The Fundamentals of Planking

As promised I took part in Planking Day, if you don’t know what it’s all about I gave a pretty good description in “For the Love Of Planking“. Anyways, after a rough shoot, I dusted myself off and spent about four hours editing, then another 5 hours trying to figure out how to upload it. Finally my video debut is here!

I’ve been thinking about doing something to help raise awareness and this seemed like the ultimate opportunity, so check out the links for Asthma and Allergy Awareness & Mental Health, since May is the month for both. They’re great causes and just by understanding them better we can show our support!

Here’s the video for “The Fundamentals of Planking” I hope you enjoy it, it’s only my first crack at video so it ain’t perfect.

(And I even did my own stunts!)

With Somethin’ More Familiar

Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.
Mark Twain

So here I am in a bar, with about 10 or so other people, while a guitarist and singer named John Reader starts off a set with a song by Cannonball Adderly that has shades of gospel. It’s not the first time I heard this guy play, I thought back to about a month ago when I had a chance to interview Amanda Rae Gallant and he was her guitarist for the 2 song performance they gave at the ECMA’s. As he played the next song which was a John Haitt cover, I thought about the great tone he got from his tattered guitar and wondered if he was avoiding buying another one for financial reasons or just because of the one he had was like family to him, there were a couple of noticeable marks around the sound hole.

Despite that he sounded great of course and the music seemed to be perfect for such an intimate environment in this bar named The Alibi in Charlottetown. It was the first time I’d been to that particular bar, but I was told by a guy from a band called Manifold’s (who was scheduled to play a little later tonight) that I should check it out. As John closed off another song with the familiar slowdown on the last few strums I thought of this bar’s previous incarnations as a late night pizza joint called JR Capone’s owned by the guy who plays Jules on the Trailer Park Boys, then as a Chinese buffet, and most recently as an Indian buffet where I gained not only an appreciation for curry chicken, but also the far out sounds of the sitar in the Indian classical music they’d play.

The guitarist mentioned that he thought the last song would have sounded better on the piano, unfortunately it wasn’t “miked”. I thought of a joke I had made up earlier that day while cutting the grass which went something like this “is it just me or is talking about your favorite pianists a bad icebreaker at a Metallica concert?”. So he reaches into his guitar case and pulls out a binder and tells us that he has some new songs, he plays one that was very campfirey & happy that might get people clapping hands during it. I thought it was pretty neat as I got the last drink of my slightly metallic tasting beer down and threw a couple of dollars in the tip jar, the music was neat, the waitress was friendly, but I had to get home.

The Uneventful Stroll

As I walked out he started to play some kind of Mississippi blues kinda thing and it was a little sketchy, I hope that he didn’t feel like it was because of him that 10% of his audience (me) was walking out.

It’s about 9:00 on a Thursday night, not many people around, not much to think about as I walk down these streets I’ve seen before so many times I was just thankful that today was so sunny and I was able to get some work done out in the yard. It was familiar, as opposed to what happened when I checked my emails when I got home, wow, all these people I used to hang out with are on there. Then I remembered starting up a Facebook account earlier and making some friend requests to people I knew. I don’t really know how to approach answering them except thanks for accepting my friend request?

Facebook is really foreign territory for me despite being a worldwide household name. I started out with email, eventually got into WordPress which lead to Twitter and now I guess I’ve finally come full circle. The biggest reason I joined Facebook was to get the word out about the website I designed about play reviews on PEI, and now I guess I’m gonna be able to be a little more in contact with all these people that I haven’t seen in years. I don’t know if they’ll find what I’m writing about familiar but at least it won’t be unknown.

A Girl Named “Like”

Speaking of Facebook somebody in Isreal named their baby girl “Like”. I bet they’ll get a lot of “Likes” on their page, as for the baby, “Like” may someday grow up and realize that she “Don’t Like” being called “Like” and might change it to something more mainstream in Isreal “Like” Ahuva or something.
Here’s a song I “Like” called “Courage”…

Musical Medicine Cabinet

I was recently perusing the CD’s at a pawn shop downtown. I found “Scarlett’s Walk” by Tori Amos, she’s a very talented pianist who spins dramatically beautiful energetic imagery with her lyrics sung with a most “melody friendly” accent. I normally balance out my yin selections with some yang and on the radio I hear “Lithium” being played by grunge legends, Nirvana.

I asked the clerk if he had the album “Nevermind” in stock and sure enough he did. I didn’t get a chance to pop that one into my CD player yet…

The Playlist Alterations

I recently finished a book called “Power Vs. Force”, which talked about how the music we listen to can have a profound effect on our mood. Heavy Metal, according to tests run by kenistheologists actually weakens us, while music similar to J.S. Bach strengthens us. In another book I read a few years back about accelerated learning Bachesque music was found to make plants grow healthier while something like Led Zeppelin with it’s heavy beats and loud bass (there are certainly quite a few Zeppelin songs that are beautiful) makes plants die much quicker.

I deleted all my songs that had negative lyrics from my phone, there are still some heavy ones that I listen to, but for those ones the lyrics are either were meaningless or undecipherable. That’s were “Nevermind” comes in. I really couldn’t figure out Cobain’s lyrics on that album, I know that he had dabbled in heroine (according to his biography he used it mostly to alleviate cronic pain) and the name of the band (Nirvana) described a supreme state of bliss in Buddhism. It’s as if the words weren’t meant to make sense, kind of like he was above trying to use the music to send a message. There’s a song called “On A Plane”  which I think meant like the Astral Plane or something there’s lines like “Start this song without any words…”, “Scratched til I bled…”, “I’m on a plane, I can’t complain…”, (I can’t hear what the 3rd verse is about), “what the hell’m I tryin a say…” “…to write off lines that don’t make sense…”, “…then I’m done, & I can go home…”. Oh yeah, sometime’s Kurt Cobain wore a dress, too.

Heroes

I think that not only was Nirvana was the revival of the popular power trio, but also put of a movement that would provide an alternative what was known as hair metal or crotch rock. When I was about 10 or so I was watching “The Power Hour” on Much Music with my uncle and I thought that metal sounded pretty cool and just assumed that the tight pants, makeup, and permed hair was something that just came with the territory for bands like Poison or Motley Crüe, but as he pointed out they looked pretty foolish up there.

So there I was as a pre-teen dealing with all the hormonal changes and all the musical rebels were singing about either getting wasted and/or having a one-night stand with one of the multitudes of groupies that would get featured in their videos. For a while, there wasn’t much else that was very interesting in the late eighties.

Then came Seattle’s Grunge scene and people like me finally had something we could actually relate to! The lyrics were actually thoughtful, the guitar sound was a little less shred and whammy-barred, and the drums sounded more live. I gotta say that I was thankful to be the age I was back then.

Here comes thunder, I’m shutting it down!!!

The Voice on a Chocolate Crash?

You don’t have to be singing about love all the time in order to give love to the people. You don’t have to keep flashing those words all the time.
Jimi Hendrix

Microphone

I’m sitting here watching a new show called “The Voice” on NBC after watching a rather depressing show in french on Radio-Canada about Les Phoques. My voice is back to normal after sounding kinda “froggy” for about a week. I’m thankful for that since I’ll be recording some more radio in a few days. Could it be all the chocolate that I’ve binged on since Easter?

On Friday, I felt great about all the fun to be had on the long weekend. Now it’s Tuesday and I’m healthy, I felt a little sleep deprived over the weekend with work and celebrations. After going for a swim today my eyes are burning and I was wondering earlier if all that chocolate made me feel emotional, after all there’s supposed to be some stuff in chocolate (I’m not interested in doing any research at the moment, but it’s probably not hard to find info on Wikipedia or something) that gives you some kind of a high and what goes up must come down as they say.

The Moment Has Passed

I gotta say that right now I feel a lot happier than I did when I was washing dishes about an hour ago with thoughts of inadequacy crossing my mind as the ideas flowed as they often do while in the midst of a monotonous task. I was thinking about how much I want to get done this week and wishing I had more time to pull it off. Tomorrow I’m scheduled to interview a band called The Manifolds in town, meet with a local business owner who also happens to be a bit of a mentor to me to discuss the Atlantic music scene, and hopefully make it to a drummer’s circle in the evening.  There are a few options for Thursday as far as what to do. On Friday I plan to help my father out with some renovations. And on Saturday there’s a writing workshop.

I’m also getting close to finishing up my website for opening night reviews of the long running plays on PEI this summer. If I can stay focussed I’ll be done this week and get a domain name registered.

Everything actually seems to be pretty good now that I think about it, including the show “The Voice”. I think the performers are all very respectable as singers and people. I thought the auditions were probably well prepared for and sounded like great live renditions of some pretty decent songs. I’m sure that everybody’s impressed with at least one or two of the judges, the soulful Cee Lo Green, stellar vocalist Christina Aguilera, Maroon 5′s Adam Levine, and country singer Blake Shelton. They’re a good bunch up there, they get along (so far), and most importantly all of the criticism is constructive and well informed.

I used to think that show’s with auditions were kind of cruel and took the focus off of the music to shed light on how much “talent” someone has or doesn’t have. Personally, I think that there are many factors that decide whether or not a person is going to be a “star”. However, when it comes to vocals there’s really no gray area, you’re either singing in key or off key. This show seems to be more about the judges putting their name behind their favorite singers as opposed to giving opinions about what the contestant did right or wrong.

Tears of Joy?

I feel pretty good right now although my eyes are still stinging enough to make tears fall. Earlier on I convinced myself that it was sorrow, and obviously something in the water that I swam in didn’t mix well with my eyes. I turned down the brightness on my monitor, thought out what I have planned this week, and listened to some impressive television. I don’t want to sound picky or anything but TV doesn’t often impress me, so this is quite refreshing. I think I’ll give the computer a rest tonight.

Are there any shows that you thought you wouldn’t like that turned out to be pretty cool?

Here’s the video for “Crazy” sung by Cee Lo when he was Gnarls Barkley. (I couldn’t embed this one)