must be doing something right

in spite of regularly shaking the foundation of my three-apartment home by way of rehearsals in our band's basement practice space, one of my neighbors went out of his way the other night to tell me that what we're playing sounds great, and that he plans on being there whenever we play out (soon).

considering that we're honing our performances of the same handful of songs, i take that as a great compliment. i think i'd hate us by now if i was in his shoes.

it's hard not to be excited. we've been working at this for some time, and now that we have vocalists in the mix, our songs are beginning to take on the kind of life that our earliest cracks at them only hinted at.

plus, when one of the biggest practice kinks is that your bass player is independently increasing tempo in some spots because he is getting excited in the middle of the performance, you know you're on to something pretty special.

good music writing

check out the angry young bostonian's round-up of lesser-known beach boys gems

here comes another great soundtrack tune

yep, the good ol' meatballs theme. fortunately, the background on this one isn't nearly as nebulous as that of the balls-to-the-wall rock from cheech and chong's next movie, as discussed in a post below. all indications point to the north star kids choir as being the responsible artist, and i think that name in and of itself does all the explaining we'll need.

pretty much the most joyous ode to shenanigans you'll ever hear. i love how the kids build up to screaming on those bridge-like parts.

beat street

i've found that the majority of the music i write tends to originate in little riffs i hear when i'm walking. when a rhythm is forceful and persistent enough to feel hard-wired without my having to do anything to help it along, and when i'm lucky enough to have a relatively clear, unfocused mind, the beats just kind of send notes pinballing around in my head. this tells me i need to get a little tape recorder to preserve such spontaneous ideas (it also proves to me, if nothing else, that i'm a pretty steady walker).

somewhat jealously, i wonder whether melodies and harmonies come from a place that's somehow more ethereal.

under what kinds of circumstances do you hear those special musical nuggets that are distinctly yours?

a great mystery

more often than not, you can pull up conclusive information on nagging bits of trivia by plumbing the limitless depths of the web. but there's times when an answer proves elusive.

below is a scene from cheech and chong's next movie:



aside from the obvious awesome on display -- the motorcycle in the living room, chong's extended coughing fit, etc. -- you may notice that the song playing in the background is ridiculously bad ass. if you were to pull up the youtube page this clip is from, you'd find that a lot of the people posting comments think so, too. however, you'd also find that no one there has any idea where this smoking chunk of maximum rock came from.

the closest i've come to an answer is that steven lukather of toto played on this song; it is not, however, as some suggest, a cover of 'hell on wheels', the 1979 cher disco poop that he also happened to play on.

with its righteous, god-of-rock vocal delivery (check in particular the way the singer stretches "wind" into two syllables), bombing riffage and hallelujah "takin' off" refrain, this is quite possibly one of greatest proto-metal classic rock songs ever, and sadly, it may not actually exist anywhere outside of this celluloid moment.

if anyone's got the sleuthing skills to track this number down, i'd be eternally grateful.