jonvanoss
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
One for the Vine
I'm going to talk about music now... I'm listening to an old Genesis album from 1976 called Wind and Wuthering. This was their second album after Peter Gabriel left the band and I think it may be one of their finest post-Gabriel works (ABACAB not withstanding). In particular, the song One for the Vine which is a 10 minute opus which has a circular narrative. Think about that... Genesis uses a lot of keyboards in their work, but never obtrusively. Their guitar sound is also quite unobtrusive, meaning that they're essentially all blending together is one beautiful progressive masterpiece. Modern day examples of groups that have this good of a blending are Interpol, The Strokes, and Grandaddy.
David Bowie is obviously my biggest influence. Everyone that has heard my music says that before anything else... Let me tell you about how I got into David Bowie... I was a sophomore in high school and had just gotten my license. I was driving a Chevrolet Citation. Crystal Blue. Beautiful ride (and ironically the only car that I never had to get worked on). It cost $250 dollars... Anyway, a couple friends and I cruised to the local used CD store in it and were browsing around. I happened upon a CD by Bowie called 'Outside' which was from 1995 and was the first of two techno albums that Bowie put out, although 'Outside' was more of a concept album with a techno/trance flavor. Until then, I had only heard the obvious Bowie hits (Space Oddity, Changes, Ziggy Stardust, Let's Dance, etc.) and didn't know much about the man. One friend told me I probably wouldn't like it, but I bought it anyway. I listened to a couple tracks and kind of discarded it. Later that year, my family took a vacation to Florida, and while at Disney World (Pleasure Island to be exact) I heard 'Changes' piped over the outdoor sound system. That one song completely renewed my interest in Bowie and the next day I located a copy of ChangesBowie which is somewhat of a greatest hits package covering Space Oddity to Modern Love. Much to my luck the inside booklet contained descriptions of all of his back-catalog reissues including brief descriptions of the albums. Suffice it to say after purchasing a couple on the booklets recommendation I was hooked on the man and still am. I can think of no one more talented than he. In all seriousness, just think about he had his first hit in 1969 and is still relevant today in 2004, putting out critically acclaimed new music and having a very highly rated worldwide tour. I mean it... If you don't like David Bowie, something is wrong with you. Plain and simple.
That said, here are a few promised music tracks of my own. I don't know if you'll hear the Bowie influence, but maybe you'll hear something else, i.e. Grandaddy, Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright... Let me know what you think...
On a side note, these are mp3's encoded at 96Kbps (slightly lower quality than normal). This is mostly to save bandwidth (although the arrogant side of me says it's also to prevent people from widely distributing it as their own (although if you like it, send it along to your friends)).
The first one is called Autumn. It's about my desire to leave Holland and go to NYC. It was written about 6 months ago, give or take...
These next two are from an hour long piece that I'm 40 minutes into called Odds & Arps. The concept came out of a bunch of little snippets I had in my head. My plan was to string each snipped together with some arpeggiated segues. This worked with mixed results. These 2 are from my latest recording session. The first one is only about 20 seconds and I don't have a title for it, so we'll call it Untitled. The other one is lacking drums due to my drum machine breaking (see previous blog). It is called Major 7th because it makes use of the dreamy major 7th chord, in this case a C major 7th chord. Hope you like them. Post comments below.
End.
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David Bowie is obviously my biggest influence. Everyone that has heard my music says that before anything else... Let me tell you about how I got into David Bowie... I was a sophomore in high school and had just gotten my license. I was driving a Chevrolet Citation. Crystal Blue. Beautiful ride (and ironically the only car that I never had to get worked on). It cost $250 dollars... Anyway, a couple friends and I cruised to the local used CD store in it and were browsing around. I happened upon a CD by Bowie called 'Outside' which was from 1995 and was the first of two techno albums that Bowie put out, although 'Outside' was more of a concept album with a techno/trance flavor. Until then, I had only heard the obvious Bowie hits (Space Oddity, Changes, Ziggy Stardust, Let's Dance, etc.) and didn't know much about the man. One friend told me I probably wouldn't like it, but I bought it anyway. I listened to a couple tracks and kind of discarded it. Later that year, my family took a vacation to Florida, and while at Disney World (Pleasure Island to be exact) I heard 'Changes' piped over the outdoor sound system. That one song completely renewed my interest in Bowie and the next day I located a copy of ChangesBowie which is somewhat of a greatest hits package covering Space Oddity to Modern Love. Much to my luck the inside booklet contained descriptions of all of his back-catalog reissues including brief descriptions of the albums. Suffice it to say after purchasing a couple on the booklets recommendation I was hooked on the man and still am. I can think of no one more talented than he. In all seriousness, just think about he had his first hit in 1969 and is still relevant today in 2004, putting out critically acclaimed new music and having a very highly rated worldwide tour. I mean it... If you don't like David Bowie, something is wrong with you. Plain and simple.
That said, here are a few promised music tracks of my own. I don't know if you'll hear the Bowie influence, but maybe you'll hear something else, i.e. Grandaddy, Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright... Let me know what you think...
On a side note, these are mp3's encoded at 96Kbps (slightly lower quality than normal). This is mostly to save bandwidth (although the arrogant side of me says it's also to prevent people from widely distributing it as their own (although if you like it, send it along to your friends)).
The first one is called Autumn. It's about my desire to leave Holland and go to NYC. It was written about 6 months ago, give or take...
These next two are from an hour long piece that I'm 40 minutes into called Odds & Arps. The concept came out of a bunch of little snippets I had in my head. My plan was to string each snipped together with some arpeggiated segues. This worked with mixed results. These 2 are from my latest recording session. The first one is only about 20 seconds and I don't have a title for it, so we'll call it Untitled. The other one is lacking drums due to my drum machine breaking (see previous blog). It is called Major 7th because it makes use of the dreamy major 7th chord, in this case a C major 7th chord. Hope you like them. Post comments below.
End.
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