Case in Point - FREE MUSIC!

Everyone likes to get (non-ticking) packages in the mail. Every so often I arrive home to find an unexpected tan package with my name on it and free music inside. It used to be that a lot of companies would send me their albums but these days that I'm not as aggressively reviewing music there are only a few who send me albums for review. One of these that still sends me music is Inside Out Music, a label that specializes in progressive rock music.

Such was the case yesterday.

Three albums forming a mixed bag. The most promising is The Hemulic Voluntary Band by Ritual, a Swedish group who really, really love the earth. But the delivery is coated in effusive melodies and organic instrumentation (in addition to the usual rock stuff there's piano and flutes and pan flutes and other pastoral flotsam) and dramatic Freddie Mercy-like vocals that make the icky medicine go down easier. And to be honest, by Al Gore/Unabomber standards they are barely environmentalists. I really enjoyed their first two albums and so hope to enjoy this one.

Also included was an album by Riverside whose first album sounded like modern radio gaga. It gets one listen and if it fails to grab me, it's gone.

Last is the newest by The Flower Kings. Lots of bands I like love this band but despite repeated listens to many of their albums over the years... nothing. I don't have high hopes for this one either but it will get one, maybe two listens before being stacked neatly away in storage with Riverside.

One out of three ain't bad!

The Last Watermelon

My darling wife is sitting next to me eating a piece of what might possibly be the last watermelon of the season. Sure, we could take out a loan on the cat and buy a melon in December but they aren't as juicy or ice-cold-satisfying in the middle of a (Northern) Indiana winter.

It's not easy to write a blog post with my darling wife sitting next to me offering editorial comments on every sentence. That's why I'm glad her mouth is full of the delicious last watermelon of the season.

Ahem

There are many perks to writing music reviews... you can often schmooze free CDs that you would have paid for anyway (and get them before the release date), you get paid cash dollars that come in handy in exchange for goods and services in the United States and abroad (especially good for bribing Mexican officials to turn their heads while you escort a pack of llamas over the border in the dead of night), and sometimes you get music for bands that you didn't know existed but eventually come to overhaul your entire musical world.

But this here entry isn't about the positive. Nope. It's time to be NEGATIVE! Because sometimes your editor gives you local albums to review. And sometimes these are decent, good for a few listens. Of the hundreds of local albums I've reviewed less than ten could compete with a national release. Sometimes it's the production that holds it back. Often it's the lackluster songwriting skills. And almost always it sounds like two or twelve bands currently being played to death on the radio. Knowing that these local bands and their fans comprise a good part of the advertising dollar for my unnamed print publication I do my best to find the good and write what is in essence a glowing press release that will be read almost exclusively by the band's parents and girlfriends. Everyone is happy and I get to pocket my payment and my pride.

Only once did I give my true feelings about a band in undisguised verbage... really, they deserved it and I found the experience quite cathartic... and the editor politely asked me to be more polite.

But today I am faced with another difficult task that has reared its head a few times in the past: reviewing an album by an artist who is extremely well known and loved in the area but whose music I find bland and without any uniquely defining characteristic. Somehow I will pound out four-to-five hundred words of tripe using my boilerplate and everyone will be happy.

More Music Stuff (snore)

I just listened to Ben Fold Five's Whatever and Ever, Amen for the first time in a long time. For some reason, the album just opened up for me. While it wasn't the first time I've enjoyed the album with headphones I'm sure this helped in making the bass sound leap out and meaning of the songs suddenly pop into focus. I mean, I subconsciously knew most of the lyrics and had a general awareness of what each song was about but this time everything clicked. And then there was hearing and appreciating all the nice touches like clarinets, cellos, brushed drums and upright bass. It's about as much fun as one is allowed to have at work.

While I'm not a rabid Ben Folds fan I sincerely believe that he is a master songcrafter. The man can write melodies and put a song together like few peers. Plus you add in his penchant for melancholy melodies and I'm there. Now that he had kids he's going the route of the family friendly soundtrack, which in most ways is good. I mean, his early habit of throwing superflous swear words into his songs did help in marketing him as "angsty" and "Not Your Fathers Piano Player" but in the long run they did little to service the song. And anyone who knows me knows that I'm all about servicing the song. I have no clue what that means.

Or possibly the illumination comes from me switching to WinAmp because Windows Media Player 11 doesn't work with Last.FM and WMP version 10 doesn't work my "operating system"... although they played well together last week before the latest Windows update.

Contest For Stuff

My dahlink wife would simply LOVE to win one of these purses... and you can to, or maybe you can buy a purse from her fledgling web business. Or maybe you can even read her blog.

Heartwarming Holidays

It's almost as if Santa whispered into her ear: "On Christmas Eve I'm going to come down your chimney AND EAT YOU! Kinda looks like he means it, too.

Revenge

If you have a memory longer than mine you'll remember the pictures of our garden and the amazingly massive tomato plants. Well, they've exploded in ripeness. I think in the last three or four days they've cranked out close to thirty ripe tomatoes. We ate quite a few, maliciously tossed a few at transients, and then decided to make spaghetti sauce. It isn't easy to find a recipe that calls for fresh tomatoes (and I'm sick of typing the word "tomato" so from here on out I'll refer to them as goats) as most call for canned goats or small rodents or tofu goats. But I found one in a slow cooker recipe book (that THAT internets) that did us quite nicely. So the other day I spent an hour skinning and seeding and slicing ten or twelve goats to make a double batch, letting it simmer all night and into the next day. Today we are on our second double batch of goat sauce. There are still about twenty more goats in the garden threatening to ripen but when they do, we'll be waiting but probably not for more sauce... most like we'll turn them into BLGs.