Random/off topic posts

Want to try singing “acapella” for youtube…

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I think I’m gonna start singing songs for youtube acapella as well. For years, I have always sung songs with a guitar, but I think I want to try singing without an instrument. See what kind of feedback I get with my vocals without an instrument accompanying it. I can never tell how good my singing is, and this will be a good way to do it. Just to test out my singing skills. I really have been working hard on the singing. Trying to become an actual “singer” is tough. It doesn’t happen over night.

If I knew of a vocal coach, then I would work with him/her, but I don’t know any vocal coaches around here, so I just teach myself with an instructional DVD. I want to take singing seriously from now on. Have more range and control of my voice. Sing with more passion too!

Kev

TV

Cool Video: Frank Underwood spoof of the White House Correspondents Dinner…

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Netflix’s original series, House of Cards, has gotten so popular that Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is becoming a favorite character for everyone. The show decides to spoof the White House Correspondents dinner by having Frank Underwood join in. “House of Cards” is a political drama that has a bit of dark comedy in it as well. The show can also be humorous.

I laughed pretty hard at this video. Especially the Anthony Weiner comments which really did it to me.

“House of Cards”, really is a great show; wish they would get season 2 green-lighted already. Enjoy the laughs.

Kev

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dCzI521sgqE

Random/off topic posts

Cover songs…

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I think I’m gonna be doing a lot more cover songs for my youtube channel. I want to perform cover songs that I like and the ones that inspired me over the years. I’ll be performing my favorite cover song from the 50’s to today’s music — every decade. I just want to prove people that I can be something musically. I was proud of how that “Freedom” cover came out; if you’ve noticed, the singing has gotten slightly better. Singing a bit stronger and a bit higher as well. I’ve been practicing real had on the singing like I’ve been telling you. I’ve been taking the singing a little more seriously now. I’ve always liked playing cover songs; I’ve been doing them for years ever since I started gigging.

I’ve been doing cover songs for youtube ’cause I’m not ready to start writing new originals yet; will soon. This is just another reason why I want to get better at my grammar/English. It’s also to help improve my lyric writing to the next level. Writing good lyrics requires writing good sentences just like you would do in a novel or short story. Want to read more poetry to help with my lyrics like I said previously. Music is going to change for the better, and doing all I can.

Kev

movies

Thought: Why “Rocky – The Musical” deserves to happen…

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After Rocky – The Musical made it’s successful debut in Hamburg, Germany in 2012, Broadway has gotten the green-light to put the musical in production at the Winter Garden Theater in NYC for the year 2014 — which is obviously, next year! Of course, they had to get Stallone’s blessing, in which he seems to be all for it! While Sly has had a long movie career, it seems that he is most proud of his work with the Rocky movies more than everything else he has done in the past. The character Rocky means so much to Sly for so many reasons. One of the reasons is that the character reminds him so much of his real life. Before Sly’s fame & fortune, he too started off as a nobody just like Rocky in the first movie. Sly was homeless; living in the streets of New York City for a few weeks until he sold the script to “Paradise Alley” for a $100, and then he got his acting start doing adult-porn. Yes, it’s true. Just like Rocky, Sly himself went from zero to hero.

Rocky is not just a boxing movie and Sly always made that pretty clear. It’s about life and moving forward to bigger things. The character also means so much to all of us, which is how the movies got so big and successful. I’ve always loved the first movie. It’s one of my favorite films ever made, and I will never get tired of it — ever. To be quite honest with you, I always looked at the first Rocky movie as something theatrical. Like a play — almost. That’s what the first film felt like.

Bringing that story to the stage is just their way of keeping that legendary story alive. Keep it well known. It’ll help bring more people to the first film. Rocky deserves to be a part of everyone lives ’cause that character is so special. While Sylvester Stallone did so many great action movies, it was Rocky that mattered the most. That’s how I became obsessed with Sly’s movies to begin with. It all started with Rocky. The first Rocky film was Sly’s best acting out of all the films he has done. I wonder if the actor who plays Rocky for the musical will be able to make the acting style similar to Sly’s in the first movie. I’ll have to wait and see for myself.

This is a play I would like to go to NYC for to see. I think this deserves to happen.

More on the story, here.

Kev

Kev Brock music

Cool Video: The Brock covers Richie Havens “Freedom”…

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Well, here it is. Did the best I could. Like I said, I’ll never be able to get Richie’s exact style of rhythm playing since he was so used to playing along with the congas, so I gave the song my own take. That’s what you want to do. You don’t want to make the cover song sound exactly like the original anyway; you want to give it your own style.

Enjoy! I hope!

Kev

movies

Netflix Pick (DVD rental): Sinister (w/ Ethan Hawke)

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Last night, I watched the new horror film, “Sinister” starring, Ethan Hawke.

It tells the story of the true-crime writer named, Ellison Oswalt, who moves his family into a home where a horrific murder happened in the backyard. Ellison’s family — who has a wife, a son, and daughter — doesn’t know about the crime. Ellison moved his family to the home to do research to write a novel about it. His novel writing career is in a career slump and he wants to write a book on the tragedy at this home, hoping that will make him a successful writer again. As he learns more and more about the crime that happened years ago at the home, he becomes even more obsessed with it and works on the research for hours & hours. Ellison finds footage of tapes that you would watch on an 8mm camera (pictured above). Each footage on the tapes has different murders that were disturbing and graphic; however, in each tape, he finds the face of a unique figure he never saw before. As a result, his family tries to talk him out of what he is doing, and things in the home get much worse after that.

That’s enough of the plot. On with my thoughts of the movie. Honestly, I thought this was one of the best horror films of the last 10 years.  I think this movie, “Sinister”, and the new, “Evil Dead”, movie were the best horror films ever made in over a decade. “Sinister” really was that good. It is true horror at it’s finest. True supernatural horror. The movie was well-filmed and well-made. It felt like a horror movie all the way through, and it didn’t rely on gore too much. There is gore but not a whole lot. The less gore, the scarier a horror film gets. “Sinister” was actually scary as hell and I was a little creeped out at some parts. Especially, the film’s ending which was a big shocker I never saw coming. This was Ethan’s best acting too.

I think I’m gonna get this film on Blu-Ray sometime ’cause it will be a great film to watch on Halloween. If you like creepy ghost movies, then this is the film to see. It really was a great movie, I was impressed with it.

Kev

Random/off topic posts

Planning to start reading a lot of poetry, I think…

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I think starting this year, I’m going to start reading a lot of poetry. The reason is that I want to read a lot of poetry to help with my lyric writing. Just more of my research material. I want to try to make my lyric writing a little more poetic instead of telling a story. I don’t really like “story-telling”, kind of songs anymore. I want to do research on how to write poetry. I’m also planning to start writing poems of my own just to start practicing. If I write songs that are a little more poetic, maybe listeners will start taking my songs a little more seriously. I think the storytelling thing in folk music is old and boring; I want nothing to do with that stuff anymore. I don’t like the Bob Dylan/Utah Phillips kind of songwriting, and I don’t want to be viewed as that for my music. I just want to make my songwriting a little bit different, next time around. I don’t like spoken-word storytelling songs and a lot of my earlier music is like that. I want to start making some actual songs with real singing and all that stuff. I’m working very hard.

Sorry, I haven’t posted the last few days. It’s just that the weather have been so nice out over the weekend — I’ve been doing better things, other than hanging on the computer. Sometimes I take a little break on blogging ’cause I just don’t care anymore and getting bored of the blog. I’ll only post things if it’s only worth posting, these days.

Kev

Random/off topic posts

About the Richie Havens “Freedom” cover!!!

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I think I got it! After practicing and rehearsing this song all-day-long, I think I’ll be-able to play this song just fine with no problem! Yes, I have been rehearsing the song with a metronome so it can sound much tighter. I love playing an entire song throughout with a metronome. It’s a bit of work and kind of hard to play at a steady pace in sync with the beat — especially, when you’re playing at 130 bpm, which is what I set the tempo on. I’ll never be able to get Richie’s exact rhythm pattern with the song at all; so, I just gave the song my own take on it. I’ll have the video uploaded in youtube this weekend. I think it has potential to be another big cover of mine for youtube. It might become just as big as my Whitney Houston tribute. The Richie Havens tribute could possibly get even more views. We’ll wait and see to see what kind of feedback it’s gonna get. It’s not that hard to sing either. Like I said: the song is a piece-of-cake. I think people will like my Richie Havens tribute coming up. I can play so much better with a metronome too! It really helps and makes a difference in your playing!

Kev

music

Report: Black Sabbath extends North American tour… but can Tony handle it???

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Originally, Black Sabbath had 4 or 5 shows to their tour but now they added a bunch more shows. Sadly, the band is not playing NY State… yet… but who knows, maybe they’ll add a NY show soon? To you NY Sabbath fans, the closest we’ll get to see them are either the Philadelphia or Boston shows.

Hopefully, Tony Iommi can handle this long tour ’cause as some of you he has lymphoma cancer. Can Black Sabbath go through all these shows successfully without anything happening to Tony? They could play a few shows, and all of a sudden, Tony has an emergency situation which will force them to cancel the rest of the tour. That could happen. We’ll wait and see if they can pull this tour off.

This could be the final Black Sabbath album and tour. I can’t blame the guys for wanting to do so much with Sabbath ’cause they want the band’s career to end on a positive note before Tony dies. Despite Bill Ward not being in the band, fans should support this band anyway ’cause of Tony’s cancer. Lymphoma is an impossible cancer to fight, so Tony may not actually have that much time left. That’s why the band is in a rush to get stuff done. It’s gonna be a sad loss when it’s time for Tony to go ’cause he is such an important person in music. There can’t be Black Sabbath without him so the band will probably call it quit after he dies. Sabbath was Tony’s band to begin with.

See the band’s tour listings, here.

Kev

movies, sports

Film Review: 42

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Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Christopher Meloni

Directed by: Brian Helgeland

Today, I decided to go hit the movies for something to do. Since there is currently no movie theater in the Wilton Mall, I’ve been going to a different mall that does have a theater. There’s a couple of good movies out that I wanted to see currently. They were: “Oblivion” w/ Tom Cruise, “The Place Beyond the Pines”, and “42”. So, out of the three choices, I ended up going for the baseball movie, “42”. I wanted to see something real and something serious. So here is my review…

Plot/Synopsis: This tells the life story of professional baseball legend, Jackie Robinson, who is one of the all-time greats. It is set around the time when blacks wasn’t being accepted in this society. It also depicts the MLB signing their first African-American. Thanks to Branch Rickey (played by Ford) who helped make that happen and changed history forever in professional baseball. 

One thing to keep in mind before you go see this film is that this isn’t really a Jackie Robinson biopic film. This film doesn’t depict his entire life. It is set around the time he first signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. I am not much of a baseball fan. I used to be when I was a kid. I used to be obsessed with baseball but gave up watching it over the years. After watching this movie, made me start to appreciate baseball again. They titled this movie, “42” instead of “The Jackie Robinson Movie” for a reason. It’s not just a movie about, Jackie. It’s about changing history in sports. It’s about welcoming black people into the sport of professional baseball.

I was pretty impressed on how this movie was filmed. It was filmed like a historical sports show like you would see on TV. The cinematography was good. The casting was good, and was well-acted by everyone.

Speaking of the casting, I was pretty impressed with the film’s leading star, Chadwick Boseman who played Jackie. Chadwick is an unknown actor who I’ve never heard of, and this film will indeed make him a huge star. Christopher Meloni (former star of “Law and Order: SVU”) had an interesting role. Like usual most of Chris’s roles were short-tempered characters and he had a short-temper kind of character in this film once-again.

I was most impressed with Harrison Ford’s performance, though. His performance is going to grab everyone’s attention. I think Harrison’s performance is Oscar award worthy, for sure. In Harrison’s roles over the years in his career, his acting has always been the same — nothing new — but Harrison’s acting was something different in this film. This film really showcased Harrison’s talent and I know that his acting has been critical by people over the years. Yes, Harrison still plays a grumpy old man in this film but they made him look a lot older. His acting really was something special, and I think he’s got some awards coming his way.

Other than that, this was a very entertaining movie — all the way through. I wasn’t bored a bit, and this film makes me want to watch MLB a lot more. It definitely does have Oscar potential. I loved this film, very much. I thought this was the best baseball movie since Costner’s “Field of Dreams” (which is also my favorite baseball movie). I’m glad I decided to see this film today, and I’m definitely buying the BluRay when it comes out. This film, “42”, can have some different emotions, though. It can go from enjoyable, sad, and funny. Yes, there are some comical scenes in the film to add a bit of humor. It was a pretty amazing film and so far, the best film this year. Two thumbs up.

Kev

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