Category Archives: music

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5 bands & artists in the industry that I like but everyone else hates…

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I’m bored today on this Saturday. Trying to come up with something interesting to post today so I came up with this. 5 bands & artists in the music industry that I like but everyone else hates. The problem with people is that everyone seems to have the same tastes in music — siding with popular opinion. I was never like that. If I like an artist, I’ll like an artist — it doesn’t matter if everyone else hates that artist or not. Good music is good music to me… I never cared whether the artist is loved or hated… here is a quick list in no particular order…

  • Metallica – I don’t know why Metallica is still hated today. I never understood all the Metallica hate. Yeah it was because of Napster, their direction change of music, and the sound quality of their albums is why a lot of people hate ’em but they are still a talented band. I’ve stuck with Metallica even through all the St. Anger/Load/Reload/Lulu stuff. Keep the hate going. You’re just making the band a lot bigger than before. Metallica 4 life! \m/
  • Phish – I don’t get all the hate for Phish either. This one confuses the hell out of me. I think I’m starting to figure it out, though. A lot of people can agree they’re talented musicians but they think Trey Anastasio is too arrogant and they jerk off a lot on stage (not in a sexual perverted way but you know what I mean). Love Phish or hate ’em, they’re geniuses. I still think they’re an amazing band. I’ll never turn my back on them like a lot of fans seem to do.
  • Katy Perry – A lot of people like to talk trash at Katy Perry, her music and they like to bash her as a person. I’ve always been a fan of Katy. I’m a fan of all of her music and I like her as a woman as well. She’s not bad as a lot of people make her out to be. I’m not ashamed of liking Katy Perry and I’m looking forward to her new album that she put out called, “Prism”, and yes, I think her new song, “Roar”, is awesome!
  • Lou Reed – Lou Reed has been hated for years that goes way before the “LuLu” stuff. I’ll never forget all the criticism for his “Metal Machine Music” album. Come on. Don’t hate on Lou. The man’s a fucking genius and a legend. You’re trashing the guy who started the Velvet Underground. Have some respect to the legend!
  • Nirvana – They get bashed a lot too. Kurt’s songwriting skills and his singing has always been pretty questionable by a lot of people but I’ve always found this band to be amazing. I love them ever since I was a teenager in high school. Of course, the first album I heard by them was “Nevermind” and I remember as a kid, I couldn’t stop listening to that album. I still love that album today. I love the rest of Nirvana’s music too. I’m looking forward to getting Nirvana’s “In Utero” 20th Anniversary edition. Nirvana were an amazing band. They wrote incredible songs. Loved all of their stuff!

I can come up with a lot more but those five are the big ones.

Kev

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Farm Aid 2013 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. review…

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I didn’t go to the show @ Farm Aid 2013 in Saratoga Springs last night but I watched it on the live stream in youtube. Yeah, they were live streaming the whole Farm Aid show on the internet like they do every year. The event was first started by Willie Nelson in 1985 to help raise money for families who owns local farms so they won’t lose them over mortgage debt. John Mellencamp and Neil Young teamed up with him. Dave Matthews joined them as board of directors later in the years. This year, Farm Aid was taken place at SPAC in Saratoga Springs which the event happened last night. There was live music all day on the main stage yesterday but the 4 big headlining acts: Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, and Willie Nelson didn’t start til later at 5 p.m.

Let me review each of their performances briefly, I watched Farm Aid on the Ipad last night:

Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: They played an acoustic set. Dave played mostly DMB songs, of course. I’m not much of a DMB fan anymore but I actually like him and Tim Reynolds playing together more. I thought their set was pretty amazing last night. I was most impressed with Tim Reynold’s performance, though. He’s quite the guitar player on acoustic! I was watching what Tim was doing close-up on the Ipad and what he was doing on the acoustic amazes me. Tim can play fast lead guitar on acoustic with just using his fingers. He doesn’t even use a guitar pick in a lot of stuff and I’m like woah. It’s very hard to play good lead guitar on acoustic and I would like to play like that myself.

John Mellencamp: To be honest, I wasn’t so crazy about this performance. He played a mix of new songs and classic hits. He was cool enough to take requests from the audience, he definitely like crowd participation for sure but I wasn’t so crazy about his singing. John doesn’t sing good anymore as he used to. He sings like an old man who smokes too much. Something about his singing that didn’t grab me, I don’t know. I’m not much of a Mellencamp fan to begin with, anyways. His music wasn’t really my cup of tea.

Pete Seeger: After Mellencamp got over with, he invited folk music legend Pete Seeger to the stage. Even though Pete Seeger is 94 years old and he admitted that he doesn’t have much of a singing voice anymore, he still KILLED IT. Pete was pretty amazing. Pete did his usual cover of “This Land Is Your Land”. The 4 founders of Farm Aid sung along with him and so did the audience. Pete was awesome!

Neil Young: All week long I’ve been looking forward to Neil’s performance at Farm Aid and to be honest, I’ll have to say I was pretty disappointed with his performance. His performance was acoustic. He didn’t have Crazy Horse with him which is expected (’cause their guitarist Poncho has a broken hand which is why the band had to cancel their tour). Neil’s performance was amazing of course, he did a few covers and a few of his classic tunes; however, he could have played more songs instead of rambling and ranting on and on and on over ridiculous stuff. Yeah, I understand it’s Farm Aid and he had a message to say about food and farms but he didn’t need to go on that lengthy rant in between songs. There was even a point where some guy from the audience called out Neil and yelled, “Come on, Lets go”. Neil immediately responded to that guy from the crowd and said, “Did I hear a come on lets go? I work for me.”. Sure enough, the crowd cheered for him and Neil kept talking until he finally went back to the music. Later on when he went to the organ to perform a song, he messed up a song, stopped playing and rambled on to the crowd some more. I love Neil’s music and all but he is kind of an asshole. He was a dick to the crowd last night. He didn’t care if the fans were waiting for him to play the music, he had a message to say about the food industry in America which was inappropriate really ’cause that wasn’t what Farm Aid was about. Instead Neil ranted about food politics and turned Farm Aid to a negative direction. He obviously has liberal views toward food, climate, global warming, etc. He talked about all that stuff. The music he played was good, I just wish he didn’t go on those long speeches.

I didn’t bother watching Willie Nelson, though. I’m sure he was good but his music is not my cup of tea either.

Even though, I didn’t go to Farm Aid, I’m glad I got to watch it online. I thought the Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds and Pete Seeger were the best performances of the night. Thumbs down to Mellencamp and Neil.

Kev

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Cool Video: I just love the new Arcade Fire song, “Reflektor”…

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The new song Arcade Fire “Reflektor” is pretty intense. I don’t give new music positive feedback too much but the new song by Arcade Fire here is pretty incredible. I can’t stop listening to it. Gives me goosebumps every time. The song has a 70’s disco feeling to it. This song is different than their earlier albums.

I am noticing that David Bowie does some backup vocals toward the end of this song. You’ll notice Bowie’s voice immediately. Bowie himself even makes a cameo in this video as one of them weird masked people… you can see him at 5:30. That’s Bowie standing next to a coffin with that weird masked girl. Not sure if the man wearing the Bowie mask is really Bowie himself but that’s definitely Bowie’s mask. It’s just letting you know that he has special guested in this song.

I love Arcade Fire. I have their previous albums and I can’t wait for their new one. Glad they’re back finally!

Kev

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More on Miley Cyrus and her “twerking” performance…

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As expected people have been going on and on about the Miley Cyrus performance all day on FB. I think that’s pretty much proof that people just don’t understand how the media and the entertainment industry works. The industry is all about “sex” these days. People go crazy over that stuff. Anything sexual in the media about celebrities, you can very well believe it’s going to be a media frenzy for days. The Miley Cyrus “twerking” performance was obviously staged by MTV. MTV doesn’t give a shit how offensive their material get through their VMA shows. They’re gonna do whatever it takes to bring up ratings. I just read on Deadline today that the ratings for the VMA’s during the “twerking” performance went sky high. No surprise there. Like I said before this is nothing new with MTV… they’ve been doing offensive sexual stuff for years… Howard Stern’s Fartman, Diana Ross feeling Lil Kim’s tits, Britney Spears in 2000, the Britney/Madonna kiss, etc.

Remember, this is MTV. They’re just doing whatever it takes to keep people watching and the sex all over those shows is the only way to do it since a lot of people aren’t into today’s mainstream music. Sex sells, folks. That’s all there is to it. The sex seems to be the only way to promote things in this day and age. Just watch. MTV will come up with something else for next year. Will Rihanna suck on a dildo during a dance or will Justin Bieber moon the audience? You get the point, I think.

MTV knows this stuff offends people and that’s why they do it. it’s all part of the entertainment. You think MTV is gonna tone this stuff down? HA!!!! They don’t give a shit how people feel. They’re happy with the ratings.

If you hate MTV so much, then why watch anyway? I don’t like MTV. I don’t watch it at all. Not even the fucking VMA’s. I avoid that network like the plague. Also, don’t blame this on Billy Ray, Miley’s father… I’m sure he was all for it ’cause even he would know it’s just a performance and it was for entertainment purposes. I’m pretty sure Miley got his approval before the performance and besides, people, Miley is not a little girl anymore. She’s in her 20’s. Let her be all sexual and perverted all she wants to.

My blog was kind of slow today ’cause I spent most of my day recording songs. The recording is coming along well. I’ll have another post about that soon.

Kev

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Miley Cyrus at the VMA’s thoughts…

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I didn’t watch the VMA’s last night, nor did I watch the Miley Cyrus performance and don’t care to watch it at all. All day long, I’ve been seeing people posting about Miley Cyrus on their newsfeed. People saying how horrible and racy it is. Her tongue sticking out and all.

Well, if you want to know my thoughts… that’s how MTV is. Every single year at the VMA’s, they will pull some kind of controversy with an artist just to get people talking and to help bring up the ratings. They will do anything to attract attention. Not a lot of people watch the VMA’s anymore and MTV knows it too. That’s why they do this shock factor stuff on the VMA’s hoping that will get people to tune in. That’s why some people still watch every year ’cause they’re wondering what kind of controversy MTV will pull off next. They’ve been doing the shock factor stuff for years. Goes way back in the 90’s when Krist Novoselic of Nirvana threw his bass up in the air and hit him in the head when it came down. Controversy goes way back before then too. I’ll never forget Howard Stern’s Fartman. Most of the shock factor stuff were fake and scripted except for the Novoselic bass throwing incident… that was pretty real.

I don’t know why people continue to support the commercial mainstream of music but whatever. If you think these artists are talented and if you think the industry is real, then you’re delusional and need to wake up. Like I previously said before about fame, most of the industry are auto-tuned and lip syncing bullshit. That’s the VMA’s.

I had a lot of respect for the industry during the 90’s grunge and metal era but since pop & rap took over… there’s no good music anymore.

To be fair to Miley though, she’s just trying to get out of her Disney image. She’s trying to grow out of her child role model stuff.  I’ve been saying that on this blog for years now. No matter what you think of her VMA’s performance, she is succeeding with her goal of getting out of her Disney image. She clearly doesn’t wanna be Hanna Montana anymore. I haven’t seen the video of her performance yet but I will get around to it.

I stopped watching the VMA’s years ago. It’s the same garbage every year. I got better things to watch. I was watching “Breaking Bad” last night instead.

Kev

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Cool Video: The Melvins walk off stage after fan throws plastic water bottle at guitarist…

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The Melvins, a legendary punk rock group is seen here about ready to start a gig in Canada… the band starts playing the song and a fan throws a plastic water bottle at the guitarist’s chest. The band stops the song and walks off after saying a few cuss words at the crowd.

I know some people would mistakenly believe that the band did an unprofessional thing here but to be honest, I’m siding with the Melvins. You pay your money to go see band shows. When you go, you don’t heckle ’em and throw stuff at ’em. Doesn’t matter if it’s a water bottle, a shoe, tomatoes or whatever. You give the band shit, they’ll give you shit back and that’s what went on here. Bands get stuff thrown at them all the time. It happens. People have thrown much worse things at bands like glass beer bottles and things like that.

After what happened to Dimebag, I think bands have all their right to react to thing like this. They are concerned for their safety and protecting themselves. Not only for themselves, it’s for the safety of the people who went to the shows.

The band are there to entertain you. You want to give them bullshit, it’s a good idea for them to walk off. I would have done the same thing if I ever get a band someday. It’s called karma.

Even if it was a plastic water bottle and wasn’t gonna do any harm, it’s still very rude to throw stuff at ’em. Can be a bit distracting when playing your instruments. It’s okay that fans want to throw beach balls or balloons on stage like it always happens but bottles of any kind… no. This is the same thing as a little kid getting punished for throwing a pencil at a teacher at school. You know how when you got to show the school teacher respect? The same you must do for a rock band.

If you don’t like a band, then don’t go. Simple as that. You gotta respect the Melvins. They were the ones who made Nirvana happen.

Kev

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Happy 65th birthday, Robert Plant!!!

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Ya know, I hate when people hate on Led Zeppelin and bash Robert Plant. These guys need to be respected. Love ’em or hate ’em, Led Zeppelin is the world’s greatest rock n’ roll band. They were the reasons why I do what I do. They made me the musician that I am. As a kid, when I heard Led Zeppelin for the first time, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life… play guitar. I wanted to play like Jimmy Page. I don’t know if you notice but most of my songwriting has been borrowed from Led Zeppelin quite often. That’s where my tight and aggressive guitar playing comes from. I get that by listening to way too much Led Zeppelin.

Back to Robert Plant, he may not sing that great like he used to but he is STILL a great rock n’ roll singer and performer. I’ve always respected Robert through his Led Zeppelin and solo careers. I think his solo albums: “Manic Nirvana” and “Fate of Nations” were his best solo albums. I also loved the album he did with Alison Krauss.

Even though there may never be another Led Zeppelin reunion — who knows — maybe Robert and Jimmy will collaborate on a second album together. Robert and Jimmy has been best friends forever so I think they will do more projects even though it’s not Led Zep. Maybe Jonesy will join them on a side project. Anything is possible.

Happy Birthday, and thanks Robert!

Kev

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I just don’t understand all the hate toward jam band, Phish… why???

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In facebook, I am seeing so many people bash the jam band, Phish. So many people say that the band sucks musically. They accuse Trey of being arrogant and egotistical. They also accuse the band of promoting drug culture. I look at all of this and say to myself. Why?

I see nothing wrong with Phish at all. They are a great band and I’ve always respected them. They’re just musicians like the rest of us. Just like all bands they started off unsigned. They started off playing at small places in Vermont where not many people came to see them play. Phish has definitely came a long way so why all the hate? No matter if you like ’em or hate ’em, they accomplished a lot. They do a lot of touring more than making records. I think they’re good songwriters. I think all the musicians in the band are very talented. Trey is a master at guitar. Mike Gordon and the rest of the guys are talented too. They have interesting improvisational skills, and they sound nothing like the Grateful Dead.

I have seen Phish live in concert a couple of times and would go see them again. I would have gone to see them at SPAC and the Glens Falls Civic Center but tickets were sold out pretty quick, anyways.

Why hate on the band when so much music today is so fake? We have so much fake pop and rap music today while Phish is a band who plays real instruments, and they don’t fake anything. They don’t lip sync. They really play their instruments and can do it well. They put on the most fun live gigs too. I enjoy Phish albums and enjoy seeing them live.

Congrats to Phish on 30 years. Now here is a band who is definitely, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame worthy! Phish really deserves the respect. Trey is not the best singer in the world but you don’t need to be to play this kind of music. You don’t have to be a good singer to perform improvisational music. Phish has also played just about every genre. They did it all! Rock n’ roll, blues, jazz, reggae, funk, metal, hard rock, etc. You name it, they probably played it.

Phish are genius musicians. Legends they are. I’ve always respected Trey Anastasio. He’s an interesting guy and seems down to earth to me. So I see nothing wrong with Phish. There’s so much Phish hate in facebook lately that I thought I would respond and defend them a little bit.

I really think people bash them out of jealousy a little bit. They’re just jealous ’cause they can’t play music the way Phish does and it’s killing them. They know Trey is a genius guitar player. He really is a virtuoso. I also think people don’t like them ’cause of the long jams they do on stage. Really, they jam on stage for a long time for one song. They can play a single song all night if they wanted to. That’s why they are called, “jam bands”. That’s what they do, Jam and rock out.

Give them a chance people. If you actually listen to them, you would find them quite fun. You don’t have to be a stoner to enjoy this type of music. I don’t do drugs at all. I don’t even smoke weed but I like all the jam rock and psychedellic stuff. I don’t really enjoy being around hippies too much, I understand but I just like the music.

Kev

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Cool Video: Lady Gaga goes naked in new video…

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A new video by Lady Gaga have surfaced the web today. In it, she’s doing some kind of weird performance art known as the Abramovic Method. I believe this video is in tribute to, Marina Abramovic.

A lot of people are probably hating on Lady Gaga for this but what she’s doing is “art”. Performance art. Doing it in the nude is completely okay ’cause that’s what a lot of artists do. Perform art in the nude. You know how painters would paint nude people? Well this is pretty much the same thing.

I think it’s a beautiful video. It’s why I love Lady Gaga. She’s not afraid to take her creativity to extremes.

Now the whole world knows what she looks like completely naked and I think she looks beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself like this. It’s all part of art. She’s not doing this for attention at all. She has a message behind this.

I think this is very different and awesome. Looking forward to her new album, “Art Pop”.

Kev

EDIT TO ADD: The reason for this video is to help promote the kickstarter project to fund the Marina Abramovic Institute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHrakCtg0Y0#at=104

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Happy 50th Birthday, Mr. James Hetfield

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Today, James Hetfield, rhythm guitarist and lead singer of Metallica (also one of the band’s main founders) turns into the big, 5-0 today. He may look a little older but he’s a lot younger.

Yes, Metallica gets a lot of hate and disrespect in this day and age. I still respect the band. Why? Simply because Metallica has a lot of balls and they aren’t afraid to do what they want to do. I don’t understand all the hate for Metallica. Yes, they sued Napster, yes they moved on from their speed metal music and went alternative, yes they aren’t good with sound production on their albums but no matter what you think of Metallica… they had a 30 year long career and they are the kings of metal. I don’t understand all the hate. They seem like real good dudes to me. I mean they reconciled with Megadeth, Slayer and even Napster’s Sean Parker. All 3 who Metallica had past feuds with. Sure enough, the fans will always find something new to hate about Metallica.

Metallica are a band just like all the others. They just want to get together and play music. They’re not gonna stay in the same style of music forever. All bands want to change and evolve. They all do. I stuck with Metallica through all the their albums even with the “Load/Reload”, “St. Anger”, “Lulu”, albums. I even liked those albums. Metallica will always have my back and my support. I had the opportunity to see them live in concert finally and it’s a night I’ll never forget.

People want to act like these guys are the most hated band in America but they’re just regular dudes and they’re just musicians. That is all! Anybody who hates Metallica just wants to be a bandwagon jumper and side with popular opinion. There’s nothing wrong with liking a band everybody hates. They’re still great songwriters.

Happy Birthday, James. Now start making the follow-up album to “Death Magnetic”. We had to wait a long time for “Death Magnetic”… now don’t force us to wait a long time for the next record. Metallica doesn’t spend a lot of time in the studio ’cause they’re more worried about touring around the world than writing and recording. Seriously, these guys do so much touring. It’s incredible. That’s another reason I respect them. They tour more than any other rock band out there.

Long live Metallica!!! \m/ I’m looking forward to their “Through the Never”, big screen 3D movie too. I’ll probably go see it!

Kev