I love music DVD’s. Correction. I love some music DVD’s. I enjoy the interesting content you get that you can’t get at a concert. It seems like bands and artists are so hit and miss when it comes to making a good DVD. It’s easy isn’t it?? Just make it interesting!!!!
I bought the Kings of Leon: Live at the O2 London, England DVD. I loved the last two albums. A lot of people loved the last one. As for the DVD…well it’s ok. I mean it’s just a live show. They don’t do anything crazy. It’s no more advanced or interesting than my Police DVD I bought that is just concert footage from Atlanta way back in 1983 during the Synchronicity Tour. In fact Sting has the upper hand in the stage banter catagory as the Kings lead singer Caleb Followill came off a bit arrogant.
Muse had a DVD included with there album and it was essentially just concert footage. The difference is Muse incorporates robots, giant satellites, confetti and a cover song. They also shot the DVD with more than 3 or 4 cameras! This was also just an accent to the album as it came packaged with it…unlike Kings of Leon.
Some of the best DVD’s I’ve seen have come from Pearl Jam, Coldplay and Keith Urban. These DVD’s had behind the scenes footage and intimate moments that were amazing and it offered a real sense of connection to the artists. It is always great to hear interviews or see bloopers or just nice candid moments. It allows you to really sink your teeth into the product, which is ultimately the artist…not the music.
My favorite DVD is actually a movie and an album. The Last Waltz by The Band is one of the best music moments of all time. It’s also better than most of the DVD’s that come out these days and it was shot 30 years ago. It has live footage, interview footage, candid footage, staged footage and if you watch it enough times you’ll see the bloopers like Neil Young struggling to find the key, Eric Clapton’s guitar strap letting go halfway through a solo and a drunk Van Morrison doing high kicks.
In life we all have good days and bad days. It can be affected by weather, like a rainy sunday afternoon will leave you bummed out and feeling like shit. Sometimes your feelings can be the direct result of a change in your day to day life such as a new apartment or a vacation somewhere warm. Sometimes you will hear a song that takes you back to when it meant everything to you and you’ll have a little three minute flashback of the “good old days”. Your feelings and emotions might not be what guide you down the long term path of life but they sure as hell fuel the tank that moves you on a day to day basis.
Some people go through life trying to enjoy every moment and appreciate what they have. Bad times are often softened with good family, kind friends and lots of distraction. Some people go through life sad or angry and often pointing out the obvious flaws in our messed up world, only elongating the down time. Many of us are both of these people and we’re just trying to make sure that we steady the wings on this f$#%ed-up plane so that we don’t fly off into the atmosphere or crash into the ocean.
Writing music is not one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy the end result of writing a song and I even enjoy moments of putting a song together. For the most part writing a song can be mentally and emotionally draining, that is if you’re working hard on it. Where your head is at when you’re creating and assembling a song usually directly effects what you’re doing with the song and where you want to take it. Writing a song with another person or a group of people is really a helpful way to bounce ideas around and reassure each other about vocal melody, drum beat, key changes, song structure and all the rest of it. The downfall to writing with other people is pride. Good constructive songwriting comes from working together, knowing how to approach suggesting change to the song and knowing how to accept change to the song. Pride enters the picture when one person is unwilling to change something or they want something done there way. Good songwriting chemistry is hard to find…overly proud songwriters are not hard to find.
Some say music is art but what’s art if the artist is the only one who wants it? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound??? If a shitty song is written and no one listens to it, is it really art???
I’ve spent my Sunday (the first day off with no obligations in two weeks) working on my Pro Tools chops. They’re still not good but damn that program is fun. If you’re one of those people who don’t like Pro Tools I’m sorry…but damn it’s fun. I haven’t been working on Winhara songs because we’re not yet to the recording stage with any of our new stuff. I did mess around and come up with a terrible “Hip Hop-ish” song I’ve entitled “pajamas” because it is the least “Hip Hop-ish” name I could think of. OK well I’ll let you know if this makes it on the next Winhara album…that was a joke…seriously, even if I joked Dano would hit me with a blunt object, haha. Well enjoy!
I’m reading a book on being in an Indie Band. It reads:
Not everyone is cut out to be an independent musician. Before making the decision to go after an independent career, you-as a musician-must ask yourself:
*Have you done everything you can to be as good as possible?
*Can you trade dreams of being a star for the reality of making a living from your music?
*Are you willing to bend with suggestions from others?
*How much time are you willing to devote to your music career, including touring?
*How big are your balls?
Indies should never assume anyone will do anything for them that they aren’t willing and able to do for themselves. No one will ever care as much about your music and career success as you do. The only helping hand you can truly depend on is connected to the end of your arm. Don’t expect others to do it better than you can do it yourself!
“I Don’t Need A Record Deal!-Your Survival Guide For The Indie Music Revolution”
I’m just listening to Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits and it blows my mind how many songs I recognize but had no idea that it was a Fleetwood Mac song. As much as Fleetwood Mac got it’s name from the original rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie I think most people think of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks when they think of the band. I did a little reading and didn’t even realize that FM had a lot of life long before Buckingham and Nicks even entered the picture. Led by guitarist Peter Green in the 60’s who was a famous blues guitar player they had a few hits and he actually wrote a little song called Black Magic Woman…you know that song that made Santana famous…no big deal. Anyways he left the band in 1970 approx. 13 years before I even existed and faded away, which I think is totally Rock and Roll. After that there was a bit of a transition period and then between ‘75 and ‘87 is when FM did the most damage. Most people know the drama of this version of FM and how everyone was sleeping with everyone and the crazy tension between the band members especially during the Rumours album. That shit aside because I really don’t know that much about FM (or care to know), the thing I find most fascinating is that they were one of the few bands that survived through two very vey different era’s. After listening to the Greatest Hits it’s amazing to hear Hit Songs from the same band that sound so very very different. If you take a song like Landslide and play it side by side with Little Lies there is a 10 year difference in the songwriting not to mention there were 3 different song writers in the band during this period…not to mention 3 main singers. What the hell is that! I guess it just goes to show that if you have a hit song, it’s a hit song. It doesn’t matter if Stevie Nicks is singing it or Lindsey Buckingham (or the the writer of “Little Lies” herself, Keyboardist Chistine McVie).
Just had band practice. We’re working really hard to give you different live options for all the different venues we play. We’re currently working on a mid-size live show that has Prevost playing through a drum pad that triggers MIDI drums in our Mac mini we use to play our backing tracks. This allows us to remove the full drum setup from the live show and Prevost can stand up and join the party. Hugh is still working from his synth workstation with his bass and Dano has minimized his setup to allow him to run all over the place. The stage look is changed drastically for this setup. We have Dan on the left side at the front, Prevost and Hugh facing each other in the middle but set further back where Prevost usually is with his drums and me in my usual spot on the right. We’ve purchased new pieces that include the start of an interesting light show we’ve been dreaming up and sometime in the near future we’ll be adding visuals to the show. We’re getting bigger and better every show so if you get a chance come and check it out!
I work in a shoe store five days a week. I make just enough money to pay my bills and in a good month I might pay off a little of my debt. We play music on a regular basis but it’s rare we make enough money to cover our costs. When we do make money on a gig we don’t split it between each other, it goes in “The Band Account”. We spend three to five days a week practicing, writing and having meetings to organize ourselves. In our off time we hang out with girlfriends, go out for drinks, workout, read and some of us obsess over hockey pools. All of this happens well we dream up new ideas and plans for the band. Financial stress, family pressures and personal goals are all factors that can pull the spirit and excitement from living this lifestyle. Every new musical moment, every new artistic invention, every cheer from the back of a dark dingy Toronto bar and every new soldier in the Winhara army makes it that much easier to take a deep breath and ignore the negative forces I have kindly titled “bullshit”. If you are reading this thanks for helping to relieve our pressure, we will continue to work hard to bring you our best.
Hugh and I had rented a three bedroom town house in Kingston while he was finishing his last year of university. Steve was also finishing up school in Kingston but had already signed a lease just down the street with some friends. Dan was teaching at a private school just outside of Kingston and I was working at a bakery knowing that band was eventually going to become our number one focus. We wanted to rent a three bedroom house because we wanted room to setup all the band equipment. The third bedroom ended up being an office for Hugh to do his school work, our dining room became our living room and our living room became our band room, coincidentally the largest open area in the house.
So many nights during that year in Kingston Hugh would be studying hard as I sat in the stairwell or the kitchen playing my acoustic guitar trying to come up with some idea, some riff, that would evoke a comment from the office upstairs. I can’t remember the actual moment in which Hugh probably said something fairly simple such as “That last thing you were playing was pretty cool” but it only ever took that for me to show it to the other guys the next time they were over. It was most likely a Sunday because that’s when Dan would usually make the hour drive to Kingston so we could have band practice and I remember thinking that I was going to show him these verse, pre-chorus and chorus parts I had been working on. I remember feeling confident he wasn’t going to like them but I was feeling obligated to show him because they felt so good to me. Being the super self conscious guitar player I am I had prepared myself for this reaction and was completely o.k. with sweeping these idea’s into the trash. Much to my surprise Dan seemed to really like them so we decided to work on them at the next practice.
Our living room window faced west and at sunset the room would always have an inspiring glow to it but on this particular day it was nothing short of spectacular. As we plugged in our equipment and got settled into our little personal bubbles the room felt normal as usual. We started to throw around ideas for the song and it just started falling into place. A bridge was easily formed and Dan dropped the eventual melody he sings to this day in without any hesitation. As the different parts formed into a song, the room was turning from its usual stale white into a burning fusion of red and orange and it was a songwriting moment I will never forget. The sun was beaming in on all of us with these incredible colours and the room was screaming with a beautiful mesh of bass, drums, piano and guitar. And then it happened. As we swooped emotionally into the chorus the mumbled melody idea Dan was using easily transitioned into wise words to live by,
