I wanted something comforting. Like an old comfy coat, that you pull out of the back of the closet just as fall first starts to hit, and you need another layer, but don't want to get out the "technical fiber" jackets that will be necessary for the winter rain, snow, and cold. So I put Black Sabbath in. Their first (self-titled) album. The rainstorm begins... rain is falling... thunder crackles across the sky... and then THAT CHORD hits... BAM! Emaj Thirty-eight minutes and twelve seconds later, I have been on a gooddamn journey! The music is simple. Loud. Heavy. Even if you don't like Black Sabbath or metal or guitars, you hear a couple of notes from this album, and you know what it is, and who it is. For me, I grew up listening to this. I know every breath. Every beat. Every wrong note. This album is a part of my DNA. --- That was about 5 days ago. The album has not come out of the CD player yet. Every time I get in the car, it starts up where I left it when I turned the car off. It's not the Perfect Album. But it's the perfect album for me.
I made a new friend recently. She shared with me that the only way she can tolerate cardio is by making the whole thing as silly and high energy as possible. She's used this as her warmup song for the past few months and thinks it's a good way to change moods and boost energy. I keep finding myself humming the refrain. Fack. If you haven't heard T-Pain's Tiny Desk, you should
Been listening to this every day. I turn it on and do whatever suits me. The ultimate background music. Other than that been really into Lawrence and their newest single. Posted it below.
There are some tracks on this album that are just wayyyyyyyy too poppy, but then on some of them, Kim gives the producer (Vaughan Oliver) room to run wild, so he programs his analog synths (and that was in 2014) to make these crunchy sounds that fill the whole frequency space, and mixes however the hell he wants. Sometimes the lines between synth and percussion get blurred, and I absolutely adore it. Then she slaps her name on it, but whatever. I'm about 90% sure there are true-blue Baroque chord progressions in at least two songs. You'll all probably intuitively know which songs you like, and which you won't, within a few seconds of listening. Could be 0 songs you like, tho :/ P.S. the song "TRANSylvania" is her referencing that she's transexual, and it's one of my faves. It's also one of the Baroque-style tracks, in one section.
I'm currently reading Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (it's really good, so far) and at one point the author is interviewing Terry Melcher who boasts about being the "only American to produce the Beatles!". I couldn't find anything by the Beatles that he had produced, although he seems to have been working with Apple in some capacity for a while: The first Grapefruit single "Dear Delilah" was produced by Terry Melcher when he came to the UK to sign a publishing deal with Apple. "Lullaby" was produced by John Lennon and Paul McCartney but didn't end up as Grapefruit's second single because Lennon and McCartney was in India at the time. The version found on the album Around Grapefruit was a later, group-produced version that had been remixed by Melcher, who also added an orchestral arrangement. The Lennon/McCartney production wasn't released until 2016. Toward the end of the '60s, Terry Melcher was hired as an independent producer by the Beatles' Apple label. While working for that company, he produced several singles for a fantastic but largely forgotten group called Grapefruit whose primary songwriter was the older brother of Malcolm and Angus Young of AC/DC.