Music
Posts about music and musicians
Okay, yes, I know. I was rather harsh in my post about the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I'm a cynic; what can I say? And I'm extremely picky and fussy about musical performances and music in general. And the ceremonies gave me a lot to moan about. So I moaned. Maybe even griped.
I went into this whole Winter Olympics thing with a distinctly jaded outlook. I'd been hearing about the lack of snow in Whistler and the possibility of the Blackcomb resort filing for bankruptcy protection, and I started thinking that the whole thing was going to be a major train wreck. To make matters worse, I then read this article by Vancouver's poet laureate Brad Cran stating his reasons for not participating in the Olympic celebrations, and I my blood started to boil a bit. When large corporations start telling people what they can and can't do, I get angry. Real angry.
But the whole corporate thing is fodder for a post of its own. And believe me, I will return to it.
So I wasn't really planning to watch much Olympic coverage. I knew I'd end up seeing at least some of it, because CTV was basically suspending all regular programming except for the news and broadcasting non-stop Olympic coverage for the entire seventeen days of the games. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: "I Believe", Alexandre Bilodeau, Canada, CTV, feelings, figure skating, hockey, Jennifer Heil, Joannie Rochette, luge, moguls, Nodar Kumaritashvili, Olympics, Team Canada, Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Well, I'm not a sports fan, but I am a Canadian, and I do love spectacle, so I decided to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games last night.
I was seriously underwhelmed.
I'll probably end up sounding like some kind of jaded cynic—and, truth be told, I actually feel like one a lot of the time—but I have to be honest here. There was a lot of stunning visual stuff going on, but not a lot of substance.
The projection of images onto the stage floor was a brilliant idea and beautifully executed, and the dancers and aerial performers were awesome, the orchestra was fabulous, the lighting and effects were great, the giant inflatable light-up polar bear was incredible, and the native costumes were beautiful. But something was missing.
Something to hold my attention, maybe? Something to keep me awake at one-bloody-o'clock in the morning when I'm starting to question why I stayed up this late in order to watch squares of wheat projected onto the floor and hear our national anthem turned into a hip-hop diva moment? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Anne Murray, Barbara-Ann Scott, Betty Fox, Bobby Orr, Bryan Adams, Catriona LeMay Doan, Donald Sutherland, Jacques Villeneuve, Joni Mitchell, Julie Payette, k.d. lang, Music, Nancy Greene, Nellie Furtado, Olympics, Opening Ceremonies, Rick Hansen, Roméo Daillaire, Sports, Steve Nash, Terry Fox, TV, Vancouver, Wayne Gretzky
Yes, I'm still on about the Beatles. The remastered stereo box set is so cool, I might just write a blog post about each album. Or maybe a post for every two albums. I haven't quite decided yet.
So, let's see how much I have to say about A Hard Day's Night, the first album the Beatles recorded on four-track equipment. It's also the first album to contain exclusively Beatle-penned songs and the only album in the entire catalog to contain nothing but Lennon-McCartney compositions. There are no covers, and no songs written by George or Ringo.
The album is the soundtrack for the movie of the same name, or at least half of it is. When originally released, the first side of the LP contained the seven songs that were included in the movie, and the second side contained songs that Lennon and McCartney had written with the movie in mind, but were never actually included in the film.
Let me just say right off the top that putting in A Hard Day's Night after listening to Please Please Me and With the Beatles is a bit like watching the middle part of The Wizard of Oz, where it switches from black and white to color. The depth of the mixes here is leaps and bounds above those of the first two albums. I know some people still prefer the mono mixes of all the albums that were released that way, but this stereo mix of A Hard Day's Night is, to my ears, bloody awesome. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Beatles, Beatles For Sale, digital remastering, Hard Day's Night, stereo box set
Last time around I prattled on at length about the packaging of The Beatles Stereo Box Set. I think I might have even gotten a bit of drool on my keyboard, but it seems to be working okay nonetheless.
This time around I'm going to start talking about the remastered music itself. The set I have is in stereo, but there's also a mono box set—called The Beatles in Mono—that includes the ten albums that were released in mono in the UK (Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let it Be were never given a separate mono mix) along with Mono Masters, which includes the mono mixes of the singles and EP tracks that were not included on the albums.
Why all the fuss? What's the big deal about mono? Isn't stereo better? Well, you might think so, but remember, back in the early sixties, stereo was a relatively new phenomenon. Mono was still the preferred format, and stereo mixes of LPs were usually only purchased by true hi-fi enthusiasts. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Beatles, digital remastering, mono, Music, Please Please Me, stereo, With the Beatles
Thanks to the arrival of Christmas and some not-so-subtle hinting on my part over the last three months, I've been visited by the Beatles. Or, should I say, I've been revisiting the Beatles.
The Beatles Stereo Box Set (the big black box) was under my tree on the twenty-fifth, and I couldn't have been more excited. As any of you who read my previous post on the Beatles will know, I'm a huge fan, and to own the entire album catalog plus the singles in remastered digital format is pretty much the motherlode.
I'm still kvelling.
I'm taking my time with this one. I've listened to the first three albums so far, and I've been just sitting back and taking them in, not doing anything else at the same time (which is a challenge, as I've been listening to them on my computer). I don't want to gulp it all down at once, and I don't want them to just act as background music. I want to delve deeply into the experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Beatles, Box Set, CDs, digital remastering, Music
I've been thinking a lot about mondegreens lately. It happens every few months or so. I get a few of them stuck in my head, and then I go off to Google to search for more.
Don't know what a mondegreen is? Well, friend, let me fill you in:
A mondegreen is a lyric or phrase that has been misheard. Misheard lyrics are the most prevalent examples, but I often derive great pleasure from realizing that I misheard something that someone said. It usually only takes a fraction of a second for my brain to correct the error, but in that fraction of a second… tremendous potential for hilarity. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Davy Crockett, Jimi Hendrix, misheard lyrics, mondegreens, Shaft, Sylvia Wright, The Beatles, Trooper
I've recently begun playing my guitar again. I can't play for long periods of time yet, because my chording hand is still rebuilding the calluses on its fingertips, but it feels good to get back to it. It's actually quite relaxing to strum or pick away at a familiar song or just noodle around with fingerings and rhythms.
While I'm no virtuoso, I can play a few songs reasonably well and entertain myself for a while. I have a few music books and pieces of sheet music, but I also find chords for popular songs on the internet. There's a wealth of resources out there for budding guitarists, and I've delved into quite a few of them.
Every once in a while, I'll be trying out a chord pattern or sequence, and it will remind me of something I've heard before. The other day, a couple of chords I played brought to mind the song "'39" by Queen. It's a great song with a lot of acoustic guitar in it, so of course I immediately set out to find the chords for it.
And find them I did. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: '39, Bohemian Rhapsody, Disney, guitar, Hollywood Records, Muppet Movie, Muppet Show, Muppets, Queen, YouTube
