In the late ’80s, David Letterman had a feature for a little while on his program featuring throwing things off of tall buildings. I only bring it up because my piece of crap computer, which is freezing up and ‘blue screening’ on a regular basis now is becoming a candidate for my own ‘throw it out the window of my 11th floor apartment‘, and see how it likes that!

It’s slowly grinding to a halt. Since this computer was made, progress has completely passed it by. Bit rates for music and video is much higher now and I need to upgrade in order to keep my video content from looking like South Park all the time.

Things that it used to do, it just barely can do now. The hard drive makes lots of complaining noises these days. iT ONLY MAKES SENSE THAxxxdAMN CAPS LOCk!!!……

My old PC

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The Original Brother Sister Team! And Much Better Than Donny And Marie!

I don’t listen to ‘muzak‘ like stuff. I also don’t intend to include ‘compilation albums‘ in this Important Albums series. However, this album is so much more than either of those things.

Talented? You Better Believe It!

Raised as CT then CA kids, the both of them demonstrated an aptitude for music right away. Richard Carpenter spent loads of time listening to music and playing the piano. Karen was more the outgoing athletic type, but was also passionate about music. Karen started playing the drums while in high school and became a rather good drummer that could, according to Richard, play in “exotic time signatures“.

Richard formed a jazz trio in the mid ’60s. Later in 1966, at a musician’s home studio, Richard was accompanying an auditioning trumpet player on piano and it was suggested to Karen that she try singing. After doing so, the musician remarked, “Forget the trumpet player, that chubby girl can sing!” (What a bastard!) Read the rest »

Bon Jovi everybody! Howsitgowin? OK. Here’s the deal: If you’ve been checking in regularly and not been finding new posts as often as you have in the past, don’t worry. We’ve all been kind of busy dealing with stuff like health issues, real jobs, being held without being charged, and everyday matters like that. But once we’re allowed our one phone call, things will pick up again, I promise….

An Irrelevant Picture of an Old Guy

…but in the meantime, while you’re here, why not check out some of the “Back Issues” of Music By Day. There’s a little something for everyone here. (We are a bit Beatles/Pink Floyd/Radiohead-preoccupied here but what the hell!)

A Family Hairloom

Just click on some of the links to previous months and years and take a chance. You’re bound to find something interesting. For instance, you might find a writer who’s style you like, so you can just click on that guy’s or gal’s name and pull up all of their posts, and get one person’s take on a number of topics. One of my favorites is  Mozart Breath . Fiendishly clever, that one is! And my stuff (Amadeus) is pretty hot poop as well! Hah!

A Creepy Album Cover

Or,,, you could scroll down and click on one of the tags on the right to pick a topic or band you like and pull up all the articles that give a mention (passing or otherwise) of the tag selected.

Check out the Categories along the top or a more extensive list just to the right and pick one that sounds promising. “Album reviews” is good. There may not be a lot of “new” album reviews but there are a lot of reviews of records from the past that may have been forgotten or even overlooked the first time around.

Instant Headache Relief!

“Mushrooms” is posts about stuff that cannot be explained away by normal logic, and not about fungal growth as you might have originally thought! Also of note is “IHateU’s Place of Hatred“. There’s only 2 or 3 posts in that one but a couple of them are classic.

You can also learn a bit of trivia and history about Music By Day itself under “The MUSIC BY DAY Awards  ” . If you’re a Beatles junkie, you could be stuck here ALL DAY! just by clicking the “Beatles” tag.

Among the hi-lites of our posting history is Leslie Loveface‘s insightful expose on the music of  Hollywood Undead – The Worst Music Ever?  It was the most successful posting in that it generated, not only the most hate mail ever, but the most mail ever period! In fact we got SO much hate mail that the comment box imploded and all four hundred and some comments disappeared. Check it out!

(For more hatemail, see Here.)

We learned a lot about the youth of America and their articulate ways. With these people being our future, and a stagnant economy coupled with a comatose education system it is clear that America is really going places and you all owe us expressions of gratitude for never having pointed this out publicly. But all kidding aside, America‘s wonderful! (Except for the south).

Paul McCartney - 1957

And as you read and educate and entertain yourself here at Music By Day, feel free to leave a comment expressing your opinion on what you’ve just read. We thrive on feedback from the readers and love pointing out how retarded some of your views are, thus making ourselves feel good (about ourselves). Believe me, this hurts us more than it hurts you!

Or just leave a comment that isn’t related. Maybe you just want to express your opinion on the lack of sense of an agrarian economy in an E-centic world. It’s possible that nobody will respond to you but rest assured that your comment will be read and that someone might go away provoked to thinking ‘Do I really like Cheese THAT much?”.

Sarah Silverman's Boobs

So, therefore, in conclusion: Don’t go away discouraged if you’ve been checking in and haven’t seen a new posting for a week or two. Browse around while you’re here. There’s loads of hidden gems that don’t deserve to be forgotten. I said upon my arrest that it was just a harmless bit of fun. I executed a dazzling handstand while tossing my racket in the air which came down on the bridge of the nose of the choirmaster during a tricky bit in C# minor.

I don’t know why I said that.

JUST STICK AROUND! OK?!!

P.S.: Check this out. You’ll curse me for it later!

Radiohead has announced the first dates from their 2012 US tour:

February 27th – Miami, FL – American Airlines Arena
February 29th – Tampa, FL – St. Pete Times Forum
March 1st – Atlanta, GA – Philips Arena
March 3rd – Houston, TX – Toyota Center
March 5th – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center
March 7th – Austin, TX – Frank Erwin Center
March 9th – St. Louis, MO – Scottrade Center
March 11th – Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
March 13th – Broomfield, CO – 1st Bank Center
March 15th – Glendale, AZ – Jobing.com Arena

~~~

Jobing.com Arena? … Really? Arenas have such terrible names these days!

Howdy internet trawlmeisters: In January 1984 I taped (remember those days?) about an hour of my favorite radio program “The Original Import Show” on Toronto’s CFNY 102.1-The Spirit Of Radio.

In the days before the internet, that was the only way to hear about the coolest new wave obscurites from Britain and Europe. After you heard some sound that appealed to you, if you got the name of the artist, you had to race down to the import record store to grab a copy before they were gone and (for the most part) lost in the mists of time (as most of them were).

So,,, here’s my problem: the last song on the tape got cut off about a minute into it and I didn’t get the name  of the band. As the ’80s rolled on, I started trying to find out WHAT THIS SONG WAS! But nobody knew! I even found the host of that program recently and he had no memory of this tune at all.

So,,, I bring this query to the WORLD. Someone on this planet (or one near here) must know what this song is and who does it! I would dearly like to know so I can obtain the whole song and perhaps others, using the frightening new techniques that science has made available today.

Here you are: Mystery Song

I’m sure it’s some (now) obscure European group whose identity is lost in the distant past but I MUST KNOW this song! …and you’re in a position to help.

Thank you indeed.

Seig Howdy! Music By Day Consumers. Since Pink Floyd seem to be ALMOST as popular as The Beatles around these here parts, it’s probably a good idea to address a couple of issues I see as being unimportant to anyone but the newly obsessive Pink Floyd fan who needs just that little bit more than the “Immersion” box sets are going to supply.

“Why Pink Floyd?”

The Pink Floyd's highly ambitious stage show set the standard by which all concerts would be judged!

If I didn’t have to pay rent, I would’ve bought the Dark Side of The Moon immersion set and the Wish You Were Here and The Wall immersion sets as well as the Sure to come immersion versions of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and Animals (they must be on the way!). However, there are some good you-tube videos of people taking us on a tour of the immersion Dark Side… set, so you can feel like you know what’s going on. What they include and are going to include in the later sets are,as far as I’m concerned, brilliant, except I don’t know if I need the marbles, the laundry, and the coasters at all.

However, the idea of the 5.1 and the original quad mix of the albums (except for The Wall, the quad idea had died by then)is great and I do look forward to hearing them. The Alan Parson‘s early test mix of Dark Side…is interesting as is the fantastic live rendition of the album in 1974. Having seen them in ’87 I can also say that having the films made for certain songs would be cool as well. Those are legitimate treasures of course and as always, the packaging is top notch and likely worth the money.

But I think that EMI and the band should really embark on a live album series for the FANS. Especially those very adventurous early years where they weren’t completely in juke-b0x mode and note perfect every time. There are some great BBC and European FM broadcast recordings that capture some really great and ‘out there’ stuff. And maybe the odd audience recording of stuff that would be considered very rare and desirable. In the mean time…..

Pink Floyd tone it down a little bit.

I thought I’d give you all (those who don’t already know this stuff) a head start on the best live RoIOs (Recordings of Illegitimate Origin) to get in order to complete the early Pink Floyd experience.

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Guys See Pistols On Stage And Form Band To Become Punk Legends!

These lovable mop-tops from Manchester represented the ‘happy‘ side of punk rock. Buzzcocks (no “The”) took the Sex Pistols‘ ideal of ‘do what you want’ and applied it to their own brand of 3 chord adolescent angst. Love-sick, existentialist teenager songs to a positive punk rock sound backed by a rhythm section that just kicks you right there in the chest! No songs really about anarchy, personal or otherwise, or songs about smashing things up, just straight forward pop tunes by one of the “original” punk bands.

They formed in ’76 and after a very lo-fi debut E.P. “Spiral Scratch“, their original lead singer did the real ‘punk’ thing and quit right away (went on to form Magazine) leaving Pete Shelley to move to lead vocal, Steve Diggle moved from bass to guitar and some lead vocals, hired a new bass player and went on to produce a string of killer pop punk singles and three very fine albums all with a very separate identity. And going contrary to what most punk was about, they avoided politics and saying how much England sucks and instead focused on how broken hearts suck. Or how happy everybody is.

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If you don’t live in Canada, have YOU heard of Sloan? No? Maybe you’ve heard a song called “Underwhelmed“. This one was on their debut LP Smeared (1992) and was on a ‘major’ label popular with the ‘grunge’ world at the time: DGC. This song almost made them rich as Chris Murphy (Bass/lead Vocal) pointed out on their live album liner notes but “thankfully it didn’t“. I suppose he meant that if it broke them big in the U.S. they would’ve been stuck in a machine that would demand more of the same in perpetuity until the fad had passed. And their subsequent creativity would have been well and truly quashed!

In fact, DGC strongly urged them to DO the honourable thing and produce a follow up in the same money making vein. The band refused and instead produced an anti-grunge album. Hurrah! Band and Label soon parted ways leaving Sloan broke and struggling back home in Halifax. Then they decided to break up. But it wasn’t over!,,,,

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Prog-1, Metal-0: Opeth – Heritage

If you like prog, this is an album to truly get excited about. If you like Opeth, be forewarned: This has NO death metal riffs or death metal growling. As Mikael Akerfeldt said recently, “It feels, without sounding pretentious,like we’ve been working our way up to this point since our first album.”

I’ve always appreciated Opeth and even have a couple of their albums but honestly, I don’t like the growl singing of death metal, but I always check out what these guys are doing.

And this album was the big reward! Mixed by busy prog wizard Steve Wilson, this is a VERY good musical trip. Sandwiched between two piano driven softies is a wide variety of sounds and styles. The best comparison I can think of is David Coverdale Deep Purple crossed with Camel which gives this album an ebb and flow unlike any of their others and unlike most anything else that’s new out right now.

70s style hard rock/prog rock with a certain tinge of jazz fusion and a bit of folkiness here and there peppered with some sweet time changes make this a real treat for me. The losing of the death metal aspect really frees up the guitar player and especially the drummer to play in styles that wouldn’t work on a ‘heavy’ album. All in all, the depth of musical direction on this one is a reward for those who do like their music adventurous.

They’ve always been adventurous and with this album, they prove once again that they can and will continue to progress and keep from being stuck in one spot for their whole career. This is a band that are truly interested in their craft and not just an image or one genre of music. If you’ve been interested in Opeth‘s career all along, or you’re interested in groups that aren’t content to stand still, then this is perhaps a good album of new music in a year of endless mega re-issues, to chomp your musical teeth into. Get it now. Seriously; Tuck in! You’re musically starving!

The Tape-Beatles Sever All Connection To Beat And Melody And Go For A Soundtrack Blitzkrieg; Plagiarism As An Artform!

What is Music? The short answer is that it is organised sound. As Zappa once wrote, if John Cage decided to record himself drinking carrot juice and recorded it and gave it a title, that counts as his “composition”. Of course, without that “frame” ie; the track on your CD or the stuff on the concert stage, it’s just a guy drinking carrot juice. If you can conceive of something as music, like traffic noise or the kids fighting, it’s music. But the audience needs to decide to consume it as music. The CD track or stage act helps here.

Most people can’t grasp that concept! They need a good beat and a simple melody that might sound a bit like another melody that they already know because they’re really into music. If, however you are one of the ones who like to listen to modern composers drinking carrot juice, then this “band” might interest you.

The Tape-Beatles - Live On Stage!

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