English: Criminal silhouette to the right (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am a music blogger-I love Music- I am a criminal
Every time I feature a YouTube video with no permission-I risk committing a criminal act. The artists and/or other companies that have rights to this video must allow me to post their stuff or I am walking that “breaking bad” line.
Does it matter that every human being with access to the web will hit up YouTube to check music they have interest in but do not own?
Do 8,000,000 views and a label of “official” mean anything?
I am seriously asking the question.
I do not want to look at my cell mate of the near future and tell him I am doing 5 to 10 because Robert Plant had taken issue with the 7 like buttons on my “Stairway to Heaven” post. “Yeah, I posted it and did not even flinch when I hit that publish button, I am one bad-ass blogger!”
I need more, it is an addiction.
I love to feature music and then talk about it and possibly even argue about it in that polite WordPress way with three or four smiley faces. And I don’t make any “big faces” doing this. It is done simply for the love of music.
So I ask again-Are us music bloggers all criminals?
Goodbye and thanks to Brother Lou–we hardly knew you
You were complicated, angry and cynical. But instead of letting it build up inside and end up being a menace to society – you turned it into beautiful music. Gritty honesty with a warped sense of humor is a great combo. Somehow you became the first un-natural rock star. The moves always looked forced and the voice was always nervous.
But you made it work and thanks.
You let us misfits know that we could get by.
I always thought of you as a long lost brother-It may be a bit weird but that’s what I thought, and now you are gone, may you head toward the great unknown in a blaze of feedback.
You were around for an eternity in Rock n’ Roll years but we still hardly knew you.
Your band is doing great and you are shooting up under a bridge with random junkies you don’t know.
Yeah-addiction is like that. It does not give you anything—it just strings you along and sucks the lifeblood out of you. It leaves you a shell of yourself; any energy that you have will be removed and transferred to it. It is relentless-it is after you and you can’t stop.
But it makes for some great music. Those lucky enough to take it to the edge and escape (warning-results not typical, your battle may not turn into a hit song with an interesting story).
Watching someone battle their demons can be as bad as being sucked into the vortex of no hope yourself. It goes right to the feeling of helplessness that can drown you as you witness someone else drowning.
Of course each addiction problem is a little different as is each person a unique individual-but….but……but…this strikes so many in similar ways that is easy for the masses to relate, even in the third person scenario.
3.Hurt.Johny Cash
You get to the end of your run with nothing left to prove and instead of going quietly into that dark night- you decide to take an artistic high dive that will drag us all through the depths of hell with you to show us all that you do not take heaven lightly. You are the Man in Black and this song plays in my head like “Paradise Lost” plays in my soul. I don’t know what else I can say- inspired genius.
4.Joey.Concrete Blond
Here we go with a song about being the enabler in the addiction process. Ah, yes- that volatile mixture of love and addiction. Johnette has the gift of making everything extra real and relevant without making it a cartoon.
Wow!-here I am echoing the sentiments of Amy Winehouse about putting together a bunch of depressing songs one after another. “I died a hundred times”-She is not just saying that-she is feeling those words. I don’t care if you accuse me of a stretch with this because I love this song and I don’t love “Rehab”.
Great music lends itself to many different interpretations- Maybe I am still coming down from my last post with Marvin Gaye but this song always cuts me up. The desperation and cry for help that went unheeded is haunting.
What a waste of talent and another sad victim of this disease.
Cheers from the cave…and think I will keep it to just the one pint tonight.
This is a great pop song-It has an emotional connection to people of all ages and all walks of life. Kind of like a bridge song that connects people to thoughts and feeling bigger than themselves. It encourages a feeling of community and responsibility. This is all good stuff, in fact….it is all great stuff. Can you become a converted hippie? I think it is starting to happen to me. Anyway this song made me think of an older tune from Marvin Gaye.
Simple and eloquent
Which made me think of my favorite “converted hippie song” bringing me right back to my alternative rock roots. Elvis Costello that quirky purveyor of hipness doing a song by the suave cool original Mr. Nick Lowe
Now I will head down to my local medical marijuana dispensary and see if they can point me in the direction of the closest “converted hippie” bar or nudist colony or wherever my new people hang out. If indeed all the old hippies are at a nudist colony- I really wish I did my conversion a couple months ago when the weather was much warmer! Oh well, it is just another group that will barely tolerate me for a while and send me back to my cave anyway.
They may not be brand new but they are new to me. I hear atmospheric indie pop that is ice cold. I hear The Cure on the way to another galaxy running through the endless void of outer space. I feel like I am walking over the immensity of solid sea ice in constant dark winter as the northern lights dance over my head….
But that might be just me.
That is the great thing about having a music blog and pushing yourself ever so slightly to jump into some strange waters. Once you get over that first shock –you often find that the water is kind of nice and before you know it, you are having a nice refreshing swim.
This blog post is all about not being that guy who thinks the best music has already been done.
That guy who says music today is all crap.
Just slow down –get over yourself—–and listen——-really listen.
Gratuitous kick out the jam Thursday song. The Cult with a basic straight ahead rock song that puts the pedal down for a screaming ride on a dark stretch of highway—in a nonthreatening and exhilarating kind of way. Like most of the music I feature –it was sitting in my head demanding one more play- so here we go!
Joe Jackson, El Macombo, Toronto, May 21, 1979 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is for one of the great lost technicians to ever craft wonderful beat and melody. He arrived on that great flood of new wave/pop-punk that washed a ton of debris on shore starting in 1979. He was one of the few precious gems left after that great flood receded. This post finds him still alive and well and living in Germany.
He not only creates great songs- the dude can sing- the dude can put on a show-grabbing the moment in his fists and squeezing everything out of it. He is a professional-I only saw him once in concert and he did not disappoint.
Am I going a little crazy waxing poetically about a little blip on the screen of pop music?
Maybe- but I hope you did not miss it at the time it happened. I am focusing on that great output of creativity in three short years from 1979 Look Sharp to 1982 Night and Day – 5 solid recordings – I admit that I left him at the scene of Mike’s Murder in 1983—it was over for this fair weather fan but the man kept rolling on through life and all the storms and kept making great music. You have to respect a true professional. And I am tracking him down again. Now that we are both adults (or at least should be by now).
Honest and rambles down the road of your soul like a rusty car of truth that cannot be stopped
It does not lose or gain power over the years- it revolves around and quietly orbits the music universe waiting a glance in the right direction
That is what all great music does
So enjoy —and I encourage you to buy this song and go search out more of the greatest band to walk this earth
And if legal representatives want me to remove this post or threaten to put me in jail or fine me because the 7 or 8 people that might click on this bother them- then I will remove it
But I don’t do this to steal music- I do this to share my love of great music
“I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday”
This is deeper than just a typical little folk/country/rock song- Kris Kristofferson has hit on something profound.
An adventure starts in Louisiana rain and goes through “Kentucky coal mines to the California sun”. This is a song that can be appreciated by the broke majority in “all kinds of weather”.
“I pulled my harpoon from my dirty red bandana”
The Bandana: The symbol of the outlaw, cowboy or counter culture.
Harpoon: slang for harmonica …this is groovy man….the good ol’ harmonica and echoes of first person blues sung on the road. This goes all the way back to the origins of rock music and fitting that it starts on the edge of the Mississippi delta.
Pink can’t mess this song up- it is that good.
“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
There are iconic lines in rock music, I don’t know how many (maybe a future post?) but I do know this one gets thrown on the rough draft and makes it through all revisions with no argument.
Freedom is a cool thing but this has me thinking a different way.
Freedom is the last option for the desperate among us.
Freedom is a benefit that remains when all else has been lost in America.
Or…whatever interpretation of this line you want to add based on your own life and experience….go ahead- try one-this line can take it. As in all great art—it holds up under all kinds of light and still shines in any darkness.
The Voice
Janis Joplin sings like a tiger escaped from a circus–
Dangerous but beautiful- Sad but truthful. Tamed enough to perform, but still wild. I hear echoes of those Kentucky coalmines. I hear the brooding downpours of the Louisiana rain. I feel the California sun burning in that voice.
The combination of great song writing with this vocal instrument makes this an essential work. Without this song -Janis Joplin could easily be remembered like Mama Cass as just another casualty of the 60’s-
With this song she becomes a legend.
And speaking of legends-here is “The Killer” Jerry Lee Lewis with a version
And finally- I am hanging on to the hope that Bobby McGee actually did find that elusive “home’ when he/she (or both, whatever works for you today, we don’t judge at the cave) slipped away near Salinas.
So much Metal at the height of its power- big hair and Marshal amps, maybe some boots and make-up to go with them sleek sexy guitars and it takes over the entire world.
Loudness could have only happened when the saturation of this genre was complete. This song is a true relic that gets forgotten when metal fans talk of the good ol’ days.
I love this song- pure attitude and flash with all the offensiveness sanitized out as it is washed to brilliance in the eastern sun. American metal gets transposed into a cartoon of itself and sent back to us in a bright package of innocent excited exuberance. Metal at its best is cartoony music with monsters and superheroes competing on stage with guitar gods and devils. Right back to the beginning with Black Sabbath dragging Ironman from a cheap comic and Lemmy dealing cards with evil in the “Ace of Spades”.
“The beat kicks you in the head”
It can make us old men feel like a 14 year old boy again. And let’s face it….this was (and is) always the target audience of metal music. Like pro wrestling and video games…it is just a little creepy if we indulge in these vices as we hit half a century.
But……”The beatkicks you in the face” and “We are the heroes tonight”
I have to admit that I did enjoy the slight trip back and thank you “Loudness”
Cave of Fame 