I love music, most kinds. But there are some tunes that leap straight down your gullet and warm your belly. It could be for but a moment of poppy goodness that turns into fond nostalgia in 48 hours, or it could be for a long drawn out sultry aural affair. There are sometimes single word adjectives that can sum up the epiphanic moments of musical bliss upon discovery of a track that strums your own personal guitar.
One such song and one such adjective are, respectively, STEFY's Chelsea, and "Tasty".
I posted my comment while waiting for my 60-second bump delay to expire, and found later that the one-word descriptor had struck a chord with other listeners. I think the word does in fact sum up a kind of pop-appeal in music. Led Zep was many things, but never Tasty. On the other hand, Bananarama was (in my somewhat dated opinion) nothing but. As an aside, I'd never heard of STEFY before this, but am now eagerly awaiting their next submission. Such is the power of thesixtyone, but I digress. I was quite surprised and taken with the rapidly evolved consensus, and devised the Tasty Certification to mark that unanimity, and to find a way to express appreciation to the artist.
I'm sure there are other Tasty songs out there, and I know there are other songs with single word monikers that suit them in the eyes of the many. Perhaps they all deserve recognition for their achievements. I will be on the lookout for more Tasty songs, and other adjectives.
I've been chatting with Ryan Fox, drummer of the band Cactus Bob. He sent me a secret track to post. You won't hear this at The Sixty One... heck, some of the band members haven't even heard it!
Ryan says, "Nobody else was around for band practice when our singer Robby Gira showed me 'Isn't me'. We thought it would be a good idea to record it, so we did. We didn't have a bass amp, so I just played the bass part on a keyboard. We needed something else, so we gathered my father and some beer bottles (which were both just laying around the house), then we blew!", he adds, "Blew on the beer bottles that is."
"As you listen you will notice that only my dad can actually make the true jug sound; both Robby and I were just making loud breathy noises in our attempts to blow on our beer bottles."
-Ryan Fox (drums/beer bottle), Cactus Bob
I really like the song and people just don't blow on jugs anymore. Tell us what you think.
I have always harbored very strong opinions on Live albums and Covers of other songs. In this post, I wanna focus on the Covers!
When an Artist does a Cover of another song, they are in fact doing one of two things: either paying homage to the original, or are just out of ideas and need filler of a popular song! To pay homage to a song is great, but I think that it takes little talent to do it exactly like the original... what value does that add? On the flip side, to do a cover and to interpret it with your style, approach and sound, and by doing that, to bring a new dimension to a song, is the greatest form of homage that can be paid to the original, while at the same time demonstrating the creativity and vision of the Artist covering the song.
Having spent countless hours on thesixtyone, I have noticed a lot of covers. Some of them are just a rehash of the same song and they make me wonder what value is added here? Others are great re-interpretations, where the Artist deconstructed the original song, reformed it and created something truly extraordinary. Below are some examples of songs that add new dimension to an already well known song and some of my favorite covers on the site:
Here are two videos by the band Stab the Matador. The first is a professional video for the song Low Rider. It has interesting pulsating video effects and an awesome guitar sound. They had to use some sort of 'convert audio to keyframes' tool - my guess anyway. YouTube quality though. Meh.
Here's another Stab the Matador video for the song 'Doctor'. This one is by high school student Abby Wheeler of Harrisburg, PA. The tear effects are really cool. Abby did a lot of the editing 'in-camera' and used Final Cut Pro to finish it. Very cool, Abby. You have a future in this.
I run THESIXTYONE.COM Fan Podcast and am honored to have been invited to be part of this elite group of T61 contributors. I guess I need to explain a little something about my show. It's not for everyone. It's geared towards adults and people with a very raw sense of humor.
We all love music and we all love to laugh. We don't all love the same music, and what I find funny, others will find offensive. It's inevitable. It's my form of escapism and if you are easily offended than my show is not for you. My sense of humor is the closest thing to art that I have and believe it or not, you'll be hard pressed to find a man more respectful of others than myself. My humor might demonstrate the exact opposite to some, but having lived in and travelled many countries for almost longer than I lived in my home country, I know what discrimination feels like. That's a claim that most white American men can't even begin to fathom. Living in a foreign country teaches you a lot about your own culture. My daughter summed that thought up best one night while we were out to dinner and some drunken guy sitting alone at the bar kept asking the owner of the place questions about "those foreigners" in a very loud and rather rude voice. After the owner finally said, "Bryan speaks Japanese just fine. If you have a question for him why don't you just ask him?" I don't recall what the guy asked but it was something about us (Americans) not having something that they have here in Japan. My 10-11 year old daughter had enough and out of nowhere she said, "Hey! You know what the difference between Japanese people and people from other countries is?" The old man got a big laugh and said, "No, why don't you tell me there, little girl?" She replied, "The only difference is the color of our passports." (They're both blue now but at the time the Japanese one was red.) The thing that makes my very dark humor funny (to me) is that I harbor none of the negative, sometimes uncomfortable expressions I use in my podcast. Age, class, creed, disability, ethnic origin, gender, marital status, nationality and sexual orientation mean NOTHING to me, but laughing at people that think that any of those things will ever affect their personal lives absolutely cracks me up.
Finally, save your hate mail. If you don't like my show, don't listen. I can't believe that people care enough to write to complain about something that is free, and that they're free to turn off at any time. On the other hand, if you *do* like my show then please make sure to subscribe and to vote for it on podcastalley.com. Head over to www.puntspeedchunk.com and start clicking!
This place called podcastalley is an alternative place for people go to find new podcasts to listen to instead of iTunes, but more importantly, it's where sponsors go to find places to advertise and where independent artists go to get exposure. Voting is a monthly deal and I would really appreciate it if my friends and artists here would take the time to "bump" my podcast over there every month.
During this evening's the61 outage (maybe it was just me...) I came across this little nugget of info that may or may not be of interest to you guys:
Trent Reznor has just released a 36-Track, quadruple-disc instrumental album, available for download now on the intertubes. He has supplied numerous ways to obtain this new album:
The $5 download includes all 36 tracks in a variety of digital formats (320kbps LAME encoded, fully tagged; FLAC Lossless; Apple Lossless), including a 40-page PDF: NIN "Ghosts" Website
$5 download for all 36 tracks (and probably your fastest option with Amazon's 1-click - which you undoubtedly use via the61 already...): Amazon.com
The Deluxe Edition Package $75+s/h [hardcase w/ 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD w/ all tracks, 1 Blu-Ray w/ all tracks in high definition 96/24 and a slideshow, and a 48-page art book. It also includes immediate access to download the files to listen to while you wait for the physical booklet(s) to be shipped to you]: Artists In Residence
For those that use torrents, Trent has allowed one album [Disc 1] to be shared via this means (but you know you want all 4 discs, so go pay your $5!!!): The Pirate Bay
[found this info via slickdeals.com as well as SNYpod's wall post to me]
Current Favorite Artist: It changes from week to week, but since I recently found out about Jaymay, I'll say her. (ultimate favorites include Madeleine Peyroux, Feist, and Aqualung)
Artist you most wish would upload music: Got a few: Junior Boys, Blonde Redhead, and Pink Martini (in regards to rock music: Athlete, The Cinematics, and Low vs. Diamond)
Your musical guilty pleasure: The Killers
How did you hear of The Sixty One? My friend, Mitchell, sent me an email - he knows I'm always on the hunt for something new to listen to.
How much less productive are you since you've joined? A good amount, but that's because finding music is much more enjoyable than hitting the books.
What is the biggest change you'd make to The Sixty One? Same as what has already been mentioned before, specifically
Listener's bio section (occasionally there's other music finds outside the61 that I'd love to share)
Tunebox shake-up (more efficient way to tunebox multiple users at once, notification pop-up, larger writing field)
Revision of subscription activity (fills up extremely fast and I tend to miss some things) [edit: Initially I listed sortable stats, but I'm not sure if I really care all that much about it anymore]
Who is the listener you'd most like meet to in person? I'd love to meet all the regulars, though if I had to choose, perhaps rkeller4 (the painter), redbaron (the writer), and imonlysleeping (the light bulb?).
What do you think of Second Life Avatars for musicians and users? There's so much natural beauty in the real world – go capture it!
What sort of stuff would you like to see on this site? Interviews of artists or featured artists, video picks (youtube, takeaways, etc), latest album releases (and maybe t61 listeners' reviews), forums for music discussion, and links to other worthwhile music sites.
