The Music Nerds Discuss Local Music

At one of my East Side Grill gigs, we performed “Send Her My Love,” & then I announced that we would be doing “one more from Journey” before we launched into “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.”   My sister’s boyfriend turned to her in surprise because he thought “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” was written by a local band (notice how this local band’s fan doesn’t even know the correct lyrics to the song).

KK described this as being as bad as thinking that Jodeci wrote “Lately.”   And although my sister denies it, I swear I remember her thinking, when she was in high school, that Keali’i Reichel had written “In My Life.”   When I told her that it was by The Beatles, she had said, “Who are The Beatles??”

16 Songs That I Can’t Sing

But have tried to. Or still try to.

I’ve arranged these songs (done by the original artists, who CAN sing them) in a playlist for your listening pleasure. And then I’ve made a list of what happens when I try to sing them. Please click on the “Pop Out Player” button for the playlist, which should open in another window.

Karaoke Review 01-11

It’s time that I start recording stuff again.

Not because I’m worried that my pitch is slipping; I’m fairly sure that was a given last night.   More because 1) it would help me remember what the hell happened, & 2) apparently last night I got drunk enough to acquiesce to Carmen’s request for Heart by singing “Magic Man,” & then go along with Hoax’s request for “Alone” immediately after.   And yes, I did the wail before the final chorus.

Seriously, I wish I was there so I could have heard that, good or bad.

KK’s new earphones.

I’m on the phone with KK, who is enjoying his gift from our Secret Santa exchange this past weekend.   He’d asked for a pair of good quality in-ear earphones, & gotten the Denon AH-C351Ks.

KK’s music collection is basically all mp3s.   He subscribes to the message in the XKCD.com comic regarding the limitations of DRM-locked media.   From where I stand (next to my full 3′ x 5′ CD rack), I wonder why someone with ears as trained as Keith’s would want to use good earphones to listen to compressed crap.   I’d think that good equipment would only make more obvious the flaws in the sound quality.

Vocal Horror.

Today I went on a Cinderella kick.   I’ve got Heartbreak Station & Night Songs on iTunes so I listened to the 2 albums continuously while playing WoW.   The musical styles of these albums are entirely separate genres, but I enjoy them both.

Somewhere during the 3rd round something was bothering me: Tom Keifer’s insane vocals.   How could the man sing like that?   I ended up alt-tabbing so I could look the band up on Wikipedia.

The kind of abuse Keifer’s vocal cords had to take in order to have this growling/screaming sound had to be excessive.   I couldn’t imagine how someone could sustain that kind of pressure on a tour.

Let’s talk a little bit about singing

Since Lauren has been bugging me about actually putting a post up here, I thought I’d actually take some time and put something up here.  Lauren must really be trying hard since she’s sent me things hoping to spark some sort of creative initiative on my part.  That being said, I’m not sure where this is going, but hopefully this makes sense since I’m doing this while putting in my requisite 3.5 hr session on Full Tilt.

I’ve been thinking a lot about singing recently.  For those of you who don’t know me, I grace Lauren’s bar from time to time when I’m in town, and will usually sing a song or two if I’m there.  Well, I intend to sing a song or two, but that normally degenerates to Lauren just putting songs in to sing if it’s slow.  Not that I mind, but it will normally involve at least one or two songs that I don’t know.

Here’s the strange thing.  For someone who enjoys singing and music as much as I do, I’ve recently realized that I don’t know a whole lot of music.  I think this stems from a habit I have of normally listening to things that I have to learn to sing or things that are in my vocal range.   I do listen to other things, but the majority would fall into the first category.