Sometimes I think that the voices of certain singers are as familiar to me as the voices of my closest friends and family ....Those voices ...are my companions through bad times and great times.
... Some of those...voices... are... keys to my ... heart. They will always guide me through times when I have fits of excessive rationality.
To me, this observation gets to the heart of what it takes to resonate as an artist and is worth repeating. It is, indeed, a quality that extends beyond rationality.
Included in SVT's list of companions who have the quality to get inside of you is Johnny Cash, an artist he describes as:
Johnny Cash (I love his deep voice, powerful and fragile, fierce and affectionate. The two times I had the chance to see him live on stage are among the most impressing moments of music I ever experienced.)
I am not yet ready myself to make up my own list of great companions of the heart. However, I most certainly would include Johnny Cash. There are dozens of great videos posted on the web that capture his resonating voice, his own troubled soul, his appeal to the common man and the dispossessed, and his abiding love for his soul-mate [June Carter]. In fact, I just spent much of my Sunday morning just clicking and watching both artists perform and speak.
You can and should do the same on a lazy Sunday. However, for many artists who have yet to find your own compass, I came across the following interview [about 9 minutes well worth your time] in particular that I thought was a must watch to find inspiration and guidance when in the dark places:
"You have to be filled up in order to pour out..." [@6:24]
I mentioned to the producers, and I repeat here:
It would be an achievement beyond measure if, with a push from this community [and others], the piece stimulates an ever-expanding circle of your fans to reflect upon and address the urgent concerns of our conflict-weary planet. To that end, I will try to get more folks to check it out and give you and KHP more input.
Please check out the video and add your thoughts and ideas at The Majority's blogspace linked above and cited below.
Happy Sunday to you all. TCC
http://themajorityinfo.fuzz.com/blog/entry/Please-watch
Enjoy and have a mellow weekend! TCC
For those who can't open the link or don't have the time, here are a few take-aways from the article:
. What about the guys? I dunno. There doesn't yet seem to be a similar survey about male bloggers. What's goin' on here? Why do women always seem to be the pathfinders in the development of our social capital? Do we still live, when all is said and done, in a matriarcal world - from caveman to blogman - or, rather, I should say: from cavewoman to wonderwoman?
1."Blogosphere" may not be a pretty name for it, but it is a pretty attractive destination -- for women at least
2. more than one-third (35%) of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week. And that number increases if less-frequent visits are factored in. Of those women who are online any amount of time, 53% read blogs, 37% post comments to blogs and 28% write or update blogs
3. "We can now see that blogging is mainstream"
4. The study was based on surveys of two sample groups which together included several thousand respondents: one composed of participants in the BlogHer community and the other of online women selected to represent the general population of U.S. women. If anything, blogs do seem to capture a consistent audience.
5. Of the general population of online women who write blogs, 58% post entries at least weekly -- and of those who read blogs, 80% do so at least weekly.
6. Of women who said they write blogs, answers from BlogHer respondents and the general population were "nearly identical," saying they: most often do so for fun (65%); to express themselves (60%); to connect with others (40%); as a personal diary (34%); and to give advice or educate (26%).
7. Women read blogs for fun (46%); to get information (41%); stay up to date on family and friends (36%); stay up to date on specific topics (34%); connect with others (28%); and entertainment (26%).
8. the last finding is significant for all media. "I think other media have to be conscious that this is also entertainment. It's replacing other forms of news gathering, which has newspapers and magazines scared, but it's also [replacing] all of entertainment, which should have TV and movie [companies] scared," Ms. Page said.
9. there has been a noticeable shift away from traditional media. Some 24% of the women overall watch less TV, as do 43% of BlogHer users; another 25% and 22% of the general consumers read fewer magazines and newspapers, respectively, as do 31% in each category of BlogHer users.
10. Demographically, BlogHer users are fairly similar to average online women, although they skew much higher in the 25- to 41-year-old Gen X range, with 68% of the BlogHer users in that age range vs. 42% of overall women.
11. "We are almost a beacon of what's to come," Ms. Des Jardins said
Found on Fuzz
Hey, here’s an artist that I truly 100% found on Fuzz, having no prior knowledge of them beforehand. They live in Austria, a place where most people don’t expect to hear much about new music, but they’re well worth your time and attention.
As luck would have had it, I found them through a best guess match via Blip, the neat little Twitter-like audio application/conversation gestation creation now available in the navigation here on Fuzz. You enter in some keywords or the title of a song you’re listening to; Blip tries to find it, and presents a handful of options–the real thing, close matches and the like from a bunch of sources. Whatever I was looking for didn’t turn up, but a number of tracks by Bell Etage did, and since they didn’t have some sort of crazy name like ThEH FuNkY LoRdZzZ, they seemed worthy of notice.
Grateful for having checked them out, I now share the band Bell Etage with you, the Fuzzpublik. As a five-piece vehicle for singer-songwriter material in a young, poetic vein, Bell Etage struck me as pretty cool for two reasons: the overall restless rhythmic shakeup that’s present even in their calmest musical moments, and their use of blunt force, English-as-second-language lyrical delivery. The former owes a big debt to the bustling, anti-industry activity of ‘90s emo, as it separated into (and against) indie rock/pop ideas and its roots in hardcore. Listen to the snaking guitar lines and jagged wrong notes that pop out of a song like “A Drop of the Universe” and understand that not a whole lot of bands trying to play music this sincere and heartfelt actually have the control that these folks do in their attempt to strike such a balance. It speaks of time, experience, and the willingness to be different, all qualities that are shared by far too few acts out there. It’s redolent of a lot of ideas that usually don’t make it too far into songwriting showcases, and the fact that they can bring it across so naturally is quite remarkable. Their album, We Cried the Sunlight Down in the Day, is loaded with similar moments of wild surprise.
Onto the latter. Nobody’s ever expecting to hear someone singing seriously about masturbating in the opening verse of a song–and nobody really should–but it leaves “Feathers in the Washing Machine” with an uneasy feeling that carries right through to an almost immediate tempo shift to faster and more aggressive, hooky terrain. The dusky delivery of these words–odd ones at times, ones that don’t grasp a native subtlety–speak to a different set of rules. Their hustle is strong.
Anyone who likes Modest Mouse, Rainer Maria, Monochrome, any outfits of the brothers Leo (Ted or Chris, maybe even Danny) or the like really ought to check this band out. For playing within the boundaries of what we know to be an indie sound , Bell Etage takes a lot of chances. Those chances don’t translate to great work all of the time, but their yen for musical miscegenation, to weird things out in ways you wouldn’t expect, provide a bounty of real surprising, complex work that really helps to lift them up to the shoulder level of the faceless hordes out there.
Second, my take on it:
Hey, Doug
Like you, I was first looking for something else and then came across your intriguing review [to say the least] of the Austrian group, Bell Etage.
Using your perspectives as a guide, I gave their pieces a listen and agree that there is experience, control, wild surprise, and hustle in their work. Indeed, I would say that their efforts could raise them to a level that puts them above the faceless hordes.
I moved on to the group's bio and noted their own efforts to provide a literary frame to their pieces as follows:
"It's all about sex. Or loneliness, depending on the different characters...The Mojo never really reaches the surface...My house is crowded with...strangers...the songs are made of the observations from out there...They want to tell you what they have to say but in the same moment they don't want to. There is an aura of alarm to it,...It's all about sex, loneliness and silence. But mostly it's about the hope inside..."
I think Bell Etage will give their followers a worthwhile return on the investment of the social capital that one is prepared to expend on them. I'm investing.
What do you think?