Maturing Musically, Part 2: Under the Covers

It is my firm belief that most of the really Great songs have already been written. Hand in hand with this belief is a belief that at least 80% of the new music coming out today is pure garbage...of course this may be the ravings of a grumpy, balding middle aged man, but so be it. (If anything you read here sounds familiar, I think I posted a similar blog on MySpace about three years ago, but I'm not sure.) Ah, but my mind strays from my point. As I said, most of the great songs have already been written, thus the popularity in recent years of cover songs, and even cover albums.

A cover, if you aren't familiar with the term is when a current artist goes back and records someone else's hit. This is in no way a new thing. Many of the earliest Beatles hits, Twist and Shout for example, were originally hits in the 50's. Today there are for basic ways covers are packaged.

1. There are tribute albums featuring Various artists doing songs by one group or artist. Examples include Two Rooms, the tribute to Elton John's music; Come Together..Country Stars Salute the Beatles, and Common Thread the music of The Eagles. I have found most albums in this category contain a few week tracks, but are good over all, with a variety of artists spinning their style on songs we all know. A recent twist on this was the Across the Universe soundtrack, with various stars of the movie singing the songs of the Beatles...much more successful than the Sgt. Peppers movie in the 70's.

2. There are also what I call album reworkings. This is where several artists will record songs that were all originally on the same album, and release it as an album. A great example is Tapestry Revisited where artist from pop and gospel recorded the music of Carol King's Tapestry album. It's a really good collection. I've noticed in recent years that there have been similar releases of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. I have not listened to these, as I'm afraid they could only ruin, and not improve on Pink Floyd. (grumpy old man again)

3. Sometimes an artist will just record one or two covers and mix them in with there own new music. This has been the most common use of covers over the years. Sometimes this works well (The Beatles' Twist and Shout, or Sarah Brightman's way of turning classic rock hits into classical ballads) and sometimes these are just aweful (Think Britney Spears' version of I Can't Get No Satisfaction).

4. Last of all is one of my favorite kinds of albums, where a single group or artist sets out to record a whole album of covers. Some of my favorites in recent years are Mandy Moore's Coverage (Yes that Mandy Moore, yes it's GOOD); Wilson Phillips' California where they cover the bands of the late 60's early 70's California music scene; and the ever quirky Erasure doing Other Peoples Songs, a strange ecclectic collection worth adding to your library. Barry Manilow has releases a disc each of 50's, 60's and 70's songs, and I'm sure the 80's are coming, and they're actually pretty good. A few others that don't work as well are Big Band Theory by Styx, and the cover CD Rush recorded (can't remember the name). These two fall short in that they break one of the cardinal rules of covers...stick to songs people know. Each of the CD's sound good when they are doing familiar pieces, but then they dabble in songs by obscure bands or regional artists that most of the country won't know.

Oh, and I almost forgot my favorite cover CD of all time Phil Keaggy and Friends Acoustic Cafe. The guitar king is joined by a few friends and family members to cover music by Dylan, the Beatles, he Beach Boys, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper and more. A must have for any collector. I only hope he comes out with an Electric sequel. I could go on all night about cover tunes and music, but then you'd probably think the old guy was rambling, so I'll go plug in my headphones and Drift Away

Social Media and the aging process

Going with a different color ink for the letters tonight, what do you think? Tonight's topic is social media and the aging process. As I age, I find myself more and more into this social media stuff, which is supposedly the domain of the younger generation. At least that's how it started.

My first real experience with social media came with MySpace probably about 4 or 5 years ago. Several of my friends from Domino's kept telling me how great it was, how you could reach out to your friends, how you could keep updated on music, etc. These were all pretty much teenagers I worked with, and I brushed MySpace off as just something for kids. Then I got an invite from my friend Doug Brown from my KLoRD days. He had set up a page to promote his music, so I joined, and quickly found I enjoyed it. I even did a bit of blogging. At time I had over 300 "friends", but most of these were bands, or people who were interested in the same bands I was. A few were friends mostly from Domino's, and young people I knew on the mountain here. I had only one or two friends near my age, a few voices from my past. I made my MySpace page as load and flashy as I could, and tried to convince myself I was as young and hip as most of my friends there. But as time went on I felt less and less connected to my MySpace friends.

Then about a year ago I think, I started hearing, "I switched from MySpace to Facebook, come Join me." from more and more MySpace friends. And so, I did. And it has been amazing. I have found friends from college, high school and the church I grew up in along with my KLoRd fiends, Mo Media friends, Camp O-Ongo friends and of course Toyota friends (All places I've worked). I currently have 210 and know at least 200 of them personally. I read an article a few months ago that "old people" are ruining facebook. By their definition, I'm pretty sure I'm old, and I'm guessing most of my friends are too (My dad is on facebook and he's 82). I'm not sure what we've done to ruin facebook, but I say lets keep ruining it.

For months I was happy to stay in contact on facebook. I kept hearing about this Twitter thing, but had no interest. You know us old folks are slow to try anything new. Then a job as internet information director, or something like that came up at work, and I applied, but it said you needed to know twitter, so I quickly signed up for twitter. I didn't get the job, (Probably too old and unhip) and quickly abandoned my Twitter account.

Then came the swine flu scare and I found out that the CDC had a twitter account that posted swine flu updates. As any old guy who fears dying of swine flu would do, I jumped on twitter and started following CDC updates. Purely out of curiosity I started following a celebrity or two...oops! I was hooked. I now follow 152 people. Athletes, authors, celebrities, dancers, and a couple people I actually know.
I think it is a fun way to get a touch of who these celebrities are as real people. that is if you can find the real people from the fakes. Thank Twitter for Verified accounts to make this easier.

And now with Blogger, I am attacking the blogsphere and hope to gain some attention (or at least a few more comments) as a writer, so someday the novel I'm trying to write might be published, or at least made available on Kindle before I am too old to enjoy the royalties. So please read my blog post. Comment on them here (my comments are open to anyone, not just Blogger members). Share them with your friends. And promise you'll by my novel....whenever it gets published.