The blog for The Solitaire Rose Experience. Yes, the blog revolution is utterly and completely over. However, I haven't figured that out yet, so I'll be listing articles, ideas, links, and other internet debris. Now, you can join in! And be mocked mercilessly!

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

New music I am listening to lately:

I am not one of those people who is uber-knowledgeable about music. I read a few music blogs (waves at Flux from Barbelith, and Pudding Tame), but I’m not the big music fan I used to be. Part of it is that I am a bit older, so I don’t feel the need to search out new music like I used to, part of it is that I prefer to get information when I drive so I listen to either talk or news radio most of the time and partly because (like most people, I’m guessing) I want music as a kind of “comfort food” where I listen to things that I’ve either heard a bajillion times already or sounds like a music style I already like.

I have satellite radio, but I have fallen into the pattern of hitting about five different channels (the New Wave channel, the Grunge channel, the two classic rock channels and the garage rock channel), so even the newer bands I hear, sound like the stuff I already like.

So, as I look through my CDs, I notice that pretty much after REV105 went away, the only new bands I am “finding” are ones that either friends have put CDs in my hand, or they have opened for bands that I already like. Every once in a blue moon, I’ll see a band on TV or heard a song in a movie that I’ll like enough to search out.

The big problem is that music CDs have become disposable, IMHO. They put out SO many every week that it’s almost impossible to keep up. It’s like most forms of entertainment now…they dump so much out there on the market that it’s hard to sort through the big pile of new stuff every week to find what you might possibly like.

So, the new CDs I have been listening to over the last few months are:

The Decemberists: I picked up all 4 of their CDs used after seeing them on Colbert. “The Crane Wife” is the one I am listening to the most. They have a lot of “prog rock” echoes, and are interesting enough lyrically that they warrant continued listening.

Shaw/Blades: I know, the minute I saw it’s Tommy Shaw from Styx, most people will have their eyes glaze over. I liked some of Styx’s output, but was never a BIG fan of the band. Their early stuff was rather thin, and their later stuff got AMAZINGLY pretentious, but they have some great songs scattered amid the mess. However, I was not expecting to ever say that an acoustic album of covers by Tommy Shaw would be worth getting…but it is. Shaw strips down each song to its bare bones, and then shows that he has an amazing singing voice as long as you don’t mind the fact that he’s channeling Robert Plant…better than Robert Plant ever did. A surprisingly satisfying CD that is something I can listen to all on its own.

Funkadelic: Yeah, I’m 30 years late to the party, but the music is simply fun funk that doesn’t seem to have aged in my mind, and each used CD I find sounds like it was recorded yesterday. I never listened to the band before simply because I’d never heard George Clinton’s work before, but now that I have, I’m going to keep looking for it.

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