My New Obsession
I've always loved the idea of blogging and I've made attempts in the past both personally and professionally but I've never been very successful. This time it's for real. I mean it.
There are a couple of subjects that I'll probably use this journal for. One of which is what I'm currently listening to. (the others are gig recaps and maybe places on the web that concern me or that I think should concern you - but we'll see)
When I find a new CD or a new artist that I particularly enjoy I tend to obsess over the album or number of them until I've totally exhausted my appreciation of it; which, in some cases could take years. I know that I'm not alone in this so hopefully there are readers out there that can appreciate my enthusiastic "over-appreciation."
Right.
So, about two months ago, my buddy Wes gave me Mike Doughty's 'Haughty Melodic' (2005, ATO), a collection of really melodic, kinda sullen acoustic, almost-ballads by the former lead singer of Soul Coughing. For those of you who don't recall, Soul Coughing was the oh-so-cool band whose record would come on around three-thirty am at all of the drama school parties (on Halsted Street) that I attended in college. They were lyrical-jazzy-hip-hop-rock at its best and I'm glad to see that Mike Doughty has found a musical existence since.
In fact, I'm so glad that I'm obsessed.
This record delights every almost-depressed bone in my body. It's upbeat in it's melody, but ravishing in its melancholy. It's exactly what I've been looking for my entire life. I can't turn this CD off. It's absolutely incredible and I think you should get it.
The whole thing sounds like it was written on a guitar with twenty-year old strings while sitting on the edge of a bed in an apartment on the top floor of a three-flat somewhere in Pittsburgh or another eastern-midwest blue collar city and then recorded on said guitar after the rest of the band moved in around the aforementioned bed; the drummer bringing the raddest sounding snare drum I've ever heard. (This is sort of accurate as the album was recorded in the in-home third story studio of producer Dan Wilson in Minneapolis.)
I've spent the better part of the last three years working on my record at home and during that time I think I wrote maybe one song. To my wife's chagrin (she's had to endure my seemingly endless and stagnant tinkering), the instant the final nail was hammered into my new CD, I suddenly started churning out new songs. It makes sense that I would now that the older material has been laid to rest, but I've found that every new song that comes out of me sounds like an outtake from 'Haughty Melodic.' Not that I'm complaining, it's a joy to sound like my latest obsession.
But should Mike hear the new stuff, he might prefer that I come up with something a bit more original.
There are a couple of subjects that I'll probably use this journal for. One of which is what I'm currently listening to. (the others are gig recaps and maybe places on the web that concern me or that I think should concern you - but we'll see)
When I find a new CD or a new artist that I particularly enjoy I tend to obsess over the album or number of them until I've totally exhausted my appreciation of it; which, in some cases could take years. I know that I'm not alone in this so hopefully there are readers out there that can appreciate my enthusiastic "over-appreciation."
Right.
So, about two months ago, my buddy Wes gave me Mike Doughty's 'Haughty Melodic' (2005, ATO), a collection of really melodic, kinda sullen acoustic, almost-ballads by the former lead singer of Soul Coughing. For those of you who don't recall, Soul Coughing was the oh-so-cool band whose record would come on around three-thirty am at all of the drama school parties (on Halsted Street) that I attended in college. They were lyrical-jazzy-hip-hop-rock at its best and I'm glad to see that Mike Doughty has found a musical existence since.
In fact, I'm so glad that I'm obsessed.
This record delights every almost-depressed bone in my body. It's upbeat in it's melody, but ravishing in its melancholy. It's exactly what I've been looking for my entire life. I can't turn this CD off. It's absolutely incredible and I think you should get it.
The whole thing sounds like it was written on a guitar with twenty-year old strings while sitting on the edge of a bed in an apartment on the top floor of a three-flat somewhere in Pittsburgh or another eastern-midwest blue collar city and then recorded on said guitar after the rest of the band moved in around the aforementioned bed; the drummer bringing the raddest sounding snare drum I've ever heard. (This is sort of accurate as the album was recorded in the in-home third story studio of producer Dan Wilson in Minneapolis.)
I've spent the better part of the last three years working on my record at home and during that time I think I wrote maybe one song. To my wife's chagrin (she's had to endure my seemingly endless and stagnant tinkering), the instant the final nail was hammered into my new CD, I suddenly started churning out new songs. It makes sense that I would now that the older material has been laid to rest, but I've found that every new song that comes out of me sounds like an outtake from 'Haughty Melodic.' Not that I'm complaining, it's a joy to sound like my latest obsession.
But should Mike hear the new stuff, he might prefer that I come up with something a bit more original.
