Bobo
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Posts posted by Bobo
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I'm a big Evanescence fan on the quiet. "My Immortal" is so haunting that it makes me teary. It's a great song.
"Bring Me To Life" has the same effect on me. Amy's beautiful vocals on the track really bring out something in me which I didn't know was there.
Recently there was a concert on a terrestrial channel featuring, amongst other artists, Evanescence. I was looking forward to it. They'd play a few songs, there'd be a bit of conversational interplay, and whatever else.
I was looking forward to watching the concert live. After listening to the tracks for this time, I knew it wouldn't disappoint.
Or would it? Amy was screeching all over the place on My Immortal, hardly able to hold a note. Bring Me To Life, and a couple of new tracks off Fallen. I kept watching, hoping it would get better. But it didn't.
I'm so glad that I have my copies of these tracks as they are. At least I can use them to cloud my view of their live performances.
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I could never narrow it down to one song. But I could easily take it from a shortlist of those tracks which, if I had that single track on CD, for the rest of my life, no money nor means to buy any other, I can give that due consideration.
First among several equals is a little oddity. I'm sure I've mentioned it around before somewhere, but doubtless y'all fell asleep before I was finished rambling.
Dennis Wilson was perhaps THE underrated force of The Beach Boys. At times stage leader, at times propulsive drummer, at times the tenderest of keyboard players, and at times the most achingly beautiful lead vocals.
Not only that, but he knew about music. Alas he is the guy who, amongst the genius of brothers Brian and Carl Wilson, took up the drums because The Beach Boys didn't have a drummer at the time (the drumming on the early tracks, Surfin', Luau, etc was all done by Brian, of all people) Dennis, at 15, had to learn to play the drums.
Along came the pressure of having to be a good musician, and the heart behind everything that The Beach Boys stood for. He, of all of them, was the only one who could surf (Brian states that although he had tried it as a young lad, and after Denny's death, he never could get into it).
Stories give Dennis the persona of being the guy who, by the time he was fifteen, was smoking, drinking, taking rather heavy drugs, and by this age had already gotten a girl in the neighbourhood pregnant for what were at those times vast sums of money.
Back in the recording studio (or real life as the Wilson brothers all knew it for so long), they were recording. And recording. And recording.
Ten years later, they started somewhat of a renaissance. Two South African guys, Blondie Chaplin, a keyboardist and guitarist and Rikki Fataar, a drummer, from a South African group Flame joined the band.
Along came Denny's incredibly sensitive self. Demoted to vocalist, as he was, he performed two tracks off the second half of this album.
The latter, a sweet lullaby to his princess, Cuddle Up, is an emotional piece in itself. With piano from Daryl Dragon, and the prettiest of violin arrangements, it's hard not to like.
But then, the criminally underlooked. You can't really call it emotional. Heart-rendingly beautiful is more on the money. The cracks in his voice are obvious.
"Look at me, funny face" he cries. "That's not you, a wrinkled nose, a tear". The violin lines are now descending into pure beauty. "You're crying". Small gap in the melody while they decide to change keys.
"Rest your head
Cry on me
Don't be afraid, I'll stay with you"
Building up and up, I'm not afraid, as a grown man, to admit that the song has me wiping the tears from my eyes.
"I know you'll make it
And you'll make it good, and you'll make it good
And you'll make it good."
Fantastic interplay, if ever one gets here, of instrument and voice. One of the prettiest things I've ever heard is when Denny's voice rises again.
"All of my life, I haven't known much
All I know is what I feel
And what I feel"
Tiny echo, "And what I feel"
"And what I feel" - "And what I feel" (more echo this time)
"Love.." The chords are still not moving so quickly. But the feeling is still there. It builds up, and comes back down to a dramatic climax.
Smiling, as always
Matt
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Ah yes, another crazy story to tell.
My darling former girlfriend, Mel, Westlife fan that she is, was, and forever shall be, had a habit of wrecking "the moment" between us. Having just broken a dwelling kiss in the backyard of my house, we figured we should head out to hers.
With me being thirteen at the time, and she a mere eleven, we had to employ the help of my mother to drive us there.
We set out in the car, eyes closed, lips forever interlocked, as was the custom prior to my discovery of the Internet.
Cruisin' we set out to do, and cruisin' we did.
Back then, CD singles were all that caught Mel's eye. She'd just been on a four-week long trip to Australia with her mother, her sister, and her father, and bought herself a seven-track CD single with a 220-second long interview at the end with their former manager, Ronan (codename Rodent) Keating.
I drifted off to sleep eventually, guided by Ms. Massey's honey-drenched soprano ramblings to the vague tune of Swear It Again, while I, like others, was thinking "F*** this song." Swear indeed I did.
Three weeks later I came around to Mel's house. Thankfully now she'd acquired some new CDs, including The Offspring, Groove Armada, and those two-hit wonders, The Honeyz.
As she held me in her arms, she quoted some words which will stay with me ever since.
"Some people say
that everything has got its place in time
even the day must give way to the night
but I'm not buying
cos in your eyes
I see a love that burns eternally
and if you see how beautiful you are to me
you'll know I'm not lying
sure there'll be times we wanna say goodbye
but even if we try
there are something's in this life won't be denied
won't be denied"
More of the same, I'm afraid, but for that moment, we had found peace.
It wasn't until I phoned her this evening that she reminded me of this story. And 'pon my life, never will I forget that day.
Retrospectively tearful
Matt
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I had an earworm this morning. It was so bad, yet so weird.
Information from the 80s cafe enabled me to complete this post, so I'm happy about that. But on with the show..
It was five years ago, that I read an article in the UK-wide newspaper The Guardian. Great paper, dam'-near impossible crossword. This was the week that Christina Aguilera came to the fore with her debut single, Genie In A Bottle, and she who was then unmarried and secretly going by the name of Britney Spears, was attempting to win the hearts of thousands upon thousands of the young, impressionable youth by wearing a school uniform. Good times.
Anyway, the hook of this song gets in my head. The title repeats over and over upon horrendously tender pre-teen rock vocals.
And it gets in my head. And again, and again.
As I've previously stated about this song, the plan was that it got to number one and pulled the UK pop scene apart. I was one of a select few hundred who got their hands upon a copy. It's since become a prized artefact in a collection, as I'm one of the few who still owns it.
And it gets in my head, again, again, again. How I wish it would stop.
But it won't. Excrement occurs.
Yours, as ever, but probably with more to come as more songs come into my head.
Matt
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Sorry about misinterpreting your previous message, Ken. I was joking about messing around with the record players anyway - any that I come across nowadays just refuse to work at the worst of times.
This is the bit I hope I didn't majorly p*ss you off.
I guess I need to clarify. When I had written that, I was using you as a refrence for age only. You are 17. From what I have been reading here, you represent the younger age of the spectrum here on these boards. I am going on 40. I don't consider myself old, but in between the 2 ages (yours and mine), there were some drastic changes. I have neices and nephews your age (the 15-16-17 year old age bracket). They don't remember the hassles that involved hearing your favorite song. They weren't around. Or the hassles involved with a record player, or an 8-track player. My first record player was a Mattel close-n-play. It was a toy. You'd stick a 45rpm in, shut the lid, and the record would play. And it was horrible when it would skip, as you knew that was it for the record. Want one that doesn't skip? Buy a new record. Nowdays, heck, just pitch the disc, make a new one in 2 minutes via the computer. And Bobo, you say you'd like to try the pennies on the needle thing. Some advice. Don't. 9 times out of 10, it will only screw up the record.Ken.
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I missed your allusion to me in the initial post, and would like to somehow respond. How, I don't know yet.
I'd like to try your pennies on the needle thing. I never could work my old box because it kept skipping. Now I've got a new one, I've no need to worry. That was very annoying when it happened.
I was 14 when I downloaded Napster. I thought - hey, free music. Power to the people, if only for the amount of time that they overlook the illegality of it all. Course, by 16, this had happened, and I had switched over to Audiogalaxy (which started out very slow, and then, when Napster gave in, it picked up in site traffic). For this reason, file sharing is a great thing. Not for self-pleasure, but to give other people the chance to see what's out there. Of the 312 >mumble< Everly Brothers >stops mumbling< tracks which I have on CD-Rom, 300 were downloaded off the Internet. This includes foreign rarities, two whole live albums etc.
Yes, I'm a mad fan, but skipping that obvium, it gave me a chance to be in the knowledge that there was SO much music out there that even millions of users couldn't have it all.
Giving our voice to the music, as when Dylan sang to the Onassis-Kennedy's (the allusion from American Pie - the jester sang for the king and queen). That's the most important thing to me. Life's ultimate aim is to make a difference. And for those that can, all power to them.
(On a tangent: they played American Pie from the original record the other day, you could tell because it skipped three verses at the end)
For those who can and do share music, I have all the time in the world. A rare breed are those who say it's okay, carry it out, stand up to courts, tell everyone within sight that, unequivocally, downloading music is the best thing that happened since the naissance of the internet.
My computer was first installed in September 99, and since then I have been mad keen on the idea of getting what we deserve for nothing but 20 minutes download, and months of pure pleasure.
I'm not sure if any of this makes any sense to anyone else...
People like Bobo, at 17, given the fact file-sharing has been around for 5 years now, was 12 when it came on the scene. Never had to put friggin' pennies on a record needle because the damn record skipped. Instant digital music. Never had to contend with a Mattel Close-n-Play. Never had to screw with a stupid 8-track that never rewound, and sounded like someone dropped a garbage truck off the Empire State Building when the program changed. Music Utopia for the younger crowd. And I don't mean Bobo personally, just, people of his demograph.
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Ironic death-related incidence number two:
The first track I downloaded off Napster was The Everly Brothers' Down In The Willow Garden. About a man who makes his girlfriend die a gory death. I would say that that's quite prescient given what later happened with file-sharing networks!
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Hi!
I know it was definitely chosen as Cool Site of the day, on their site. More traffic would have been due to that, certainly.
Matt
Carl,Just curious... what's the daily hit rate for Songfacts?
Is there any "incidental" or "intentional" main thuroughfares to the site (aka like Yahoo picks was)?
~ Mike
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Mercifully, his one and only UK chart entry was with I Talk To The Trees, which hit #18 in 1970, as Lee Marvin was scaling the chart peak in the form of a Wand'rin' Star.
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Great intros, guys, keep 'em comin'!
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So that's where it got to? I couldn't find it to refer anywhere. Thanks Sara.
There was another discussion about this song a few months ago, maybe you'll find something helpful in there:
Sara -
Here is an interesting link, with:
German (as sung) | Direct German Translation | English (as sung)
Hope you find it useful.
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What can I say...
A seventeen year old student, I play music with two bands, one, a jazz/blues/everything else band called Uncle Heavy's, and one an everything group (we mainly sing whatever we write between the thirty of us) called AstroCatastrophe. That was an idea of a name which I got from a good friend of mine's nickname way back on Napster. (Am I allowed to say the dreaded N word on here?) I sing lead, and falsetto harmony vocals. We were set up for a bet, and have lasted on and off for three, nearly four years now.
Anyway... I'm currently in college studying Music, which covers everything from writing tunes like J.S. Bach (which sucks), to writing music of my verily own (which rocks). I hope next year to start studying music at a higher level, which would rock.
I have one beautiful, amazing, and altogether wonderful girlfriend, name of Jordan Michelle Domoslai.
Hmm... a picture of me.
Hair bleached blond thru blond, dark blue eyes, bloodshot red through lack of sleep. 5 foot 4 inches tall, and 114lb precisely. (Near enough). Bright pink-white surfer-boy skin. And short, stubby, piano playing fingers. Buried underneath thousands of CD's.
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Apparently he's from Denver, Colorado, and is on his sixth album, recently released and entitled Mississippi to Mali. Sounds like some good stuff.
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Cool. Sorry about the extremely pesky question, Carl. I was just using my limited knowledge of spreadsheets, and better still, databases, to presume a couple things about the site.
Using even more presumption then, if there are (a specific number) of songs in the database (easily enough achieved by a sensible means of databasing and presence/alternate presence checking), we can see how many hits a particular song, a particular artist, gets within a day. Unfortunately, however, because they're .lasso based, this doesn't work half as well because people can so easily refresh and so on.
Anyhoodle.
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Interesting. So the theory is that when a referenced, but invisible clock hits 00:00 (whichever time zone you use, Eastern?) a database of some kind smacks all numbers back to zero and starts again, counting the number of times a URL is reached? Does this also work with Random.lasso? Cool feature.
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A great website. Looked through it already, probably will on several more occasions. Thanks for replying, too(!)
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So true. As much as can, and is, be taught about music - writing, performing, whatever... it's not up to someone else how someone else does something. Nobody can take that away from anyone else who owns it.
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The bandthemselves have been around for 15 years and have released eight albums... they don't look like they sound too bad.
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Anyone here songwrite? Just thought I'd bring it up in case there was someone else here who did.
Just interested to know if there was anyone else out there who did.
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From a musician's point of view, that's funny. The chord progression itself isn't so weird once you get to the verse. Just a (dominant minor, tonic major 7, dominant minor, tonic major 7) * 2. Subdominant, Dominant major 6th, tonic. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but so beautifully executed...
DISCLAIMER: Yes, I did work that out on the spot. Yes, I do have too much time on my hands.
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Mike Love - WOW - could he harmonize. He MADE that classic Beach Boys sound!
Nono, he didn't. Wanna know who I think made the Beach Boys sound? Dennis. Reason being, listen normally, you can't hear his voice in the vocal blend. Listen through headphones you can just hear a middle pitched whine disguised as a note (to be fair, he makes it). Besides, he was not the classic Beach Boy. It's a well-worn fact, but he was the only Beach Boy who surfed (Brian, in his autobiography, himself claims that he could never get into it.)
But it was the Wilson Brothers, with their over-reactive father and their apprehensive mother, both of whom were heavily involved in music, who MADE the Beach Boys.
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OOPS...sorry Bobo.
Hey, don't be. Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.
I like people disagreeing with me. It makes me seem more individual in my tastes. And that, I believe I am.
Sara 
What's the name of this song and who sings it?
in Questions and Answers
Posted
Amigahd. I know this one! I'm even singing it right now in my subconscious.
The title is Roll To Me, and it's by Del Amitri. And I must say, it's a dang fine song!
The lyrics are here:
http://www.lyricalcontent.com/htmlit.php?q=1411&artist=Del+Amitri&title=Roll+to+Me
Love and mercy
Matt