Chicago's deserving but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a complete Joke.  Getting inducted doesn't mean anything in my opinion... I hope though that the guys in the band feel it means something and I hope they get some satisfaction out of it.  I'll definiately be watching.

I had a friend who was more into Motorhead than I was, and the way he talked nearly 15 years ago Lenny was supposedly on his way out, way back then.  That's a pretty good run to beat all that!   

It's too easy, but I've always heard "Til I Die" as a dirge.  It's just morbid, downright pitiful

Super cool Jim & Jesse McReynolds live version of "The Great Speckled Bird" from the 60's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBS2FLna0fU

top-level mandolin and dobro action on that one.

Here's a current video of Jesse McReynolds in his 90's still playing...

"Border ride" with a little bit of Pachelbel thrown in at the beginning because he can

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OGT3pYwLEs




Also, here's a recent version of his classic "Drifiting, and Dreaming Of You"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4jte7nuyxM

How in the world does he sound so young? 


Put an image in your mind of a 22 year old guy, with a guitar standing on a stage.... then play that song, and see if it sounds off.


He literally sounds like he's in his early 20's. 

That's a good point, it could always be someone else's signature unless you saw it in person...

Just my opinion, Darlene Love is an angel walking the earth, if she says she sang on In My Room i'm going to smile and nod my head, like I do when my crazy Grandma starts talking about how she's going to learn to use the computer. 

To be honest, this is a great deal in my opinion.  I've got an autographed Beach Boys album I bought on ebay years ago, but who the hell knows if it's even legit.  I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Brian in person. 

Getting an autographed album straight from the record distributor is the best certificate of authenticity you can have besides meeting Brian yourself. 

on top of that, it's probably his best looking album cover! 

Little known fact - "Help Me Rhonda" was originally "Help Me Ronald".

I've told this story before, but when I was a kid, I absolutely thought they were singing "Help me Ronnie" (my name).  It never occurred to me that the song was about a girl. 

They probably haven't really spoken about it because just in my opinion, most people don't really care one way or the other.  Live and let live, as you will.

I'd imagine to that community, it's a big deal to them and something to be curious about, but I think to most heterosexual people they just don't think about it much.   

I also think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in the music industry who wasn't generally supportive of LGBT rights (the phrase the OP used), because for whatever reason there seems to be a higher percentage of LGBT in the music industry than the general populace.  So in other words, all of these guys have probably known LGBT people their entire lives (they've been famous musicans since their teens). 

I think studies have shown that people who actually know LGBT people are more likely to be supportive of gay marriage, etc.    Kind of hard to be hardball against it if your neighbor's gay.  Or if you're in a band and two of the guitarists are dating each other, lol

When I was a teenager, I only listened to classic rock & roll, up until probably 12 years old or so.  I didn't listen to anything modern... then for awhile, I only listened to modern country.  So when I was about 13, I had some friends and was opening up a little bit, they listened of course to all the modern stuff. 

I used to walk to a girl's house and her mother would drive the two of us to school every morning.  So I'd always get there, and sit down, and be there for 10 minutes or so before we left... and casually watch the t.v.

One morning, it was on MTV, and they were playing the video for "Plush".  It , as you can imagine, blew my mind.  It was so out of the way from what I usually enjoyed listening to, but yet I absolutely loved it.  Thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen!

So a year or so goes by, and I moved.  That whole summer I was pretty isolated, playing a lot of video games.  When school started, I had a couple nerdy friends that I ate lunch with, but in general we were all loners.

And then it happened.  One of my nerdy friends was telling us about this really beautiful girl he had met in one of his classes... and like magic, there she was across the cafeteria!  Wow, he wasn't kidding, so pretty.  For two or three days we scoped her out.  She ate lunch with a big guy we later discovered wasn't her boyfriend... but her brother!

So after a few days, this pretty young lady came over to say hi to our friend that was in her class... and we discovered that she (and her brother) were also kind of outsiders, they didn't quite fit in either regardless of how pretty she was.  She had a Sony CD walkman that she carried with her everywhere she went, and her favorite music at the time was the Stone Temple Pilots!  She really liked "Wicked Garden" so of course I soon did too.  I wasn't really completely into it, but she made me want to be more into it. 




The story gets much better from there, but I've often marveled at the fact that people like Scott Weiland cannot possibly understand or even comprehend their immense contribution to the world.  His music made me and my friends very happy, it helped me fall in love once.  He didn't know that, he couldn't have known it... but what I know is that i'm not the only one.  That's just my little story, I imagine there are hundreds of thousands of similar ones. 

God bless you Scott. 

I still like "Everyone's In Love With You".  What a great song.  instrumentation is horrible, though.  A casio keyboard would sound better than that.  Lyrically, Vocally though it's fantastic.  I suppose the guitar is nice too.

10,000 years ago is pretty good.  It sounds like a Hall & Oates song.  In a good way.

Glow Crescent Glow is pretty chill too... I've always liked Mike's relaxed vibe.  Lyrically it's pretty good too, he gets a bunch of sh*t for his lyrics, and rightfully so, but this is Lyrically good

Too Cruel is great.  Drums are pretty much god awful, though.  Everything else is very nice. 

I don't Wanna Know is good as well, it once again sounds like a Hall & Oates song, though.  I like it.  Christian sounds much better than Mike's version.

Cool Head, Warm  Heart I've liked since I heard it on the Hallmark CD.  Not sure if this is the exact same recording, sounds faster.

All in all it's hit and miss as you would expect but it's got a few decent tunes on it.  I wish Mike had spent more time recording, if you took a handful of these it would make a good start to a strong album. 

I like the production as it is.  I understand some people can't stand it, though, and that's their prerogative. 

Unfortunately I feel that music gets sterilized because there's a style of production that people have come to expect everything to be recorded in.  Even if you'd prefer music to be recorded clean with less effects, etc. that still homogenizes the way people record music and takes some of the creativity out of it. 

Just my opinion. 

Whoring usually involves doing something you don't want to do, for money.









































Like writing articles for "the aquarian" 

I've always subscribed to the theory that it's about a baby.  It's up to interpretation, though. 


Brian's humming like a baby crying in the background the whole time.  "Wahhhh, hahhhhh, ahhhhhh dum be dooby doo...."

He gives speeches, but they put him back in bed where he wrote his satire

(Baby babbling, nobody knows what he's saying, they put him back in the crib, he keeps babbling away)

He gives speeches, always reaches out a lot, led him to discover

(Baby reaches out for his mom from the crib, as babies are ought to do)

Silken hair, more silken hair fell on his face, and no wind was blowing

(No wind was blowing, so it's not his hair, it's his mother's hair lying on his face as she holds him to her chest)

Stepped across the golden fields and saw that she was soon trailing after

(Baby runs off somewhere, mother goes following as mothers are ought to do)

She was nice and didn't fight, he fell into her friendly persuasion

(Baby loves his mother, lets her pick him up)

Late that night while by a streetlight, little hands shadowed on the ceiling

(Baby lies in his crib at night making hand  shadows on the ceiling above his crib)



Brian's crying in the background seals the deal for me...

I'm going to get sacrilegious here for a second. 

On "Glee" they did a cover better than both of the two original songs, Aerosmith's "Crazy" and Britney Spears "You Drive Me Crazy".


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFeNzkiGVJA

Unfortunately the autotune is so bad even I can hear it, but it grows on you after awhile and it's pretty hauntingly beautiful.  Something about how they made it a simple acoustic song and about a couple teenagers works.

There was a 'standard' version that only had about 10 songs.  It's just a marketing thing.

The songs would have been different, but they would have been just as good or even better, look at the Beatles, they recorded their own stuff with very few outside musicians.  Paul McCartney may be the greatest bass player ever but he didn't start off that way.  If the Beach Boys would have recorded their own songs they would have been just as popular, Carl and Al were already turning into accomplished guitarists anyways and Brian could competently play bass, was a great pianist... Dennis was a fantastic drummer, etc. 

The 'groove' would have been different but they would have banged out just as many hits in my opinion.  Or more. 

I'll bet Brian's more like 330 340 in that picture.  He's very big boned, tall... to look that round he had to be way up there. 

Thank you lord for saving that man, he still had much more beauty to give the world!  He still had a family to adopt and raise!  He still had a wife to love and cherish!  He still had a lot of wounds to heal, and pulled it off!  Go BRIAN!!!!!

You just know Noel was bitching about the 'Boys because he's such a fan of the Beatles.  I will never understand why some people insist on pitting those two against each other, personally I like listening to Beatles music just as soon as I finish listening to Beach Boys music. 

That lamb must have came from the same prop shop as the baby in American Sniper

Mike sounds great on this!  He's so fucking weird.  When he's gone we'll wish we still had him around being weird. 

I'd have to say, right now at least, it's probably this:

1. California Girls
2. This Whole World
3. Don't Worry Baby
4. All Summer Long
5. I Get Around

It changes a lot, but I find myself singing all these songs, all the time.  I'm not making the case that these are their best, just that these are my favorite.  Either I really like the way the melodies go, or how the Beach Boys sound singing these, or I relate to them.  "All Summer Long", for instance just reminds me of how life was when I was 17 or 18, what a wonderful time and what a wonderful song summing that up. 

Or "This Whole World" really kind of sums up the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson to me, Brian sounds half-insane on it but the beauty of the song is almost overwhelming.  the end part where they sing Acapella is probably what heaven sounds like.

"I Get Around" is just a perfect summation of the Beach Boys, it's one of their huge hits and I love the melody and the back and forth between Mike and Brian.  Mike sounds great on the verses, and Brian sounds like God on the chorus. 

"Don't Worry Baby" has always been one of my favorite songs, even when I was a kid and didn't know what it was about, I always liked how Brian's voice sounded... I even recorded my own (horrible) version of this years ago, figured out the guitar part, overdubbed tons of vocals, etc. even made a little clap drum track for it, this was back before any of that was easy... I recorded it all in my bedroom over the course of a couple months.  Fantastic song, and I always loved how Brian changed the chorus around to subliminally make it almost as if Ronnie Spector was singing it to him... think about how that works, he wanted the Ronettes to sing it; when they wouldn't, he just added the "When She says.... " part, and sang the chorus the way he imagined the Ronettes would.  Brilliant. 

"California Girls" in my mind still stands as probably Brian's greatest pop achievement, it's a perfect song.  The drums are frankly amazing on this too, and the famous story behind the recording of the song really sums up Brian's genius.  I love how the lyrics are so simple and basic, but yet it's the highest of art. 

It's tradition for Beach Boys Christmas Songs to have certain lyrics that make absolutely no sense, so Mike threw that in there to make it authentic.


For instance...


"Christmas comes this Time each Year!.   Christmas Comes this Time each year!"

Why, thank you for that Mike.  What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Is it his brother who hates the Beach Boys?

To be honest, just in my opinion, the Gallagher brothers have always been so ridiculous that you can't really take anything they say about who they hate seriously. 

They're both really talented, both great performers, Noel's a great songwriter, Liam's a great singer and a decent songwriter... but if you get too caught up in who they say they hate you're never going to make sense of it.  They basically like to run their mouth about anything and everything but at the end of the day they're both completely harmless. 

I honestly don't think they even take themselves seriously.