Alternative Weekend: Something to Read while Bored to Death Inside
It's Easter and lovely weather, so what do we do? Stay inside of course because we are not allowed out.
Fear not, as I have yet another boring post for you to read about from the most messed up music mind you have ever come across.
From Opeth to Glen Campbell and The Carpenters to the Sex Pistols, I am a fan of all of them.
If you have a more diverse taste than me then let me know, we will probably get along very well.
Stormbending – The Devin Townsend Project (Transcendence -2016)
I don’t quite know what to make of this Canadian bloke who reminds me of a demon from the depths of hell without hair. He looked even more terrifying when he had a little a few years earlier.
@zekepickleman mentioned this song to me maybe around a year ago and I must admit it does have something. 'Epic' would be the word I would describe 'Stormbending' and it does catch your ear quite easily.
Driving rock combined with some synthesizer sounds always makes for a decent combination. I tried to listen to the rest of 'Transcendence' but like many albums, it failed to get into my brain.
Northern Lights – Renaissance (A Song for All Seasons – 1978)
If you were born after 1970 then this will probably be quite alien to you. The song itself was quite mainstream, but the band class themselves as 'progressive'.
Annie Haslam has one of those seventies female vocals that seem to have been eradicated from today’s world. A smooth non-warbled voice that makes your skin turn to Goosebumps.
Others I can think of are Maddy Prior of folk band Steeleye Span (though I can’t do with their music), and Sally Oldfield who sang on Steve Hackett's flagship song, 'Shadow of the Hierophant' but even more famously, her brothers’, ‘Moonlight Shadow’.
Non-warbled female voices I think are now extinct, though if you hear one that’s not 40 years old, then do let me know.
Northern Lights rang true to me at an early age and I went out and bought the single. More recently I have been tempted to dig into their back catalogue.
Who can resist an album named ‘Scheherazade and Other Stories’. It could well take me back to the days of old Arabia!
Even Flow – Pearl Jam (Ten – 1992)
After a couple of songs, you have probably never heard of I had better come up with one you have a chance with.
This was yet another song I started playing on plastic guitar courtesy of Guitar Hero III. I didn’t buy or listen to ‘Ten’ back in the grunge days of the nineties, preferring Nirvana at the time.
The song was a single but I can't find an official video on YouTube, though some of their other songs are there, strange?
I do love the guitar work in the second verse of this song but would love more to hear the Guitar Hero II version as they emphasized that particular instrument and brought it to life.
Layne Staley: Dead
Chris Cornell: Dead
Kurt Cobain: Dead
Scott Weiland: Dead
Eddie Vedder: WOOHOOO BOYS I MADE IT
It’s interesting what I see within the comments of this song and quite true.
Being a grunge star of the nineties would inevitability lead to your death sooner than you might have thought.
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.
My my, that is quite diverse. I like big guitars but have never been much of a fan of the polished almost bland nature of the kind on Devin's stuff. Tis very nu-thrash/metal. Even Flow still stands the test of time.
It is interesting with the guitar hero stuff as there were Metallica tracks that were much better with the mastering for the game as instead of the record
Yeah call me 'Mr Diverse'.. got to have something for everyone! Devin is a demon, I'm sure of it.. even his name sounds like Devil.
You must have been a GH demon, the heavy ones were really hard to master.
He certainly looks the part!
They were indeed. All them twisted riffs and bloody solos!
https://twitter.com/BrynRogers/status/1248579287109828608 - Tweeted.
Evenflow was such a good song. Probably one of my favorites of theirs right next to Daughter and Yellowledbetter. Everyone was always to big on Jeremy, but I think it was mostly the dark themes they like which wasn't as mainstream back then. That's my opinion anyway.
I don't know either of those tracks, listening to them now. Jeremy.. hmm it was never my favourite, I preferred Black.
Well, I'm just wondering if Neil Young was right. It's better to burn out than it is to rust?
I guess we could ask Eddie Vetter for an unbiased opinion.
A lot of the good ones seem to do just that! Average age of 27 or so isn't it?
Yeah, something like that.
You ought to consider John Prine for an alternative. He damn near tripled the average and made some serious good music in the last two years. I mean, he described some of his critics as "syphilitic parasitics" How can you not love that? 😂
It appears he died very recently, the young version of him reminds me of Patrick Swayze!
He died Wednesday night. Corona Virus got him. He was extraordinary for 50 years.
Devin seems to be over the top in everything he does. I first heard him on Steve Vai's band project a few years back. He keeps cropping up on various things, but he seems very prolific.
Those female folky vocals are rare in popular music these days. Everyone seems to have to do vocal acrobatics instead of just delivering the song.
That's one way of putting it! I noticed the trend with Maria Carey and 'Vision of Love' though Whitney may have started in the mid-'80s. Then everyone started copying the style and I started falling asleep.
Mariah has a lot to answer for, but then I do love her Xmas song :) Female singers I like include Bjork, Neneh Cherry, Amie Mann and Camille.
There's an issue playing some Youtube videos in PeakD.
Its a browser issue, use Edge and they all work.
Edge, on Linux? I don't think so :) Using Brave.
Ah, Brave doesn't work.
Haha yah man!
I am pretty sure most people don't know what to make of Devin Townsend. I think that only the most progressive and involved music fans really know who he is. I hadn't really gone past the first layer until you started posting music sharing blogs and I dug in a little deeper.
I miss you man. Piled up a few epic stories and hoping to get back into daily content creation, engagement and curation now!
Hope you are well dood!
He's a demon from the depths of hell! Even his name sounds like 'Devil', there's no mistaking it!!!