|
| Main | Music Reviews | Journal | Links |
|
|
March 13, 2003 I've been listening a lot to Richard Buckner's Devotion + Doubt the past few weeks. I'm going to try to learn a few of the songs with my guitar instructor. I think we'll start with "4am".
I have the opportunity to see Katryna and Nerissa Neilds, on April 2nd. I may go alone. My usual date has a date that night. I got to see them emcee and perform a little at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in January. They tell good stories and I like their music, for the most part. I get to hear "Easy People" several times per week because it is on my wife's work out CD. Great tune. "I choose you to take up all of my time..." Hmm Humm Humm Hmm Da Da Da da...
I have run into a little insurance problem and have to make a decision in the next few weeks. I guess I am "on their radar", so to speak. Good insurance, but still at their mercy. That's the big news for now.
Oh, if you have a sound card and speakers, you have to check out http://www.muffinfilms.com.
February 28, 2003 Before the internet, how did people discover new music? Or should I ask, Did people discover new music before the internet?
Before the internet, there was popular radio stations and there was "word-of-mouth". I guess the internet is an abstraction of word-of-mouth communication. The latest fad in the 'net is blogs, and the hottest application on the internet is email. Both are electronic substitutes for face-to-face communication. And thank god we at least have that.
February 21, 2003 Just wrote a note to Emm. I was reading her journal at emmgryner.com and thought she needed some encouragement. I don't know if she will reply. I don't care.
I've been thinking lately about interpreting songs. Sometimes on the Patty Griffin discussion list, I'll write my interpretation of a song, when requested, and send it off to the list. The last song I looked at like this was "Silver Bell". It is also the kind of thing I sometimes do in the music reviews section of this web page.
The conflict I'm having is this: if I really want to know what a song like "Silver Bell" means, I ought to contact the writer and ask her/him what it is about.
Dear Patty Griffin, I know you are busy and you probably get 100s of fan letters every week but you must put my letter at the top and respond to me as I ask you what inspired Silver Bell and what is meant by "I did a stupid thing / I even tried..."
Yea right. Patty would not respond. She should not respond. If she were to write me back and tell me her inspiration for the song and the meaning of the words, then I contend that it would cease to be art. The text would then become non-interpretable and cease to inspire thought in each person who hears it. And this is what makes us human--the ability to use and interpret symbols. So in a way, by not asking Patty for her meaning, I am encouraging humanness.
February 13, 2003 I censor myself tremendously on this page. If this were truly a journal, I would write about anything I wanted to write about, publish it, and not give a damn.
February 5, 2003 Does it really matter what I write here? I mean, these words may be read by 6 people in the next week, maybe 20 by the end of the month, and possible 100 by the end of the year. What if I just started writing gibberish. Would you still visit? Then I guess I couldn't call this a "Journal" if I wrote gibberish. In fact, if I wrote gibberish, then I wouldn't be writing it for my benefit. So why am I writing all these Random Thoughts and Whatnot? I guess I am writing them so that when my descendants open up this web page, they can find out something about me. Or maybe when I'm 95 or 105 years-old, I can look back on this bits of data and say "God was I full of s#$%."
So I will experiment with gibberish and at the end of it I will ask my future self if I (at 95 or 105 years-old) am still reading this.
Hold on....
Here it comes....
Are you, Future-self, still here? Waiting for gibberish you are [with the verb after the object, this must be be spoken in Yoda's voice][obviously]. And not knowing when to begin the gibberish experiment, I found myself stuck in a picture frame of a window of my radar in the front seat of my desk with a rocket to the moon in front of venus and miami and liquid pencil for a red wagon with a girl pulling a teleitubby, maybe po or la-la or michael jackson, not knowing where i'll be found when the end is near there is no one knowing where the doomsday machine can be found or is it in the kitchen, behind the attic, or in the empty porcelean mouse or is it in the olympics experiment with the music no, the temptations, the stray cats, the emm gryners ;) hey that's not gibbersish, no that is not jibbersssh, no thatss' not gjgjbsh, no thatsks nos jjg, no. ARe you still reading this Future-self? Get out, this is jfjbjisjrishs (gibberish). So what have I proven with this silly experiment? That I can write nonsence and I still have an audience? I certainly hope not. I hope that Future-self gave up reading this long ago. Hopefully I have proven nothing.
Patty Griffin's next album will be called Red Wagon, and the title track will be written by an unknown writer, myself, and that song will be about a girl pulling her red wagon and about how simple life is when you're six.
Ok. I'm just kidding, but maybe in a few years I'll be able to turn this song over to Patty.
January 23, 2003 Musical highlight of 2003? So far, it would be going to the Ann Arbor Folk Festival and seeing Patty Griffin perform with Doug Lancio and a "full" band. She was fantastic. I tried not to think about the chords she was playing or how she was holding her guitar. I just wanted to stay in the moment. The highlight for me was her cover of Springsteen's "Stolen Car", where I felt her and Doug had some great on stage chemistry. The electric guitar expressed the pain felt by the writer of the song, and I finally realized what the metaphor stands for. Of course it may stand for a stolen car that he is driving, or it could also represent him possessing a memory of his relationship after he and an ex-wife have drifted apart. But not simply possessing the memory, but clinging to something that is not his to hold, something that is already gone.
Saw a number of other great acts. Enjoyed a bluegrass band The Waybacks. Their guitarist made some incredible picking look easy. Purchased a Josh Ritter CD. Enjoyed the quality of his lyrics as much as his melodies and guitar picking. And I also enjoyed the performance of Jeffrey Gaines. Great voice.
January 23, 2003 I'm a little surprised at myself. Since getting the guitar for Christmas, I've been practicing at least 5 nights out of 7. The lessons are going well. I think I like a blues chord progression the most. The instructor introduced a "turnaround" on Monday, so now I'm integrating that into the blues number. What I need to work on most is keeping the beat, changing chords and not missing a beat.
My wife and I are going to the Ann Arbor folk festival on Friday. The lineup includes Patty Griffin and the two Neilds sisters. There are probably 8 acts that are going to perform, so it will be a long night.
January 13, 2003 I had my first guitar lesson a week ago. Today I have my second. I think I'm a quick learner at guitar. I can work through a couple of songs, but I still need to work on pressing the strings all the way down with the left fingers and changing chords without missing a beat. So I guess I'm saying that there are two major areas that I have to work on. Besides that, I'm gold.
January 3, 2003 I received a guitar for Christmas. Not only that, but the most special gift I received was probably the 4 lessons that were purchased along with the guitar. Many thanks to all who were involved in this purchase. You will be in my thoughts when I kick off my worldwide tour and perform in front of throngs of screaming fans.
Thanks to a generous Christmas gift, I purchased Norah Jones' Come Away With Me this past weekend. While I was checking out, the cashier behind the counter said, "I really like this CD." I replied, "I've put off buying it for too long now."
| index | music reviews | journal | links |