Another weird thing that happened at Bonnaroo over the weekend. Phish invited country music legend, Kenny Rogers to perform, “The Gambler”. Listen to the audio below, I couldn’t find the video in high quality in youtube, yet.
This is an odd collaboration, but really good. I’m a huge fan of Phish and Kenny. Enjoy.
Kev
Here is Alice Cooper and his band covering, Lady Gaga’s, “Born This Way”. They don’t call Alice Cooper a shock rocker for nothing. The man is always unpredictable at his live performances.
Some may find this a bit silly, but no matter what you think about Lady Gaga’s music, she is rock n’ roll. She’s a rock musician even though, she has a lot of electronica and pop in her songs. Any rock band can cover her music, and this is proof of it. Honestly, Alice’s version is better than the original and he just made it his own song. I’m sure Gaga herself is flattered he did it.
I’m a huge fan of Gaga and not ashamed of it either. She already has a fourth album in the works, and looking forward to that.
Kev
Ya know, I think the volume levels on the .wav file to that “Nightmare” song is just fine the way it is. Must be my end of the computer. I just listened to the .wav file on my Ipad, to test it out, and the volume levels on the track were loud and good. I’m sure you’re able to hear it loud and good yourself.
I’m proud of how my version of, “Nightmare” came out. I know that punk band, The Jims, covered it in youtube, while I love their take on the song still, that wasn’t my original vision to the song.
My vision was to have a jazzy lounge kind of feeling. Something that you would hear when you walk into a jazz club. In my original vision to “Nightmare”, I can hear horns playing in the background, a full horn ensemble backing the song up. Garageband does not yet, have horns to play for the software, but I’m hoping they’ll add that soon. I plan on bringing back more of my older songs, and when I get done with some of the older songs, I’ll start writing brand new stuff again.
Kev
One thing people love to do with my music is compare my music to other artists. People come up to me all the time either online or in person, they say stuff like, “You remind me of this artist (here)”. So far, the most popular comparisons of my songwriting are: Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Nick Cave, Tom Petty, etc.
I can understand why. It’s because I don’t have a very strong singing voice. I’ll admit, that I’m not an actual singer, I just do it. Those guys I listed above are not actual singers either. They just sing with their regular speaking voices, not having a strong range. Know what I mean? To be honest, I actually enjoy singers who don’t take themselves too seriously. When you want to sing, you don’t have to be professionally trained. If you want to sing, just do it, period. You don’t have to be a perfect singer.
I do want to sing better and am practicing and learning. I would like to have better range and a stronger voice, but learning to sing real good takes years, just like it takes years to play great guitar. I am considering taking voice coach lessons though. I would like to sing a little better.
I do get flattered when people compare me to other artists like that though. When people do that, it means they really like your stuff.
Kev
Yes, canned tuna maybe a great source of protein, but you don’t want to be eating a can a day or worse a few cans a day. I used to think it was good to eat tuna every day, or at least most of the week. From this point on, I’m going to vary up my lunches during the day. Tuna has something called, Mercury Toxicity, or something like that. I don’t think you want to be eating fish of any kind everyday, doesn’t have to be canned tuna. 2 or 3 times a week for fish is good enough. Read more on it, here. Fish may not harm ya this early but it will years ahead, you could get an early death if you eat way too much tuna.
So I’m going to go looking for other sources of protein for lunch during the day. I think I’m going to start eating more boneless chicken breasts for lunch instead of fish. I’ll also eat a lot more vegetables. You can also find good sources of protein from healthy beans like Soy Beans or Black Beans.
I was kind of getting tired of tuna anyway. I’m going to do more research on nutrition, try to make it a little different.
That’s okay though. I’m still NEW to fitness and nutrition. This is called learning.
For breakfast in the morning, I would have either egg whites or plain oat meal, and I’ll have whole wheat toast to go with it ’cause you need your whole grains. Beginners make a lot of mistakes with nutrition and I do too. I’m not perfect with nutrition but I’m trying to get better as much as I can. Eating healthy is a learning experience, indeed.
Kev
I spent the last couple of days working on this song, I wrote a couple of years back. If you can tell by the lyrics, the song is another one of my dark songs, based on horror and true crime kind of stuff. I know I said I was going to write positive/family friendly stuff from this point on, I will write those kind of songs too, but I think I’m going to get back into writing the darker stuff. I seem to be better at writing songs with dark & angry lyrics anyway.
I kept the drum beat simple, nothing too complex. It’s just a demo and I’ll improve the song down the road. This is just a song idea.
Enjoy.
Kev
Edit to add: I know the wav. file volume seems kind of low, but when I record and listen to playback on the computer before exporting it, I can hear it loud and fine. It must have something to do with the settings of the “exporting’. I’ll figure something out. You can still hear it okay, just turn the speakers up or listen to this on headphones.
And I know the vocals are kind of louder than the music, I’ll fix that too. I need a break from the computer. Gonna go out and enjoy the nice hot day.
As of today, Johnny Depp turns 49. He’s one year away until the big 5-0. Whether you love him or hate him, I’m sure you at least love a few of his movies. We’ve all seen his flicks. He made his film debut in the original, “Nightmare On Elm St.” which Freddy Krueger helped launched him into world wide fame. I also liked him in, “Edward Scissorhands”, “Ed Wood”, “Donnie Brasco”, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, “From Hell”, the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie (I didn’t like the sequels), “Sweeney Todd”, “Public Enemies”, and “Dark Shadows”, were some of the movies, that I liked of his.
I’ve always respected Johnny. Kudos to the man for having such a positive career, and he’s a pretty successful and legendary actor, no matter what you think of him. I think Tim Burton is responsible for making him so famous. Without Tim Burton, there would be no Johnny Depp. I’m not a fan of all of his movies, he had a handful of movies that I never cared for, I only like the good ones, like the ones I listed above.
Happy Birthday to Natalie Portman too.
Kev
Even though I’m still a fan and still respect the professional wrestling industry, I just wish it can all get better. Not just with WWE, TNA needs to get better too. I like both companies. I still watch both as much as I can.
There are some good things and bad things about the WWE. The bad things, I actually don’t mind their “PG” rating, ’cause that’s how WWE started out in the 80’s. I just want their wrestling and promos to get better. The word, “promos”, another wrestling term where a wrestler gives a speech out in the ring. In the WWE, there are very few of today’s wrestlers that puts on very good promos, like CM Punk and Jericho. Those guys are still amazing on the mic, but everyone else in WWE? *yawn*
The guys in TNA seems to be much better at promos than WWE ’cause they are a TV-14 company. I think Bully Ray, who works for TNA, is one of the best wrestling heels I’ve seen in a long time. Bully Ray is what keeps me watching TNA I think. Bully Ray, used to be one of the Dudley Boyz (a former WWE tag team). Bully is a great character and he’s the best at doing promos in TNA, than anybody in their roster. The whole point of TNA is that they are competing against WWE. All of TNA’s ppvs and storylines are pretty much the same as WWE’s but it’s their own version.
The problem with today’s professional wrestling, is that it’s all too mainstream now. It’s not like what it used to be in the old days. The old days was “true” wrestling. The old days, they tried to treat it like an actual sport, but now it’s “sports entertainment”. Today’s wrestling is not special anymore. The old days would have some of the most amazing matches I’ve ever seen, more guys would cut great promos back then too! It really is sad how wrestling is today.
I still do enjoy watching WWE shows live in person though. I just enjoy seeing the performers enjoying themselves out there. Whether they’re badguy wrestlers, or good guys, I respect them all. It’s just a wrestling show! Yes, I have been criticized and been made fun of for my love of professional wrestling, but I’m a fan ’cause I respect what these guys do. They work hard to entertain fans and very good at it. I just want both companies to get better like everyone else. People complain about WWE and TNA ’cause we want to see good wrestling matches and we aren’t getting any of that. It’s all storylines and soap opera stuff these days.
Kev
I was very impressed by this album. Probably the best work Slash has ever done. I listened to this album a couple of times and you hear something new with every listen. I’m probably gonna be addicted to this album. This album sounds like a Guns N’ Roses record. It’s got that old school GN’R sound. Wow. No wonder Axl hates Slash! Myles Kennedy is the lead singer of this album. He sang the lead through every song. This album doesn’t have different vocalists like the last record Slash did. Myles sings just like Axl, except Myles is a way better singer than Axl. This is Slash’s best guitar work too. This album makes you want to forget Guns N’ Roses.
I hate most mainstream rock music ’cause it’s mostly pop stuff to be honest, but it’s very rare that something really good will come out and this is one of them. You don’t have to be a longtime fan of Guns N’ Roses either, to enjoy this album. It’s very good. I’m probably going to listen to this a lot and you should get it as well.
Kev
Yes, I completely understand that people don’t want to pay anything to learn to get ripped, and achieve the body of their dreams. So people go online looking for free information and there are tons of guys (or even women) in youtube trying to teach people how to get a ripped body. They go in there, giving workout advice, teaching different workouts and they give you nutrition advice. It’s mostly the experienced bodybuilders with the successful physiques teaching fitness, and they just want to pass along how they achieved it. All that is great, and wonderful how people want to help people, don’t get me wrong, but… you can’t trust their source.
You also have to be careful of their scams, ’cause some of them will want donations. You also have to watch out for the supplement products they push out there. When they teach workouts, their form is not always good. So you must be careful on that too. As I already stated on that video, some of these guys are almost always opinionated on stuff. Not giving actual facts. Sure, there are like one or two fitness gurus who really know what they’re doing and what they’re talking about. I’m also sure people have gotten results out of some of these online fitness gurus. The thing is, you can’t trust everything you see online.
I’m a self taught bodybuilder. I learned from Arnold’s “Encyclopedia” mostly, and I learned from other people locally around the Greenwich area. I just watch how other people did things in the gym. I would also try to learn new workouts from bodybuilding.com. I found my own ways of learning things. It is very strange how too many people go online to support these guru bodybuilders who don’t even look natural even though they claim to be.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to learn about bodybuilding. All you need is a set of dumbbells, your own gym membership, learn a few workouts for each body part, and a clean nutrition, that’s it! I don’t want to have a Mr. Olympia kind of look. I think that look is kind of silly and disgusting. I just want a natural looking, medium physique. I respect the competitors out there, but that’s not my thing. Like I always say, I just want to get in decent shape.
Don’t learn from these so called fitness guru’s online. Like I said on the video, they’re all a bunch of whack jobs, and I meant it too!
Kev
K'Brocking 
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