Monday Morning Music

Good Stuff...









"Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world?"

H. Chapin (11/7/1942--7/16/1981)

I'm a California Oklahoma Man

Goin' To A Party...Meet Me On After School...

Back in the late 1970's I managed to walk over from my dorm room in downtown Atlanta at Georgia Tech with some friends across I75/I85 to the Fox Theater on Peachtree Street to see a number of really excellent concerts.

In the process I managed to see the rock band CheapTrick twice I think...featuring Rick Neislen on lead guitar, Bun E. Carlos on drums, Robin Zander singing lead and playing rythym guitar, and Tom Peterssen on Base Guitar.

Any way, I was fooling around this morning trying to get my head screwed on straight in contemplation of the things I have to get done over the next four to six weeks and I found this video of the band ten years after I've last seen them...in Houston in 1989. (If you are not a Cheep Trick fan bear with the intro and skip to about the middle point of the video where the song really starts playing.)




Then of course there is this song...



Y'all have a LOVELY weekend...if you will (I'm heading out of town for a while)

"Country Roads" And Other Stuff

My Absolute Favorite Singer

I've seen James Taylor perhaps a dozen times in person, and my vocal range allows me to do some of his most famous songs in a manner and style similar to his I'm told.

I have a fairly broad range of musical taste but Mr. Taylor and Jimmy Buffet best fit my lifestyle and mindset most of the time, and I'd like to think that if I had pursued music as a profession rather than a hobby I could have been in their company as peers given the chance and having expended a great deal of effort to get there.

That said...YouTUBE gives us a look at a couple of really nice selections this morning for your enjoyment...



Then There is "Fire and Rain" which I do fairly regularly on Karaoke night at our local pub:

Monday Morning Music

A Well Planned "Impromptu" Public Performance

There was a time...about a hundred years ago 35 years ago, when I held a musical instrument in my hands for at least three or four hours every day. Between practice at home and then band practice during the school weekdays, followed by Friday nights at half-time in the football stadium, I probably sat or stood with a trumpet in my hands for 25 hours each week.

Then there were the guitars--both electric and acoustic--and a little piano/electronic keyboard, and in more recent years I've run around the planet carrying a briefcase full of Honer and Lee Oscar Harmonicas (and of course my real Austrailian Didgeridoo which has never left my house)....

But the point of this story this morning is that music and making music has been a nice part of my life. I've never really been good enough or otherwise made any money doing it (playing music) in the process, but I have played solo for 10,000 people at one time in a football stadium, and I've blown my harps for small crowds from Key West to Savannah to Atlanta and now Knoxville over the past 15 years...

and when my Blog Idols over at Powerline mentioned this YouTube Video of the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra just showing up in the City's Central Train Station and putting on a performance of Ravel's "Bolero"...



...I was wishing I could participate in something like that...

Pretty nice, eh?


More at 3:30 AM...Check out this version...

I'm Busy Making Sawdust

Listen To This Until I get Back...


Scott Johnson, one of my Blog Idols over at Powerlineblog, pointed out that yesterday was country/bluegrass artist Alison Krauss' 40th birthday.

Dang What a Pretty woman...

I've had the privilege of playing several different musical instruments on and off now for the past nearly 40 years, sometimes in front of a crowd of a few thousand people at one time, but I've never had the chance to be an ugly old white guy making music in a room with the likes of Miss Krauss.




More on Monday Morning...

I knew that song was familiar...it was written by Gordon Lightfoot who (or is it whom?) we just saw perform it this past spring in concert.

Miss Krauss and her back-up group "Union Station" will be returning here in the US from Europe touring places like Asheville, NC; Atlanta, GA; and even here at the Tennessee Theater in Knoxville in September.

Unfortunately we'll be laying around down in Florida at the beach that week of September and miss that show.

If you're nearby and have the cash I think it might be worth spending the money for an evening with this lovely lady.

Good music beats the heck out of almost anything including good food in my book any day...and if you can happen to get both at one time you've got yourself a good life....in my considered Redneck Opinion.

My Favorite New County Song

I Wish I could Sing Like That...

Lucille

"You Know How I Feel..."




Pretty funny...Huh?

Other than that, I'm getting ready to leave town for a while and don't have time to write.

Regards Y'all...

Sunday Music

Oldies But Goodies...

I'm just goofing around this morning reading some things and listening to some weird stuff I've found.

First there's a band called "The Marmalade":




And now "The Hollies":




Finally Michael Murphy's "Wildfire"...


THEN




AND NOW




Me and the Turbo Pup are gonna take a nap now.

Regards Y'all...

Watching Old Men Sing

Dang...I'm Old Too...


Well, I managed to spend the night for the first time since we lived in Eastern Tennessee in downtown Knoxtown last night after going to see this guy in concert:





Yes, that would be Gordon Lightfoot (acually the opening photo is his original  lead guitarist Terry Clements who just passed away February 20th at the age of 63.)

Talk about sitting in a building full of middle aged to old white people...

Any wayyyy...

We had tickets down front on the second row about 25 feet from Gordon who sang his heart out but physically has seen his better days at the age of 73.

He did a 45 minute opening set, and then did a little over an hour after a 30 minute intermission opening the second set with his Billboard number two hit "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."



Of course Mr. Lightfoot looks a little different than he appears in those videos, but he still delivered the show with a great deal of enthusiasm and vigor and came back for an encore in polite response to the crowd's ovation.

So now we'll get moving I guess and wander around a little in the downtown Knoxtown Market Square district and have a late Brunch at one of the Turbo Pup Friendly patio restaurants before heading back home to the western banks of the Mighty Tennessee River mid afternoon.

Until then...Regards Y'all...

Gregory Isaacs Passes Away...

" The Border "

 


Age 59 is too young.

RIP Mr. Isaacs...and say hello to Mr. Marley from all you guy's fans..

Strange Harmonica Players

Anyone Know Who This Guy Is?




(My buddy Ferdy edited 5 cameras worth of video from the club and tossed this up on the WWW without my knowledge until tonight.  It's not exactly my best vocal effort on the song because it was filmed about 2 AM on a Saturday Morning and then posted on the Internet a few months ago without my knowledge after having a LARGE TIME during an evening of Summer Time mirth and merriment...)

"Walkin' In Memphis"

New Karaoke Aspirations...


If you have about five minutes listen to Marc Cohn Sing one of my favorites...



I'm working on the song a few steps lower in key...and I'm gonna sing it in public one day but it's a tough one.

Wednesday Morning Music

Crank Up Your Speaker Volume And Enjoy This Hybrid Tune...





(yeah...that's a Journey and Metallica Musical Mix-up)

I Wish I Could Play The Horn Like This

She Looks Like She's About Twelve...






Dang fine tone and vibrato on what looks like a "student" model trumpet.

Years ago a couple of my fellow trumpet players and I used to go out and play taps for the Veterans at the VFW and American Legion when they did a flag ceremony on Memorial Day and Veterans Day while we were in High School.

We never sounded like that at age sixteen or seventeen.

That little Girl's performance proves either you got it or you don't I guess...

Thanks for the link Rodg

Virtual Piano?

Coolest Thing I've Seen In A While...


If you play piano (or just want to fool around without getting in trouble at the mall or in church) then go HERE:

http://www.thevirtualpiano.com/

Writing's probably going to be light tonight because I'm tired from building and shipping valves all day yesterday... and another load is coming in Friday so I got to go clean up my shop and do some paperwork.

Regards Y'all...

Hayseed Bohemian Rhapsody?

Burt Reynolds & Ned Beaty Beware...








"That's right there is funny...I don't care who you are..."

--Larry "The Cable Guy"


Wait...

I'm just back from YouTube...and there's More...



heh..

PANTS ON THE GROUND?

Seen This?





Heh...

Obscure Musical Stuff I Know

And Things I Think That You Should Know Too...


Have I mentioned that I spent a good deal of my life with a Trumpet in my hands a long time ago?

Probably not, because I never really mastered the instrument beyond a tolerable level of competence although I played it through junior high, high school, and into college in the GT Naval ROTC band.

In fact, the first time I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans I was actually IN Mardi Gras, trumpet in hand, as our band was invited to march and play in three major parades--Bacchus, Edymoyn and Poydras (I think)--on Canal Street and in the Superdome.

Any way, today I currently own an old Holton B flat trumpet and a cheap Chinese Fluglehorn like Chuck "Feels So Good" Mangione plays, but best intentions aside they spend most of their time in their cases these days as my lips have lost their finely tuned pucker as a result of disuse. (By disuse I mean that talking and eating don't qualify for keeping your skills using an instrument with a mouthpiece in tune...)

I also have a real Australian Didgeridoo, a genuine Hawaiian Ukulele, and a whole box full of Horner and Lee Oscar Harmonicas laying around in my office at any given time, and I can make strange noises with my armpits and wet my hands and make funny fart like sounds and wait a minute...I lost my train of thought here...

...wait...

...I've got it...

...I know, what I was saying was that I consider myself to be sort of a musical person on and off through the years, and I pride myself in carrying fairly high standards when it comes to the music I listen to because I find silence or the roar of a power tool to be vastly superior to much of the stuff put out on CD since they stopped making 8 track tapes and vinyl records.

Any way, I've been working on singing the Blues when we do our karaoke nights out the past half year and you already saw the Elvis Presley's "Tryin' To Get To You" and some other stuff I've put up here in the past.

Tonight I present for your enjoyment a man I greatly admire--Big Joe Turner --who's career spanned 60 years from the 1920's until he died in 1985.

As I understand it, Big Joe started out singing without a microphone or electricity in taverns and juke joints and a result became famous not only for his singing but for belting out his lyrics at a HUGE volume, with no amplification.

I'm a fan of his work and if you Google him or go to Best Buy and check out the blues section you'll be surprised of the volume of his work and the songs he did that other people like Elvis covered in later years.

Here's a couple of links to YouTube showing Big Joe doing what he did best at the Apollo Theater in about 1954:




...then about ten years later in 1965:





And if you haven't had enough, listen to this:



I find it to be comforting to find stuff like this recorded for posterity on YouTube...maybe some day a hundred years from now people will see me singing Big Joe's hits at the local karaoke bar...

Then again...Probably not, but that will be all...for now...

Happy 75th Birthday Elvis

Sorry I'm A Day Late...


Up or down, in or out, here's a look at "The King" in his prime in 1968:




...RIP Mr. Presley

Today's 1980's Audio Flashback

The Church..."Under The Milky Way Tonight"



UPDATE: 10/19/09

I did this song at the local Karaoke Bar Saturday night...easy for my vocal range and it got a good crowd response because no one ever does it but everyone remembers it when you sing it.