Ch. #22 – “How I rediscovered live music”

 

It’s funny for me to think about it today that there was a time when I generally frowned upon the concept of live music given how amped I’m about the thought about seeing a band I like in the flesh today. And remarkably that wasn’t all that long ago.

I should clarify that with “frowned” I didn’t necessarily mean that I thought live music was just bad, but I thought for the longest time that live performances were inferior to polished studio cuts. As far as I was concerned music were for the most time just better on record.

It was a belief I held for many years; from my early teenage years until almost my mid-20s. Then around that time in my life I got hung up on The White Stripes and began sifting deeper into their discography and footage of them performing. One faithful evening I decided to watch their live video album “Under Blackpool Lights“… and after that viewing I was a different man.

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Ch. #21 – “From Chicago, with Grunge”

 

As alluded to in last week’s entry I had more than one show lined up last week other than Lenny Kravitz‘s. The latter’s show was great and all, on and off downright amazing to give credits were credits are due. Watching his performance reaffirmed my view of what an baller of an artist he his. So I’m very happy I got to see him live finally.

…that said, to be real honest despite how psyched I was on seeing Lenny Kravitz perform I was possibly even slighter more excited to see the other band who was in town last week; Chicago’s fabled 90s Alt-Rock posse The Smashing Pumpkins.

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Ch. #20 – “Summer shows ahead!”

 

Summer around this part of the world is just about around the corner, and summer that means… summer shows! I’m thoroughly jovial about getting the sun, the delectable warm and brights nights and live music back in my life again. And although I might need to hang on for another few weeks still for the former to get here my concert summer begins already next week with two shows at Gröna Lund in Stockholm. I can’t even put into prose to describe exactly how pumped I’m for this!

Therefore, not surprisingly, the feature song of the week is by one of the artist I’m planning to see live this coming week. Non other than Romeo Blue himself; Mr. Lenny Kravitz.

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Ch. #19 – “All I wanna do is have some fun”

 

I had a slow week this past week, in most sense sense of the expression. Not much exciting was happening and I had low level of energy and was generally uninspired to do stuff through the week. You know, I had a low key week as you do every once in a while.

The problem of course is I got to deliver a piece of writing to honor my pledge to myself and to this here blog. A not too uncommon spot for anyone who do creative based work, and in particularly those who do such work for a living. Sometimes you just have to power through that state somehow.

So I did that. Or sort of. The uninspired, dulled state I was in eventually became my muse as I recalled an old favorite tune of mine I had not thought of in a while which partly is about this very mental state; Sheryl Crow‘s 1994 breakout single “All I Wanna Do“.

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Ch. #18 – “From outcast to firestarter”

 

In 1963 Betty Friedan published her book “The Feminine Mystique” which would go on to be a new spark in the grinding struggle for equality for women in the United States and in the rest of the Western world. In said book Betty Friedan lays out and discuss what she precised from her research and own experience the gloomy state of womanhood at the time, pointing the source of this state to what she now famously referred to as “the problem that has no name”.

Now some 50 years later I would argue that we have several names and suggestions to what to call Friedan’s elusive problem. Take “misogyny” for once.

Fast forward (or rewind I guess) to the early 1990s. The place is Chicago, where a girl in her early 20s called Liz Phair is struggling to make her voice heard in a male dominated local music scene that frowns at her for her efforts. A scene who her circle of friends jokingly once referred to as “Guyville” due to its homogeny and apprehended close mindedness.

This is a not a sob story however. On the contrary; this is a story of an outcast who became a firestarter.

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Ch. #17 – “The Wurlitzer Electric Piano”

 

Given my my choice of songs and artist so far on this blog I shouldn’t surprise you to read that I have a knack for the sound of a guitar. And I happily take my guitar sounds with some dirt and with some playing with a slide sprinkled on top.

Oh, yes. I’m so guilty as charged.

That said, twanging or fuzzed our guitar tone is hardly the only thing the tickles my fancy instrumentally speaking. A close second on my internal power ranking would be electric pianos and organs. Today I would like to put the spotlight to one particular kind of the former group and give it a short ode to why I like it so much. The instrument I’m thinking of is the iconic and venerable Wurlitzer Electric Piano.

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Ch. #16 – “Desert Rock”

 

When you are playing and you are looking up the sky, looking up the mountains and all of a sudden people are lighting fires and drinking and there are car lights… If you saw the view that I saw, you might just start to play like that way to.

— Josh Homme

The above is a quote from the rockumentary “Desert Age“, which chronicles the local music scene in Palm Springs out in the southeastern California desert that sprung up during the 1980s and rose to fame in the early 1990s. They share a history not too far removed from what happened in the Pacific Northwest in and around Seattle during the approximately same time period; a bunch of kids and teenager living in relatively remote one-horse towns in a pre-Internet world just trying to entertain themselves and each other via playing music. And they end up birthing something marvelous and beautiful.

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Ch. #15 – “We’re Alive”

 

This week’s installment on the blog was just supposed to be another “new music alert” piece but the burning of the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris last Monday changed that. With the pictures after pictures of evocative imagery of the old church and grand artifact of European history burning down flashing before me in the week that has passed the song and the album I had in my mind to share had suddenly been filled with new meaning and association; “We’re Alive” by British Blues and Indie rockers Band of Skulls, of their newly released album “Love Is All You Love”.

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Ch. #13 – “I actually like pop music, I really do”

 

By now if you look back at the songs I have chosen to feature on this blog from the start up until day you may have already been able to sense my leaning and affinity for Blues and 90s style Alternative Rock. And what can I say? Guilty as charge.

If I would have to point to any sweet spots in terms of musical genres it would be those genres… including when those genres intertwines (oh sweet lordy lord). However it’s far from the only style of music that I listen to and that I dig and appreciates, which I hope will be displayed in the weeks and months to come of this blog.

Today I thought to spare a couple of words on one of those genres that haven’t really been brought to light on this blog up until the present day. And the genre is… drum roll please…Pop.

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