Monday, February 23, 2009

When Things Start to Crumble...

title: When Things Start to Crumble, Keep the Good Things Close.
Like pepperoni pizza... or a good pair of kicks... or even a devilish owl robot thing.  It could even be a best friend... a tiny chihuahua... a feral cat... a bike... an art book... but those things wouldn't fit on the page. Maybe for the sequel to this piece...
























Anyway, you get the picture. We all get down and things sometimes seem bleak. When that shit happens you gotta focus on everything good in your life. It's so easy to forget about that stuff and just hold on to the bad, but in the process, you're only hurting yourself further. So the next time life hands you lemons, throw them fuckers out and order a pepperoni pizza.

•••••

Music is one of those good things for me. In fact it's an essential element that I must ingest in large quantities on a regular basis to stay healthy and sane. And everyone knows that 90's music is the best, most nutritious music there is. Well, sensible and intelligent people are aware of that at least.

Which brings me to the featured song of the blog:



















title: Flow Like a River
artist: Gutter Twins

So, first off this isn't a 90's song, but it sounds like it was plucked directly from that decade. And there's a reason for that. It's performed by the Gutter Twins which is a band fronted by 2 treasures from that time: Mark Lanegan from the Screaming Trees and Greg Dulli from the Afghan Whigs. These guys are incredible singers and in my humble opinion some of the most underappreciated talent in music - from the 90's through today. Separately these guys have had their hands in tons of different projects, which more than not, really shine. Together they create one of the best rock harmonies in rock music today. Their first album Saturnalia was one of my favs of 2008, and when I saw them last summer at Lollapalooza - they completely blew me away. By the way, thanks Adam for erasing all the videos you shot of them playing before we could even watch them once. I still love you though.









At least Adam kept a few photos of them performing from Lollapalooza 2008.Thanks buddy - this one's my favorite.

Recently, they had a second release called Adorata, which is an 8 song EP comprised mostly of covers. While I don't quite like this work as well as their first, it does have a number of strong songs on it. Stylistically, this EP has a lot of depth on it, but "Flow Like a River" is a full-on return to 90's grunge complete with big crunchy guitars and a catchy chorus I can't get out of my head. The song is actually a cover by a band called Eleven whose members worked with a lot of 90's acts. Usually I try to post featured songs on my MySpace profile, but this song isn't available there so I posted some of their other songs. My advise though is to just go out and buy both albums. I promise you'll love them, unless of course you're deaf or have abysmal taste.  ;)

I realize that these blogs are going to be too long if I keep the art and music together. From now on I'm gonna do separate entries for the music stuff. Thanks for stopping by.

Much Love - Ryan