I wonder if President Obama will help Nairobi, Kenya…

What’s going on at the Nairobi mall in Kenya is very tragic. It’s a heartbreaking and very sad story. I’m praying for the people in Kenya. While this is horrible, this should be good enough to show that the Muslim religion isn’t peaceful at all. I also wonder if President Obama will respond to the Nairobi mall attacks. A lot of people have been killed and many more have been held hostage by Islamic people. Muslims are getting out of hand in this world. With their violence and hate of innocent people.

I don’t think President Obama will respond to the Nairobi attacks. Simply because in his last African trip he avoided Kenya like the plague and he will completely avoid this too. I’m sure people are going to expect Obama to play peacemaker in this. Will Obama send US military help in Nairobi?

No… and for a few reasons:

1) Kenya could possibly be his birthplace.

2) He stands behind his fellow Muslim people.

Watch President Obama stay silent throughout the Nairobi tragedy as it happens in the news. He’s willing to help other countries when they’re in trouble like Syria for example but he’s gonna leave Kenya alone in this.

So far, Obama hasn’t said anything about the Nairobi mall attacks and don’t expect him to either. It’s gonna hurt his presidency if he gets himself into this one since it involves Muslims and all.

Kev

Songwriting…

Some musicians seem to get all butthurt when the truth is told about the songwriting process. Sure, there maybe no right or wrong way to write original music but that maybe okay for beginner or amateur musicians, though. It’s okay for beginner/amateur musicians to write chords, tab or other things down on paper to write songs but when you want to become part of the professional musicians community… you really gotta learn your shit. Learn music theory, learn to develop your ear, and learn how to write songs on a professional level.

How long does it usually take me to write a full song from start to finish? It should take no more than a full day to write a song. Some songwriters would spend months and months on it. The way I do things, I like to get songs done right away. I’m the type of guy who has this special rule, “If I start it, I finish it.”. I never sit on a unfinished song for a long period of time. I usually write songs pretty quickly. That new song I wrote, “Leave This Place” was done in a couple of hours. I could come up with 4 or 5 songs a day if I wanted to. Sometimes it does take a long time for me to finish a song but it rarely happens. I used to write the lyrics first but from this point on, I’m doing it the other way around. Write the music first, and then lyrics. I’m finding it much easier that way.

Like I said, it’s okay to write songs however you want to as a beginner/amateur musician but when you’re playing for years and still playing random stuff until you find something you like… then there’s something wrong there. You’re not the actual musician you say you are.

There’s nothing wrong with me saying that songwriters should write songs from the heart and writing songs you hear in your head ’cause that’s how most songs in the music industry have came up with songs over the years. They just think of them in their head and try to get it out of them on their instrument. That’s how most of my songs have been written in the past. I just think of them in my head and get ’em out of me. I’m not the best at improvisation yet but I am still able to find ways to get songs out of my mind by humming along to the melody in my head and try to get it on the guitar the best I can.

If you wanna get great at songwriting, playing from the heart is the only way to do it. Play with feeling and let the fingers do the talking.

I’m not really trying to tell you how to make your art but if you want to be taken seriously as a songwriter, you must learn to play a little more professionally. Music theory is probably the most important skill which a lot of songwriters around here ignore. Theory will help your songwriting. Learn it all… the scales/modes, learn how chords are built, the circle of fifths, intervals, etc. Learn theory and that’ll take your songwriting on the guitar to the next level.

I’ve taken a lot of time off from songwriting so I can focus on guitar playing. Wanted to improve and get better on that. Learn some theory and all of this stuff. I’ve been criticized about my musicianship in the past and I wanted to get better by teaching myself more guitar. It helps, trust me.

I’m just not afraid to take a realistic approach when it comes to music in songwriting and music over all. I’m not afraid to expose all the fakes in musicians. My posts aren’t aimed at a certain band in particular, they’re aimed at pretty much all of them, in fact.

I’m not acting like a better musician than everyone else, believe me, as I know there are talented musicians out there that are way better than me. I’m not the best musician myself but I’m always trying to improve every time. You can’t always think you’re good all the time. You have to admit that you are bad at some things and it’s not that hard to do — people won’t care. By the way, I never saw myself as a professional musician or a god at music — I’m just a regular guy who likes to play music. I just wanna write songs, be the best I can be, and just enjoy. I never took myself serious.

Kev

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

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

“Bands Who Jerk Themselves Off”…

All musicians and bands
want to move forward
and be successful.
When they do, they act
all important and their
ego will get big once
they become well-known
and established.
They jerk themselves off
pretty much.

That’s the way local bands
been acting in this day
and age — thanks to
social media sites like
facebook.

The last thing you want
to do is jerk yourself off
with your success.
It won’t get you anywhere.
It doesn’t make you cool.
It doesn’t make you a better person.

Bands don’t want to admit
they have huge egos.
When you tell them they do,
don’t expect much of an
answer.
They’ll become defensive…

Making claims how they are
a good person, and how they
work hard.
Welp, you just explained how
much of an ego you really
have.

If you want even more evidence
on how bands have
huge egos…
they always expect to
headline gigs.
They jerk off to big
crowds.
They jerk off with their
so-called accomplishments.
Bands are horrible at
handling criticism.
Need I go on?

Bands try their best to
make themselves look good.
They really need to leave their
ego at the door.
It’s nice to get success and move
forward but the last thing you
want to do is
jerk yourself off.
It’s good karma if you don’t
respond to your success
in music at all.

Kev

Stephen King’s Top 10 best novels… in celebration of his birthday today…

Stephen King celebrates his 66th birthday today and I thought it would be cool to list ten of my favorite books of his. Yes, I have his entire body of work. Yes, I have ’em all in original editions with original cover jacket and all. A few of them don’t have cover jackets, though. I have collected every Stephen King book over the years but the only one I’m missing is, “Danse Macabre”, which that one is hard to find the original edition of. It wasn’t easy for me to collect his entire body of work as most of his books are so old and rare now.

I’m looking forward to his upcoming new book, “Doctor Sleep”, which is the sequel to the Shining.

Anyway, here are my top 10 favorite Stephen King books in no particular order:

  • The Dark Tower Series (all of them)
  • Needful Things
  • The Green Mile
  • The Dark Half
  • Under the Dome
  • Dreamcatcher
  • Nightmares and Dreamscapes (his best short story collection)
  • The Shining
  • Misery
  • Lisey’s Story

I like all of his books, of course, but those ones I listed are my favorite. Happy Birthday, Stephen. I’m sure he and his wife Tabitha are enjoying it somewhere in Maine.

Kev

Why so many people are upset with “Star Trek Into Darkness”… just saw it…

I’ve just seen, “Star Trek Into Darkness” and since so many people gave this film mixed reviews, I wanted to talk about my thoughts on why people hated it so much. There’s a few reasons for the negative criticism over, “Star Trek Into Darkness”, the latest Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams. I’ll put a spoiler warning in.

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The reason this film has gotten negatively criticized a lot is because of a few big scenes…..

1) Kirk’s death scene is a total remake from Spock’s death from, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”. Spock stealing, “Khhaaaaaan’s” catchphrase from Kirk was wrong too.

2)  The Spock vs. Khan fight scene was messed up also. Keep in mind that Mr. Spock was never a violent guy. Throughout the original TV series and the original movies, Spock never used his fists to fight. Except the only time Spock used violence was that he used a weapon to fight Kirk in the original Star Trek episode, “Amok Time”. Other than that, Spock never used any violence whatsoever. If Spock wanted to hurt people, he would do the pinch nerve that he’s known for and I don’t think I haven’t seen Zachary Quinto do that with his Spock.

3) The Enterprise hiding underwater was silly as hell.

4) There are also tons of plot holes throughout the film… the script was a mess.

5) Benedict Cumberbatch trying too hard to be Ricardo Montalban who played the original Khan

The good things I can say about the new movie is that Spock in the volcano scene was kind of cool and I also liked Peter Weller, the Robocop actor, being in the film. He played a good villain. I also liked Alice Eve, the sexy blonde in the film.

Other than that, the film was a big disappointment. I didn’t “hate it”…. it just wasn’t very good. It was definitely a little better than “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”, though. I’m glad JJ left for Star Wars. Who ever takes JJ’s place in Star Trek better do a good job ’cause this franchise needs to get saved, big time.

I’d still say ditch the re-boot and try something new.

Why not give “Deep Space Nine” their own movie? I just started watching “Deep Space Nine” on Netflix and it’s a great show actually. I kind of like it more than TNG, honestly. “Deep Space Nine” definitely deserves their own film.

Kev

Obamacare defunding getting passed through the House is good news but…

… I have a feeling that the Senate is gonna vote “Nay” on it. Even if Obamacare defunding gets passed through the Senate, you know President Obama will get it “vetoed”, anyways. The House maybe victorious but Obama himself is gonna do whatever it takes to prevail. Obama the coward himself responded to this by saying, “Republicans are trying to mess with me”… like a tough guy he thinks he is.

It’s all up to the Senate now if they want to listen to the American people or not which is gonna be tough ’cause there are more liberals in the Senate than there are right-wingers.

The fact is that Obamacare is really bad. It’s goal is to ruin people’s lives. It’s not a good healthcare bill at all and if you think it is you need to inform yourself. Obamacare is pretty scary stuff.

While it’s good that Congress is trying to fight Obamacare… they need to start working on trying to impeach the President. That would be even better than defunding or trying to repeal Obamacare.

My previous post on Obamacare was correct. It’s just that liberal idiot trying to mess with me. So I’m good.

I also don’t think we’ll get a government shut down ’cause to be honest, the government has always been shutdown if you know what I mean.

Kev

 

On removal of comments…

I remove comments on my site for a couple of reasons. I remove them if they don’t add any value to a discussion (in other words, not taking the discussion seriously) or if I feel comments are ridiculously stupid, doesn’t make any sense and most importantly of all, I don’t accept asshole and negative comments. Mostly the people trying to reply are nothing but assholes. Almost every reply by certain readers try to write an asshole comment to me and I can’t accept that here. There is nothing wrong with my posts at all. I try to keep my posts positive and entertaining the best I can but as always I get nothing but haters trying to be an asshole to me — pretty much, all the time.

I never understood why people think it’s okay to be negative to me all they want to. Personally, I think they do it ’cause they find it funny to them to harass me. That’s the only reason they do it. They’re like bullies in high school. Period. End of story.

I don’t accept criticism toward myself and my writing on this site.

Now, there are better ways of writing to me about things you disagree with. Instead of slamming or bashing me, why don’t you kindly correct me on things? Teach me things in a friendly way instead of saying immature shit like, “You don’t know nothing”, “you’re not smart”, and on and on and on. You get the idea, right?

I get angry readers writing nasty shit that I don’t care to read so I just delete them. I don’t care who the reader is. Wanna be an asshole? The comment will be gone. Don’t like it? Then leave my blog.

I’m a human being. I take what people say seriously too and I’m not gonna let people think it’s okay to write to me how they want and people have had this problem with me for many years. I try to stay positive and everyone else just want to be negative. I’m tired of it.

If you want your comment approved publicly, just play it cool and treat me like a human being, it’ll get posted. It’s that simple, right?

I treat my other social networking sites the same way: Facebook, youtube, twitter, etc. If people start to act like an asshole and if things get out of hand… goodbye. I get too many trolls following everything I do and obsessing with everything I say… I never understood why. Just a bunch of losers with no lives. I’m strict on moderating comments for a good reason. Pretty much that reason is all the haters and trolls on here. I’m trying to keep ’em all away.

As for the Obamacare defunding getting passed in the House is good news. I plan to give that post a re-write. Leaving the comments closed in this post ’cause it was meant to be a read and not reply kind of thing.

Kev

“A True Songwriter”

I see the way some musicians
wrote songs.
Some songwriters would write
the lyrics first and then they’ll
write the chords above certain
lyrics.
Songwriters will even go as far
as writing down guitar tab for
riff ideas or guitar solos.

Stop, right there!!! Time out!
If you write songs in that way,
then you are not a songwriter.

The way I always wrote guitar parts
for music is that I never wrote
stuff down on paper.
The only thing I would ever write
down on paper are the lyrics,
of course.

The beauty of music is being able
to play from the heart and your
mind.
Being able to play what you hear
in your head.
That’s a true songwriter.

When making music, I never plan
ahead.
Music should be unpredictable.
I never say, “Oh, I have a plan of what
I want my song to sound like”.
You just play whatever comes out of you.
It’s just as simple as that.

I’m not knocking the way you write songs.
Not trying to tell you how to write them.
If you want to be respected as a musician,
this is the way to go.

Learn to have a good ear. Learn to improvise
more. If you do that, you’ll be surprised of how
much better of a songwriter you can be.

Kev

“Negative and dramatic people”

I can’t stand
negative and dramatic people.
There are too many out there!!!
I just want to live my life
positively and happy the best
I can.
I don’t really get into
other peoples problems or
soap opera stuff.
A lot of people like to
complain how they are having
a bad day, gossip about stuff,
people being rumor mongers,
and just bullshit, all-around.
I’m not interested in people who
bring themselves or other people
down.
If people want to be all negative.
Leave me out.
This is part of why I have no problem
being a loner
’cause people are crazy.
Drama gives me a headache.
Playing guitar is the only way
that gets me away from bullshit.

Kev

The Official Music Website of Kevin Brock – Brocking N' Rolling