Showing posts with label Bandcamp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bandcamp. Show all posts

Thursday 23 March 2023

Agadont


 My friend Lee Sei-Macfhearchair used AI to reimagine an eighties chart-topper in a Goth style using Chatgpt 4, and this is what came out.

(Verse 1)
In the shadows, dark and deep, where the twisted branches creep,
Whispers echo, secrets weep, the moonlit forest's mystery,
Pineapples and coffee ground, beneath the earth, their spirits bound,
Dance with me, our souls entwined, in this nocturnal symphony.
(Chorus)
Agadoo doo doo, pluck the darkness, stir the storm,
Agadoo doo doo, blend the shadows, hearts transform,
To the left, to the right, rise above and take your flight,
Join the dance of endless night, chant the gothic hula's might.
(Verse 2)
Through the mist and ancient trees, feel the breath of ghostly breeze,
Mournful cries and melodies, the spirits of the past arise,
Candles flicker, casting spells, where the raven's omen dwells,
In the twilight, hand in hand, we dance as one with haunted eyes.
(Chorus)
Agadoo doo doo, pluck the darkness, stir the storm,
Agadoo doo doo, blend the shadows, hearts transform,
To the left, to the right, rise above and take your flight,
Join the dance of endless night, chant the gothic hula's might.
(Bridge)
In the distance, church bells toll, the haunting echoes of lost souls,
Our love immortal, darkness calls, we're bound together, evermore,
As the moon descends, we sway, shadows dance and spirits play,
In the realm of endless night, we are the keepers of the lore.
(Chorus)
Agadoo doo doo, pluck the darkness, stir the storm,
Agadoo doo doo, blend the shadows, hearts transform,
To the left, to the right, rise above and take your flight,
Join the dance of endless night, chant the gothic hula's might.
(Outro)
Agadoo, our hearts aflame, in this realm we shall remain,
Dancing through eternity, the gothic hula calls our name.

The music is "To The Devil" by Dead Eyes Opened which is available as a free download on their Bandcamp page. I'll leave you to work out the song.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
  2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
  3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
  4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Saturday 13 November 2021

The House On The Borderland


I am now re reading "The House on The Borderland" by William Hope Hodgson , and only thirty pages in to a 170 page book and I think that he must have indulged in some mind altering substances. This is probably what drew me to the book in the first place.

I wrote a short piece on him on Vocal here.

The protagonists have just delved into the found manuscript and  something strange has happened to the author , scaring his dog and sending him far out of the solar system and with a worrying encounter with horrific swinefolk.

The book wont take me long to finish but his whole canon is available on Amazon Kindle for 99p although there are annotated and illustrated versions available for a little extra.

Music i have gone for Beautiful and Brave by the excellent Dead Eyes Opened who don't seem to be available on Amazon but are on Bandcamp where they will get more of your money if you buy here.

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
  2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
  3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
  4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag

Wednesday 2 June 2021

Dixie Chicken


Today I have been listening to a lot of music , part of which was on a four mile walk that included posting a CD from a Discogs order to Connecticut in the USA, and decided to play a best of Little Feat , “As Time Goes By”. By the way this post was rejected for an unspecified reason by Vocal.


The first song on the album is “Dixie Chicken” , also the title track of their third album written by Lowell George and Fred Martin. The song itself is just very good but for me the piano lines just know over the perfection line by some way. They almost don’t go with the song but enhance it so much that Bill Payne’s lines just make you want to play it again , although a second Little Feat song always adds to the feast , and a whole album just really is perfect.


Little feat were probably one of the first multi ethnic bands , although to could also cite Santana and The Mothers of Invention, with Sam Clayton an integral part of the band.


Their songs are usually complex but you can sing along with them and all of Lowell George’s guitar work was planned down to the note. I always improvise and therefore often can’t repeat what I actually played but Lowell George was a nailed on musician.


After “Dixie Chicken” came “Willin’” a sparse acoustic piece from their first album but this gets better every time you hear it and Lowell George’s guitar work is wonderful.


Lowell George was always Little Feat’s main man and I learned about him from the documentary on Amazon Prime “Feats First” about his short life , and his lasting musical legacy , six Little Feat studio albums , one live album and one solo album.


The other thing is Little Feat were never a one man band Bill Payne and Paul Barrere were also mainstays and contributed songs , licks and vocals to the overall sound.


I have recently been listening to all their albums while I work and at no point do I ever wnat to skip a song, and even though “As Time Goes By” is a compilation , you could probably put any dozen Little Feat songs together and it would be an absolutely great listen. If you go to their website (they are still going) there is a jukebox on their site to whet your appetite.


Although they didn't move a great deal of music early on they are now regarded as a truly great rock band and it is almost impossible to pigeonhole them , yes they are very unmistakably American, possibly in a similar univers to The Band , they influenced a lot who came after , but their music still sounds fresh and contemporary.


I often hate people who say that music was only good when whatever, I know people who’s musical diet is British Rock between 1974-6 , or eighties power ballads or stuff like Heart or Smooth radio, but basically 95% is always rubbish and it’s up to us to find that 5% good stuff. Little Feat and a veritable gold seam and all their stuff is worth listening two , much like The Band. 


I am unaware of a contemporary equivalent but I am sure another will emerge and knock us off our feet so to speak.


So I suggest to listen to “Dixie Chicken” , thanks to YouTube it’s free to listen to , though you may have an advert to navigate , and if you like that I suggest to invest in some of their LPs, you will not be disappointed and please don’t use Spotify and it does not support artists. Buy music from the artist direct if you can , otherwise see if they have  a Bandcamp site.


Monday 19 April 2021

Writing While Moving

 I’m am slightly in awe of the way we are becoming a TV watching proletariat. Though that’s a discussion for another time. I decided to see if I could do a blog post as I walked and this is the result. I hope my edits manage to make it readable

One of the problems with writing, walking, doing things they always take time.I was just wondering that out on my morning walk could I actually record this and use phone and Google Docs to record my thoughts.

I'm not sure if I can do paragraphs or how to actually make breaks but anyway this is going to be a stream of text which I can then take apart when I actually get home and you know so that we can actually see if this actually works.

I do write about music and that is a big part of my life. When the lock down hit last February or whenever I suddenly spent a lot of time and listening to 6 Music listening to radio and hearing what they had to play and share.

The I also you realised that my CD collection is too big. I mean I've ripped most of it to my network but when CDs are in boxes or even worse in an attic then you may as well just get rid. I've actually got a pile that I've for sale on Discogs now .I'm not looking for money as such, more just to make space ,and as I say, I've got a lot of boxes of CDs but what then happened is that whilst I listened to stuff through my Kindle fire and speaker system, I realised that my radio also had a CD player so I thought well I will listen to some of these CDs I've got for sale because it's very close, while I work.

Then I thought you know so even the ones I have on saleI will listen to those as well and it's progressed so that I spend my working day listening to music on CD.

A lot of people have actually said oh well you're not with the times. You should be using Spotify or a streaming service and yeah I can stream on YouTube or whatever the odd one, there are full albums on there they do get taken down.

I now listen to my CD collection as it  is very convenient and as I say I have lots of CD box sets and I do believe that my purchase of CDs a lot of the time it was more about supporting the artist then actually getting the CD and you know I've not listened to lots of my music.

I probably I have hundreds of thousands of tracks and I know this from ripping them to my digital store. I've also bought albums from Bandcamp recently by Edward II and Jordan Reyne because Spotify does not support artists. Spotify is flawed because there are a few people making a lot of money from it and artists not the ones. If you're an artist trying to break through you are not really going to make all that money you can't. I tried it and I got paid 0.00001 didn't get paid anything because he was too small to pay but basically Spotify make a lot of money.

A couple of years ago daft punk's random access memory what's the biggest selling album and biggest streamed album of the year and they got paid £13,000 . When you can see that the people in Spotify are all millionaires making millions from this it's not the artist who's getting the money.

I'm told that I'm behind the times and I should have a Spotify account and you can get it free with advertising whatever but it's a very bad model for the artists.

The model does not encourage new music.It’s alright it's just using what's there and if there was no new music produced ever Spotify would still go on it would be ok.It would still make money because shall we say the market the market has now got so much music.

 I mean we've got music from a couple of centuries and even just normal popular pop music is like 70 years of Music so Spotify has this huge amount of music for people to actually stream and listen as and when they want and it's convenience but I once actually said that CD was the McDonaldisation of music by its convenience you can actually skip tracks sequence tracks in the order you want make playlists.

The move to mp3 and digital even made that's more convenient and Spotify you don't even have to o that you just let Spotify choose what you want to hear and you know it's a perfect medium for people to actually or the corporations to decide what you want to listen to.

When I was with EE the streaming service was Deezer and I saw an advertisement for it and it was just it just chooses exactly what I want to hear no it doesn't it chooses what it thinks you should hear and that is my problem

I see Amazon suggestions and old you bought this so you might want to buy this which force you to actually do it like listen to it and decide it's not what I want or he might listen to it in here something and decide yeah if it's what I want but you know side of my preferred way is you know when I listen to the radio or walk into a record shop and hear something and think what the hell's that .

Luckily these days with digital radio you can find out what you actually playing with online lists or it shows you on the actual DAB player and the DJ usually tells you.

When I was a teenager when you heard something and then the DJ didn't say who it was or it because they said at the beginning of the song in you came in like 20 seconds in then you know it was a little more difficult and that happened so many times with me where I heard things and I'm going like what the hell is that you know.

Today we've got you got things like Shazam which will recognise music most of the time so you know and then you should have it and then you can actually get it from wherever so there is no need for it for my old site apart from a legacy thing where people wanted to hear know what the music was so many years ago and such an advert you know but again it's just like people who want that it's so few now that the sites not worth maintaining all I've got it on Facebook and if I see a decent advert I will put it on there because the advert will be on YouTube and it's it is one of those things that even with adverts these days there are very few that are worth noting and again if you want music on your device then you got it

So the first song that made me start the Song of The Salesman site was a Guinness advert that used “Burke’s Law” by Prince Buster so I will signoff with that. Though I can’t find it so we will share “Guaglione” by Pérez Prado with the fabulous Dancing Man advert.

This has been mostly spoken into my phone and recorded by Google Docs so I will blame that for all my mistakes.

Friday 19 March 2021

Good Morning

The other day was one of those hideous morning when I got woken up my my alarm clock. I know that is the point of the alarm clock , but I have never figured out how to snooze it , so when the alarm goes off I know I have to get up. Although I have also observed that the alarm actually stops after a while then restarts after five minutes. I like waking up and knowing i hamaybe forty minutes before the alarm allowing me a gradual waking , but the other morning it wasn't to be.

The good thing about being woken by my alarm is that I must have had a good night's sleep, undisturbed by anything and though I had to drag myself up , I knew that I had benefitted from the rest. I would hate to be awake throughout the night and when the alarm went off having to drag a tired ad reluctant body towards the shower despite the physical protests and desire to just stay in bed.

Todays' music has been mostly Jefferson Airplane's first five albums, Edward II's "Dancing Tunes" and some Continental Quilts . Follow the links to the artist's Bandcamp areas. All worthy listens , and was particularly impressed with "Surrealistic Pillow" which contains "White Rabbit" , "You're My Best Friend" . "Somebody To Love" and I will share the wonderful acoustic "Embryonic Journey" , which I loved when I first heard it many moons ago.

Tuesday 9 March 2021

Y5G?

We are continually being sold 5G by every mobile phone network, but seriously who actually needs it? Yes it's faster but it's like telling your average punter that they need an HGV or Formula 1 Racing Car to get about. I'm not dissing 5G , and I can see that it can have many applications, but I remember streaming movies on 3G and 4G is generally more than adequate for all my needs. If my broadband is off I can use my 4G signal with no problem.

I can see possibly that when you are 5G you can stream very high definition movies but if you are watching on a phone or computer will you get any benefit from that?  Obviously your data usage will shoot through the roof but maube that's what the mobile phone companies are looking at.

The ads will tell you  you can download a movie or album in seconds, but given the amount who streaming platforms who is going to be downloading anything. I use Netflix, Amazon Prime , BBC iPlayer , All4 and lots of others to watch things on my 40" television , and I recently purchased "Dancing Tunes" by Edward II and "Chapter Zero" by Jordan Reyne from Bandcamp and downloaded them via my broadband , but 4G would have been fine. 

By the way a lot of Bandcamp artists make music available free such as the song "Dancing Girls" by Dead Eyes Opened (great goth band) or on pay what you want so a great source of music worth supporting if you can.

So given that I started on 5G and finished on Bandcamp here's "The Banana Boat Song" from "Dancing Tunes" by Edward II , it is a totally joyful album and if you can get a signal you can stream it over 3G, 4G or 5G.


Tuesday 2 March 2021

March On .. And Support Artists

I don't buy much music these days, my collection is huge and I am selling a lot of CDs I bought on Discogs. I've written previously that I have bought albums because I think I should have them . The good thing about this is that the artist get's supported from the initial sale , although subsequent resales don't actually benefit the artist although often money I get from Discogs sales does by music. This week, although I don't need it I have ordered an album by Deodato and singles by The KLF and Roger Williams on vinyl. 

The albums I have for sale I have in a stack next to my desk and I actually listen to them to see if they are worth keeping. I think one or two have made me think "Why the hell did I buy that?" but most ate worth listening to. I am currently listening to a five disc budget reggae compilation called "The A To Zion" and it is rather good but it's still for sale.

Other's like "Meet The Humans" by Steve Mason (ex of the Beta Band) were so good that I pulled it from the store. I have the attitude that if you put something in a box or drawer that that's it , it's not going to be played, but yesterday I was listening to a Randy Newman box and after the five excellent discs of his Americana I remember I had a couple in the "N" box , and next to those two was an NWA compilation , so three discs for that box actually got played yesterday.

The main reason I am writing this is that I got a missive from Jordan Reyne on Bandcamp about her new album Chapter Zero  . Jordan does not put her music on leech like streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music that make a fortune for their owners but pay the artist a pittance. I cannot see how the model can properly work, but for almost all artists it doesn't so if you share a Spotify playlist with me you go down in my estimation.

Ever since I saw her opening for The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing at Think Tank? (see here) six years ago she has remained the most impressively original artist I have ever seen or heard. She is also a very approachable person , and her set that day was so stunning that I bought three CDs on the spot. So a new album is always an essential purchase , and buying from Bandcamp ensures that artist gets fair recompense for their work.

I am looking forward to hearing the new album and you gat a digital copy of all her work here for about thirty quid. Not only is she a musician she puts together videos for her songs on her YouTube channel here. You will be impressed.

Though it's the opener from here last album "Bardo" , "Then They Came For You" shows her video creation skills off, and is a song for our times.

Saturday 25 April 2020

A Shadow on the Wall .....


I reread books I like, mainly because my memory is fairly rubbish,but many years ago I picked up a book, I think from a library clearance, a large print version of "A Shadow on the Wall" by Jonathan Aycliffe (one of the pen names of Denis MacEoin, and other is Daniel Easterman) , and he is probably my favourite authors in the Goth / Supernatural genre. The think is I am reading this and it has become obvious I have never read the book, even though it's been in my possession for probably ten years.

I've just looked on Amazon and there a few more of his books that I was unaware of, so my reading is probably sorted for the rest of the year.

I still think "The Matrix" is the most frightening book of this genre I have ever read , and along with "The Vanishment" and "Naomi's Room" are brilliant reads, "The Lost" is a slightly comic take on the genre but still well worth a read.

As Daniel Easterman the novels are more political / religion based but still absorbing and worth your time.

Back to "A Shadow on the Wall" , I am past page 200 (there are 264 pages) and I still haven't a clue what is going to to happen, and the main protagonist doesn't know what he is going to do either as people disappear , fall ill, and die as he tries to keep his new family safe. It is up there with is best.

A small aside is that Denis MacEoin apparently visits the Oxfam shop in Jesmond where I briefly helped after I left EE while I was at Geek Talent and before my present employment.

This week I have been listening to my fave Goth band Dead Eyes Opened and delighted they are back from the grave with a new song "To The Devil" which is available as a free download from their Bandcamp area and the video is above. Hope to get to see them again soon.


Sunday 5 April 2020

Something Negative


It's into Sunday morning and one of the things this Social Distancing / Isolation is doing is (at weekends) allowing me to stay up very late knowing that I don't have to get up tomorrow morning. While I see people out , I don't see any gatherings and I am wondering if the cramped aisles of local shops (and supermarkets) may have to change. Certain people certainly know how to block your way.

I am now reading "What If" by Randall Munroe and it is quite interesting trying to seriously and scientifically answer some completely absurd questions. Randall Munroe is responsible for XKCD "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". What does XKCD stand for (I think it looks like a Roman Numeral but the K knocks it out ("K" in European metrics is a thousand but "M" is a Roman thousand) but this is what it says on the site:

What does XKCD stand for? 

It's not actually an acronym. It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation -- a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings.

So follow the link to find out more and read the book to enjoy some absurdities , there is a section about lightning and tonight watching the final "Righteous Gemstones" episode Baby Billy got struck by lightning and forgave his brother in law and meeting his dead sister, so there's a coincidence.

So I only said something negative because the last post was something positive, so maybe we should get something dark and gothic to play out with, maybe "Bring on the Dancing Girls" (available as a free download from Bandcamp by clicking on the title) by Dead Eyes Opened who impressed my as a support band at the Cluny a few years back.


Friday 28 December 2018

Quiet


It is that time between Christmas and New Year where you almost feel you are trapped in Limbo. Prior to Christmas I saw someone chatting about the 12 Days of Christmas with celebrations every day but it is basically Christams and New Year and then the outlet seems to be shop sales.

I would love 365 days of celebrations where everyone had a good time, looked out for their fellow man and no ne wanted for anything but unfortunately it's not like that. Commercialisation drives us to spend more money while ensuring we are paid less, and then complains that people are not spending money. People spend what they think they can afford.

This morning on my walk in I saw some amazing skies as the sun rose, examples on my Instagram feed are here. I have completed my steps for December 2018 although at the beginning I was thinking I might not make it, but the weather has become much milder and listening to music on the way in is excellent. Today I listened to Jordan Reyne's new album "Bardo" which is hypnotically dark and beautiful, much as I expected.

There are no video's for the new album yet so I have chosen "Bite" from "The Annihilation Sequence", all her albums are worth experiencing and available as a digital pack from Bandcamp.

Saturday 16 July 2016

A Little Online History



Around fifteen years back I started my Song of The Salesman website and then I realised that I could ad advertising and sell related music from it. At it's height it was bringing in £500 a month , not it maybe hits £30 , but I keep it going as a hobby with monthly updates. Yesterday I removed two more online music links , namely GEMM who have gone to the wall and Play / Rakuten who have become fairly rubbish. This leaves Amazon and iTunes left as the only online iusic sellers that I can link to.

Emusic used to have a great model but that became shot to hell so I had to drop them , but the problem is that for the sellers that disappear there are no replacement models that will pay me for linking .

Ebay dropped me because I didn't make THEM enough money .

There are online services such as Spotify , but their model wouldn't mesh with mine, others come and go.

Below is a list of the affiliates who have come and gone, a lot still exist in one form or another:

  • Napster
  • GEMM
  • Some Russian Site
  • HMV
  • Virgin
  • Zavvi
  • Emusic
  • 7Digital
  • WE7
  • Woolworths
  • Tesco
  • Asda
  • Ebay

There are probably a lot more but I just find it sad that I feel as though for music , online there is much less mainstream choice. There is still a lot of online presences worth looking into such as Noisetrade  who make a lot of albums available free to promote music, Bandcamp  , Soundcloud and many others. Music is certainly not dead , it's thriving , but  it's the grass roots music makers who give us the choice , not the mainstream.

Grainger Market

I suppose it's like the Supermarket model , their ultimate aim is to close down all the competition. Luckily I live in Newcastle and have The Grainger Market and lots of great local food shops like Medina.

Also if you look at online , many people will not venture beyond Facebook and Amazon when the sum of all human knowledge is at their disposal. TV is the same , with have a plethora o f media available but some people don't get beyond Eastenders , X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent.

The thing is there is so much out there if you just open your eyes, but as the bible quote says "There are none so blind as those that will not see"

Anyway , it's gorgeous out there , go out and find something worthwhile to enjoy , me , I'm going to see The Reet Hot Chilli Peppers tonight.