Sometimes I get really amazed by people and their musical tastes. Everybody likes different things, and some people like very different things. It's fascinating to me how much music is really out there. I like to think my taste in music is pretty good, but others probably think I listen to weird music. Those who think that absolutely have no idea whats out there. I'm not really that in to rap music, though I do like a lot of it I would rather hear and see people actually playing and writing the actual music. I think lyrics are important but theres something about the music itself and the way it makes you feel that is much more important to me. I have nothing against people who like rap that I find disgusting, but to me that usually means that they have a very closed mind. Individuals like that think whatever is really big at the moment or whatever the vast majority is in to is what they have to like to be cool or be accepted. Deep down hopefully they know that it's really not very good.
Anyway, on a lighter note, lets here some music. Today I want to try to display the range of my musical taste at it's widest points. When i was a little kid I was extremely into Michael Jackson for years. I actually bought loafers and pulled my pants up high to show my socks and would do the moonwalk in front of my family. I used to have Moonwalker  and HIStory on VHS, and this is one of my favorite parts from Moonwalker. On the other side of my musical taste you will find Rage Against the Machine, who I was also terribly in to and actually went to their reunion show at Coachella in 2007. This is one of my favorite songs of theirs. I hope you enjoy, and keep on listening to music!

It's Starting To Happen

About a week ago I finally decided to do everything in my power to actually start playing shows with a decent band and have some success. I knew that the first then I needed to do was call my good friend Darren. I've known him and his brother Brendan since kindergarten. They've been playing piano, guitar and drums since we were in third grade. We were in bands together from about the 8th grade until sophomore year of high school when we kind of drifted apart. So, I called and told him I had these songs that weren't half bad and asked if he wanted to jam. Of course he was more than ready, so yesterday I went over to his house. We were playing each other our songs and were both equally blown away at how good they actually were. I'm not tooting my own horn here but they have potential. He immediately said we needed to go over to his friend Cody's house where all the equipment is set up. We go there, Brendan is already there rocking out on the drums and our other friend Randy was slapping the bass, so we sit down and play our songs. We ended up jamming non-stop for almost 20 minutes, until Brendan couldn't take it anymore. We sounded almost like everything and nothing I've heard before. Needless to say I'm excited for what's ahead.
As always I'll end the blog with a song by a band/ artist I'm really into at the moment. I'm sure I've posted an Arctic Monkeys' song but here is a great quality live video of The View From The Afternoon. Enjoy

Great Findings At Your Local Record Shop

Just the other day my friends and I were milling about in Fingerprints record shop, checking out books and records and things. I've been in that store dozens of time but never really checked out the used cd section, which is a travesty, because they have tons of releases that I'm always looking for out in the new items but they don't have what I'm looking for or it's too much money. My friend and I spent about half an hour just scoping out all the CDs we were interested in buying, and I didn't get the always pleasant get feeling that I'm about to be broke if I drop 20 dollars on this here Cd, because at most it will only cost about five bucks. So I decide I'm not going to buy anything but I just then happen upon a band called The Coral's first self-titled album. I started going on and on about this tune I'd heard on a Teenage Cancer Trust concert show thingy on palladia called "Dreaming Of You". This song is pretty much everything you want to hear in a good song if you know anything about music and aren't frantically waiting for the New Kids On The Block/ Backstreet Boys tour to come to your town. If you are..... that's questionable. Anyway I talked this song up enough that my friend Spencer decided he was to buy this album and I think it was a very smart investment. This band has got some other good tunes so I recommend you check them out if you like this song.

Sometimes I Just Want To Rock

Lately, I've been writing a lot of ballad-ie type songs that sound really nice and pretty on an acoustic guitar. I'm worried, though, that when I apply these songs to a band setting they wont work as well. The songs might be too slow or too boring. In response to this feeling, earlier today I started to play this riff that is somewhat simple and generic, but still fun to play. I then wrote a chord structure around said riff. The structure is again quite rudimentary but still fun to play. I figured I needed a good rock -out song to split up all the happiness of my other tunes. Not to say that the other songs aren't alright, but it's good to shake things up a bit.
The reason for this change in style, I believe, is from watching this video of the Arctic Monkeys playing The View From the Afternoon at a show earlier this year. That band has proven to me to be one of the best of our generation. They have definitely come a long way and now they can really blow your head off. The Monkeys have matured in every way possible really. They've gotten much better at their instruments, especially Matt Helders the drummer. Some of his drum fills in their last album Humbug are truly mind-blowing. This band deserves to be bigger than any fake pop-act ruling the charts in America.

Food For Thinks

As I'm sure you're aware, The Beatles have finally released their music on itunes. It's not exactly everything, mind you. It's all of their studio albums and some live footage I believe, so it isn't all that a die hard fan like me would need, I mean, there's no Decca tapes, and I didn't realize until just now that they did put Past Masters on there which contains all of The Beatles b-sides and generally songs that weren't on the original U.K. albums. For a normal, non-Beatle obsessed person just looking for a miscellaneous grab bag of Beatle greatness, then itunes is perfect. Sure, I think $11.99 is way too much to pay for a download. I actually feel it's a couple dollars too expensive for an actual real-life album, that you can touch (but I've already discussed that in my last blog so, moving on), but if you are an avid itune-zer than get on there and get you some Beatles.

In other music news, my favorite band The Strokes , have finally finished their new album! After their tour in 2006 for their third album First Impressions of Earth, the band went on a four year long hiatus. All of them with the exception of this guy (Nick Valensi) released solo albums or started another group during this time. they were all good sure, but the world needs Strokes! In 2009 they started work on the new record and they finished it just this week. It should be out in March of next year. Hopefully a single is released before that, but more importantly hopefully it gets leaked so I can hear it before it comes out!

The Major Labels

Downloading music, or more specifically illegally downloading music has pretty much become the standard practice for an everyday music fan. I know I'm no saint, although if it's one of may favorite groups or artists releasing something new I'll try to but the actually record from a record store. Most people, though, find it much more convenient to just hop on a torrent and download some music. Perhaps they're really and don't have time, or what if they can't afford it. Most commonly people can't afford to spend seventeen dollars, or twelve dollars, or whatever it may be on some music they could easily get for free on the computer without even leaving there bedrooms. This is one of the big faults I think the major record companies make.

It's no secret that it's remarkably cheap to manufacture a cd. It does cost money to actually make and produce the body of work that is the album, but if the record companies weren't so greedy and made the albums cheaper I think they could sell a lot more. This is just my slightly educated opinion of course.

I don't think it would be correct for the majors to just disappear completely though. When Myspace started and bands could put their music up everyone got excited and said "Yippee, we don't need them big ol' labels no more!" (or something to that effect), but in reality we still do. How would bands make money? They could license their songs to commercials or movies sure, but how would anyone even know hear the song in the first place without the major labels marketing money.
It's a tricky dilemma that we're all in at the minute, that I don't think we'll see the end of for quite sometime.

On a lighter note here is some music for you to enjoy that you may not have heard before. It's a song written by Paul Weller and his band The Jam, called Carnation with Liam, Noel, and Whitey from Oasis, some other guy singing and playing guitar, and the man himself Paul Weller playing keys. Enjoy!

The All Important Demo Tape

In this day and age of the music industry being in the position that it's in record companies really don't have the time or money to invest in a group or band that isn't going to make them money. As sad as I am to say that I know what I would need to do to get signed to a label, and it's mostly hard work and luck smashed together. You need to invest copious amounts of time and effort into writing the best music you could possibly write and constantly improving. You need to make sure every show you play is more mind-blowingly powerful as the last so that the people who were there watching would want to come to see you again, and tell their friends about the awesome band they saw last night. Who know, maybe lady luck was smiling and a record executive missed his flight back to Scotland and decided to catch the band playing at the bar down the street. You might just give him the feeling that you guys might be right for his label, then bam! Next thing you know you're being paid to record your music, travel the world playing it for people. Hopefully when it comes out people like it enough to buy it, or at least a t-shirt so u make a little something back, but that's not what it's about. If this happened to me I would be ecstatic. My life would be made. There's a lot more hard work ahead for me though.

Here's a guy who worked hard all his life and is just fantastic, and if you don't like him because of the crap you heard about him in the media, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself. (what a horrible phrase, disregard that.) :D enjoy!!