Happy Valentine's Day

"There never was a time when you or I did not exist. Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be"

-Krishna to Arjuna in the Baghavad-Gita, quoted in the George Harrison albums Somewhere in England and Brainwashed

"That was me!"

-Paul McCartney

Is it important to be a cohesive person from one decade to the next?

If so, why?

What makes you the same person now that you were five years after you were born?

…that you were five years ago?

…ten years ago?

…ten years from now?

…a hundred years from now?

…ten years before you were born?

What is the same?      What have you always had?

What is different?  What will you always have?

What defines you?       What have you always been?

What will you always be?

No Matter What

NameMemoriesThoughtsBeliefsActions

StuffLovesFamilyFriends

NationStateJobHobbiesBodySoulGod

Who are yOu?

Top 10 Paul McCartney Backup Singers

10. Michael Jackson
9. Bowie (Live Aid)
8. Abe, Brian, Rusty, & Wix
7. Paul
6. Ringo
5. Hamish
4. Denny
3. Linda
2. George
1. John

Discuss.

Pulling Out All The Stops

Fellow musicians,

Are you certain your album is done? Have you considered any of the following enhancements, used so successfully by the artists noted? Consider using the following "stops" as in "pulling out all the". They are not mutually exclusive and I have begun creating a song on which I intend to use all fourteen. Use all fourteen on every song on your album and I will refund your recording costs if you don't win a grammy*.

1. Children's Choir. Nothing says sincerity like the innocent voices of little ones. If you really, really mean what you are saying in your song, you simply have no other alternative. (Tina Turner's We Don't Need Another Hero, Bob Dylan's They Killed Him)

2. Modulate up a whole step. It's like writing a whole new song. There is an entire website dedicated the study and promotion of this practice. I have written two songs (Powerful Statement, We'll Go On Forever) that each do this two times or more. Make sure the kids really nail the first few notes of the new key - that can be tough. (Barry Manilow's Mandy, Looks Like We Made It, and every other Barry Manilow song)

3. Instruments drop completely out then blast back in after a big vocal line or total silence. Our ears need a break and then they need to be hit harder than ever right away. (Semisonic's Closing Time)

4. Rap break. Allows use of the very hip "feat." tag and will attract a whole new demographic to your music. (R.E.M.'s Radio Song and more recently The Outsiders)

5. Spoken section. Again just proving the sincerity. There is no reason you can't use all five of these so far in the same song: after a rap break, have your music track blast back in a whole step up with children speaking the words. This will not ruin anyone's life. (Elvis' Are You Lonesome Tonight)

6. Operatic chords and melody. This is harder to quantify, but I know it when I hear it. I think in C it would go something like this: d minor-G dominant 7-C Major 7-F Major 7-Bflat-E dominant 7-a minor-A dominant 7. (Elvis' My Boy or The Sound of Your Cry, possibly Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive)

7. Tension between scale degrees 3 and 4. Mi and Fa yield some real greatness when they're the main part of your melody. I noticed this when I really studied the wonderful chorus of Elton John's Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters and elsewhere I can't think of right this second.

8. Pick scrapes. Why would you only use the tip of your guitar pick when you can use the side as well? You paid good money for that pick - make the most of it. Studying Mick Ronson's (at 1:57, 2:10, and 2:38) brilliant guitar work with David Bowie can help you master this crucial technique.

9. Synthy answering phrases to the vocal. Your singing will never seem so human until it is contrasted with the eerie strains of a DX7 or one of its descendants. (Tina Turner's What's Love Got To Do With It at :41)

10. Special guest vocalist. The Beatles didn't expect people to listen to a single singer for a whole album - what chance do you have? Extra points if the song, tantalizingly, might actually be written about the special guest. (Carly Simon's You're So Vain)

11. Speeding up the tempo at the end. You hardly ever hear this anymore when everything is recorded to a metronomic click track, so you'll stand out from the crowd. (The Beatles' All Together Now)

12. Flanger on everything. Why add that eerie, windy sound to a single instrument when you can make the whole song sound like it was recorded on Mars? Caution: do not use on the entire song. (Doobie Brothers' Listen To The Music)

13. Muted guitar strums as percussion. You may not know it, but some of your favorite sounds are those with no pitch at all. Sure, everyone knows Smells Like Teen Spirit is F-Bflat-Aflat-Dflat, but it wouldn't be the same without the atonal strums in between the fingered chords. Go even further and don't play any chords (Paul McCartney's Maybe I'm Amazed - listen closely at 2:08) Go double super even further and add a wah pedal to the non-chord strums! (Isaac Hayes' Theme From Shaft)

14. Answering/counterpoint vocals. The main vocal can be open to all kinds of misinterpretation, so make your point even clearer by restating it another way in the background. They Might Be Giants are the foremost masters of this technique, most obviously on the song Dead.

Fellow musicians, you're welcome and I look forward to hearing your vastly improved works.

*offer is not legally enforceable.

Culture Roundup

Well, if you like movies at all and live within forty miles of Minneapolis, you owe it to yourself to go to The Heights Theater at least once in your life. I went recently on sort of a spur of the moment thing and saw Phantom Lady from 1944. It was wonderful. There was live organ music for about a half hour beforehand. Magical!

Here's a tip: order the Heights Special – I didn't look carefully and got a large popcorn and a small pop – for a quarter more than I would have paid for a large popcorn and a large pop. To their credit, they did not point this out to me and try to change my order. They let me be dumb.

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If you are a Paul McCartney fan you should check out "The McCartney Years" 3 DVD set. Put disc one on your netflix if nothing else. Some of the commentary is hilarious and/or poignant. At one point McCartney (2007) is watching McCartney (1980) walking in front of an arctic set and there's a polar bear. "I think there was a trench in between the bear and me…oh, yes. There's the water erupting from the trench." Maybe it's in his delivery. He's just like, "Oh, yeah, that time I was walking around next to a polar bear and of course water erupted from the trench between us. Naturally." So casual.

At one point in the "Silly Love Songs" video McCartney (1976) is goofing for the camera, walking with Linda, together looking like the coolest rock stars the world has ever produced, and Linda points her thumb at him and looks at the camera with a good-natured "long suffering" look. Paul (2007) says on the commentary, "Yes, he's a nutter, Linda."

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On a related note, I was recently asked, "Could Linda McCartney really sing?" I answered somewhat less than unequivocally, but I've thought about it a lot since then. Yes. The answer is an unqualified yes. It's a shame that that awful clip of her isolated backing vocal from a 1989 live version of "Hey, Jude" got so much airplay. It was simply an artifact of poor engineering, rather like the 2004 "Dean Scream" that may or may not have given us an extra four deadly years of Dubya.

Nearly three decades of beautiful harmonies (often along with Denny Laine) and the very good compilation of her own compositions and lead vocals on the album Wide Prairie are far more representative of an artist who is sometimes unfairly maligned. Pick up any Wings album and you'll realize that the sound of the vocals – Paul, Linda, and Denny – really makes the music soar. (I recommend Band on the Run for first timers and London Town or Venus And Mars if you've already got BotR.)

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In books, I must endorse Revolutionary Road. I love it. It is most reminiscent of John Updike's Rabbit books, but set in 1955 and with a deadly dry wit. Some people might say it is depressing but I say life is often depressing and this book is the accurate depiction of exactly how and why. It helps to have Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in my mind as the leads and I plan to move the movie to the top of my netflix now. The characters were so very real and heartbreaking. Terrific. Get on the waiting list for it NOW at your local library as it is very popular.

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Final note: If you haven't seen any of the "Drunk History" episodes at funnyordie.com you should really check them out. I laughed so hard I couldn't speak. Partly because I know I couldn't do any better at reciting those things even if I were sober.

PaMaCaNee!

So today when Child requested that we listen to some Paul McCartney (I am so proud of her!) I put on 1989's Flowers in the Dirt. Dear God, that is a wonderful album! Seriously! I fail to see why Flowers in The Dirt/Off The Ground does not generally receive the same "career resurgence" acclaim that Time Out Of Mind/"Love and Theft" did for Bob Dylan.

Well, no. No, I don't. Critics don't like McCartney solo - that's why. Elitist snobs.

For that matter, has anyone EVER had as much of an improvement from one album to the next as McCartney did from Press To Play, from which he seems oddly absent (a la Madonna's Hard Candy) to Flowers in the Dirt? I'm asking you. Comment.

New Morning is really good but Self Portrait is underrated. I really can't think of another pair of consecutive albums that were that much improved. Down in the Groove to Good as I Been To You? Maybe. No, it's still not Press-Flowers.