I had a great opportunity to collaborate on a Christmas tune a friend was using in a song/recording competition. Scott Lake is a terrific singer/songwriter from Michigan, and I’ve done a few other projects with him in the past. This year, for a competition at kvraudio, he recorded a version of the “Huron Carol,” a tune written by a French Canadian missionary in the 1600s. More details here. I played fretless bass on the tune (from the 3rd verse on).
If you’re a guitarist, there’s at least one chord you know with a “given” name (like the “Hendrix” chord — the dom7#9 shape in the beginning of “Purple Haze”). For a long time, there’s been a mystery surrounding the opening jangle of the Lads’ “A Hard Day’s Night”… some people think it’s George’s Ricky 12-string and John’s Ricky 6… others think it’s multiple layers of 12-string guitar. But now a Canadian professor/researcher thinks he’s cracked the code.
Run away!
Came across this one accidentally. Unbelievably great early (1977?) promo film for 10CC’s new album “Deceptive Bends”, just after Godley & Creme split to form, um, Godley & Creme.
either 10cc before the breakup in '76 or the touring cast of "Hair"
It’s got everything: Tambourines! Split Screen! ’70s Hair! Star Filters! Link to the video after the jump! Continue reading
I’m finishing up Ed McMahon’s (yes, that guy) book on the early years of television (“When Television Was Young“). It’s surprisingly informative and entertaining, and it comes from a man who was involved with television from day one. McMahon is cheesy, corny, and a little old-fashioned, but you do get the sense of how world-changing the device was, and how inextricably linked television would be with pop music. Continue reading
Just a bit of personal name-dropping (clears the room like a fart, I’ve found) — friend and phenomenal drummer (and a decent singer) Mike Bedard will be on American Idol tonight (Weds, April 9). He’s touring with previous winner Jordin Sparks, and will percuss (is that a word?) behind her when she fills time between vote-offs. Continue reading
I was at NAMM (the big music industry tradeshow) at the Anaheim Convention Center last year, and I picked up a demo CD of Melodyne, a pitch- and time-shifting software package for editing audio tracks. It was pretty impressive, fixing wrong notes in a singer’s performance, building harmonies (very natural-sounding), and constructing arrangements from a single instrument. It was amazing stuff, much more expressive than the industry standard of a few years ago, Antares AutoTune (notorious for giving even crappy singers good pitch, and for creating the “Cher” effect — that robotic, stair-step kind of vocal). Continue reading
I truly could be none more excited. If you’re a powerpop fan, you know and love the Not Lamers.
A happy mix of distributor and label, Not Lame hunts down the the prime examples of my favorite genre for their catalog, making them available to incredibly dorky fans like myself.
And now they’ve done the unpossible. They’ve become even cooler by offering free music to people just like me. And you, too. But mostly me. Continue reading
My favorite “sub-genre” of pop music is powerpop (which I’ll address sometime soon—in fact, you’ll get sick of me talking about it). For some reason, this style of pop seems to attract one-man band artists more than any other.
It’s a pretty new phenomenon, if you think about it: one artist who plays every instrument on a recording, arranges and sings all the vocals, and in some cases, engineers the entire album. Les Paul and his multitrack recording technique/equipment advances certainly paved the way in the 1940s and 1950s, but I don’t think anybody did it as a truly one-man effort until Paul McCartney (solo) and the woefully unsung Emitt Rhodes. Both their albums came out in 1970, with Emitt proclaimed a “new McCartney” (and to be honest, the album is an obvious Beatle-esque pastiche, no matter how well done it is). Continue reading
Hopelessly Pop 