Bad Veins

Last summer, on what had to be one of the hottest days of the year, Dianne and I went to Fountain Square for one of the Friday concert series where the CRG skaters were promoting an upcoming bout. The post about it is here. One of the bands that we heard playing was Bad Veins. A couple guys playing with some recorded tracks and doing things like singing through a megaphone to give a unique sound. I thought they were pretty good -- but I didn't realize how good.

I read on the Spill It blog that Bad Veins just received the first Target Music Maker Award associated with the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC. Pretty cool for them.

B.B. King and Balluminaria

On Friday evening Dianne and I went to Music Hall in Cincinnati to hear B. B. King in concert. It was a wonderful evening and we had pretty good seats. I have to say I didn't care too much for the opening act, Joanna Cotten. She has a good voice, but I just wasn't in to her songs. B. B. King had a large group with him including four horn players, a rhythm guitar, a bass guitar, drums, and keyboards. The band was a great group of blues musicians that put out a full sound. And B. B. King has an amazing stage presence. Although he now plays sitting down (at 82 he said his knees are bad), he sings and plays with such emotion that he keeps everyone captivated. B. B. King shared some interesting stories about his life (he claimed he didn't see an electric light until he was 16) between songs. It was fun to see him play live. Oh...and to the annoying woman sitting right behind us talking on her cell phone in the middle of one of B. B. King's songs, get a life and show some respect to him and those around you.

Today Dianne and I went to Eden Park in Cincinnati to see the Balluminaria. What's that? The Cincinnati Parks Commission organizes the event each year where hot air balloonist set up their balloons around one side of the perimeter of Mirror Lake in the park. The balloons don't take off. When it gets dark, they coordinate the lighting of their burners to get the balloons to glow. The colors are beautiful and the reflections off the lake enhances the effect. The photo here doesn't do it justice. It was nice to see...but it was cold!! It was about 40 degrees, but a little breeze really made it seem cold -- especially when you're standing and waiting for an hour and a half. The small photo shows them during the set-up stage while it was still light. The photo below shows the balloon glow. Hopefully it will be a little warmer next year.

Macro Mondays Music

I'm so far behind in posting pictures! It's been a busy week.

This past Monday the theme for the Macro Mondays group on Flickr was "music." This one was relatively easy to get a couple photos. For the last several months I've been trying to learn how to play the guitar. I used that for my main subject. At the right is a tuning peg on our electric guitar. I like the spiral wound string on the peg. Below is a shot taken with a slow shutter speed just after plucking a string. I thought the vibrating string represented the music theme well.

Lately I learned the chords to the Oasis song Wonderwall. That was relatively easy. Now I'm trying to learn some picking techniques for the song White Bird. K. T. Tunstall is good acoustic guitar player! That song is a lot tougher, but I like the sound of that style of playing.

Dianne is very quickly getting sick of hearing both of these songs. She's also sick of hearing Everywhere I Go. A great blues song I learned a couple months ago -- although I have no idea what the lyrics are!

Songs in Haiku

This post is a little bit of shameless self promotion.

Our other blog project, Songs in Haiku, is a site where each post summarizes a song's lyrics in a three line verse. It's a cooperative blog with Dianne and Pat. If you haven't been there lately, you should check it out as Songs in Haiku got some enhancement a couple weeks ago. Besides providing a link to the actual song lyrics, Dianne thought it would be good idea to add links for facts about the song and a video. She thought the video would be a nice addition especially if you're not familiar with the song.

I thought it was a good idea, but didn't think we'd find many videos. Boy was I wrong! Isn't the Internet wonderful? Nearly every post has links to facts and to a video for the song. Some of the videos are very interesting and clever. A great example is this video for the song "Mad World" picked by Pat. It's a very creative and well thought out video. Other videos are actual performances videos such as the link in the post for "What a Wonderful World." There are some songs where we couldn't find an official video or a performance, but have found the tune associated with other video. A funny example of that is the video link with the post for "Copacabana."

Finally, thanks to Erika Jean, I requested a review of the Songs blog at the Untwisted Vortex site. Read the review here. The review was actually pretty good. Thanks to RT for taking the time to visit the site and provide the review.

Songs in Haiku -- First Request

"We got one!!" That's one of my favorite lines from Ghostbusters -- when Janine the receptionist (played by Annie Potts) hits the alarm when she answers their first call for assistance with a ghost.

"We got one" on our other blog (Songs in Haiku) on Friday! Each entry on that blog is a 3 line poem in Haiku form (5-7-5 syllables) that summarizes the lyrics of a song. We have quite a few posts up now, so you're sure to see something you recognize. But an early visitor left a comment asking if we took requests. We thought that would be a good idea. Dianne did some research last weekend and set up a request form on the sidebar of Songs in Haiku. It emails us the information on the form to request a song or artist.

Michele sent in a request for "Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum. A great song with some lyrics open to interpretation. Since Pat, Dianne, and I have different approaches to summarizing lyrics, we though it would be fun to write three haiku and post them together. Go check out the three versions. Also look at our other posts -- we plan to try and have something new there daily.

New Blog -- Songs in Haiku

Dianne liked the idea of summarizing a song in haiku, so we decided to establish another blog. It's called Songs in Haiku. Pat, a big music listener, is a co-author as well. Our goal is to post at least one haiku a day. I'm hoping between the three of us there will be a good variety so you'll see a familiar song. I moved my entries from the other day to the new site and Pat and Dianne have added several so it's off to a good start.

The posts about songs I'm very familiar with are the funniest for me. Dianne's take on the Alabama Song and Pat's post on Another Brick in the Wall both made me chuckle.

Check out the new site! Bookmark it and come back often. I've added it to my blog roll on the right for convenience.

SEH #1

A lot of times there isn't much going on with us. It's hard to come up with something to post. I've been thinking about what to post on dull days and came up with a new feature for Earl World -- Song Essence Haiku (SEH). I'm going to post a series of haiku where each one summaries the essence of a particular song's lyrics. Basically a Reader's Digest condensed version of a song. I'll also give links to the complete lyrics. OK, these are a going to be a bastardized form of haiku, but here we go with a few examples to get started.

#1
Signs everywhere.
Many bad scenarios,
so make your own sign.

Signs
5 Man Electrical Band


#2
Chicago gangsters
have a gunfight with the cops.
Papa makes it home.

The Night Chicago Died
Paper Lace


#3
A man meets a girl.
Goes from the bar to her place.
But she is a he!

Lola
The Kinks


#4
Beautiful stranger;
say hi for her attention.
It’s love at first sight.

Hello, I Love You
The Doors

Saturday Night Yuppies

In an unusual departure from our typical quiet Saturday evenings at home, Dianne and I ventured to Hyde Park Square last night. Our first stop was Indigo Casual Dining Cafe for dinner. (Incidentally, that Indigo link is from the ZipScene site -- a nice place to go for information on local events, music, dining, etc. in your city) It's a nice spot for dinner. Last night was a beautiful evening in the Cincinnati area so their patio was packed! However, we got a table right away indoors. I had a chipotle beef wrap (good but enough for two so I have lunch today) and Dianne had her usual ravioli with asparagus spears. Dianne is hooked on her recently purchased Pokemon Diamond game, so she was playing a bit while we were waiting for our check.

After dinner, we went just a couple doors down to the Vineyard Cafe and Wine Room. You can read more about the place here (also lots of links to reviews), here, and here. It's definitely an upscale, yuppy spot with an extensive wine menu. There are quite a few selections available by the glass and pages of wines by the bottle. The wine room/bar area is fairly small, but they have a nice, small enclosed outdoor patio available. Incidentally, the bar is a couple doors down (toward Indigo) from the main cafe. It's not well marked unless you're looking for the Vineyard awning over the doorway.

Our main purpose in going there was to hear Nick Tuttle play. We just started taking guitar lessons from him about a month ago and thought it would be nice to hear him play some songs. Nick plays guitar and sings at the Vineyard every Friday and Saturday evening. If you're in the neighborhood and want to hear some very nice acoustic guitar, stop in there for a drink. You can also eat there or have dessert. It's a nice outdoor spot on a pleasant evening. And if you're not a wine drinker, they also have beer and other spirits.

Brad Delp Found Dead

Just read a BBC news report this morning that Brad Delp, the original lead singer for the band Boston, was found dead at his home on Friday afternoon. The cause of death wasn't yet known. Their debut album was standard issue equipment in the late 70s. They are one of my favorites. I finally saw them on their Walk On tour in the mid 90s. Click on the image to go to the Boston web ring.

A sad day for Boston fans.

Top 200 Definitive Albums

Thanks to Michael at the Neverending Rainbow, I found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the top 200 definitive albums. You can search the list or browse through from top to bottom. It's fun to look through. Our CD collection is a pretty good reflection of the top 20. Dianne and I have it covered from different angles.

Internet Music -- Pandora

Thanks to The Bestest Blog site, I found a cool music site called Pandora. In brief, the site is an internet radio station that you create and influence. You set up a station's playlist by adding your favorite artists to a primary list. Pandora plays songs from those artists as well as artists related to those on your primary list. In that way you are introduced to new artists that you may not have heard before. It’s another way to discover some new music.

The relations between artists/groups have been defined through a music genome effort. You can also rate songs as they are played and your ratings guide the system to choose music more suited to your taste. I thought it worked pretty well, but I did notice few limitations. First, that rating system is a simple like or dislike. It would be nice to have a five or ten point scale. Second, if you get a really bad song you have the option to skip over it. However, you can only skip a certain number of songs per hour. Finally, it's a US only service right now.

Check it out.

Tune Glue

Tune glue is a fun little Flash site that lets you create a music map where you can explore relationships between bands and musicians. Enter a name as a starting point. Each artist or group is shown as a node. Click on the node to expand or delete it from your diagram. You can drag nodes or lock their positions in the diagram. Some artists have news, links, etc. as well. When you expand a node, connections are made to neighbors. At the right is a diagram I made starting with one of my favorites, ZZ Top. You can see their node near the center (click on the image to see a larger view). The logic seemed pretty good as I also like the neighboring groups within a couple degrees of separation.

The diagrams aren't always perfect. Sometimes an artist will show up in 2 places and band names can be tricky (e.g. The Doors and Doors were separate nodes). Nevertheless, it's clever and worth a look.

All-TIME 100

Time magazine has put together a list of the 100 best albums. This is nothing new to those who read Time, but I read about it on the Neverending Rainbow site. You can see the list by decade here. It's fun to review the list and see if your favorite artist or album made the cut. Some of the choices are compilations which are probably good, but not ones I would have included in such a list. Of course you'll notice some of your favorites that didn't make the list. For example, who in their right mind would leave out one of the top selling debut albums ever -- where is Boston in the 70's!?! Also, as Pat pointed out recently, reviewing a list like this brings back memories of people and places associated with the music. Check it out!