Segarini – Yesterday, Rocketman, and Beyond

Before you read this week’s mumble, you would do yourself a favour by clicking on this Little Red Link and read what led me to write this.

Clearly, the Entertainment Gods have counted the take from Bohemian Rhapsody and, for better or worse, we are in for a rash (and I DO mean RASH) of nostalgic rewritten accounts of our Rock and Roll Heroes lives.

…and judging from what I’ve seen so far, they may include some music you love, but they seem unable to get the locations, timelines, and bit players even remotely right. So the less you know about these people and places, the less likely you will choke on your 20 dollar bag of popcorn when you see a microphone from 1985 being whipped around by Elvis, a song written in 1975 being sung in 1970, and a nightclub the size of a janitor’s closet re-imagined as a cavernous concert hall, and a man as tall as an NBA centre reduced to the size of a gay piano player.

JAIMIE VERNON – Hey, Now, You’re A Rock Star

Had an interesting conversation with a dear friend of mine this week who has had his fair share of fame and fortune and everything that goes with it. He continues to write and record in the seclusion of his home studio and is effectively retired from both live performing and trying to nail groupies.

Frank Gutch Jr: Amy van Keeken Releases All The Time EP; Jack Meussdorffer Talks Sand, Quarterflash and More; and, Of Course, Them Pesky Damn Notes (There Will Be a Quiz)…

 

There was probably a time when one release would not have meant as much to me as it does today.  I worked in the record business for so many years I became jaded, the major labels releasing numerous albums each month and the independents trying to squeeze the few that they had through the stampede.  I never really cared about the really big ones— it is a part of me I have had since I was very young, this aversion to the stars— and have learned only within the past ten to fifteen years to really appreciate the significance of the lesser-knowns.  I get tired of all the pissing and moaning about how the “new” music biz has watered down the quality of music and allowed the less talented to record massive amounts of lesser works.  As if they were lesser.

JAIMIE VERNON – THE COMEBACK SPECIAL

Happy 2016, ev-ree-baw-daaaaay.
Woo! Howz everybody feel?
We’re all here to partaaaaaay!!

Roxanne Tellier: It’s The War on Christmas, Carol

As hard as it might be to imagine holiday songs battling it out, the plain fact is … Christmas songs mean big bucks. Over and over and over again. A Number One Christmas song can mean early retirement for the writer, with a nice pension income supplemented every year in December.

Roxanne Tellier: When Love Takes You By Surprise

I have a friend who’s been bit by the love bug. He wasn’t looking. Meeting her was unexpected, … a bolt out of the blue that could not have come as more of a surprise to him.

“It whapped me upside the head,” he told me.

Doug Thompson: ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE MISSES THE MARK…..AGAIN!

Rolling Stone Magazine recently released their latest ‘list’, “The 100 Greatest Songwriters” rollingstone.com).  Let me repeat that title, “The 100 Greatest Songwriters”.  Their descriptive line states “From Brill Building tunesmiths to Punk poets, from Woody Guthrie to Max Martin, the visionaries who defined music history.”

JAIMIE VERNON – EVERYTHING OLD IS STU AGAIN

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

There’s a Renaissance of sorts happening in the music business right now by which music we’ve lost track of, or have ignored outright, due to the current ubiquity of pop music is crawling out from the primordial ooze and is being reborn as something new. New masters, new packaging and/or new formats are moving in to replace the gaping hole left by marginilized MP3 files and the impending death of CDs.

Roxanne Tellier: No Biz Like Show Biz

My bones are aching like they’ve been played by a mad vibraphonist. Ah, the perils of live performance. The agony of the feet.But ah, the joys as well!

JAIMIE VERNON – THE ORIGIN OF SONG

Songwriters are a gifted breed. They’re poets that think in three dimensions. It isn’t enough to be able to put pen to paper and Chaucer their ideas onto papyrus. They have to lift those words from this black and white template and insert them into music from which a melody rises and falls.