, The Beatles, Led Zep, The Who, U2 (Ireland, but whatever), The Clash, Pink Floyd, etc. Not that America hasn’t provided its fair share of movers and shakers, it’s just that the top spots seem to involve those damn Brits (lovingly).

So now, here’s the important part, you can say “but The Velvet Underground are one of the most influential bands of all time” and you would be right. But how many people walk around humming “I’m Waiting For My Man”? They just are not as much a part of the popular consciousness as The Stones or The Beatles, which doesn’t detract from their brilliance, but it hurts them on a list such as this. So that leads me to another important factor to determine THE GREATEST AMERICAN BAND IN EXISTENCE…how will they be perceived 10, 20, 30 years from now? Go ahead Kreskan, put on your future head and look at it from that perspective. The Velvet underground wouldn’t even make the list if you asked some hippie from 1973 who the greatest bands are, and yet their esteem has grown over the years and this has caused them to pop up on the latter half of many publications top ten lists.

Of course this is all objective, and a matter of opinion, but it can sometimes elicit very passionate responses. I’d like to thank all the commenters for refraining from fierceness…and helping to…maybe…prove me wrong? I had completely forgotten about a few bands. Mainly:

Tool R.E.M. Green Day The Red Hot Chili Peppers Queens of the Stone Age The Pixies The Beastie Boys

These are all bands I think who have had enough success to allow them to qualify for the top half of the list…well, maybe not The Queens of the Stone Age, but…what about R.E.M? I think the only thing that really hurts them is relevancy. What kind of impact have had they had on the music scene since Berry left? It’s been a slow, diminishing part they have played, no? But perhaps their legacy is still enough to put them on top? Or, The Red Hot Chili Peppers? They have definitely had enough mainstream success to keep them in the public consciousness for years to come…they have a virtuoso bass player and one of the better guitar players in rock today, Anthony Keidis is…an attractive man? And they have had their fair share of critical success throughout their career, By The Way was well received in most circles, right?..as an interesting return to relevancy (I’m trying to be kind). So what about The RHCP? I now think both R.E.M and RHCP deserve the top spot more than Pearl Jam, but alas…I’m still not happy about it.

I think the point I was trying to make is still a valid one-where are the great American rock bands? Where are the bands who have had both critical and commercial success, and still remain relevant? Where is our Radiohead?

The Greatest American Band In Existence

RyRy — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:26:23 GMT

Awhile back, I proposed a question to my friends that has caused quite a bit of consternation. Its a simple question really, and yet the answers (or lack thereof) have sent me into a downward spiral of dismay at my inability to be definitive in answering... THE QUESTION:

WHO IS THE GREATEST AMERICAN BAND IN EXISTENCE TODAY?

Now, before you get all Answer McAnswerton on me, there are guidelines to take into consideration. We never quite narrowed them down to a definitive set of rules, but I'll try to set some down here:

1.) They have to be an AMERICAN band. This one is obvious. I don't think we are gonna run into too many "but the bass player is from Slovenia. Does that count?" but if we do, we will take them on a case by case basis.

2.) They have to have been in existence for sometime. This one is pretty vague. We tried to set a concrete time, like, at least 10 years, but that seemed a bit too much...and 5 years seemed like too short a period of time. This is all relative to how active they have been...some bands have been around for 5 years but have only released 2 albums and an EP, this doesn't seem like enough material to definitively assess their impact...and longevity is a factor.

3.) Commercial vs. Critical success. One has to have some of both. For example, I think The Flaming Lips and Wilco deserve consideration, but neither have had the mainstream success that, I feel, is needed to put them on top. Remember, when determining THE GREATEST AMERICAN BAND, your co-workers have to have some idea of who the hell you are talking about. This rule has caused the most debate.

4.) The LIVE element. Not as important of a factor, but important none-the-less. The Grateful Dead became one of the great american bands because of the live experience, not the studio albums. This means the Dave Mathews Band scores points in all the above categories, but do you really want to rank them THE GREATEST AMERICAN BAND...? Me neither.

Umm, I think that pretty much covers it. The hardest part is trying to remain objective.

And after careful consideration, I still cant come to a definitive conclusion. I feel confident in my "top bands of all time" list (that's for another time) but this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth...So, my answer...ahhh, well...its Pearl Jam. And runner up...its even more distasteful...Metallica. They lost points for losing relevance, as did Pearl Jam, but...man, I still don't like it. Go ahead, Tell me why I'm wrong. Unless, of course, you have something better to do...

Your Taste Offends Me (or, Maybe I'm Wrong)

RyRy — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:16:13 GMT

As I sit at my desk this morning, with my coffee in hand and my blog at the ready, I'm compelled to ask myself a question: Why is music such an integral part of our lives?

Currently I have advance copies of The Decemberists and The Akron/Family, and new disks by Kasabian and Bob Dylan, all ready for a thorough listen. I will play them loud. I will dance across my living room. My daughter will join me. I will listen with the lyric sheet in hand, I will study cover art. I will excitedly call friends and try to "sell" them on a band or artist I think they will enjoy. We will debate issues such as, is the new Dylan really as good as Love and Theft? Was Love and Theft really that good in the first place? Or, how bad are Panic at the Disco? Mega-bad or mildly offensive? How can anyone justify having Bloc Party open up for them? (That's right, check your music news for that one)

So, why do we care? Sure, I'm an extreme example, but even those people who exclusively listen to Top 40 radio or get their music from the subtle incidental music on Laguana Beach,they still care. Whether you occasionally obsess over Mariah Carey's current mental state, or if Neutral Milk Hotel will ever grace us with a new masterpiece, its all the same, right? It's all just a matter of taste, some people just want to dance. Some people don't want to think too much when it comes to their entertainment. Some people are more zombie-fied than others. (Burn)

It comforts me to know that, for example, I have a personal moment shared with one other person when we hear Summertime Rolls by Jane's Addiction. You're not gonna hear THAT on the radio, but when it pops up, somewhere, sometime...it will bring back a rush of memories. Its one of the great powers of music. But its just not as special when YOUR song is Don't You Forget About Me from the Breakfast Club Soundtrack, it doesn't pack the same punch when you and 500,000 people share a song. Of course, most people just don't want to put in the time that's necessary to be a well-rounded appreciator of music. But with the current state of radio and the lack of options available on our music television, it seems we have three choices:

1.) Suck that pablum down, with a spoonful of sugar (it helps the medicine go down)(and it weighs a ton) 2.) Give up completely and just fall back on the classics whenever you need a soundtrack to your life. The stuff you listened to when you were in high school will be sufficient. This is where the new Jack/Bob radio format comes into play. I hope you enjoy running to stand still. 3.) Create a Mog .

I lost track of my point...what was it again?

Well, anyway I have a new Dylan album to dissect.

Good Friday to you.

Sketches, for the Casting of Jeff

RyRy — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:33:07 GMT

So let me go ahead and throw my two cents in before the ball gets rolling on this Jeff Buckley movie. I've been hearing alot of speculation about who should be cast, and it seems everyone has their opinions.

When Oliver Stone was making The Doors movie I was certain there was only one man who could play Jim Morrison, and that man was Jason Patric. Well, I was wrong, but I'm not wrong about this one...

James Franco.

Can he play the guitar? I dont know. Can he sing like an angel? I doubt it. Does he look like Jeff? Its kind of uncanny, isn't it?