BAD NEWS AND WINTER BLUES

this is starting to be the most depressing blog out there, eh? what with headers like this on! hehehe...

the bad news is rather just MORE bad news in relation to my chosen profession, music. check this out from Yahoo.

now, i would argue- and *have* been to any poor schmuck who, say, gets caught in a elevator with me or whatever- that music has been devalued in america for sometime. really for about 30 years or so. how, you may ask? well, by having music EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME, people naturally won't value something they get all the time. i mean, i'll be in some shitty store and over the bad p.a. will come some great song say like Nilsson's "everybody's talking." now, this is one of the best songs of all-time, really. and so poignant! but it loses all of it value to people cuz they've heard it a thousand times thanks to oldies stations and
and dept. stores, etc. i KNOW nobody really cares about his kind of stuff but me, but hell, that's what a personal blog is for, right?

by the way, i am thrilled the Pittsburgh Steelers are in the super bowl because i have been a fan since i was 6 years old and i love their running back, Jerome Bettis because he went to notre dame, my favorite college football team for all my life, and because he's such a cool guy. i hope they get "one for the thumb" for Jerome.

nothing much to report on the music front...except that i will soon have an announcement to let people know that soon ALL my songs will be on iTunes. it will soon be the ONLY place to get "Landlocked"as it's been out-of-print for a few years now and i'm not sure when it's gonna be re-issued at this point.

cheers,
kevin

new year, same old crap...

Ha! how's that for a header title? anyway, i hope everybody had a great holiday time (take that, Bill O'Reilly) and happy new year to y'all...

here's a interesting link to my friend Mattias from sweden's website. he is a super talented musician and producer who has his own studio in Sweden and he has GREAT gear like 2 or 3 Mellotrons and an Optigan and it's rarer cousin, the Orchestron and here is great link to a movie of him playing with what is probably the world's first drum machine, the Chamberlin Rhythm-mate

Mattias is in a few bands but i first learned of him via his band, Nanook of the North. Mattias sent me a cd-r of this album and, pretty much unlike anything else i've ever had sent to me, it was great! so, i forwarded it on to Parasol records and they flipped and put it out. i was happy to help bring them together. i actually did something like that once before when back in the mid-90's i got to know Liam Hayes a.k.a. Plush and helped him hook up with Flydaddy records for his single "No Education/Soaring and Boring." the downside is i lost contact with him in, like, '98 and haven't talked to him since. he ended up going back to drag city after that single anyway...

so, everybody and their brother does a "Best Of..." list this time every year but since i can't remember much about what i listened to new this year, i'll just say for now that i really liked MOST of these albums last year:

SFA- "Love Kraft"
Sufijan Stevens- "Illinoize"
Devandra Barnhart - "Cripple Crow"
Broadcast - "Tender Buttons"
Paul McCartney - "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard"

and no, i haven't hear the new Burt Bachrach record yet...i'll let ya know...