Skip to main content

Day One Hundred Forty

So, I finally got "Double Fantasy" imported into iTunes tonight. When they re-released all of Lennon's solo stuff in October for what would have been his 70th birthday, they made a big deal about how "Double Fantasy" came with a second disc, that was the album stripped down to the bone. This, in theory, fixed John's fears about his voice after 5 years away (the original pressing of the record, also included, had the vocals buried in the mix as well as a host of extra instrumentation).

Usually, when an artist claims to have pulled back the curtains on a classic album, i.e. Alanis with "Jagged Little Pill," it makes me nervous, simply because the revision never lives up to the original. In the case of "Double Fantasy," however, I may have found the exception to the rule. Maybe it's because Jack Douglas (the original producer) and Yoko were the ones behind the remixes, but the changes they made (bringing the vocals up in the mix and stripping away all of the extraneous overdubs) worked out really well. They succeeded in making an already great record more immediate.

Hearing John's voice pushed so far forward gives me chills. The only thing I can compare it to is hearing Nirvana's "You Know You're Right" for the first time on the radio, and having to pull over and stop the car, because this voice was coming from the grave, through my car radio.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day Three

Short one today. I've got a bunch of the DVDs that Guitar World has put out. Waded through those to see what I had, worked off of the lead guitar one. Just basic scales , but still a light place to begin. It was nice to just start loosening up my fingers again. Off from work tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get a lot of playing done. Said I'd mention the other project I'm hoping to finish this year. Back when I was living in WI, I started a hard rock band with a friend of mine. She was heavily influenced by Evanescence, and so, with her as vocalist, we started writing songs. We had written and demoed almost a full album's worth of music by the time I moved to IA, and had even purchased a P.A. in preparation for eventual gigs. We never did find a permanent drummer or bassist, so our demos sound very rough (and not nearly loud enough). I'd like to finish those songs, and make an EP of the 4 or 5 strongest, just as a way to put a cap on that project. More tom...

Day Three Hundred Fifty Seven (Year Seven)

Today was okay.  It ended up being quieter than I wanted it to be, but I got in a few things. 1.  I got the music from the car hauled in and sorted out in advance of my road trip to Dubuque for a little longer than a day.  I'm taking the Radiohead reissue with me for that, since I haven't gotten a chance to sit down with it yet. 2.  I'm also taking an empty notebook along with me, in the hopes that I might start to get some lyric ideas down on paper while I'm gone.  I watched some cool videos early this morning about the idea of writing all of the music before writing lyrics, and the way things are going that is looking like what's going on with me. 3.  I wish there had been more playing today, but I'm still feeling good about where things are sitting.  This next week needs to include a lot of writing.

Day Ninety Three (Year Six)

Today was an interesting day. On one hand, it wasn't a day where I spent a ton of time in the studio, but on the other hand, it was a day where the time that I did spend in the studio was probably the most productive time I've had in a long time.  In short, even though I didn't spend all that much time working on the EP tonight, I feel like I got a whole lot closer to finishing it. I've been frustrated with myself lately for not finishing things a bit quicker, and struggling with the fact that, while I have been successful at finding a whole lot of kernels of songs, they haven't seemed to want to sprout into completed works.  Tonight, instead of freaking out and making myself more stressed out, I sat down and looked at a few favorite songs to see if I could sneak a peek behind the veil, if you will. The answers jumped out at me immediately.  I haven't been doing enough with the kernels.  Mostly, I haven't been facilitating the chord changes that will a...