The next stop around the world is Chad. The Republic of Chad is located in Africa, bordered by Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. Largely desert, the nation has been inhabited for thousands of years, with a long history. The country has been in French hands since 1920, and as a result, French, along with Arabic, are the official languages. Currently, the nation has been destabilized with neighboring problems in the Sudan causing an influx of refugees.
The band representing Chad is Chari Jazz. The group was founded in 1964 and is considered the first modern band in Chad. I haven't been able to find a whole lot of information on this group, but Archive.org has a couple tracks. Listening to them, there's a great sound here, bubbling with energy and a solid beat. There are some Jazz influences here, as well as what I suspect are more traditional African influences here.
The Post-apocalyptic, quasi-folk indie-folk duo We'll Write have added another installment to their serial album Songs for the End of the World, this one titled Demon. I've written about these guys before, and it's always a pleasure to hear some fun songs that fall squarely within the geek realm. This is the third song to be released from these guys after Bleached Bone Fields and Measure of a Man.
In addition to Demon, they have released two additional b-sides, Self-Made Man (about a Robot) and Old Moon Face. To get them, sign up for their fan section.
These guys sing and play acoustically, with some fantastic tongue-in-cheek lyrics (and go around with signs that say Apocalypse Now [Or Very Soon]). I look forward to their next song about robots, demons, specters or space pirates, or whatever they've got up their sleeves next.
I just finished Charles Stross’s last book, Halting State, which proved to be a facinating, and ultimately a very different read than I had been expecting.
The book is set nearly twenty years from now, and technology has progressed much as it could be expected. Mobile phones, wireless devices, and the internet have taken on a far more ingrained role in society than it is today. The premise of the book starts with a bank robbery in MMORPG land - a band of Orcs break into a super-secure facility and make off with a lot of loot. In real life terms, a bunch of gamers have gone in to a place they shouldn’t have, and taken property, essentially re-writing digital signatures and threatening to distrupt a lot of the internal economy, and thus messing with the real company’s profits. Several of the main characters are called in to investigate how this happened, and the floor drops on them, revealing a mess of a situation that involves foreign governments, corrupt CEOs and various agendas gone haywire.
A couple days ago, I wrote about how older SciFi is still relevant. On the opposite side of the coin, this book goes to show just how relevant modern day science fiction can be very relevant. Stross takes society today, and extrapolates just how dependent we are likely to become on electronics. The near-future that he paints is very, very frightening to me. This is certainly a product of the United Kingdom, where things such as video surveillance is an everyday thing in most places, and here, it’s taken to a bit more of a frightening level. This is cyberpunk with a dose of wireless - it’s a place where foreign governments are actively trying to subvert the UK’s infrastructure by utilizing gamers to do all the legwork by unwittingly hacking into various systems. It’s almost like SETI, but with the focus on disrupting the telecommunications, inventory and emergency systems of a place that is overly dependent on electronics.
It brings an interesting subject that I’ve been contemplating - just how dependent are we on such devices? I myself carry my mobile, ipod and laptop to and from work. I know some people who carry around more things, and are always connected to the internet, no matter where they are. What makes this even more scary is when some agency moves in to mess around with the fundamental coding and access points of all these devices, which would likely leave the target population utterly helpless. I was talking about this with my father the other day - I think that a more crippling type of terrorist attack would be one on the wireless infrastructure out there, because of the sheer dependence here. Halting State brings us to a UK where this is not only a frightening reality, but it’s one that brings some of the more unobtrusive things, such as games, and mobile phones into the front lines of a possible war.
I have to say that this is one of the more engaging and interesting books that I’ve read recently. Stross is a master of the genre - I loved Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, as well as numerous short stories that I’ve read by him in Asimovs. He’s won several Hugo awards, if memory serves, and they are well deserved. This is a paticularly fun read as it’s written in the second person (apparently as a homage to some of the older Adventure games.)
There’s also a good dash of humor here. One of my favorite lines in the book was as follows:
Attention object able Charlie sixteen. This is your creator speaking. Give me a cookie and initiate debug mode.
Stross also ends the book with a 419 e-mail (you know, one of those Nigerian ones that promises loads of money?) and opens with a recruitment e-mail that is very very frightening for anyone who’s paranoid about personal privacy on the internet.
This is Cyberpunk in the Social-Networking age. And what’s frightening, and fascinating, is how true it could become.
Making Plans for Nigel - XTC (This is actually one of the chapter titles in the book)
Today marks the 45th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech, I Have A Dream, which stands as one of the major defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
The speech came from the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to a crowd of over 200,000 supporters. It is one of the most important documents to have been written in United States history, for it helped put pressure on the Kennedy Administration to help push forward legislation relating to Civil Rights in Congress.
In an interesting coincidence, tonight is the night that Sen. Barack Obama will accept the nomination for Presidential Candidate on behalf of the Democratic Party, a major landmark in and of itself. While Sen. Obama's campaign have tried to dispel race in this presidential race, this is no doubt a powerful image for all in the nation, and despite some, it represents some of the major breakthroughs in the nation.
Part of the appeal and lasting nature of the speech is the ability to which Dr. King was able to weave numerous documents together, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address together to create a wholly new and powerful meaning. This, combined with Dr. King's presence behind the podium, have made this document a lasting and important one.
World music is one thing that I am always on the lookout for. When I was offered a copy of Many Lessons, I jumped at the chance to listen to something really different - Islamic hip-hop from West Africa.
Many Lessons is a compilation album with a selection of music from the region, highlighting the growing trend of hip-hop among Islamic believers in the region. The back cover of the album states that the artists seek to include their religious beliefs in their music, combining it with social, religious and political criticism.
Musically, this is a fun album. There's a rich blend of hip-hop, rap, afro-beat and reggae. I don't understand the lyrics, so it's hard to comment on the specific messages that we have here, but what I hear, I really like.
I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop and rap in general, but this is an interesting introduction to this type of music, and another avenue of World Music that I've not really had the chance to listen to until now.
I'm working to catch up on some back reviews that I've been meaning to get to in the past month. First up is Jakob Dylan's first solo album, entitled Seeing Things.
Dylan has a big shadow to get out from under, that of his father's, the legendary Bob Dylan. He's been with his own group, the Wallflowers, since 1989, of which I had a lot of fond memories of from High School. This new album offers a similar, but not identical sound and feel. Dylan has a lot of strengths as a songwriter, and it really comes through in this album, which is coupled by a great acoustic/folk sound.
Seeing things is a sparse album - it feels very stripped down, somewhat melancholy (starting off with Evil is Alive and Well, for example). While there are most likely some parallels between the songwriting and current events, I never got the feeling that there's anything that's a target here beyond broad themes in American culture and politics, which I applaud - there's nothing worse than taking a medium that can be an art with subtlety and being as blunt as a bad with it.
This is a solid, although not perfect album for Dylan. While most of the tracks don't stand out from the album as a whole, it does represent a good collection of well-written and well played songs that have quite a bit of weight to them.
It's been a while since I've done this, so getting back into the swing of things, I present Tcheka, representing the nation of Cape Verde. This small island country is off the coast of Africa, and was discovered by the Portugese in 1460, where it remained a way point for ships passing up and down the African coast. Our artist here is Techeka, who's an afro-beat artist. Born in 1973, he's been a long time musician, playing with his father at a very early age. By the age of 15, he began playing with his own style, and eventually, went to work in the television industry on the island, and partnered with a friend, and began to play in local bars. He plays in the batuque style, which is local to Cape Verde.
According to Wikipedia:
As a music genre, the batuque is characterized by having an andante tempo, a 6/8 or 3/4 measure and traditionally it is just melodic, i.e., it is just sung, it has no polyphonic accompaniment. When compared with the other musical genres from Cape Verde, the batuque has a call and response structure, and it is the only genre that is polyrhythmic. In fact, analyzing the rhythm, one finds out that it is a 3-beat rhythm over a 2-beat rhythm. Source
It's a beautiful style of music, and one that I'm happy to have come across. Tcheka's music is melodic and very soothing, and I'd highly recommend him.
There's so many bands out there that I really like, it's pretty hard to keep track of them. While I generally despise myspace, it's brilliant for finding what artists are up to, blog updates, new music, etc. Such is what happened today with The Alternate Routes. I discovered that they're not only releasing new material, they did so back in July, with The Watershed EP. On it, there's several songs that they've been playing in concert, such as Shelly and Louisiana. There's a couple newer ones that I hadn't heard before yet, but from my first listens, they're absolutely fantastic. I'm looking forwards to their next record already.
Their last album, Good and Reckless and True was a favorite of mine last year, for their easygoing style, and fantastic live shows that I attended. Last fall, they said they were doing some new tracks, and it looks like we've got part of their efforts here. Hopefully, they'll be back up in Vermont again, because I'll certainly be making that show. You should too, if they come near you.
I posted up something last week about this concert, with my regrets about not being able to attend. Fortunately, the great tapers who post up at Archive.org have posted up the entire concert.
Before you do, here's a bit of news. Once again, the band will be doing a three night stand at Higher Ground Music for New Years - December 28th, the 29th and the 31st. You can get tickets for the nights here: 28th, 29th, 31st.
Listen to the entire fantastic concert here. Man, I wish I made it out to this.
This is an interesting song to look at because it's also an evolution of a song here. Over this weekend, I was talking to my Dad about Weird Al, and how he played the song Amish Paradise during the concert that I was part of. This led to a discussion of covers vs. originals, and he mentioned that Coolio wasn't the original artist for this song - it was Stevie Wonder. Doing a bit of research, I found that this was correct - The original song was called Pastime Paradise, recorded in 1976 on Wonder's album Songs in the Key of Life. In 1995, Coolio took the song and reworked it as a rap song on his album by the same name, Gangsta's Paradise, which then went on to win a Grammy award, and it holds as the 15th most successful single of all time. In 1996, singer Weird Al Yankovic took the song and then reworked it per his usual style, creating the fantastic song Amish Paradise. This actually caused some problems for Yankovic, as Coolio had not granted permission for him to use the song. In response, Weird Al has since secured permission from artists directly. The last song here is a cover of of Coolio's song
Jentri Colello came through my e-mail box last night, and I was intrigued from the first couple of notes. Hailing from Madison Wisconsin, she's the lead singer of a four-person group that has a great, laid-back indie-rock sound.
While the information that I received compares her to Neil Young, Spoon and the National, I think she has more in common with the likes of Rilo Kiley, without as much edge.
Birds of Prey is the first single from the group's first release, an EP by the same title that was released in July. There's a great balance here between the vocals and guitar here, with a wonderful beat that really brings this song to life. Giving several of the other songs on their myspace page a listen, it's clear that this is a common thread. The guitarwork here really sounds fantastic.
Unfortunately, it's not a new album (that's been promised for 2009 sometime), but the Decemberists will be releasing new material this year in the form of a 'singles series', entitled Always the Bridesmaid. This release will be in 12" Vinyl and digitally, and features music that they liked, but felt wouldn't fit on their upcoming album. Here's the release schedule:
October 14: "Valerie Plame," and "O New England"
November 4: Days of Elaine" b/w "Days of Elaine (Long)" and "I'm Sticking With You,"
December 2: "Record Year for Rainfall," b/w "Raincoat Song"
I'm pretty excited about this - I loved the Crane Wife and Picaresque (I'm still a little iffy on some of their older stuff, at least some of it) and I love that these guys are big into history. Valarie Plame refers to the CIA agent who was outed by the Bush Administration that caused a lot of fuss earlier this decade, and I'm interested to hear about O' New England, being a native and resident here myself.
Moreover, this seems like it will be a very interesting experiment in distributing music via the internet. While it's not nearly dramatic as what Radiohead has done with In Rainbows, releasing the B-sides and tracks that didn't make the cut ahead of time is something that is very new - I'm sure that it is going to generate quite a bit of hype for their upcoming LP, and I'm sure that a lot of other bands will sit up and take notice, or will at least be watching to see how this goes. It's a big band, it's organized, and they'll likely make quite a bit of money doing this, not to mention a lot of mentions in the media, which is essentially free advertising.
Vermont has some good music, and this morning, I came across a really facinating story about just how far back pop rock goes here. This past year, a band called Mike and the Ravens returned to the studio to record a new record. The cool thing? These guys were getting back together for the first time in 46 years. In an era that pre-dates the Beatles, and coming out of the Buddy Holly years, these guys had an incredible Rock & Roll sound that was fast and energetic. These guys played locally, up in Plattsburgh, New York, and made an impression for those who listened to them live. The band dissolved in 1962 after a midnight prank involving one of their records and a church loudspeaker in a sleepy Vermont town.
The group has gotten together again, starting in 2005 to record a new record, Noisy Boys!, and will be doing a number of local shows in the area. This latest record was released on August 12th, and I'm planning on picking it up as soon as I can.
Ray LaMontagne is coming out with a new album in October, Gossip in the Grain, which is due out on the 19th. One song has already leaked, Let It Be Me, and earlier this week, the first song, You Are The Best Thing, was released as a single. This is easily one of my most anticipated songs of the year already, and I know that a lot of people are looking forwards to this one. LaMontagne has had a very good run with his albums, with the wonderful Trouble and the even better Till the Sun Turns Black. From the sounds of these first two songs, we're in for another fantastic album, with elements from his last one carrying over with the horn section. If this track and the other one are any indications, this is going to be one fantastic listen. October 19th can't come soon enough.
I just came across this news earlier today - Saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who was one of the original members of the Dave Matthew's Band, passed away yesterday. He was involved in an accident back in June, and passed away due to complications.
This statement from the Dave Matthew's Band:
We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.
Last night, the Band went on for a concert as schduled and had this to day:
"As we sat this afternoon contemplating the loss of our brother, we wondered how we could possibly do a show today. Dave put it into perspective stating, "There's no place I'd rather be than here with you guys right now." We cherish special memories of our lost friend. Tonight, Dave told a story about LeRoi at a bar in Virginia where the cash register was near the stage and LeRoi leaned on the register because "standing had become a chore". Roi proceeded to play the most beautiful version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Dave said, "that was the day I fell in love with him. And I'm still in love with him." It's safe to say we all were in love with him. "It's always easier to leave, than to be left."
Dave Matthews, on August 19, 2008
I'm not sure what to think here. The Dave Matthew's Band, while largely dismissed in the blogosphere and among 'indie fans' has been one of my absolute favorite bands since early high school, ever since I got a copy of Under the Table and Dreaming, which remains one of my favorites. Over the years, I've ranged in my fandom of these guys, but I've always looked forwards to listening to their music, or an upcoming album. One of the things that has always struck me when I was younger was the introduction of a saxophone in a mainstream rock band, and now, I've come to appreciate the diversity in sound that it brought.
I'm truly regretful that I've never seen them on stage yet, and now that I'll never be able to see them as I've listened to them all these years. I do hope to see them, but I have to wonder how this will affect the band in the future, and I hope that they will continue onwards.
My last post saw the introduction of a flash player to the site. This is a step that I've been meaning to get to for a little while, and in my opinion, it is overdue. As of this point, Carry You Away will be closer to its original goal - sharing music that I like with the world, but in a way that doesn't necessarily mean that it will be copied and distributed.
Unless I get a an okay from an artist, publicist or other related party, we're not going to offer downloads. This might come as a problem for some, as it's convenient to be able to listen to a song and then download it, especially if you like it. However, we would rather skate on thicker ice with this issue. While we feel that the RIAA and the music industry in general has been slow to react to the changes that the internet has brought on, they are a group that I would rather remain on their good side, and as such, we'll be doing our best to better respect copyrights, while still showing the world music that we have found and grown to love.
Often, publicists will provide a free MP3 to share, and those will continue to be uploaded. Live tracks that can be found on Archive.org will also be downloadable. But other tracks will be on a flash-based listen only post, where you can still listen to your heart's content. If you really do like it, buy it, and support the artist.
Music is a product, just like everything else that we seem to enjoy, and I don't believe that it should be pirated to an extent where it impacts the artist. In this day and age, piracy is far more easy to accomplish, and there will be big changes on the way. We've always found iTunes to be a very reasonable platform and music store, as well as countless others. This site was not started as a way to distribute music, but as a way to share our passion for other bands to people around the world, and to help them, in any way possible, to get more listeners. The blogosphere has been a wonderful place to find new music, and will continue to be one for years to come (hopefully). We'll just do our part.
I've been meaning to do a bit of experimenting with some of this coding, trying to get a flash player on here, so people can listen to the song on the page, rather than going through Savefile. Let's see if this works...
A while ago, I finally picked up the film I'm Not There, a bio topic loosely based off of the life of Bob Dylan. The movie has been highly regarded by numerous news organizations and people that I've talked to, and I can see why - it's a brilliantly filmed and scripted movie, if confusing as hell for someone not expecting a trippy, exciting ride.
The interesting thing that drew me to this in the first place was the use of six different actors (Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, and Cate Blanchett), all playing Dylan, each representing a different stage in his life. Of the six, I think that the brightest praise goes to Cate Blanchett, for her portrayal, which I found to be one of the best performances that I've seen in a movie in a long time.
The film is a journey through Dylan's life, starting with a young boy named Woody Guthrie, and ending up with Richard Gere's version, an older Dylan. Throughout, we see the changes throughout his life, and the film ends fittingly with the following words:
"People are always talking about freedom, and how to live a certain way. Course the more you live a certain way the less it feels like freedom. Me? I can change during the course of a day. When I wake I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It's like you got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room. There's no telling what's going to happen."
I thought the movie was brilliant, confusing and enlightening. Most of all, the soundtrack released for the film is absolutely brilliant, with a ton of extremely well done Dylan covers by a diverse group of singers. If anything, I think that the soundtrack is just as good as the movie, with just as much character.
I didn't get to go to this show, unfortunately. I had a paper to write, and all the usual excuses. From all accounts, it was a fantastic show, and it produced a new GPTN cover, this from Tom Petty. This is classic Grace Potter stuff - energetic, exciting and sounding fantastic as always. The second night of the festival, Grace sang with the Derek Trucks Band, on their song Key to the Highway.
In other related news, the band recent did an interview with the local newspaper of the Mad River Valley, the Valley Reporter, where they said the following:
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals will head back to the studio to record their next album. Although it's still in the concept stage, Potter does have one promise: "We're a rock and roll band so I can guarantee some new rock and roll." The band is adding new songs to their repertoire all the time, but not all material is destined for an album. Some songs will fit on a soundtrack, or stand alone as a single.
This is exciting - I'll be interested to see what they'll be rotating through the concerts this fall. Read the full interview here.
It's always wonderful to hear young talent. This morning, I just came across Lucy Schwartz, an 18 year old who released her first album in 20007, Winter in June. It's a promising album, with a very good sound to it. There's some jazz and rock influences here, and based on this, she has a good looking future coming up.
Fans of Tristan Prettyman, Priscilla Ahn and Sara Bareilles will really like Lucy. She has some lingering similarities with Norah Jones as well. She has a very similar, yet distinct sound, one that competes with the two of them, with a light, airy sound that has a good spark to it. Apparently, she's the winner of several major competitions, and her music has been featured on a couple of TV shows and in an upcoming film, The Women.
Her one drawback here is that she sounds a little too much like Sara Bareilles - At times, I thought that the two could be one and the same, but I do have to wonder - we have so many good female singer-songwriters out there, how many more with a similar sound before it gets old? For the time being, however, she's doing a good job here.
One of my favorite discoveries of this past year (and a top contender for some of my best of lists later this year), will be back with a new album sometime soon. According to an August 2nd blog entry:
the first six songs for the new record are now set in stone. it's taken a couple of months of writing alot of tunes, around 30 i think from which i've taken these first six and have endless lists and little bits recorded here and there for the 2nd half of the record.
i do have stuff i can post already but i'm going to wait till all the arrangements are finished and then you can listen to the end result. which i know you're gonna love ;) also this time round i have a band so arrangements and getting parts down takes more time.
This has me very, very excited. Glue, Franco's first album, was one of those rarities that had me totally fall in love with just about every song at the first listen - that doesn't happen all that often, and I'm very excited to see what he comes up with for this upcoming album.
Seriously, the internet music community and bloggers can't get enough of this guy, or say enough good things. From his first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, he's been at the top of my playlist, with the best music that I've heard all year. What makes me happy? New songs from him. Here's a very new song, Blood Bank, which rocks, and a couple of covers and an untitled new one from a concert back in May. I'm not totally sold on the covers - they're decent, but the real gems here are his two new tracks. They've got a fantastic groove, and hopefully this means that he'll be working on a followup album soon:
From Wikipedia: "The word geek is a slang term, noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, gaming, etc."
Geek stuff seems to be 'in' right now, which is fine by me. I've been one for years, and a little social acceptance isn't a horrible thing, although I honestly don't care one way or the other. I'm also an unabashed Star Wars fan, and today's release of the Clone Wars is as good an excuse as any to geek out today.
