Mr. Moderator

Mr. Moderator

When not blogging Mr. Moderator enjoys baseball, cooking, and falconry.

Presenting…My First Band: Rock Town Hall’s Talent(less) Search

 Posted by
Jun 032010
 

My First Band: Rock Town Hall’s Talent(less) Search has hit The Main Stage! (Click song titles to play.)

With little, if any, prodding a dozen artists known within – and in some cases without – the Halls of Rock have submitted a total of 17 formative demo recordings as well as 1 painfully formative live track. The recordings were created from 1974 to as recently as 2008. Some are as tentative and misguided as could be expected. Some are downright impressive in their early articulation of their creator’s vision. Most are in that awkward space between, where perhaps many musicians of any stripe spend the majority of their musical lives, edging closer to daylight but rarely forgetting how wrong it can go. Although some spirited jibes are likely and expected, this is not about how wrong it went but where our young contributors were headed. Let’s hear it for our brave contributors!

With the assistance of RTH Labs, the demos have been loaded to stream from our customized RTH My First Demo Player™. To hear a track, click on the song title listed on the cassette case. A window will appear providing some details on the demo, but for the start of this event the artists’ identities will be kept anonymous. The RTH Artist Scrabble Key graphic, on the following page, includes the identities of the artists when they recorded their tracks. In some cases the recordings were made by bands containing Townspeople or Friends of the Hall, in which case those band names are listed. Feel free to pin the artist names to each track. Eventually a key will be provided to associate the contributing Townspeople by their RTH handles. Artists are free to step forward with additional details or responses to comments whenever they feel like doing so.

Those of you who did not contribute an early demo but have experience making one are more than welcome to add your tales to the record.

Some possible topics for assessment and discussion are provided on the following page, but feel free to take this where it needs to go. So enough of my yapping, it’s time to check out the nascent recordings of our dozen young artists and tell them how the music makes you feel, man!
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Hear Factor, deux: Prince, Deep Cutz

 Posted by
Jun 022010
 

The time has come for me to face the ultimate horror in our long-delayed, long-suspended second season of Hear Factor!

A worshipper of the Holy Trinity of Rock (ie, Prince, ELO, and ZZ Top) who will go unidentified submitted a collection for my consumption and gut responses consisting of 10 deep cutz by Prince. The thought of listening to this collection so disturbed me that I failed in my responsibilities of moderating a second, successful season of this nearly revolutionary music blog torture listening exercise. I did listen to it – once – but I nearly drove off the road and subsequently procrastinated on listening to it again…until today. I’m off the road and safely seated now, so fear not!

DeepCutz.zip (~72 mb)

There’s no point in holding out any longer. Tomorrow we will delight in reviewing the early demos of our fellow Townspeople. That stuff can’t be worse than what I’m about to hear. My real-time thoughts, feeling, and impressions follow the jump…
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COMING THURSDAY: My First Demo

 Posted by
Jun 012010
 

This could be your first demo tape!

The long-awaited Rock Town Hall Talent(less) Search: My First Demo will launch this Thursday, June 3! Townspeople and Friends of the Hall (Martin Newell, Big Dipper’s Gary Waleik, and Ben Vaughn) have contributed a total of 17 demos (and 1 live track) from their young and innocent days of attempting to change the way we listen to music, or at least of attempting to justify their increasingly wandering attention in school and/or at their day job. Now, in as many as 36 years later, perhaps these artists will do just that!

With some suggested criteria, Townspeople will be invited to comment on these early works. It is likely that discussions will take unexpected turns. Prizes will be awarded, long-lost bandmates will be reconnected, we will all feel…something more deeply about the music-making experience. At the appropriate time the artists can choose to provide additional background on the making of their tracks.

A few days of shame, laughter, self-awareness, and (most importantly) healing are in store. If you’re as excited as we are, check back throughout the week. Notify your friends, especially friends in the music industry. Who knows, somebody just may get discovered!

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Well, duh!!!

 Posted by
Jun 012010
 

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I’ve long been a fan of XTC‘s “Leisure,” which originally was only available on the UK import double-album release of English Settlement (talk about your killer double albums…). The part of the song that always sealed the deal for me was the coda. It always sounded familiar, but I always thought that was because it was so right for the song. Until today, when during the course of catching up on some of the cool Hoagy Carmichael recordings I’d missed during my first 46 years on this planet, I listened to the song “Lazy Bones.”

Well, duh!!! Maybe I did hear someone sing this song on a variety show when I was a kid, but it was about time I learned that Andy Partridge was referring to an earlier song when he wrote that coda! Have you ever came way late to the party concerning an artist referencing an earlier song?

By the way, it was also about time I learned that Hoagy himself actually composed and sang “Yabba-Dabba-Dabba-Dabba-Doo” on The Flintstones. He did not, however, do his dialog in Russian.

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Rock’s Most Significant Haircuts

 Posted by
May 282010
 

Willie’s bob.

My wife was telling me about some lame NPR piece she heard that started with news of Willie Nelson cutting his trademark long, braided hair. The news turned into a piece, she said, by some “kid” on most significant celebrity haircuts, or something like that. My wife thought it could be a fun story, but she was quickly put off by the correspondent’s reference to “back in the ’90s” and a description of Jennifer Aniston cutting off her long hair into a “layered bob.” This term really bugged my wife. “A ‘layered bob?!?!'” she complained, hours later. “How did this woman not know what a shag is, and if she’s some culture correspondent why didn’t she refer back to someone like Carol Brady?” She went on to tell me that the woman thought every celebrity hairdo was some variation on a bob. Keri Russell‘s shocking pixie haircut, for instance, was described as a “short bob.” At least the correspondent, according to my wife, did more than talk out her ass on Russell’s haircut, telling the story of her old tv show’s massive ratings dip following the haircut.

It was clear what my wife was getting at: This was a topic that needed to be discussed by the discerning minds of Rock Town Hall! So let’s keep it in the music realm, which we know and love best, and let’s get back to the beginning, considering the significance of Willie Nelson’s newly shorn locks. What are the most significant mid-career haircuts in rock? How did these haircuts change an artist’s fortunes, for better or for worse? How did these haircuts, perhaps, change the course of rock ‘n roll? Feel free to riff. We might uncover some important stuff.

All haircuts up for discussion must have taken place after the artist had already established his or her career. In other words, The Beatles’ groundbreaking moptop ‘do does not qualify because it was not a mid-career change in coiffure.
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