I'm at work on my hour long lunch break, and a friend just sent me this. Pretty interesting stuff.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space Live at Radio City Music Hall July 30th 2010
Update: I did a bit of research, and it turns out the "I can't help falling in love with you" part was in the original version of "Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space" but due to legal reasons they had to remove it. However, on this years reissue they replace the version thats been on the album for years with the version that includes "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You". Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they decided to leave it out of the vinyl reissue.
So I've been slacking on updating this for the last few days. I've been working a ton, and just picked up a new nintendo wii with Donkey Kong Country Returns, so I've been busy. Donkey Kong Country Returns is really rad though, same classic game play as the original Donkey Kong Country games, yet it doesn't feel dated at all, super fun game.
Anyways, I've been listening to this bootleg (and Spiritualized, in general) a lot lately. It's by no means an exact live reproduction of the original album, but I think it's way more intense. The band playing this is huge, and sounds huge. There's a full strings section, full horns section, and full gospel choir. One of the things I really really love about this bootleg is how they seamlessly throw more traditional gospel parts into the songs, like the "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" part in "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space". One of the most beautiful pieces of modern music I've ever heard.
Track list:
Download FLAC: megaupload
Download MP3: megaupload
Upload stolen from: spiritualizedlive
So I've been slacking on updating this for the last few days. I've been working a ton, and just picked up a new nintendo wii with Donkey Kong Country Returns, so I've been busy. Donkey Kong Country Returns is really rad though, same classic game play as the original Donkey Kong Country games, yet it doesn't feel dated at all, super fun game.
Anyways, I've been listening to this bootleg (and Spiritualized, in general) a lot lately. It's by no means an exact live reproduction of the original album, but I think it's way more intense. The band playing this is huge, and sounds huge. There's a full strings section, full horns section, and full gospel choir. One of the things I really really love about this bootleg is how they seamlessly throw more traditional gospel parts into the songs, like the "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" part in "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space". One of the most beautiful pieces of modern music I've ever heard.
Track list:
01 Ladies + Gentlemen
02 Come Together
03 I Think I'm In Love
04 All Of My Thoughs
05 Stay with Me
06 Electricity
07 Home Of The Brave / Individual
08 Broken Heart
09 No God Only Religion
10 Cool Waves
11 Cop Shoot Cop
12 encore break
13 Out Of Sight
14 Oh Happy Day
02 Come Together
03 I Think I'm In Love
04 All Of My Thoughs
05 Stay with Me
06 Electricity
07 Home Of The Brave / Individual
08 Broken Heart
09 No God Only Religion
10 Cool Waves
11 Cop Shoot Cop
12 encore break
13 Out Of Sight
14 Oh Happy Day
Download FLAC: megaupload
Download MP3: megaupload
Upload stolen from: spiritualizedlive
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Darkness On The Edge Of Town Live Concert Video Review.
This review will probably be pretty short because I just wrote that long story about The Minks, and really I'm not sure exactly what to say, but wow. I now fully understand why they opted out of putting out a video of one of the live concerts from the tour, and decided to film this in private with no audience. The sound is absolutely amazing, I've never heard such a great sounding live video. Bob Clearmountain did a perfect job of the mix.
The band that's playing on this dvd isn't the full E Street band you'd see on recent tours, but a smaller version more similar to the band that actually played on Darkness on the Edge of Town. If I'm not mistaken, it is the original band with the sad exception of the great Danny Federici (RIP). The band plays loud, tight, and intense. This is not a band trying to play the songs exactly as they are on the album, but playing them as they would now, and it's great. This is one thing I've always loved about seeing Springsteen live, he never plays his songs the same way twice, and you can always tell he's not trying to recreate them to sound identical to the album, but rather how he feels playing them that day. I cannot stress enough how great this concert sounds.
The only thing I didn't really like at all is the cinematography. The lighting and colour scale is reminiscent of a Three Doors Down music video. The intro is cool, which is a compilation of current day shots of the Asbury Park boardwalk, in black and white, and ties into the band entering the venue and meeting inside, exchanging hugs. The whole intro gives a great feel of revisiting youth, and being able to look back on the past fondly no matter how things tarnished and worn down things feel today. The actual concert footage loses this feel though. I found for the most part, I was listening a lot more than I was watching.
Over all, I give the recreation of the album in it's entirety, and the sound quality a 5/5, but a 2.5/5 for the actual video footage. I would love an audio rip of this, and will definitely be putting this disc on again, but I'll probably never focus on watching it.
The band that's playing on this dvd isn't the full E Street band you'd see on recent tours, but a smaller version more similar to the band that actually played on Darkness on the Edge of Town. If I'm not mistaken, it is the original band with the sad exception of the great Danny Federici (RIP). The band plays loud, tight, and intense. This is not a band trying to play the songs exactly as they are on the album, but playing them as they would now, and it's great. This is one thing I've always loved about seeing Springsteen live, he never plays his songs the same way twice, and you can always tell he's not trying to recreate them to sound identical to the album, but rather how he feels playing them that day. I cannot stress enough how great this concert sounds.
The only thing I didn't really like at all is the cinematography. The lighting and colour scale is reminiscent of a Three Doors Down music video. The intro is cool, which is a compilation of current day shots of the Asbury Park boardwalk, in black and white, and ties into the band entering the venue and meeting inside, exchanging hugs. The whole intro gives a great feel of revisiting youth, and being able to look back on the past fondly no matter how things tarnished and worn down things feel today. The actual concert footage loses this feel though. I found for the most part, I was listening a lot more than I was watching.
Over all, I give the recreation of the album in it's entirety, and the sound quality a 5/5, but a 2.5/5 for the actual video footage. I would love an audio rip of this, and will definitely be putting this disc on again, but I'll probably never focus on watching it.
The Minks - Van Gundy (2002)
When I was younger, I was in a band called The Oldskoolerz. And I use the word "band" in the absolute loosest sense of the word. The band was made up of my brother and myself, and our friend Derek "Movie" Murray. My brother was on guitar, I was on bass, and Derek was on buckets, yeah, buckets, we didn't have drums, nor did any of us know how to play our instruments, so Derek hit buckets with twigs we broke off of trees. We played one show, and recorded a whole bunch of noise on our computer. Our "songs" were just us playing completely randomly without actually ever being in tune or on time, and my brother and I would take turns yelling something, it was awful.
Around the same time we were around, there was another band in town called The Minks. One of the members of The Minks lived down the street from the house I lived in, so we decided to start a band rivalry with them, except they were a real band, and we sucked. Eventually, when The Oldskoolerz would get together to jam we would spend half the time we should have spent working on songs and trying to learn our instruments making stupid packages that we would drop off at Adrian from The Minks house. These packages included burnt cd's with "songs" we had recorded on them, contracts we would write up challenging them to various duels (games of frisbee seemed to be our most popular challenge to them), and pretty much just whatever random shit we would think of or find around the house. These packages were almost always stuffed into pizza boxes. Now, The Minks, were older than us, cooler than us, and a hell of a lot better at song writing than us, but we were young and thought we were pretty awesome, and eventually in our young naive minds at least, we thought that our silly fun and games had escalated to a serious rivalry. In reality, everyone knew we sucked and thought it was kind of funny I think, but we got a little worked up over it, and at the climax, I had about 10 people I went to jr. high with "boycott" The Minks.
Eventually, The Oldskoolerz broke up, and we stopped caring. I was in a new band(which the drummer of The Minks sister was also in very very briefly), and actually started getting pretty decent at bass guitar. I was a little older and was getting into "cooler" music. The Minks turned out to be one of my favorite local bands, and to this day I still listen to their album every now and then. I think they're probably on of the best local bands that was around back then. They play early Weezer influenced power-pop, they put out an EP and a full length while they were around. Here's there full length:
Tracklist:
1. The Big Drag
2. Is That You Dad?
3. Say Your Prayers
4. Winter
5. Fountain Song
6. Living By The Sea
7. I Think I'd Grow Better In The Sun
8. Steamboat
9. This Is The Enemy
10. Square Lines
11. Secret Everything
Download mediafire
Around the same time we were around, there was another band in town called The Minks. One of the members of The Minks lived down the street from the house I lived in, so we decided to start a band rivalry with them, except they were a real band, and we sucked. Eventually, when The Oldskoolerz would get together to jam we would spend half the time we should have spent working on songs and trying to learn our instruments making stupid packages that we would drop off at Adrian from The Minks house. These packages included burnt cd's with "songs" we had recorded on them, contracts we would write up challenging them to various duels (games of frisbee seemed to be our most popular challenge to them), and pretty much just whatever random shit we would think of or find around the house. These packages were almost always stuffed into pizza boxes. Now, The Minks, were older than us, cooler than us, and a hell of a lot better at song writing than us, but we were young and thought we were pretty awesome, and eventually in our young naive minds at least, we thought that our silly fun and games had escalated to a serious rivalry. In reality, everyone knew we sucked and thought it was kind of funny I think, but we got a little worked up over it, and at the climax, I had about 10 people I went to jr. high with "boycott" The Minks.
Eventually, The Oldskoolerz broke up, and we stopped caring. I was in a new band(which the drummer of The Minks sister was also in very very briefly), and actually started getting pretty decent at bass guitar. I was a little older and was getting into "cooler" music. The Minks turned out to be one of my favorite local bands, and to this day I still listen to their album every now and then. I think they're probably on of the best local bands that was around back then. They play early Weezer influenced power-pop, they put out an EP and a full length while they were around. Here's there full length:
Tracklist:
1. The Big Drag
2. Is That You Dad?
3. Say Your Prayers
4. Winter
5. Fountain Song
6. Living By The Sea
7. I Think I'd Grow Better In The Sun
8. Steamboat
9. This Is The Enemy
10. Square Lines
11. Secret Everything
Download mediafire
Monday, November 22, 2010
Sick Day. The Promise Review.
Woke up this morning feeling absolutely awful and haven't got much better as the days gone on, but it turned out to be a good day to take a sick day because today my copy of the brand new Bruce Springsteen Darkness on the Edge of Town boxset arrived in the mail.
Except when I got around to firing it up, it turned out my blu ray player decided it didn't want to work today. After a few hours of facebooking I finally got a friend to bring me over a new HDMI cable. Since that took me all day, I didn't get to start watching the blu rays included in the box set until around 9:30pm, it's now 11:00 pm and I just finished the first blu ray, a documentary on the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, which is titled: The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Regardless of the rave reviews I've read of this documentary from Springsteen fans as well as casual movie goers, I was kind of hesitant in getting too excited for this release due partially to the fact I wasn't the biggest fan of the previous Wings For Wheels documentary on Born to Run. Since this documentary had the same director and producer I figured it would be similiar. Also, I had listened to the outtakes album that's also included in this box set, and though it also received rave reviews, I could see why almost every song was an outtake, none of them were really mind blowing. Don't get me wrong, the songs are great, though the entire outtakes album feels like a whole bunch of b-sides strung together, aside from the song The Promise, none of the tracks really seemed like standout tracks. Even the alternate versions of songs that made it to the Darkness album are weaker than the album versions.
I was mistaken though. Now I may be biased since I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and Darkness is one of my favorite albums. But this documentary is really really great, and I can see how the casual movie goer or music fan would enjoy it as well.
First of all, I've gotta say that the entire package the box set comes in is amazing. The box set contains 3 cd's, and 3 dvd's or blu ray's. The first cd is a remastered version of the Darkness on the Edge of Town album, the second 2 cd's are an album of outtakes titled The Promise. The first dvd is the documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the second dvd is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing the entire Darkness on the Edge of Town album live at the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park in 2009 without an audience (which I found kind of odd, seeing as they had played the album in its entirety a few times during the Working on a Dream tour, and the audience interaction has always been a big part of Springsteen concerts for me), also on the second dvd is various live and studio footage filmed between 1976 and 1978, the third dvd is an entire concert from the Darkness tour, filmed live in Houston in 1978 (this is the dvd I'm most excited to watch as bootlegs from this tour are my favorite and I've been dying to see a video of it). All 6 discs are layed within the pages of a 80 page coiled note book replicating one of the many note books Springsteen kept through out the time. The note book is filled with copies of actual notes Springsteen took during the Darkness sessions, it includes scribbled lyrics and album sequence lists, set lists, tons of pictures, copies of old posters, and a couple new essays written in the last year by Springsteen on the album.
The movie opens up with vintage black and white footage of Bruce in the studio trying to work out The Promised Land. This opening immediately lays out whats to be expected of this documentary. It captures the struggle and amount of work put into the album.
The movie is full of studio footage, as well as modern day interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons, Jon Landau, Mike Appel, Patti Scialfa, and more, including Danny Federici which goes to show how long this project has been in the works. Each person adds their own insight to the work spent in the studio at the time, and the creation process of the album, but heaven forbid anyone say one ill word about Springsteen. Even Mike Appel who was in a law suit with Bruce during the years between Born To Run and Darkness, has nothing but praise for the guy.
The thing I liked the most about this movie wasn't getting an inside look at the creation process of the album, though you do get a great idea of how much passion and work was put into the album, but the things I liked the most about this documentary were the vintage footage of not only the studio, but of family, and also when Bruce takes a step back from talking about the album to just talking about where he was in life at the time. There's one scene where he talks about how everyone has a dream of the adult life being a life without limits but as you get into it you realize that you have to make compromises on a nearly daily basis, and there's things you can't compromise without losing who you are. This is something I definitely, and I'm sure just about anyone, can relate to. Also, I love in the bootlegs of concerts from the Darkness tour, Bruce does a lot of personal story telling between songs, and there's plenty of that involved in this documentary.
If you're a Springsteen fan or not I would recommend checking this out, as to me it seems more like a documentary about growing up and putting so much of yourself into something in order to get life out of it than a documentary about the making of an album.
4.5/5
I'll write reviews of the rest of the box set as the week goes on.
Except when I got around to firing it up, it turned out my blu ray player decided it didn't want to work today. After a few hours of facebooking I finally got a friend to bring me over a new HDMI cable. Since that took me all day, I didn't get to start watching the blu rays included in the box set until around 9:30pm, it's now 11:00 pm and I just finished the first blu ray, a documentary on the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, which is titled: The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Regardless of the rave reviews I've read of this documentary from Springsteen fans as well as casual movie goers, I was kind of hesitant in getting too excited for this release due partially to the fact I wasn't the biggest fan of the previous Wings For Wheels documentary on Born to Run. Since this documentary had the same director and producer I figured it would be similiar. Also, I had listened to the outtakes album that's also included in this box set, and though it also received rave reviews, I could see why almost every song was an outtake, none of them were really mind blowing. Don't get me wrong, the songs are great, though the entire outtakes album feels like a whole bunch of b-sides strung together, aside from the song The Promise, none of the tracks really seemed like standout tracks. Even the alternate versions of songs that made it to the Darkness album are weaker than the album versions.
I was mistaken though. Now I may be biased since I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and Darkness is one of my favorite albums. But this documentary is really really great, and I can see how the casual movie goer or music fan would enjoy it as well.
First of all, I've gotta say that the entire package the box set comes in is amazing. The box set contains 3 cd's, and 3 dvd's or blu ray's. The first cd is a remastered version of the Darkness on the Edge of Town album, the second 2 cd's are an album of outtakes titled The Promise. The first dvd is the documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the second dvd is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing the entire Darkness on the Edge of Town album live at the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park in 2009 without an audience (which I found kind of odd, seeing as they had played the album in its entirety a few times during the Working on a Dream tour, and the audience interaction has always been a big part of Springsteen concerts for me), also on the second dvd is various live and studio footage filmed between 1976 and 1978, the third dvd is an entire concert from the Darkness tour, filmed live in Houston in 1978 (this is the dvd I'm most excited to watch as bootlegs from this tour are my favorite and I've been dying to see a video of it). All 6 discs are layed within the pages of a 80 page coiled note book replicating one of the many note books Springsteen kept through out the time. The note book is filled with copies of actual notes Springsteen took during the Darkness sessions, it includes scribbled lyrics and album sequence lists, set lists, tons of pictures, copies of old posters, and a couple new essays written in the last year by Springsteen on the album.
The movie opens up with vintage black and white footage of Bruce in the studio trying to work out The Promised Land. This opening immediately lays out whats to be expected of this documentary. It captures the struggle and amount of work put into the album.
The movie is full of studio footage, as well as modern day interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons, Jon Landau, Mike Appel, Patti Scialfa, and more, including Danny Federici which goes to show how long this project has been in the works. Each person adds their own insight to the work spent in the studio at the time, and the creation process of the album, but heaven forbid anyone say one ill word about Springsteen. Even Mike Appel who was in a law suit with Bruce during the years between Born To Run and Darkness, has nothing but praise for the guy.
The thing I liked the most about this movie wasn't getting an inside look at the creation process of the album, though you do get a great idea of how much passion and work was put into the album, but the things I liked the most about this documentary were the vintage footage of not only the studio, but of family, and also when Bruce takes a step back from talking about the album to just talking about where he was in life at the time. There's one scene where he talks about how everyone has a dream of the adult life being a life without limits but as you get into it you realize that you have to make compromises on a nearly daily basis, and there's things you can't compromise without losing who you are. This is something I definitely, and I'm sure just about anyone, can relate to. Also, I love in the bootlegs of concerts from the Darkness tour, Bruce does a lot of personal story telling between songs, and there's plenty of that involved in this documentary.
If you're a Springsteen fan or not I would recommend checking this out, as to me it seems more like a documentary about growing up and putting so much of yourself into something in order to get life out of it than a documentary about the making of an album.
4.5/5
I'll write reviews of the rest of the box set as the week goes on.
Mineral - End Serenading (1998)
This is the only thing Mineral's put out that I've really been able to get into, it's a great album though. I've read a few reviews saying it lacks the "raw beauty" of the bands earlier work, which I completely disagree with. Sure, the album is a bit more produced, but it's still a very beautiful album. The way the two opening tracks tie together is damn near perfect, and in my opinion this is some of the best 90's emo there is. Amazing guitar melodies and personal lyrics. This is another album I think is great for morning, or evening winter train rides. Maybe it's just me, but I kind of get a Beach Boys God Only Knows-ish vibe from a couple songs on this album.
Tracklist:
1. LoveLetterTypewriter
2. Palisade
3. GJS
4. Unfinished
5. For Ivadell
6. Waking To Winter
7. A Letter
8. Sounds Like Sunday
9. &Serenading
10. The Last Word Is Rejoice
Download mediafire
Tracklist:
1. LoveLetterTypewriter
2. Palisade
3. GJS
4. Unfinished
5. For Ivadell
6. Waking To Winter
7. A Letter
8. Sounds Like Sunday
9. &Serenading
10. The Last Word Is Rejoice
Download mediafire
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Spiritualized - iTunes Live: London Sessions (2008)
Kind of odd to pick this as my first music contribution to this blog, but I've been listening to this live ep and pretty much everything else by Spiritualized a lot lately. This ep contains acoustic live renditions of tracks from Amazing Grace and Songs In A&E. The version of "Lord, Let It Rain On Me" included in this ep is 1000 times stronger than the album version, and "Death Take Your Fiddle" is absolutely heart breaking. The whole ep is perfect head phone music for 7 am c-train rides downtown in the middle of winter. Someday when I'm not so hung over, I'll be able to write better write ups about these things, right now nothing really makes sense, I think I might still be drunk, fuck.
Tracklist:
1. Sitting on Fire
2. Lord Let It Rain On Me
3. True Love Will Find You In The End
4. Death Take Your Fiddle
5. Walking With Jesus.
Download: mediafire
Upload stolen from: goldenhymn
Tracklist:
1. Sitting on Fire
2. Lord Let It Rain On Me
3. True Love Will Find You In The End
4. Death Take Your Fiddle
5. Walking With Jesus.
Download: mediafire
Upload stolen from: goldenhymn
lazy sunday afternoons.
I'm hung over so I'm making a blog.
Since I will be posting music on this blog, music that I myself did not create, I strongly urge you to use the music posted on this blog for sampling purposes only. If you hear anything you like, please either go to a record store and purchase the album, order a t-shirt from their website, or check the band out if they come to your town.
Since I will be posting music on this blog, music that I myself did not create, I strongly urge you to use the music posted on this blog for sampling purposes only. If you hear anything you like, please either go to a record store and purchase the album, order a t-shirt from their website, or check the band out if they come to your town.
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