Sad Loss

Today brings up some sad memories. Today is the anniversary of the birth of the bravest, toughest, strongest person I have met. He would have been 11 today.

They gave him weeks and he fought for over a year. He is a hero.

If I had 1/100th of his strength I would have been able to say something meaningful instead of being a wimp and letting Neil Peart say something for me.

The 9th

Your soundtrack to this post should probably be Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 2nd Movement.

Granted that should be the soundtrack to just about everything you do. Your life will feel 1000 times more dramatic.

Anyway, today is February 9th and I’m thinking about music. (get the connection?)

I got home last night at about midnight so no, I did not get up at 5:00am to write new music. I didn’t even try. Tomorrow should be a different story.

I’m sitting here thinking about Rush. (we are traveling to see two shows in the Spring. Can I get a WOOHOO?). They announced that they are remixing 2002’s Vapor Trails.

I have mixed feelings. (pun intended?)

The record is way too hot and the over modulation is just embarrassing. However, I could not love that album more. It’s heavy like Rush hadn’t been since 1976, it’s musically very challenging, it’s layered so much it’s practically dense, and first and foremost, every single song amazed the hell out of me. I can’t remember the last time a Rush record blew me away like that.

And now they are messing with it. The two remixed songs on the last retrospective gave me different reactions. One Little Victory sounds great, and there were a ton of cool things that were not audible in the original mix that worked well in the remix.

Earthsine though… That is my favorite song on the album and I feel the remix wussified it. It left me feeling a little empty and rather disappointed.

So is this remix a good thing? To fix the digital distortion issues yes, but otherwise? We’ll have to wait and see.

RPM Crap

I wasn’t going to do this.  I was going to leave the crappy, unfinished, pathetic RPM mp3s on the posterous page and not cross them over to blogger… but seeing as I went through the process of setting up the autopost…

What the hell.  Here are crappy songs #1-6.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

crappy_number_2.mp3 (3645 KB)

  
Download now or listen on posterous

crappy_number_1.mp3 (1689 KB)

  
Download now or listen on posterous

crappy_number_3.mp3 (3849 KB)

  
Download now or listen on posterous

crappy_number_4.mp3 (9462 KB)

  
Download now or listen on posterous

crappy_number_5.mp3 (3506 KB)

  
Download now or listen on posterous

crappy_number_6.mp3 (3629 KB)

(now I think I have tried this in the past… I don’t think the files will actually cross to blogger, but I do think a link back to posterous will.  We’ll see.)