What’s better than kicking back and playing a little acoustic guitar? Playing that guitar on film with amazon.com advertisements to help your starving artist status.
I had so much fun making this little video…hope you enjoy it. Oh yeah, click on some ads and buy something! I get a tiny cut….
I recently enjoyed watching the classic ’80s movie Highlander again, the film that spawned all those rather rotten TV spin-offs. The movie, however, is the real deal. Definitely the best sword fighting among immortals ever to grace the screen. Christopher Lambert deftly plays the lead role, and Sean Connery shows up as an effeminate, ageless tutor for Lambert’s character.
If you’re into beheadings (and who isn’t?) this movie is for you. The immortals, like Lambert, can die only by losing their head. They live for centuries, duking it out until only one is left standing. And the big ol’ bad guy, Kruger, is seriously bad-ass.
The best part of the movie, however, is the soundtrack by Queen. The songs are simply perfect for the action and the mood. It is Freddie Mercury and the boys at their finest. Strangely enough, it is an unofficial soundtrack, but the songs show up on Queen’s album A Kind of Magic.
While it may seem cool to be immortal, one major drawback is that the ones you love are always dying around you, getting old while you stay the same age. That sucks.
Singer Freddie Mercury asks the question “Who wants to live forever?” in light of love’s death (obviously not Mercury–he died at 45 from aids). It makes for a great song, though, so download it below and enjoy. And if you haven’t seen Highlander yet, pick up a used copy on Amazon and hunker down for a cool flick.
I wish I had a clever way to celebrate this momentous achievement for any music collector — an astounding Nineteen-thousand nine-hundred sixty-one songs in my digital music collection. If those songs were played one after the other it would take 53.9 days to finish listening to all of them (my iTunes tells me so).
The most recent addition to iTunes is the book-on-mp3 Crime and Punishment (abridged) by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first songs uploaded to the library several years ago were by David Bowie and Adrian Belew. In between are 19,000-odd songs representing a mish-mosh of musical genres spanning indie rock, rap, R&B, alt-country, and classical.
I’m curious to see what song number 20,000 will be. As I did for 10,000, I’ll have this mp3 milestone up for downloading soon after. Hope it’s a random, obscure one.
Jeff Tweedy looks a little bit like Bobby D, especially when scruffy. In fact, Tweedy looks more like the rock ‘n’ roll icon than Dylan’s own son, Jakob. Imho, if I may…
Maybe it’s me, or does every project Tweedy touches turn to gold? The Woody Guthrie records Wilco recorded with Billy Bragg were stellar. Not entirely polished, but raw and raucous and introspective and fun. The soundtrack to the Dylan flick “I’m Not There” is a compilation of some rather outstanding covers.
Tweedy turns in a rugged performance of Dylan’s classic song “Simple Twist of Fate.” I can even SEE Tweedy making Dylan faces as he sings this on-stage, solo in some seedy Chicago piano bar. Download the song below, buy the album at iTunes or amazon.com.
Stephen Malkmus begins this song by jokingly name-checking R.E.M., but this is a Pavement classic from the compilation album No Alternative, which was a benefit for AIDs years ago. Probably early ’90s. I can’t find this record anywhere and I’m bummed out because there were a bunch of standout tracks by some good bands.
Nirvana, Bob Mould, Uncle Tupelo, and Urge Overkill are some of the groups featured on “No Alternative.” My favorite song on the record, though, is probably “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight” by a band I never really got into, American Music Club. Great tune, though, as I remember it.
Evan Dando, singer/songwriter/guitarist for The Lemonheads, is definitely a lemonhead. And an unabashed stoner.
Still, he and Julianna Hatfield made a damn good album in 1992 called It’s A Shame About Ray. The record was recently reissued with a bunch of bonus demo tracks that were recorded during the making of the album.
The original album already rocks, but the demos are little gold nuggets from the past. Before Dando smoked so much weed that he lost the ability to write good songs. Then, of course, was the Julianna Hatfield Three…
Download and listen to a catchy track by The Lemonheads below, the album’s eponymous song. Download the whole album via MP3 at Amazon.
There’s been a melody softly soaring through my atmosphere, reminding me that the new Death Cab For Cutie record is near. So near, in fact, that the band’s released a single to promote the full monty (download below, then download the album at amazon.)
Ahh, yes. I new blog theme, too. Still working on an appropriate header. And a better visual presentation of comments. And countless other things that make writing a blog seem much like taking care of a young child. Never a moment…
As a bonus, check out Death Cab’s excellent cover of “Earth Angel” below and remember the simpler days: Remember…remember…remember……….
OK.
A week or so ago I noticed that Robert Pollard, singer/songwriter for Guided By Voices, was releasing a new album. His most recent stuff has yet to grow on me, but I’ll be forever entangled in so many tunes from GBV.
Listening to their old albums like Fast Japanese Spin Cycle, Bee Thousand, and Alien Lanes (I could go on) has renewed my love for the magic Robert Pollard created with guitarist Tobin Sprout. I saw GBV play live once, at the Trocadero in Philadelphia, and the show was wild, manic, and brilliant. I swear Pollard swigged an entire Budweiser beer before each song. No matter — he rocked.
So I’ve once again become a disciple of old school indie rock, which, to me, means college days in the early ’90s. In honor of how much Guided By Voices kicks ass, I’ve included two rare studio outtakes below. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
I haven’t posted lately due to a rather nasty case of melancholy. It’s my bipolar illness acting up again after lying dormant for more than a year. My pdoc claims it’s “that time of year for bipolars” but there are other loathsome, personal factors involved that I’m too ashamed to admit.
If you’re unfamiliar with bipolar disorder or would just like to learn more, click “bipolar” under the “Tags” heading along the left column of the blog. You’ll be presented with a list of related posts. You may want to start with an insightful entry (imho) from 2005, Drinking blood…embracing the ephemeral.
Life as a (recovering) drug addict with a mood disorder is certainly not the greatest day-to-day existence. I get by mainly because of my two amazing daughters who have taught me priceless lessons about love and responsibility. In my darkest hour I know they are there for me, and their youthful zeal for life can be quite contagious.
I also want to thank YOU, all my readers, who keep me motivated to be creative and keep blogging. I’m still not quite sure what the main reason is for the 20-30 unique visitors I get per day — my best guess would be the MP3 downloads. I know that most of you find my blog from various keyword searches on Google, etc. My goal is to build a steady readership by giving you valuable reasons to return.
Any feedback on what brought you here would be welcome. Please leave a comment for me so I can eventually, perhaps, provide a more narrow focus to what I blog about. I have several more websites in the works that will specifically cover topics like divorced fathers, drug addiction and my freelance talents.
Also, stay tuned for a new and improved theme for balancemybrain that will hopefully encourage more social interaction. I value each and every reader who finds me here in cyberspace. Thanks again.
I discovered this priceless video yesterday when I went searching for the Jimmy Kimmel video Amanda mentioned in her recent comment on Sarah Silverman is Fuc*ing Matt Damon. I found the latest Kimmel clip (crazy funny), but this video trumps it big time–a classic, methinks.
Will Ferrell can really hit the “high” Stevie Nicks notes in this duet — it’s impressive and funny as hell. Dave Grohl plays Ferrell’s straight man to a T even to the point where he has to break from character and say “Stop it, Will, you’re fucking me up” as Ferrell runs his hand along Groh’s leg, obviously lovestruck.
Hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I can’t get the song out of my head now, and I figured out how to play it on the guitar. Who will be my Stevie Nicks, dear sister?
