I was thrilled and honored to be asked to join in [...]]]> Just a quick post – John Anealio asked me to take part in a fantastic idea called ‘Interstellar Jukebox’ wherein he asks a bunch of great writers, bloggers, musicians, and podcasters to search through their music and weigh in on some Sci-Fi related music topic.

I was thrilled and honored to be asked to join in on the first question, “What is your favorite ’space’ song?’.

The post has gone live today so I wanted to share and point you over to it on SciFi Songs.  Here’s an excerpt of my part on ‘Hillbillies from Outerspace’ by the Vaughan brothers:

“When you think of Stevie Ray Vaughan, an image probably comes to mind of a guy wearing a wide brimmed, black hat decorated with wide, silver discs. He’s wearing a long white shirt with a dark vest and steel toed cowboy boots that are probably…”

If you want to read the rest, visit John’s site, SciFi Songs.

~P

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It’s kinda funny how things happen.  When I started playing World of Warcraft, a series of random meetings resulted in my meeting tons of new, creative and interesting people.  The same sort of thing happened when I joined Twitter a while ago.  One of those interesting people is John [...]]]>

Cover art by Ashley Quigg- http://www.ashleyquigg.com

It’s kinda funny how things happen.  When I started playing World of Warcraft, a series of random meetings resulted in my meeting tons of new, creative and interesting people.  The same sort of thing happened when I joined Twitter a while ago.  One of those interesting people is John Anealio.

In a music landscape filled with pretty kids made famous for the ability to dance while lyp syncing, I always enjoy finding an indie artist who can actually write a song complete with lyrics, a musical arrangement and, most importantly, they can play an instrument.  John is one of those (he actually plays all the instruments, I believe).

Everyone has to have a niche and John Anealio has found a most unique one; he writes music about science fiction and fantasy stories that he enjoys.

How’s that for original?!

Up until now, the only way to get John’s music was from his site, Sci Fi Songs, but as of December, John released a CD titled simply enough, Sci Fi Songs, with 11 of his best tunes to date (available as a physical CD or for DL at CD Baby).

With titles like ‘Cylon #6′, ‘Summer Glau’ (lyrics by John DeNardo over at SfSignal.com) and ‘The Millennium Falcon for Christmas’, Sci Fi Songs is a must have for any fan of the genre.  Kinda folksy at times, kinda poppy, I find the tunes very nice, very mellow.

Now, I only recommend music if I truly like it and I can honestly say that I like and enjoy John’s music.  As you may have garnered from the bit above, I can be a music snob.  Having said that, Sci Fi Songs is part of my iTunes library and is frequent in my playlists since I ripped it.  I can’t give any higher recommendation than that

John Anealio, Sci Fi Songs – check it out.

~P

Complete Track Listing:

1. The Return of Titus Quinn
2. Rachel Rosen
3. Leodora
4. Cylon #6
5. Summer Glau
6. Angels & Vampires
7. Lonesome October Night
8. Sarene
9. Merithyn’s Promise
10. The Millennium Falcon for Christmas
11. Grasping for the Wind

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They are still not content with the billions of money that they make on the crap produced and distributed every year.  They are always looking [...]]]> I know, I know – I’ve ranted about the music industry before, but they simply won’t go away and that means I have to continue to rant about their overwhelming stupidity.

They are still not content with the billions of money that they make on the crap produced and distributed every year.  They are always looking for more.

As I mentioned not too long ago, they are still trying to figure out how to force Apple to give them more money for sales through iTunes.  If you’ve been living in a rock somewhere for the past frew years and don’t have a clue what iTunes is, it’s a media player that includes a store where you can downloan music for $0.99 a song.  The power of this becomes painfully obvious to anyone with a brain: you no longer have to spend $20 to get 2 songs on a CD that you like.  You can go download the songs for $2 from Apple and skip all the rest of the crap that you never intended to listen to in the first place.

For the music industry and the artists who create the songs, this is wholly unacceptable.

From the industry perspective, they spend a lot of money to produce that CD (money that they recoup by screwing over the artists, but they don’t want us to focus on that right now), to promote it, to create videos (again, screwing over the artists to recoup their funds) and marketing and guest spots on Saturday Night Live and MTV and whatever else they can think of.  They want that money back.  More importantly, they want a return on investment of at least 5000 %.  A hit single used to make them a lot of money because people would rush out and buy the CD – hell, I’d rush out and buy the CD.  And even when they came up with the idea of ’singles’ on cassette or CD, they still charged $3.99 or more for it.

From the artists perspective – I do feel bad for them.  They get screwed no matter what.  They put out a CD of songs that can sometimes represent months if not years of preparation and work and, for the most part, only their die hard fans will ever hear all the songs on that CD.  The casual fan who hears a hit on the radio, only wants that song.  Of course they want more money for their hard work, the problem is, I don’t want to pay them more.

Yes they put a lot of hard work into that CD, but the odds are low that anyone is going to actually like all the songs.  They almost become filler.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a song, bought the full CD and then been disappointed with the rest of the music.

So, the iTunes model of a single song purchase is a dream come true for most people.  But not for the music industry who thinks they should be paid more money to recoup the costs of all that producing of utterly crappy music they churn out every year.

In an Article from BetaNews, they went so far as to try and have the royalties rates raised so they could make more money:

The recording industry’s efforts to compensate for lagging CD sales by promoting hikes in royalties rates, suffered another serious setback yesterday in the US as a panel of judges ruled mechanical royalties rates should stay put.

Apple’s threat earlier this week to shut down its iTunes service cast a brighter spotlight on the Copyright Review Board’s royalties review process than at any time since 1909. As of this morning, the CRB hasn’t actually publicly announced its decision yesterday, although the Associated Press learned from sources who participated in the meetings with the three-judge panel that it decided not to raise the rates for mechanical reproduction royalties above the current base rate established in January 2006.

So once again, rather than address the real issue (crappity crap crapola music by cookie cuttered bands designed to look good and dance better), they try to figure out how they can charge more for less.

Will they ever learn?  My thought is ‘no’.  Emphatically ‘no’.  They’re too stupid.  They’ll continue to churn out crap and call it ‘music’ and when no one wants it anymore, they’ll run for public office where they’re stupidity will be welcomed.

~P

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Eric Clapton brought together the best guitar players around for this 2 day music festival to benefit the Crossroads Centre located in Antigua. B.B. [...]]]> So, I picked up the “Crossroads Guitar Festival: 2007″ DVD the other day, but didn’t watch it til Saturday night and I have to say, it was well worth the $$.

Eric Clapton brought together the best guitar players around for this 2 day music festival to benefit the Crossroads Centre located in Antigua. B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Robert Cray, Robbie Robertson, Sheryl Crow, Derek Trucks, Steve Winwood, Susan Tedeschi – the list goes on and on. It is by far one of the best concert DVD’s I’ve seen so far and it made me wish I could’ve been there in person.

Shot in Chicago in 2007, you get 38 tracks and 4 hours worth of some of the best blues, rock, jazz and country music you could ever want. I highly recommend this DVD. As an added bonus, proceeds from sales benefit the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a chemical dependency treatment and education facility Clapton founded in 1987 to help people kick their addictions.

From the festival’s website:

“Founded in 1997, Crossroads Centre, Antigua was created to provide treatment and education to chemically dependent persons, those with other compulsive addictive behaviors, their families and significant others. Treatment is provided through residential care, family and aftercare programs. The pathway to recovery is founded on the movement toward a change in lifestyle. Crossroads Centre, Antigua also operates a 16 bed halfway-house called The Bevon House (exclusively for local Antiguan residents) and facilitates a school-based education series, Breaking the Cycle, in all local schools.”

To order, you can follow the link below:

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