New: On the pod

New: On the pod

Black Label Society – Shot to Hell
Blue Murder – Blue Murder Demos (All Original)
Bon Jovi – Keep the Faith (Various Live Tracks)
Crooked Still – Shaken By a Low Sound
Diana Krall – From This Moment On
Dream Theater – Score: 20th Anniversary World Tour
Evanescence – The Open Door
Indigo Girls – Despite our Differences
Jake Shimabukuro – Gently Weeps
Jake Shimabukuro – Walking Down Rainhill
Jeffrey Foucault – Miles from the Lightning
Jeffrey Foucault – Stripping Cane
Jonatha Brooke – Live in New York
Journey – Sleep Train Amphitheater (Sacramento, CA – 08/27/06)
Michael Penn – March
Old Crow Medicine Show – Big Iron World
Old Crow Medicine Show – Old Crow Medicine Show
Rosanne Cash – Black Cadillac
Scissors Sisters – Ta-Dah!
Vinnie Vincent – Guitars from Hell
Within Temptation – Enter
Within Temptation – Mother Earth
Within Temptation – The Dance
Within Temptation – The Silent Force


Audiobooks:

Max Brooks – The Zombie Survival Guide


The Zombie Survival Guide:


Complete Protection from the Living Dead

Max Brooks – World War Z


World War Z:


An Oral History of the Zombie War

News: On the pod

Well, we’ve got more new stuff on the pod as you can see. I’m kind of excited about a few of the titles. New Dream Theater is always a treat, even if it is yet another live album. From what I’ve heard of it so far, Black Label Society is pretty kick ass. The Within Temptation albums were given to me by my good friend, Irfan. His take is that they’re similar to Evanescence and Lacuna Coil…but better. Speaking of Evanescence, I’ve got their second album and so far so good…took them long enough though. I also managed to find new discs from my old favorites the Indigo Girls and Jonatha Brooke and my new favorite Ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro…so I’ve definitely got my listening cut out for me.


In the Audiobooks section, you might have noticed The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. I’m about half way done and can already say, with some authority, that this is the most in-depth, exacting look at what you can and need to do in order to protect yourself and your family from the inevitable and rapidly approaching zombie Armageddon. What more can you really say?

I submitted the first in what I hope will be a long line of music reviews to Finer Things Magazine last week. I reviewed Scrubs Soundtrack Volume One, the new Los Lonely Boys and the new Breaking Benjamin albums. You should be able to find the October issue of Finer Things Magazine at any of the below listed establishments around New England soon:

Massachusetts:
Diva’s Nightclub-492 Pleasant Street-Northampton
Northampton’s Pride & Joy-20 Crafts Avenue-Northampton

Connecticut:
Triangles Café-66 Sugar Hollow Road-Danbury
Women’s Center of Greater Danbury-2 West Street-Danbury
Subrosa Magick-15 Foxon Boulevard-East Haven
Best Video-1842 Whitney Avenue-Hamden
Alchemy Juice Bar Café-203 New Britain Avenue-Hartford
Chez Est-458 Wethersfield Avenue-Hartford
Cinestudio-300 Summit Street-Hartford
The Comet Lounge-267 Farmington Avenue-Hartford
Parfume Du Jour-231 Asylum Street-Hartford
Enchantments-464 East Center Street-Manchester
The Magick Mirror-321 Post Road-Milford
AIDS Project New Haven-1302 Chapel Street-New Haven
Artspace-50 Orange Street-New Haven
Atticus Bookstore/Café-1082 Chapel Street-New Haven
BAR-234 Crown Street-New Haven
Book Trader Café-1140 Chapel Street-New Haven
Café Nine-250 State Street-New Haven
Fair Haven Furniture-72 Blatchley Avenue-New Haven
Gotham-130 Crown Street-New Haven
New Haven Gay & Lesbian Community Center-50 Fitch Street-New Haven
168 York Street Café-168 York Street-New Haven
Lovecraft Tattoo-1538 Whalley Avenue-New Haven
Partners Café-365 Crown Street-New Haven
Rimage’-1210 Chapel Street-New Haven
Sogno-83-B Audubon Street-New Haven
Style Forum-1674 Quinnipiac Avenue-New Haven
Walker-Loden-258 Church Street-New Haven
Yale Repertory Theater-1120 Chapel Street-New Haven
Garde Arts Center-325 State Street-New London
Golden Street Gallery-94 Golden Street-New London
Greene's Books & Beans-140 Bank Street-New London
Triangle Community Center-16 River Street-St. John River View Bldg.-Norwalk
Georgina’s-290 Boston Post Road-Orange
Club Mor-29 Atlantic Street-Stamford
Fletcher's Café-52 East Main Street-Waterbury
Elbow Room-986 Farmington Avenue-West Hartford
Curious Goods-415 Campbell Avenue-West Haven
The Cedar Brook Café-919 Post Road-Westport

Well that’s all for now, so as usual, thanks and keep listening…

Joe

Everclear – Welcome to the Drama Club

Everclear – Welcome to the Drama Club

Welcome to the Drama Club is the best album Everclear has released since they debuted on Capitol Records with the album Sparkle and Fade in 1995. That being said, you could make the argument that Welcome to the Drama Club isn’t technically an Everclear album at all, being that out of original members; Art Alexakis, Craig Montoya and Greg Ecklund…only Alexakis remains.

The new Everclear has gone from a Trio to a Quintet this time out, featuring Alexakis on vocals and guitar along with Sam Hudson on bass, Dave French on guitar, Brett Snyder on drums and Josh Crawley on keyboards. After the release of their fifth studio album, Slow Motion Daydream, and a greatest hits album, Ten Years Gone, Everclear the Trio went their separate ways, with Montoya and Ecklund forming their own solo projects, Tri-Polar and The Oohlas respectively, and Alexakis deciding to recreate Everclear. The new lineup and a less than happy recent past for Alexakis seem to have put a spark back into Everclear that was sadly missing in recent years.

Since Sparkle and Fade hit in the mid nineties, with songs like Santa Monica and Heroin Girl, Alexakis seemed to have found his comfort zone melodically. While giving his songs a trademark Everclear sound, it also had the tendency to make several Everclear songs sound the same. On Welcome to the Drama Club however, the Everclear sound is still there, but the songs as a whole are full of energy, anger, angst and hope which give them the feeling of not having been heard before. The album sounds fresh, not rehashed and while the topics of divorce, addiction, financial ruin and even love have been covered several times before by Alexakis, the events that made up his recent years seem to have energized him as a writer and given him something more to say.

Sonically, Welcome to the Drama Club is crisp; not over produced as some of the band’s recent outings have been. The addition of a second guitar and keyboards do a remarkable job in helping to shape the sound of Welcome to the Drama Club into something that is both familiar and fresh. Josh Crawley’s keyboard work is the most noticeable new color in the Everclear palate, lending a funky vibe to some songs while expanding the sonic base of the album as a whole.

Change is tough. Change is also unavoidable. We don’t like change; we all have our comfort zone. We get used to things, they way they are and the way they make us feel. Sometimes though, you just have to jump…and once you do, you realize that change really isn’t all that bad. There’s new life in change and Welcome to the Drama Club is a perfect example of that.

Jeffrey Foucault – Ghost Repeater

Jeffrey Foucault – Ghost Repeater

Jeffrey Foucault’s Ghost Repeater is one of the most honest and most authentic works by a singer/songwriter I have ever heard.

It is a slice of life, or more correctly, a slice of American life that echoes with the sounds of a different time and a different place. Part Blues, part Country and part Folk; Ghost Repeater treads tenderly through rural America with eleven songs that seem like an old shoebox full of photographs from the twentieth century.

Foucault is an outstanding writer, with the gift of both lyric and melody. When listening to Ghost Repeater, the individual pieces of the songs; the lyrics, the melody, the music, seem to become transparent and fall away exposing the soul of the composition full with atmosphere and emotion.

Musically, Ghost Repeater is sparse and haunting with its wide open spaces filled only slightly with acoustic guitars, brushed drums and echoing pedal steel accents. Other instruments come and go with the only constant on Ghost Repeater being the acoustic guitar and Jeffrey Foucault’s voice.

Foucault has constructed an album with songs that feel traditional and arrangements to match. Ghost Repeater is sonically consistent, helping to carry that traditional feel from the starting notes of Ghost Repeater to the very last, lingering traces of Appeline.

I’ve been extremely lucky to discover a select few artists who are truly gifted in their musical pursuits. Jeffrey Foucault and his album Ghost Repeater are among the very best of them.

Barenaked Ladies – Barenaked Ladies Are Me

Barenaked Ladies – Barenaked Ladies Are Me

A while back, I wrote about the Barenaked Ladies podcast, “Live from the studio, Freaking Out.” The band began podcasting in February and has, with somewhat less frequency, continued to do so with their latest podcast that was released on August 31st. I listened to all of them and realized that I felt, for the first time in their career, that I really wanted to hear their new album. So, under the advice and/or mind control of BNL frontman Stephen Page, I pre-ordered the Barenaked Ladies Are Me: Super Duper Fantastic Morally & Socially Redeeming Deluxe Edition (actually it’s just called the Barenaked Ladies Are Me: Deluxe Edition).


Question: Was I a marketing push over? Did they, as they say, see me coming?

Answer: Possibly, but I prefer to think that I just had a lot of time invested.

Anyway, the Deluxe Edition of Barenaked Ladies Are Me has a whopping thirty tracks as opposed to the standard version’s thirteen...or fifteen if you buy it from the iTunes Music Store. You may be thinking that for someone who’s a casual fan of the band, thirty tracks seem like a lot.


Question: Was I duped by the evil and subliminal marketing strategies of the BNL sales juggernaut?

Answer: Most definitely, but you know what?

Barenaked Ladies Are Me is a really good album…not only the first thirteen “official” songs, but additional seventeen as well. That being said…


Here are my first impressions of Barenaked Ladies Are Me:

* With fear of sounding cliché, this album was recorded by a more mature BNL…not necessarily a more serious BNL mind you, just more mature.

* The album still has that signature BNL “tongue in cheek” feel, but it is not afraid to venture beyond that signature BNL “tongue in cheek” feel.

* The album seems to have a more raucous feel to it.

* There seem to be lots of guitars…lots of electric guitars.

* It feels like a more “electric” album than their past albums.

* There are very good instrumental and vocal performances by everyone.

* Bob Clearmountain did a great job mixing the disc.

* There seem to be infinitely more Ed songs on this album than usual…which is a good thing.

* Speaking of Ed…I love the line, “I was a baby when I learned to suck, but you have raised it to an art form” from Wind It Up.

All in all, I think Barenaked Ladies Are Me, in which ever form you find it; the normal edition, the normal edition with bonus tracks, the expanded edition, deluxe edition or the extremely rare and hard to find (not the least of which is because it doesn’t exist) supercalifragilisticexpialidocious edition; is a winner. By the way, you don’t have to feel too bad if you only managed to find a normal, thirteen song edition of Barenaked Ladies Are Me because the band has plans to release Barenaked Ladies Are Men, a follow up disc, in the new year that should contain most of the other tracks from the deluxe edition.

Peter Frampton – Fingerprints

Peter Frampton – Fingerprints

Peter Frampton’s new album, Fingerprints fits nicely into place following his last two studio albums; 1994’s Peter Frampton and 2003’s Now. The curveball comes when after the first few measures of Boot It Up, the first track from Fingerprints, you begin to realize there are no vocals. The man responsible for the best selling live album of all time, Frampton Comes Alive, and such legendary songs as Show Me the Way and Do You Feel Like We Do seems to have abandoned the microphone in exchange for his guitar and released the first instrumental album of his career.

Fingerprints is eclectic, carefully crafted, well played and most definitely a Peter Frampton album. Anyone who is familiar with Frampton as an artist can attest to his particular guitar “sound,” made up of his guitar tone and thoroughly influenced by his instrumental technique and musical phrasing. His sound is, just as the name of the album implies, a fingerprint and the longer a musician plays, the more defined that fingerprint becomes…and Peter Frampton has been playing for a long time.

It’s an interesting experience to hear an instrumental album from a musician who is intimately familiar with the workings of writing a song with both music and vocals. The songs on Fingerprints are more about being songs and less about the technique needed to play the instrument. The melody lines played by Frampton’s guitar are much more like vocal passages than your typical instrumental guitar album, which this is not.

The songs, while all identifiable as Frampton, are all unique to each other. Each of the fourteen tracks is a composition unto it self. Fingerprints is not disappointing in it’s variety; you have full on rockers, contemplative acoustic pieces, blues, a little jazz and even a French vignette courtesy of the album’s closer, Souvenirs de Nos Peres.

Some may look at Fingerprints as being a work of self-indulgence, in that Peter Frampton has chosen to only focus on his passion for guitar. However, a different argument could also be made. Fingerprints may just be a small jewel in the vast career that Peter Frampton has had.

John Mayer - Continuum

John Mayer – Continuum


I had these two ideas for the John Mayer review. I couldn't decide, so I included them both...you pick.


Review #1:

Having written at length about John Mayer and the songs on Continuum previously, I am left with only two things to say about Mr. Mayer and his new album:

1 – Thank whichever God applies that John Mayer started his career early. That God willing, he will be with us to a ripe old age and making music all the while.

2 – Stop reading this and proceed with one of the following:

A - Log in to iTunes and buy a copy of John Mayer’s Continuum right now.

B - Get in your car, drive to your favorite place to buy music and buy a copy of John Mayer’s Continuum right now.

Review #2:

Having written at length about John Mayer and the songs on Continuum previously, I am left with only one thing to say about Mr. Mayer and his new album:

fan-F$%#ING-tastic

New: On the pod

New: On the pod

Bitter:Sweet – The Mating Game
Breaking Benjamin – Phobia
BT – This Binary Universe
George Lynch – Furious George
Glenn Gould - Robert Schumann: Piano Quartet/Brahms: Piano Quintet
Gran Bel Fisher – Full Moon Cigarette
Iron Maiden – A Matter Of Life And Death
Jani Lane – Back Down To One
Kaki King – Until We Felt Red
Los Lonely Boys – Los Lonely Boys
Los Lonely Boys – Scared
Lyle Lovett – My Baby Don’t Tolerate
Lyle Lovett – Step Inside This House
Michael Schenker Group – Adventures Of The Imagination
Nina Gordon – Bleeding Heart Graffiti
Scrubs – Soundtrack
Soul Asylum – Grave Dancers Union
Steve Stevens – Flamenco A Go-Go
The Who – Wire & Glass


Audiobooks:

Cornelia Funke – The Thief Lord



Quick Audiobook Review:

Whitley Strieber – The Grays


The Grays

Whitley Strieber’s The Grays is a perfect example of how accessible Science Fiction can be to a popular audience. As a genre, Sci-Fi can be a hard sell to a lot of people, but The Grays doesn’t have the typical pitfalls like alien names with too many consonants or so much made up science that it feels as if you’re reading a technical manual. The real strength of The Grays is it’s humanity. Strieber gives us a story in which everyone, both human and alien alike, is looking for the answer to who they are and what that means. The writing is beautiful, most especially so in the scene of a young boy becoming who he is destine to be. The Grays is an exciting read, which once started will be hard to put down.



News: On the pod

Hi everybody,

Well, I'm back from the road trip with lots of new music to write about as you can see. I should have a few new album reviews up shortly, so check back soon for those.


While we were on the Charlotte trip, I met a great guy and artist by the name of Tom Davidson. He has a very cool comic called D-tails that you can check out over at his website, www.watchtomdraw.com. There’s an online version as well as a print version, which I highly recommend you buy several copies of, because I picked one up myself and it was great…and did I mention inexpensive?


As for the the quick audiobook review...If you get a chance, check out The Grays. I really dug that book.

I also blew through Neal Stephenson’s Zodiac which was a blast to read. Very different from his other books like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, I’d actually have to say that Zodiac was light in comparison. Oh, and it’s a very easy read, unlike...well...um...let's say...hmmm...I don't know...Cryptonomicon. I’m still working on that one.


Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller

I’m currently reading Loser Goes First by Dan Kennedy which is a fun little book too. I’ll let you know just how much when I’m done.


Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation

I think that pretty much sums up what’s going on around here so I’ll let you get back to your lives. As always, check back soon for updates.

Thanks and keep listening,

Joe

Strummin’ With the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen

Van Halen: The Where Are They Now Extravaganza - Part I


Strummin’ With The Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen Featuring David Lee Roth (2006)


Stummin’ With The Devil is the latest in a string of Bluegrass tribute albums that have been released in the last few years. AC/DC, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Dave Mathews, John Mayer and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are just some of the artists whose material has received the Bluegrass treatment and now Van Halen joins their ranks. What makes this time out different from the others is not the endorsement of, but the contribution to the album by original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth.

Roth lends his trademark vocals to the first two tracks, Jump and Jamie’s Cryin’, on Strummin’ With The Devil which are preformed by the John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band. Jump is also included a second time at the end of the disc as a “Radio Edit” version. David Lee Roth’s presence on the tracks is unmistakable and while he is more laid back here than in any other of his recorded performances, he is still, unmistakably, Diamond Dave.


Several artists, some of which include the previously mentioned John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band on Jump and Jamie’s Cryin’, Cornbread Red playing Panama, The Nashville Bluegrass Band covering Could This Be Magic? and an outstanding rendition of I’ll Wait by Blue Highway help to round out the album’s fifteen tracks.

All the tracks on Strummin’ With The Devil are stripped down acoustic versions of their original classic Van Halen counterparts. While the presentation of such signature electric tracks such as Jump, Unchained and even Eruption may at first seem odd and out of place, with each subsequent listen that misconception fades away to reveal the intricate arrangements and extraordinary musicianship that makes up Strummin’ With The Devil.

The versions of the songs made famous by the Van Halen brothers, Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth that are included on Strummin’ With The Devil are elegant in their new skin while still holding onto the feel that made them classics in the first place. Van Halen, David Lee Roth and Bluegrass fans should love Strummin’ With The Devil equally for the reverent treatment of the material as well as for its genre bending renditions. Van Halen has always been fun, especially the Roth era Van Halen. As a tribute, Strummin’ With The Devil hits that nail right on the head and yet manages to do so respectfully.

Sammy Hagar – Livin’ It Up

Van Halen: The Where Are They Now Extravaganza - Part II


Sammy Hagar - Livin’ It Up (2006)


Sammy Hagar is slowly but surely encroaching on Jimmy Buffett’s territory. Both are kings of the beach party, both own restaurants or clubs and both hock tequila to the thirsty masses. Hagar even mentions Buffett by name on his new album Livin’ It Up near the end of his song Sailin’.

Come to think of it, have you ever actually seen Jimmy Buffett and Sammy Hagar in the same place at the same time? No? I didn’t think so…interesting. Who knows, they may actually be the same person…kind of like Michael and Latoya.

Anyway…Sammy Hagar is back with his latest album, Livin’ It Up and he finally got it right. There are a few issues, but on the whole Livin’ It Up is a party from start to finish. Since his original departure from Van Halen, his albums have been spotty at best, the only consistency being that they have all contained the good, the bad and the filler.


This time out, Hagar has managed to put together a consistent album both in feel and theme. The songwriting is probably his best as a solo artist to date and definitely his least “cheesy” since his Van Halen days…Amsterdam not withstanding. The songs all fall into the atmosphere of the Mexican beach party that he has been trying to get across since Cabo Wabo was released on OU812.

Another interesting turn of events it that the former member of Montrose, HSAS and Van Halen openly embraces several aspects of the Country genre on Livin’ It Up including the trademark twang of Pedal Steel guitar on tracks like Halfway To Memphis.


My biggest problem with Sammy Hagar’s new album is…product placement. Livin’ It Up, while being a really good album, seems at times to be nothing more than a sales pitch for Hagar's Cabo Wabo and Cabo Tahoe resort destinations and his Cabo Wabo brand tequila, as fine as it may, in fact, be. The song Just One Sip could, and most likely will, be the official Cabo Wabo Tequila jingle. Both the tequila and the clubs are mentioned by name more than once on Livin’ It Up which does make his former ode to salt-rimmed glasses, Mas Tequila, seem subtle by comparison.

We live in an advertising age and the boy does have something to sell...I guess his thought was why not sell to a captive audience.

Tribe of Judah – Exit Elvis

Van Halen: The Where Are They Now Extravaganza - Part III


Tribe of Judah – Exit Elvis (2002)


Tribe of Judah’s Exit Elvis is an excellent example of a great debut album by a band not many people ever heard of. Why didn’t anybody ever hear of them? Any number of reasons really…timing, marketing, climate, band members. Band members you ask? Band members, I say. Tribe of Judah came into existence with an EP release in 2001 by members Steve Ferlazzo, Leo Mellace, Mike Mangini and Pat Badger. Any of those names starting to look familiar? How about this one, Tribe of Judah was/is fronted by none other than Van Halen’s last, and seemingly most loathed (by everyone except me), frontman Gary Cherone.


The reason I asked about the names starting to look familiar is that when added to Cherone, Mike Mangini and Pat Badger make up three quarters of the seemingly recently reformed Boston based band Extreme. In many ways, Tribe of Judah is a rebirth of Extreme, sans Nuno Bettencourt of course. You can hear aspects of the old band, but placed in a new and more modern context. Aside from their first album, Extreme always seemed to be much more progressive than their contemporaries and not just in terms of their musical technicality but also socially and politically.

Take that existence, add in the more sonically experimental aspects of Van Halen III and incorporate all of the technical advances in music and the bands that came after who helped redefine the sound of music into the new century and you begin to have an idea about the sound of Tribe of Judah. There are layers of industrial and electronic music mixed in to the heavy guitars and theatrical vocals that are Cherone and were Extreme…and Van Halen for that matter.


The album, taken as a whole, is tight and an altogether different experience than one might expect. There are, as with most things, parts that don’t work so well, but as an album it creates something interesting and unique. Exit Elvis is an experience as much as it is an album. There is a certain theatricality running through it, which concludes with the album’s title track, that seems to make it a little heartier than your average disc.

It’s hard not to wonder if Tribe of Judah would have been better known and Exit Elvis would have done better had Cherone’s tenure in Van Halen gone over better with the public in general. In my opinion, Van Halen fans weren’t ready to hear a new band, which was just what they got when Gary joined. It wasn’t Roth and it wasn’t Hagar and it never was going to be…and, people just weren’t ready for that. It’s unfortunate, because I think a second Cherone era Van Halen album would have been something that had the potential to be very special as the band would have had the time to gel and explore each other musically. I guess that’s something we’ll never know. On thing is certain though, if Van Halen III did better…Tribe of Judah never would have existed, and that would have been unfortunate too.

Eddie Van Halen – Music from Sacred Sin

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New: On the pod

New: On the pod

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
The Beach Boys – Sounds Of Summer (The Very Best Of)
Black Sabbath – Eternal Idol: Original Demos
Brian Adams – Rockpalast-Essen, Germany: October 15, 1983
Cheap Trick – Rare Tracks
Cinderella – Little Rock, Arkansas: October 18, 1991
Hall & Oats – Inglewood Forum: December 18, 1984
Journey – Chastain Park Amphitheater-Atlanta, GA: July 13, 2006
O.S.I. – Free
Pat Benatar – Portland USA 1986 FM Broadcast
Sammy Hagar – Livin’ It Up
Skid Row – Slave To The Grind: Original Demos
Skid Row – Subhuman Beings On Tour!
Soul Asylum – The Silver Lining
Tom Petty – Highway Companion
Tribe of Judah – Exit Elvis


Audiobooks:


The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum


The Prometheus Deception

How We Lost the Moon by Paul J. McAuley
(available through Audible.com)


How We Lost The Moon

Quick Audiobook Review:

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue


The Stolen Child

It’s an interesting book showing two sides of the same story. You get to follow the actual and stolen life of Henry Day through the eyes of the changeling that becomes Henry Day and the changeling that the real Henry Day becomes. The main focus of the book becomes the search for finding out who we really are.


News: On the pod:

So, here we are again with another New: On the pod. We keep getting hits from all over the world, not a ton…but a few, which is very cool, so I’d like to say hello to anyone new hitting On the pod for the first time and welcome.

It seems like the preview of John Mayer’s Continuum has been drawing a lot of people in from search engines. I guess that worked out well! If you missed the write up, you can check it out in the archives.

I received a note from Mieka Pauley letting me know that she added the On the pod write up of her show at The Space to her press page. If you want to check it out, you can go to http://www.mieka.com/presskit.shtml. I couldn’t have been more pleased. You can check out the rest of her site at www.mieka.com.

As you can see, there’s lots of new stuff On the pod this week. I found a bunch of cool live stuff over at MR-X @ www.melodicrock.com. They’re a great site for news and MR-X is a great place to find older, out of print and hard to find 80’s stuff…and it’s very, very reasonable. If I’m not mistaken, there was a $35 fee for a year of membership with weekly updates.

So far I’ve listened to Tribe of Judah, Hagar, Soul Asylum and part of the new Petty disc so I have a few things for new pieces that I’m going to start on today I think.

I was listening to The Bob Edwards Show on XM this past week and heard an interview he did with Peter Ames Carlin who wrote Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson…hence the two Beach Boys albums. Everyone calls Pet Sounds one of the greatest albums ever, so I figured that I should have it.


Catch a Wave:
The Rise, Fall and Redemption
of the Beach Boys'
Brian Wilson

One last note, On the pod is hitting the road and heading South to North Carolina at the end of August. If you catch me, I’ll sign any body part of your choosing…for a small fee, of course. We’re anticipating a little down time around that time so there may or may not be any updates...I just don’t know yet. I’m going to be bringing the laptop, but I don’t know about internet access, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

That’s all for now, keep listening…

Joe

Mieka Pauley: The Space 07/25/06

Mieka Pauley:
The Space - Hamden, CT 07/25/06

I visited The Space in Hamden, Connecticut on Tuesday, July 26 for the first time to see Mieka Pauley play and I was not disappointed by either.

First off, The Space is a terribly cool place to see a show. With a vintage clothing store above it, you walk down a short flight of steps and you immediately get it…The Space is a great “space.” Envision about the coolest musician’s basement you could think of and you’ve just about got the idea. The Space is littered with comfy couches, chairs and tables. There’s a good size performance area at the head of the room and the sound booth at the rear. The Space is an alcohol free venue so no drinks, but they do have a refreshment bar with assorted beverages and snacks. They also allowed the artists performing that night to take up the entire wall next to the entrance with tables for CDs, shirts and other assorted merchandise. The atmosphere of The Space was very laid back and comfortable and made it a very enjoyable place to see Mieka Pauley play.


After a short house announcement, Mieka took the stage with what I believe was a red Ovation Celebrity Deluxe acoustic guitar, checked her tuning and began her short, seven song set with Bravely. From there it was off to The Way It Is, Run, a haunting rendition of the Otis Redding classic (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, her fantastically sarcastic anthem to the bad gig Blunt and Secret before closing the set with Stronger.

Right off the bat, the first thing that stuck me about seeing Mieka Pauley live was how good her voice was. Some artists can make amazing records but really can’t cut it live…she is not one of those people. I had a notebook with me, and my own hand written note is, “god damn this girl can sing!!!” including the exclamation points for good measure.

Even more so than on her EPs, Pauley knows how to use dynamics to her advantage live. Her voice ranged from barely a whisper to full on without so much as a noticeable waver in pitch. From my view in the audience, she was having a good night…an early night mind you as she went on at 7:30, but a good night none the less.


For me, one of them most entertaining moments of Mieka’s set was hearing her perform her song Blunt. I was familiar with the song before the show through the live recordings available at her website, www.mieka.com, but hearing her perform it live was a blast. In a nutshell, Blunt is the working musician’s anthem. From bad gigs to questionable comments, it brilliantly encompasses the experience of playing music to the unappreciative masses.

Another thing about Mieka Pauley live is the intensity with which she is able to express herself during her performances. I introduced myself to her before the show and spoke with her briefly. She was extremely personable and grateful for people coming out to see her. (Also, rather than just talking about herself, she took the time to recommend a few of the other artists on the bill that evening.) When she took the stage however, she was transformed. She overcame the occasional coffee order and an open snare drum to become part of the songs she sang, not just the singer of them. Seeing and hearing that was a very powerful experience to be a part of.

The only other thing I can say is that Mieka Pauley is an outstanding live performer as well as recording artist. On stage she’s intense and passionate and, in my limited experience, off stage she’s generous with her time and appreciative of her fans. I highly recommend seeing her now while she’s still playing more intimate venues like The Space, because I can assure you it’s only a matter of time before the venues start to match her huge, huge voice.