Tag: Music

RPMarch 2020

Back in 2014 when I insanely did an album in a month project almost every month for the entire year, I started with RPM in February and then kicked off a new project in March.  I was looking at an old blog post where I referred to this 2nd month as RPMarch.  I also referred to how the nickname is ridiculously stupid, but I kept using it anyway.

Welp kiddies, RPMarch 2020 is well underway.  Three songs arranged with rhythm guitars.  One more is just a two bar guitar riff that I haven’t done anything with yet.  I will though, it’s mildly groovy in a dad-rock-bluesy kinda way (in other words it’s about as cool as rotting cheese).  I am such a tool.

The plan is simple.  Literally, that’s the plan.  Guitar, bass, drums, voice.  No doubling, just one rhythm guitar track played with as few punches as I can manage.  I’m also (gasp) not using any pedals (gasp, again).  I told you this was insane.  It’s just my Les Paul straight into my 15 watt Bassbreaker.  I’m not even using my tuner pedal.  Last Christmas I got a clip-on headstock tuner from my Secret Santa.  I’m using that.  I am only using one cable.  It’s utter madness!

191/365

Recording stuff before work also gives me a built in chance to cheat my way through the Flickr Photo a Day thingie. Happy day #191.

New Cream!

Today should be a national holiday.  No, an international holiday.  Hell, the entire known universe should get today off from work so they can celebrate.

There is a new Cream album!

Well… sort of.  It’s a four disc set that includes four shows from a stretch of US tour in 1968.  It’s called Goodbye Tour Live 1968, but I don’t think it’s from the last tour, I think these shows are pre-Wheels of Fire, but I don’t know the dates so I can’t say for sure.

A lot of this stuff has already been released.  I’m only four songs into my first listen and already there are two that I recognize.  White Room and Politician from the Oakland show are from Live Cream Vol II… I think.  White Room definitely is, Politician might be from Goodbye, but I’ll have to check on that.  I’m pretty sure it’s from vol. II though.  I’m guessing most of those early ’70’s live records came from these shows.  Did Wheels of Fire’s second disc?  I don’t know, but we’ll find out.  The first versions of Crossroads and Spoonful (I’m up to disc one, track five now) are not from Wheels of Fire, and I’m hearing them for the first time right now.  Crossroads sounds so under-rehearsed that they might have all been playing a different song (not really).  Spoonful sounds awesome.

Come and celebrate with me.  New Cream!  Rest in peace Jack Bruce, rest in peace Ginger Baker, and if the universe makes a move on Eric Clapton I’ll lose my shit in epic fashion.  Let’s all work together to keep our last surviving member of Cream safe and healthy for as long as we can, okay?

 

Addendum: I misspoke… mistyped?  whatever.  It’s not four US shows, it’s three.  Oakland Coliseum, Los Angeles Forum, and San Diego Sports Arena.  The fourth disc is from the final show at the Royal Albert Hall in London.  I’m hoping it’s not a straight pull from the movie soundtrack because I’ve always been disappointed in the sound quality.  I’m still on disc one, track five (a 16:46 take of Spoonful) so it will be a while before I find out.

Addendum II: Definitely not pre-Wheels of Fire.  I should have known.  Deserted Cities of the Heart from the Oakland show is the same as Live Cream vol II and Clapton introduces it as a “another one from Wheels of Fire.”  Duh.

Addendum III: Looking at the track list last week the one song that jumped out at me was Passing the Time.  I couldn’t imagine how they would work that one live as it seems very much a studio project to me.  What I didn’t notice was that Toad is not listed on the Oakland show.  That probably would have clued me in to what’s coming.  Passing the Time starts out roughly similar to the album arrangement (again, sounding woefully under-rehearsed) but instead of going into the first verse they jump right to the jam in the middle and then… drum solo.  A long drum solo.  My first thought was, will this show have two drum solos?  What about Toad?  That’s when I peeked ahead.  They did this instead of Toad.  Ah, I get it now.

Addendum IV: I’m So Glad from the Los Angeles show is definitely the same as the version on Goodbye.  It is just as freakin’ amazing as you remembered.  More importantly, Sitting on Top of the World from Los Angeles is also the same as Goodbye.  When guitar groups on Facebook ask everyone to list their favorite guitar solos, Sitting on Top of the World from Goodbye is usually one of the songs on my short list.  I’ve already listened to Politician from the L.A. show but it didn’t jump out at me as being familiar.  I might have to double back to that one.

Addendum V: Sunshine of Your Love from the Los Angeles show might be the best version ever.  Clapton is on fire.  There’s one interesting spot where Ginger Baker might have colossally screwed up, but like the jazz cat his was at heart he rolled with it and turned it into something really cool.  There’s also a moment when the bass disappears from the mix.  Was Jack Bruce having equipment issues, or is this one of those moments when one of the band members would stop playing and the other two wouldn’t even notice?

Ah, at the end of the song Clapton apologizes to the audience for the technical problem.  I guess he did notice!  Who said these guys weren’t paying attention to each other!

Addendum VI: Disc 2 track 10, Spoonful from the Los Angeles show.  Three word review:  Clapton is God.  Now an alternate two word review: Holy Shit!  This is why they were the best live band on Earth.  This is all you need to listen to.  Wow.

Addendum VII: The San Diego show on disc three is the weakest of the US shows by far.  There are moments when they sound almost lazy and disinterested.  After all the years I spent reading about how this band fell apart in its last few months, this is more like what I was expecting the whole box set to sound like.  The Los Angeles show being as good as it is was almost a surprise to me.  There are some stellar moments on disc three though.  I’m So Glad is played with an intensity that was unlike any version I’d heard before.  The jamming in Spoonful is incredible.  Clapton does a thing where he shreds for a bar, then switches to a warp speed version of the rhythm part for a bar and then repeats the pattern for a long time.  It’s a technique that Jack Bruce actually used all the time to allow him to improvise like a maniac and still hold the bass line.  It’s pretty cool.  It’s followed almost immediately by a (very) near train wreck as they completely butcher the transition from the jam back into the song.  Clapton misses his part altogether, but manages to hold on.  Bruce then does some really nice messing with the vocal melody on the last chorus.  It’s cool.

Addendum VIII: The London show is the movie soundtrack and it sounds just as atrocious as you’d expect.  It’s bootleg quality.  It almost sounds like someone set up a mic in the lobby and let it run.  That’s a little disappointing.  I know the performance is going to be outstanding, as they did go out with a bang, but I probably will never listen to this disc again.

Addendum IX: I’ve finished listening to the whole set.  All four discs.  Yes the London show sounds like shit, but the performance… oh my god.  During Baker’s drum solo on Toad it felt to me like I was listening to someone who didn’t want it to end.  Given the way he hammered his way into Blind Faith a few months later, that’s probably true.

That last show was in November 1968.  It was roughly two and a half years before I was born.  I wasn’t even a twinkle in my daddy’s eye at that point, as the saying goes.  Why then did I find myself feeling a little sad as they were bomb blasting their way through the last song, Stepping Out?  I knew it was the last moment in their collective career.  I knew that they knew it too.  Sure they got back together briefly a couple of times, and the London shows in 2005 were amazing (I haven’t heard the New York shows that followed, but rumor has it they were less than stellar), but this was it.  It was over and even though it was a little more than 51 years ago I was sad that it was ending.

I am such a tool.

I seem to recall one of them, Jack Bruce I think, saying something like as they were all back stage after the last show if one of them had decided to change their mind the others would have agreed and they could have continued.  Knowing what I know about the state of mind Eric Clapton was in at the time there is no way he would have suggested it.  He was the one who broke them up in the first place.  Still… it’s a nice thought in an alternate universe kinda way.  What would have happened if they had stuck around another couple of years.

In closing, I went back and listened to the Los Angeles show again and Politician is definitely the same as the version on Goodbye.  It makes sense that they would use the best of the shows for their last official/first posthumous release.  Sunshine of Your Love from that show is definitely the best version I’ve ever heard, even with the bass dropping out here and there.  You can almost hear Clapton and Baker communicating telepathically during the jam… Jack’s having problem, let’s just keep going until they get it straightened out.  That’s exactly what they did.  Ginger tried reigning it in and Eric just took over.  It would have been better if there was bass all the way through, but even with that hole it still sounds incredible.

Just When You Thought it was Safe

Just when you thought it was safe to come to this page without being inundated with soul crushingly boring discussions about mind numbingly bad music…

I recorded some guitar today.  I snuck it in before I left for work.  Nothing special, no doubling, no multiple amps.  I didn’t even use any pedals, just straight into the amp.  I can almost hear r/guitarpedals screaming in horror from here.

Untitled

Could I Be That Dumb Again?

In March of 2014, after finishing my February RPM album, I started an album-in-a-month thing.  I didn’t finish.  In April I started another one, even though March was still out there.  I didn’t finish that one either.  In May I finished both March and April.  In June I started another one and finished it (yay).  In July, August, and September I did the 50 songs in 90 days challenge, and in the process completed an album-in-a-month each month.  In October I took a break and did half an album-in-a-month.  In November I did NaSoAlMo… an album-in-a-month.  In December I started one but somehow lost more than half of my GarageBand files and ended up with a little less than half an album-in-a-month.

So… when I woke up this morning, a telecommute day, I looked over at the corner of my room where all of my gear is still set up and thought to myself…

Could I be that dumb again?

I don’t know.  Maybe.  First I have a new episode of Star Trek Picard to watch.  Priorities, kids… priorities.

Live at the Bradford Hotel

Okay, I went to youtube looking for more Mission of Burma and found these two.  The anniversary is in a couple of weeks so it’s fitting.

The two farewell shows at the Bradford Hotel, March 12, 1983.

The afternoon show:

The evening show:

Here it Comes

This just came up in my this-day-in-history thing and I’m re-posting it because it’s awesome, even if it doesn’t sound all that perfect.

This song ended up as a B-side.  I would have made it an A-side and track one on the album because it is awesome.  I think I said that already.

Mission of Burma doing Here it Comes, about 10 years ago…..

https://vimeo.com/9373377

My Final #RPM2020 Album

…and with that, it’s all done.

After all the talking about saxophones I only ended up using three of the seven songs I played it on.  Five of the seven acoustic songs made it to the album, but I used the band mix on two of them.

I needed 10 songs and I ended up using 13.  I still feel iffy about a couple of them.  Maybe I should have stuck to just 10.  The running time is supposed to be 35 minutes and I ended up with a little more than 43.  I never gave that much thought this year though as I knew I was going to have way more than 10 songs to work with.

Do I like this album?  As of right now, I kinda do.  Ask me again in a couple of days and I’ll probably vomit on you (figuratively).  Does it feel like an “Album”? No.  It feels like a disjointed mess, but I knew it would.  As soon as I came up with the idea of making the album one part electric and one part acoustic I knew it would feel sloppy.

Speaking of sloppiness, I lowered my standards for the minimum level of performance required for one of these projects.  There is a lot of less than wonderful guitar playing and some down right shitty singing.  The sax playing was going to be bad even at its best.  You can’t take seven years off from an instrument and then suddenly play like John Coltrane… not that I ever played like John Coltrane, of course.  I’m literally being figurative here, not literal.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s messy glory:

The Alternate/Outtake Album

I usually wait a week or two before uploading my finished RPM album to bandcamp, but I was up early today and figured what the hell.

Over the last few years I have been creating a separate playlist on alonetone to hold all of the songs that I cut.  Those songs usually don’t go to bandcamp.  Last year I didn’t cut anything and had enough for two full records, so everything went.

This year I had five acoustic songs that went on the final album and each one had an alternate mix that I think was good enough to use, and at one point I thought about putting them both on the final album.  Instead I decided to use them as the first half of the second playlist and to include that second playlist on bandcamp.

I uploaded those first so that the “real” album would show up as the most recent.

Here it is:

The first five songs are alternate mixes of songs on the actual RPM album.  The next five are songs that I dropped, three electric and two acoustic.  I put the preferred mix of the acoustic song first.  The last two songs are the non-preferred mix of the dropped acoustic songs.

 

Guitar Goofy

Here’s one of the songs I finished today.  I started this a day or two before we left for Florida but I never got a chance to add the guitars.  I was able to carve out enough time to do it today.

It’s goofy… I own three Gibson guitars.  This song used them all.  The rhythm guitar is my 1979 ES 335 Pro, the melody/solo coming mostly out of your left speaker is my 2018 SG Standard, and the melody/solo coming mostly out of your right speaker is my 1978 Les Paul Custom.

Silly, but fun.

I took a picture of each guitar too but one of them didn’t make it to Flickr and I don’t know why.  It’s on my phone, but my phone is in the other room so you’ll just have to wait.

I Am Done with 63 Minutes to Spare – #RPM2020

I am finished with my 2020 RPM Challenge album with 63 minutes to spare.  Kick ass, dudes!

I ended up with 18 songs, seven of which had two mixes.  I was going to go with half electric and half acoustic or something, and maybe have the alternate mixes as their own thing.  In the end I just listed to each song and put each one onto one of three lists:  Good, kinda good, crap.  The good list had 13 songs, kinda good had three, and crap had two.  I then listened to both mixes of any acoustic songs on the good list and decided which mix I liked better.  I was a little surprised that some of the cajon mixes were the better of the two.  Last I took the 13 songs on the good list and kinda sorta ordered them from my favorite to my least favorite, and that became the final album.

hearthis.at is being bitchy and won’t let me upload any new songs tonight.  The RPM Challenge website is completely down too.  The internets are being a jerk.  Alonetone, however, is five by five.  Here’s a link to the final record:

I Only Believe in Truth