rustypants speaks

a couple years ago, while attending a youth minister’s conference in atlanta, i got to see cannibal corpse in concert. they were playing at the masquerade. i knew i was in trouble when the lead singer said in a very soft-spoken, southern drawl, “this is a song i wrote about chopping my girlfriend’s head off with a rusty hacksaw and having sex with her neck. it goes something like this…”and then launched into the most aggressive and awful rock song i’ve ever heard. the crowd went(?) nuts and i was thinking i might be killed.

secretly, though, i was having fun. i mean, cannibal corpse!!!

when i bought an 80gb ipod 2 years ago, i did so because i knew i’d run out of room on a 30 and was pretty sure the 60 wouldn’t make it either. sadly, the 80 didn’t last long before i had to start shuffling and moving and deleting to make room for the too-many-bootlegs and cd’s acquired over the years.

so, the ipod stats as of 6-20-08:

songs: 9,099
space taken: 71.9gb
most recently added album: weezer (the red album)
most recently played albums:
   – the red album / weezer
- spirit of the century / blind boys of alabama
- money jungle / duke ellington, max roach, charles mingus
most played songs:
- to love is to bury / cowboy junkies
- brokedown palace / grateful dead
- made of tears / joe satriani
most played albums:
- trinity revisited / cowboy junkies
- eye to the telescope / kt tunstall
- live at radio city music hall / dave matthews & tim reynolds
albums loaded but not one song ever played
(aka: why do i own this cd? list):
- verve jazz masters 14 / wes montgomery
- these four walls / shawn colvin
- snake farm / ray wylie hubbard

for those of you playing at home, file this post under: who gives a damn

answer #1:

play guitar with the amp cranked to 11.

one sucky thing about not having a house is this: when you’re in an apartment it’s difficult to just open it up and play loud. i mean, you’ve got people on both sides and they don’t want to hear you play cowboy junkies, green day, and neil young tunes at top volume, you know? there’s no accounting for taste, apparently.

this guitar is sweet – it was a graduation gift several years ago from my dad. fender telecaster special limited edition with a couple dimarzio humbuckers to add to the fun. now, i don’t claim to be a good guitarist by any measure, but there’s something about just going to town even if you’re not very good. when you get in the groove and you’re just going with it…

i’ve been using a small practice amp for a while but a year or so ago i was given a short stack of peavey amps that were going to be put out on the curb – folks, these things, when wired up and cranked, can shake windows! apartment living doesn’t allow for that either, but i can always pretend, right?

summer break is great for playing your guitar at full volume in the apartment. this is answer number one to the question: what do teachers in pensacola do all summer.

lise and i took off thursday night to drive to cincinnati – the objective: pack the house up. we drove half way and spent the night at a hotel to relieve some of the stress. now, this is still a six hour drive, so to pass the time, we passed the ipod back and forth for the majority of the trip, each picking one song at a time. our resulting soundtrack:

joe satriani – come on baby
katie reider – show your love
dave matthews / tim reynolds – crash into me
david crosby / phil collins – hero
buddy miles – them changes
caedmon’s call – shifting sand
andy osenga – swing wide the glimmering gates
the band – up on cripple creek
alan parsons band – lost without you
alanis morissette – hand in my pocket
jethro tull – aqualung
john coltrane – say it (over and over again)
judas priest – electric eye
journey – any way you want it
ludacris – freedom of preach
luna halo – aliens
justin hayward / john lodge – when you wake up
monty python – lumberjack song
monty python – the penis song
monty python – always look on the bright side of life
chris deburgh – patricia the stripper
50 cent – my gun go off
zz top – sharp dressed man
rodney carrington – show them to me
roger waters – what god wants pt. 1
ray charles – drown in my own tears
neko case – margaret vs. pauline
mercyme – it’s my joy
led zeppelin – moby dick
jars of clay – flood
jim weider – prayer
audio adrenaline – walk on water
buddy guy – now you’re gone
brian setzer orchestra – winter wonderland
butch walker and the let’s go out tonights – hot girls in good moods
calexico – above the branch
cowboy junkies – to love is to bury
damien rice – the blower’s daughter
grateful dead – brokedown palace
kt tunstall – immune
keith jarrett trio – rider
neil young – rockin in the free world

an extra prize is given to the first person to guess what song lise fell asleep to, leaving scott to pick all of the rest of the tunes.

i always smile smugly to myself when i hear a kid talking who thinks he “discovered” a band that’s been around a long time. my favorite examples are:

• green day – a band that has been around since the late 80′s – these guys get hate and love from all angles but i’ve got to say: i love ‘em. dookie remains one of my favorite CD’s of all time (and you’ll pry it out of my cold, dead hands). when american idiot came out several years ago, guys in my youth group were talking about them as though they were the Next Big Thing. i had to gently inform them that they were the Next Big Thing already (waay back in ’94, a year after i started in youth ministry). by the way, when the simpsons movie included a green day performance the irony was not lost on me – they were labeled “sellouts” years ago by the punk community! one of the funniest scenes in the movie!
• the red hot chili peppers – now these dudes even have green day beat. i remember back in high school when their first album came out. how old does this make them? (hint: anthony kiedis was born in 1962) when stadium arcadium hit the shelves 2 years ago, i was blown away! and the kids came out of the woodwork again talking like maybe i’d never heard of them before. hee hee! silly teenagers – rustypants knows music!

i can’t be too scornful of the kids, though – when i discovered pink floyd‘s dark side of the moon, i was pretty certain that i had made the discovery of the century. little did i know…

i’ve gone for years surfing through musical phases that last anywhere from a few days to several weeks. i might get hooked on blues for a while, then abandon it all together for pink floyd, classical, or rap. jazz has always been a big one but even that comes in phases. all flavors of rock are acceptable, depending on the phase of my musical brain.

i’ve been teased for as long as i can remember for an insanely diverse taste in various genres of music and my 80gig iPod purchase 1 1/2 years ago was due in large part to my being tired of having to carry around 400+ cd’s in my car to keep from getting bored.

recently i’ve gotten stuck in a strange musical dichotomy phase.

my love of the grateful dead is no secret. back in junior high, i got the 3-LP Europe ’72 album – it’s not the least indicative of a typical dead concert but the music was intriguing. psychedelic rock / bluegrass / folk / jazz / blues all wrapped into extended jam sessions = yummy music.

i’ve since acquired well over 60 bootleg concerts ranging from the late 60′s to around 1991. this is one of the phases i’m in right now, revisiting concerts and video of some 70′s and 80′s shows and just being in awe of their ability to make each show sound different, each song sound different, even after 20+ years playing the same tunes. their versatility impresses me and i’ve said for years that it’s awesome watching technically proficient musicians who enjoy playing together, playing together!

here’s a decent video of the dead in action back in ’72.

my other current phase is about as far from the dead as you can get and still be in rock.

dream theater is a progressive metal band that’s been cranking out industrial strength speed / orchestral metal for 20+ years. i fall for bands like dream theater based on my early love of jazz fusion bands like return to forever – musicians who are stunning in their abilities individually, but then so in tune together that it seems they play as one. what makes this an unusual choice for me is that DT is VERY over-produced and sometimes almost comically melodramatic in their presentation. they’re tight, and not just because it’s packed together well in the studio: they are crazy tight in concert, too. but that progressive metal with melodramatic overtones gets up in my craw after a while.

and to be honest with you: i don’t really care for their vocalist. if there’s a weak link, he’s it.

but they have a killer “official bootleg” of their interpretation of PF’s Dark Side of the Moon that’s worth the price of admission.

this is a pretty good musical representation of dream theater laying down a track in the studio.

i can’t explain the strange phases i go through with music but i always know this: it’ll soon pass…

and next week it might be Jay-Z and Blind Lemon Jefferson. woo-hoo!

ron paul is really the only presidential candidate who intrigues me at this point in the race and while i don’t know a WHOLE lot about him, i know enough to believe i’d support him if he ran independent.

today, that was solidified when i heard that arlo guthrie is supporting paul for president.

and i’ll be damned if the refrain from Alice’s Restaurant isn’t stuck in my fool head now. sheesh.

the cowboy junkies, a band that has been near and dear to me for 20 years, has revisited the trinity sessions, the album that first turned me on waaay back in 1988 at the tender age of 19.

i first blogged about this album back in 2006 when i loaded the thing on my ipod. it’s lost none of its power or greatness since then. i was skeptical at first upon hearing that they were remaking the album, but upon further investigation, it’s a re-interpretation more than simply going back and re-doing the same thing.

and it sounds delicious.

you can download a free song from their revisited website: trinity revisited and can also watch some utube video from the DVD.

sadly, the trinity revisited tour doesn’t come close to pensacola, so i’m out of luck on seeing them perform it live (short of the DVD included with the album) – if you live near one of the cities, go for me, huh?

the following was taken off the revisited website:

The band’s Michael Timmins explains the genesis of the DVD: ’’To celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Trinity Session we decided to head back to Toronto’s Trinity Church with the idea of revisiting the album with the benefit of twenty years of experience under our belts. We enlisted a few musicians for whom The Trinity Session had some personal and professional resonance and whose individual work resonates with us. The idea was to cobble together a loose band sound with just a few hours of rehearsal and a one day recording schedule, resulting in the eight of us bouncing ideas off of each other and inspiring one another spontaneously … much the same way that we created the original recording. We came, we played, and the church, once again, did the rest.’’

i confess that back in junior high

i owned pat benatar‘s get nervous album.

and loved shadows of the night.

there are some albums i have on vinyl that have still not been released on CD and this both breaks my heart and makes me smile smugly.

i’ve been an on-again-off-again fan of chick corea since my high school years. corea is one of the most innovative jazz pianists out there – a chameleon of sorts who has changed his style often and leaves me breathless or scratching my head, depending on the album.

back in the early days of my jazz love affair (read: high school) i would frequent several used record shops in the cincinnati area (woodstock, moles, wizards, and ozarka’s all come to mind in the clifton area near UC) and look for new tunes every couple of weeks as the $$ allowed. i found corea’s Return to Forever / Romantic Warrior album on one of these trips and was amazed at the speed and precision that this jazz fusion group could execute. i had also been floored by corea’s crystal silence album with gary burton on vibes – there’s not a more relaxing jazz album i’ve ever heard than this one.
not long after this, i found the griffith park collection. it had many of the return to forever members on it (corea, lenny white, stanley clarke) along with freddie hubbard and joe henderson. reading the liner notes, i saw that this was a mostly unrehearsed album – charts were passed around and the songs were recorded in one take to preserve the spontaneity and improvisational nature of the music. i took this baby home and fired it up – whoa! it became one of my favorite jazz albums on the spot and has never fallen out of grace.

with the advent of cd’s, i have long hoped for this album to be released digitally but it hasn’t happened yet. i recorded it on my record player through my computer several years ago and recently came across the resulting cd as i was rooting through some boxes at the house – i wondered where it had gone and there was a noticeable hole in my ipod without this loaded. all the magic is still there. what a great ensemble of musicians! to hear this thing remixed and remastered for digital? that’d be some awesome stuff.
so, my wish list of LP’s yet to be released on CD:

• the griffith park collection (duh)
• time fades away by neil young (one of the few albums of his not on CD – thankfully i own this LP, too – it’s a classic if you like the off-kilter, depressed neil of the early 70′s. this sucker’s so huge that it’s got it’s own wikipedia page!)
• invitation to openness by les mccann
• live ’71 by buddy miles
• chick donald walter and woodrow by the woody herman big band

who do i have to sleep with to get these things released digitally??