Music: What are you listening to today?
In the spirit of the books and movies threads, here's one to talk about what you're listening to lately and what you have discovered. Tell us if you like it, what it reminds you of, anything you like, short or not, simple or not.
Like the books thread, I'd ask that we keep it mostly to stuff we are listening to or going to listen to soon, or have just finished listening to (that is, like a log more than a resume).
Below is my first entry.
----------------------------------------
Bonnie Raitt, by Bonnie Raitt.
My understanding is that this was her first record, which she made when she was 21. Nine out of the eleven songs are covers; the two she wrote are "Thank You" and "Finest Loving Man," and both are good.
I really liked this album. Bonnie's voice is much sweeter here than I've heard her before, and very warm, traveling between notes more fluently, and not yet as raspy sounding as it became. (Which I also like in its own way.) Despite the sweetness of her voice she manages to put some heart into the bluesy material, and sings with what sounds like a real love for the lyrics. It's great to hear someone who doesn't just walk through lyrics. She sounds like she really thought and felt her way through the songs. Many of the most gifted and popular singers out there don't, winding up leaving a lot of a song's power still on the table, so to speak.*
From an Amazon.com review:
Bonnie wrote two of the songs here (Thank you, Finest loving man) but relied mainly on covers, beginning with a cover of Bluebird (written by Stephen Stills, famous as a member first of Buffalo Springfield then of Crosby Stills and Nash). One of Bonnie's major influences, Sippie Wallace, is represented by two songs (Mighty tight woman, Women be wise) while Bonnie also covers Any day woman (Paul Siebel), Walking blues (Robert Johnson) and Since I fell for you (Bud Johnson) among others.
I really enjoyed Walking Blues a lot and wanted to hear it immediately again, but decided to let the rest of the album play out instead of interrupting its flow. The album is good enough that I think I'm going to listen to it again.
By the way, it's in the Rhapsody's catalogue, if you have that service. It's also at Amazon, and the MP3 256kbps download is on sale there for $2.99. You can listen to samples there too.
---------------------------------
*This reminds me of a biography of John Denver that I saw on PBS the other day. I'm not a big Denver fan, but the biography was so good that this is the second time I felt compelled to watch it. Anyway, in it his manager said that at a particular concert Denver sounded exceptionally good, and it seemed like the audience noticed it. His manager recalls saying something like, "Your voice was incredible today. How did you do it?" Denver replied that he was trying to do what he learned from Placido Domingo when they worked together. He said he was amazed by how deep Domingo's art was; he didn't just sing a line, but put the right emotion into it word by word. If he was going to sing about a piece of steel, his voice would sound like steel. Every line was emotionally full, clear, and precise.
I got a bit of a feeling of that in this Raitt album. Raitt very much inhabited those songs when she sang. Unlike some spoiled divas, the newly emergent Raitt got across the feeling that she was glad to be there.
Click on "MORE" and check out the lineup.
Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
Mingle Game (Ring a Ring a) – Squid Game 2
Isolated bass track. Kicks in around 1:15.
Disturbed – The Sound Of Silence (CYRIL Remix)
very beautiful solo work at 3:05
got completely bait and switched by this band
they played this folksy song on conan (i was a devout background viewer/listening of conan while main focus would be on other screens) and i thought there was some potential here - while the song is a little cheesy but they are clearly very young and midwestern so there was hope they'd sharpen up as they matured on one of the coasts - and they definitely seemed to be in on the joke that they were cheesing it up with the mannequins in the background and "choice" to play the song with just drums and ukulele
so i rip the album, put it on and sure enough find that while house of gold was indeed an outlier, but i thought there other stuff would just be a little grittier, a little less latenight tv or radio friendly instead of the cutesy summer camp jingle they wrote - it is instead something that i can't describe and on first few listens was utterly repulsed and disapointed with myself that i saw the con but still fell for it - they were indeed a trash band who had did their studio a solid by producing a single commercially viable song by completely abandoning their normal style to follow a known formula
but then thanks to the infinite wisdom of winamp full library shuffle i came across their music a second time while inebriated
and yes, it did whip the lama's ass
in my party 30s if i were pregaming solo (would never subject others to this treatment) before heading out i'd put on some 21 pilots, probably this one, but there were many others
if they were trash, then i skip to good music and continued drinking, then whenever i started a fresh drink, i'd play a song of theirs and if it whipped the lama's ass i'd known i had pregamed appropriately and had masterfully saved some dollars arriving at the bar already peaked
in my first venture in china it was among the chinese, so all drinking would be done under the guise of dinners so we'd all be seated at this big round table and there'd always be these fried peanuts on the table, which you'd of course eat with chopsticks
my way of knowing when i had too much then was when i was no longer able to casually pickup and eat peanuts with chopsticks that it was time to switch over from the hard stuff to beer
so in my 30s, 21 pilots became my much more accessible chinese peanut
however, i now have so much nostaligic fondness for them, that i can tolerate it sober now 😀
Paging Red
Lawd
.
Name the harmonica player...
Broken YouTube LinkSent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
Listening to Dire Straits today. Used memorably in the "Two Cathedrals" in The West Wing.
Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong...
in my china days, this was one of the more popular local bands to see live
it was a high variance affair, you never knew which version of them you were going to get
from broody punk rock which would be headbanging fun when wasted at a concert
to more mainstream pop/rock which is very fun live concert music
to whatever the hell this awful stuff is which makes you stand there awkwardly sipping your drink wondering why it's so bad
or this awful song
chances are if i asked around a bunch of my friends would know who that white boy is, 99% we've been to the same party and infinite times been to the same bar/concert at the same time - where they are filming is really cool, it's the drum and bell towers and they are right next to a lake surrounded by bars so a great place to take visiting friends towards the end of the night then off for drinks
i saw them at least 3 times and each time it was terrible but then the next few shows i'd miss would get great reviews from friends who went so i'd see them next time they came back to town and of course it'd suck balls again
Wow. That last one is terrible. I couldn't follow the plot of the video. And what is the word "panacea" doing in the title?
Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk
