My headphones got chewed up by one of my cats so this one took me a bit longer to do. That said, lots of great new music this week from Band of Horses, AWOLNATION, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Eels, Ugly Smile, Eddy Vedder, John Mayall and so much more! Enjoy!
This week's artists, by twitter handle unless otherwise noted:
@bandofhorses @superchun @scarypockets featuring @sophiajmusic Trepanic (no socials?) with @mtl_bar @Soumyajit42 with @ka_alna @awolnation featuring (hold on now) @IncubusBand, @portugaltheman and @mybrandonboyd @birdnbeemusic @niluferyanya @TheMaryChain https://www.facebook.com/EddieVedder/ (facebook) @HFTRR @whiteliesmusic @fontainesdublin @pearl_charles https://www.parquet-courts.com/ (no real socials) @dragcityrecords with @signifyingwolf and @BillMacKay68 @PinegroveBand @combo_chimbita @WilkinsImmanuel with Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble (Socials unknown) @THE_EELS @StP_BrokenBones https://josephinefostermusic.bandcamp.com/ (distributed by @firerecordings) johnmayallofficial (Instagram) with @realmarcusking1 @Ladynicolewray @UglySmileATL (this is a damned fine album) @torridtheband @pavement_band
And because I love you, see Cory Wong and the Wongnotes with Antwaun Stanley rehearsing for their upcoming tour. I drop you into the middle of the video - it's all worth the watch:
Powerhouse week for new music, from experiments from Dying Pharaohs, Jake Xerxes Fussell, and Cody Fry to powerhouse rock and pop from everyone from Billy Talent to Tears for Fears to Artsick to a comeback from Simple Minds!!! Enjoy!
Here the listing of this week's artists, by twitter handle unless otherwise noted:
@DyingPharaohs @SplittheAs @SulfurizedM @Pennan_Brae @Kev_Crane @codyfry https://slumberlandrecs.lsnto.me/fallinlovenotinline (Kids on a Crime Spree on @SlumberlandRecs. Get them their own twitter account!) @AURORAmusic @silvanaestradab @artsickband @BillyTalentBand @MilesKaneMusic @reptaliensband @martinatb @scarypockets with @ItsKentonRijell (still no socials I could find. He's on Spotify, obviously) @SwivelsbandaSunset Lights (check them out on Spotify) @mildorangemusic Hamba, featuring Pricnce (No Socials I could find for Hamba) @ombiigizi@taylorswift13 remixed by @FatMaxGsus @simplemindscom @spoontheband @tearsforfears jxfussell (Instagram)
I don't really have a lot to report on that you probably don't already know, but did you know that David Lynch (who turned 75 yesterday) once had a comic strip? It pretty well sums up how I've felt these past few years.
And because I love you, here is Camel performing their great song Rajaz live:
As often happens at the start of a year, we're now inundated with new music. Known names AND indie artists, and we have plenty of both from Envy of None, Chris Reed and the Anime Raiders (me!), Aly & AJ, Cat Power, The Lumieers, The Wombats, 3mind Blight, Elbow and so much more! Enjoy!
Here is this week's list of artists by twitter handle unless otherwise noted:
@richardashcroft with @liamgallagher @animeraider @EnvyOfNone_ sunsetlightsband (Instagram) @BlackCreekRock1 @PuddlesPityP @alyandaj @Crimsonicband @Kiffie8 @ProAuricular (I love this band!!!!) @josefsalvat @storiesacoustic with @lawrencetheband @tommycat featuring an old friend, @DaveKozMusic Xstreme Tikkko (No socials I could find) @sofiabolt @MattBerryMusic with @emmanoblemusic @widowspeaking @Elbow @CATPOWER @thelumineers @Garcia_Peoples https://mollynilsson.bandcamp.com/ @thewombats @punchbrothers ariroar (Instagram) @si_bonobo with @jordanrakei @nicfitbandjp 凄くて面白いAlbumです @OliAstral @soleamorente @3mindblight @EdinBarrows @ThePaulLawrenc1 @onebrokenshoe1 @RevivalBlack_ @youthsectorband @ScoopskiTheBand @_theAustinBrown (In full Dan Fogelburg mode)
If you want the full story about my single "Stick Around" you should check out this previous post. There's a lot of detail, including the video and it's infamous gut punch at the 4:35 mark.
And oh hey, the album drops on January 21st!
Cheap shots. It's MLK Day and supposedly his favorite drink was the Screwdriver. I have no idea if this is true, but that's today's drink anyway:
Funny how things happen in the world sometimes. Not necessarily funny as in "ha ha" or even a "Nelson haa haa" but as in the weird sequence of events that can lead from one place to the next. My new single is like that - someone had to die for me to create it.
Don't get me wrong - I wish that person was still with us. I didn't know him although he was an acquaintance of a friend. I was shocked at the impact his death had on me. I'll get to all of that.
Those of you know know me quite well (i.e. no one who reads this blog full of curse words and rants) know that I've been struggling with a new album for several years now. I have shaped and re-shaped it a number of times. I have written and abandoned songs. The concept has shifted several times. I keep writing new songs that don't fit the concept.
A fucking pandemic happens.
I wrote a single for a charity album to raise funds for Nurses back in the early days of the pandemic and that led to a whole slew of releases over the past 20 months. I had a couple of surprise hits, from "He Takes a Knee" to "Kauro-chan" to even a Piano Sonata! I had videos produced, won some awards, and had a pretty solid year.
But that album is still percolating and I've actually finished a couple of tracks. Why not release one of the to whet the appetite?
But did it have to be this one?
Everything about this song is meant to disturb the listener in ways they won't even notice. I'll get to that.
I had written a song called "Stick Around" for the album. It was a break-up song, but with a horrid twist: it was from the point of view of the man who had been dumped, telling his now ex-girlfriend that it's okay to leave him. Mansplaining the breakup to the person who dumped him. In other words, she broke him and he's trying to rationalize it. I've written a few songs like that. One of my early singles from 2021, "That Man" is like that - a love song until you realize that the protagonist of the song is actually a stalker in the last verse.
I've back-burnered this song for a while, trying to come up with a suitably subtle and weirdly off-kilter arrangement. To let you know how long it's been germinating I had it mostly worked out when Chester Bennington committed suicide.
Now like I said, I didn't know him. I didn't much care for his music either although I have to admit it's growing on me these days. But a close friend of mine has children who attended school with his children and he was completely thrown by this. He talked about what a great guy Chester was - that he saw nothing that could signal that this was coming.
Unfortunately, this is a pretty common story when it comes to depression. I have learned the hard way that I myself can't recognize it. I've never experienced it myself and I don't know how to recognize it in other people. When people suffering from depression kill themselves its almost always a shock to at least someone close to them.
Not long after his death, Chester's widow posted a video of him playing with his children from the day before he died. He looked ordinary. He looked happy. She captioned it "this is what depression looks like."
Very powerful. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Depression is insidious in that it hides itself so that the closest people to those who suffer never even notice.
And that's when I got hit with a bolt of inspiration - By changing very few lyrics I could make my Mansplaining Song be about something else. To be about THIS.
So I re-wrote the song. Took out a verse. Lightened up the guitar sounds. Re-imagined the bass...
If you've watched the video above or just heard the song by now let me explain a few of the things I did and why it unsettles you, even beyond the gut-punch at the 4:35 mark.
First, there's the intro keyboards. It's on the V chord of the key of the song, using a sound that doesn't appear again. Your ears are expecting it and it never comes.
The drums are a drum loop. Drum loops aren't all that uncommon - Africa by Toto is a great example of a drum loop - the same pattern repeated throughout the song. Usually 4 or 8 bars. For this song the drum loop is 15 bars. This means that the pattern repeats, but it gets further and further out of sync with the rest of the song (with is in 8 bar patterns) as it goes.
Oh, and the time signature isn't what you think. It's in (drum roll please)...
8
4
The rhythm guitars are the most normal things about the song, each with their jangly open strings and passive voices. The top two strings of the guitar, the B and High E strings, are played open, without fingering, through the entire song.
The bass part originally matched the drums, but I came to realize that more of a U2 kind of performance would work better. Simple but holding the beat. But I'm not playing it on a bass (although I most often do play bass on my songs). This is a guitar that has been digitally tuned down an octave.
The strings on the choruses get an octave lower each time we play them.
I was 6 feet away from the microphone to record the harmony vocals.
The synthesizer solo is meant to be evocative of a trumpet, but I let the pitch wheel get wobblier and wobblier as I played, until that final sustained note feels artificial.
The lead vocals are actually multiple takes: One sung normally, one run through a filter that rappers use to thicken out their voices, and once whispering. The flubbed line in the last verse where I stammer out the line was an accident, but I liked it so I kept it.
And then there are the name drops. The first one was always going to be Chris Cornell, who I admired like crazy. the third one had to be Chester Bennington, to honor his inspiration of the song, but I wanted a person of color for the second name, to show that this is an issue that doesn't give a damn about skin color. I settled on Lee Thompson Young pretty quickly, because I was a fan of him as an adult actor (Rizzoli and Isles) and his death was so unexpected.
So I recorded the song and then put it on the shelf to work on the album and fit the song in. But that's taking longer than I wanted and I wanted to release a "best of 2021" album and it needed a new single. So I took a few songs and had videos commissioned.
The video for this one came back and when the name drops came it felt like a punch to the gut. It was perfect for the album. So I queued up the release of the single and the album as well.
The album comes out January 21st:
The single is out now. The video is up at the top of the post but it's also available at all of the usual places.
There is help available all over the world. Just ask. Some
never did.
And now 2022 gets going in full earnest! New music from The Weeknd, Moistule, Kiffie, Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Eels, Superchunk, Guided by Voices, and so much more! Enjoy!
Here is the listing of this week's artists, by twitter handle unless otherwise noted:
@pomplamoose @theweeknd wanderingwithmusic (Instagram) lauren.m.king.14 (facebook) with my bud @christrapper and @GurfMorlix Jellyfish with Naiade (no socials for either, and I don't think it's the Jellyfish from the 1990s) @BygoneDave with The 'Over (no socials) and Odette Rose (no socials - is Spotify screwing with me?) @moistule @Kiffie8 headempty.mp3 (Instagram) @Modern_Studies_ @_GuidedByVoices @HomeFreeGuys with @texashill @11thdreamday @yearsandyears featuring @wearegalantis and @navosmusic @3rdStreetChaos1 @THE_EELS @SeaPowerBand @ElvisCostello @superchunk Floodmusicpage (Facebook) with @genesisj_diaz
Cheap Shots:
It's in the Constitution - he can't hold office. This applies to many others too.
I'm not really a sportsball guy (there are exceptions) but what happened regarding Antonio Brown yesterday is a real thing - any maybe not the thing you think.
Well this should be interesting. Unlike with a Congressional Subpoena, if you don't show up you're going to get thrown in jail. Gotta wonder how much coke Junior is going to do that morning.
And here it is, my first playlist for 2022. Mostly new releases, but I had to throw in a couple of songs by The Mute Goods, who I only discovered a couple of days ago and wish I had discovered sooner. It features Nick Beggs, who was the bassist for Kajagoogoo and plays one hell of a mean bass and Chapman Stick. New music from Hill Hunter, Ainsley Costello, Monalist Twins, Diet Cig, Johnny Marr and much more. Enjoy!
This week's artists, by twitter handle unless otherwise marked:
@iamhillhunter Mister Green (https://open.spotify.com/artist/2aNES9DaZYm5tJZVxuxttg) with @tmorello @ainsleymusic07 @scarypockets featuring loejeone (Facebook) cranelikethebirdmusic (Instagram) with @rufuswainwright @nmallstars with @LamarWilliamsJr and Sharisse Norman @themutegods (featuring Alex Lifeson of @rushtheband) @dietcig @Johnny_Marr @BestCoast @TWEN_band @fontainesdublin @corywong (although if you watch the video, it's basically @vulfpeck)
Looking forward to great music in 2022!
Looking back at 2021
January 2021:
The Republican Party, under the leadership of the former motherfucker, attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United Stated. Traitors, each and every single one of them, and they haven't been punished. That's pretty much the end, isn't it? It's been coming for a while, but this was the first real overt attempt.
I'm not sure this country recovers.
But 15 days later I released my first single of 2021:
There was a Super Bowl, and the NFL was more hardassed about COVID-19 than the CDC. This is no longer true but the disease is spreading at a more rapid rate NOW then it was then. The fucking priorities of this country.
I also released a single of a long archived track, and had a video commissioned that far exceeded my expectations:
At this point I planned out a schedule of releases of previously unreleased material (I had plenty) plus a couple of new tracks.
Also, Fuck Tom Brady, Megachurches and their COVID-19 spreading filth. And alas, we also said goodbye to Daft Punk.
March 2021:
I created my first crack at How to Watch Star Wars, which I have updated a couple of times since.
I released another single:
I got vaccinated. You should too. The idea that people would side with the disease that's going to kill more than a million Americans is just fucking insane.
I released a second single, an instrumental new-age classical thing that was once part of a pop-up art installation.
And at the end of the month I released a third single. There are two videos. You're welcome to go find the other one.
April 2021:
Then something unexpected happened.....
I hadn't planned on releasing this next song until May, but a radio station played the song and all of a sudden I was getting requests left and right. I had a video done up and once again the talented people on fivver came through and delivered a fantastic one. I had the release date pushed up to the 2nd of April and suddenly I had thousands of listeners. I got radio play, video play, followers on twitter, notices on multiple social media platforms - most of which I don't even participate in.
It was suddenly, and unexpectedly, the greatest success I had in music in over a decade and it screwed up my release schedule something awful.
No complaints though. The success of He Takes A Knee would eventually lead to this:
I'll be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the world. I simply didn't have time. I also had another single already planned for April, which allowed me to tell my Kevin Gilbert story.
And by this point I was getting pretty sick of all of these goddamned motherfuckers who seem to insist that we don't get over COVID, and released this:
And at the end of the month I finally released the single I had originally planned for the first week of April before He Takes a Knee exploded:
May 2021:
The #Fraudit began in Arizona. By the time it was over millions of dollars had been spent to determine that Joe Biden still won the state. But not before millions of people were convinced by a bunch of fucking liars that elections can't be trusted.
Elections can be trusted. They're just fucking lying. They put a knife into the back of our country and started twisting it.
We also learned that MTG has such a hard-on for AOC.
I released a Piano Sonata mid-month, which led to a whole series of videos I commissioned by accident in the most dufus-like comedy of errors ever. This is one of the ones that came out right:
But 1, 2, 3, 4 of them came out differently than I had expected. I still like them though.
At the end of the month I re-released an old single of mine, recorded when I was still Jim Christopher, and put out a fun little lyric video that I enjoy.
June 2021:
I had to be hospitalized for an infection - NOT COVID. The experience was harrowing, especially the part about having to wait for someone to die before I could get a bed.
A DJ from Manchester England took my song "He Takes a Knee" and built an entire radio show around it's themes after a Football player for Manchester United took a knee publicly before a game. I discovered the Dance/Music troop "World Order" from Japan and became hooked on their goofy and fun videos.
And I took an old song of mine and remixed it because the political sentiment hasn't changed after all these years. I had a video made:
July 2021:
The state of Texas began it's ever rapidly increasing revocation of the civil rights of its citizens by telling the people who write textbooks that they can't call the KKK "bad". Fuck Texas.
I released two EPs in July. The first was a bunch of demos and an old track of mine that I was finally able to release unedited after a lengthy embargo from Bob Dylan was finally lifted.
The 2nd EP was a small batch of covers, which I had initially recorded for my 2004 album "The Long Goodbye" but cut when digital distribution became the man way people got their music, because the rights for such things were pretty complicated in those days. It's pretty simple now. My remake of Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy" got a bit of traction, and that was gratifying.
August 2021:
I spent a lot of August railing against the attempted recall of Governor Gavin Newsom of California. I also came to realize that I have PTSD from my hospital stay. But mostly this was a happy month for me as I was nominated for 4 awards from the Independent Music Awards - my first nominations in 12 years. I didn't release any new material but I did a lot of promotions and found myself collaborating with a couple of artists I had met during the year.
More on that in September.
September 2021:
When I was young I had had a goal of visiting all 50 states at some point. I no longer want to do that. We kept our Governor, by almost exactly the same margin as we elected him by.
I won one of those 4 awards:
The song also hit #1 on the Independent Music Chart - my second #1 single of my career.
Two songs I sang on, just backing vocals, were released. This one is now nominated for a grammy:
And on this one I only sang 4 notes but it was a lot of fun to do:
And to celebrate my win I released the one cover I had held back, because it's in Japanese and becaue it was the theme of an anime the rights are more complicated. But I felt emboldened, and it's gained me a small following from that country. There are two versions of this video:
I spent October working on collaborations with other artists that you haven't seen yet. And you may never see them - I have no idea. That's part of the whole "studio musician" gig and job description. You do the work but it's the main artist who decides what to do with it. I also booked a couple of future collaborations for 2022 and I have one more that I'm still working on.
I'm not going to name the artists in question. They're friends and if you follow me on twitter the odds are you follow them too. While I love what I did for them, I'm not going to out them to try and get my stuff released. That's kind of a bitchy thing to do, don't you think? Do I want them out there? Sure. But it's not my call and it shouldn't be my call. I've done this for a very long time now, and there's work I've done going back to the 1980's that you don't know I did.
That's the gig.
November 2021:
We finally got infrastructure week. We didn't get enough of it because of a West Virginia coal Baron, but we still got a lot. We got ravaged by the Delta Varians, and Omicron was just about to start. A lot of anti-vaxxers died, but there are still a lot of them out there.
I also released my final single for the year, a remix of an older track that I had always wanted to be a single and it never quite happened. It performed as well as I could have hoped - my 2nd most successful single of the year. I also got a great video for it.
December 2021:
We finally started getting some clarity as to how January 6th, 2021 happened, and I put out there my own opinion that the Republicans wanted a fight but didn't know how to react when it turned out that the group they wanted to have a fight with turned out to not even exist.
And after seeing a post joking about it, I remember that I had tried to record a series of "silent" tracks back in the 1990's. I released it on a lark and while it's certainly never going to tear up the charts it's had a few listeners - mostly people curious to see if there's something hidden in the 66 minutes I recorded.
There's not.
The year ended with a final fuck you to the American Psyche, with the death of Betty White. We've lot a lot of great talent this year, from the drummer for The Moody Blues to the greatest jazz arranger I've ever personally worked with to the original vocalist and violinist for Kansas and so many more, but fuck you 2021.
January 2022:
That single I released in November got picked up by the same radio network that made "He Takes a Knee" such a big hit. I wouldn't have even mentioned it but they premiered it on New Year's day, which was still December 31st where I live.
I discovered a TON of great new music in 2021, great new artists, and have even made friends with a few. Lots of people follow me as the musician, but if you also follow me as the playlist creator, you can get access to the same stuff I've been grooving to for the past couple of years, and discover a TON of artists you never knew.
Great music is out there and it isn't all that hard to find, but you have to TRY to find it. Radio isn't going to bring it to you. But I do.
Let's see if we can't make 2022 the year we finally get past all the bullshit we've just been through.
Oh, and if you're not yet vaccinated, fucking get vaccinated.
