Rock Town Hall’s Saturday Night Shut-In: Will You Stand By Me?

Sep 142013

Sounds of the hall in roughly 33 1/3 minutes!

As I continue to burn my stuffed orange plastic box of 45s I experienced a troubling realization: the excitement I felt in anticipation of burning XTC’s “Toys,” the C-side from a double 7-inch centered around the exquisite Mummer track “Love On a Farmboy’s Wages,” quickly dissipated to feelings of queasiness and shame. I pride myself in sticking with and seeing through the people and things I love, but I could no longer stand behind “Toys.” Music not only has the power to shape my worldview, sometimes it even offers a place to reside, a basis for a new or extended persona. A song I wrote at that time, while in the throes of “Toys,” sprung to mind. Lyrically it was the equivalent of me playing Cowboys and Indians with this XTC song. The Me Today looked back at the Me Yesterday and thought, What a dipshit!

How do I prevent looking back 30 years from now and realizing that Me Today, the guy talking to you with so much self-awareness and confidence, was yet again a total dipshit? Will you stand by me as I determine whether I can stand by my old singles-spinning self?

RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 114: Will You Stand By Me?

[Note: You can add Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your iTunes by clicking here. The Rock Town Hall feed will enable you to easily download Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital music player.]

RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 114 by Mrmoderator on Mixcloud

The Future of Music

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Sep 132013

Courtesy of Townsman Oats…

Flo Rida presents…THE FUTURE OF MUSIC!

Combining theramin technology, white-folk hip-hop envy, masturbation, and laser beams, Beamz by Flo is an interactive music product that enables anyone to make music by moving your hands through laser beams with pre-programmed songs. Each interactive song has a background rhythm track which you start by pressing the play button on the Beamz controller; then each laser beam is setup to be a different instrument or sound effect. As you move your hand through a laser beam, you’re adding that instrument into the playback of the song. The Beamz controller lights up 4 red laser beams, and each song has up to 12 different instruments for you to add into the playback of the song so there’s lots of options for you to get creative making the music. The center button is a SWAP button for you to switch over to other instruments while you’re playing a song. Beamz also includes a recording feature so you can capture your remixes to playback for yourself or to share with your friends.

If you’re using the Beamz with an iPad, iPhone or MAC computer, you may purchase additional songs within the application itself — click on Settings, then select Buy More Songs to see a list of individual songs and song bundles available. Bundles are the best value, providing discounts up to 50% off vs. purchasing additional individual songs.

Beamz by Flo works with iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad Mini and iPad 3rd generation models or later running iOS 6.0 or later.

Songs included:

Inventor of “Doubly” Sound Silenced at 80

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Sep 132013

Ray Dolby, inventor of the Dolby noise-reduction system, has died at 80. Being way more of a music buff than a film aficionado, I didn’t know Dolby was regarded as an important innovation in the movie industry. As far as Dolby sound went regarding music in the 1970s, I thought it was a dud. How many older heads around here regularly hit that Dolby button that used to be on stereos?

The Future of Album Anniversaries

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Sep 112013

Self Pooptrait

Younger generations are free to celebrate the landmark anniversary of whatever album blew their mind in their youth, say Beck‘s Odelay (an anniversary party for which even I would attend) or that big Outkast album everyone made a fuss over and probably hasn’t listened to since 3 months after initially purchasing. That’s cool; that’s their music. My generation, however, has officially reached the point of scraping the bottom of the barrel on celebrating “classic” albums by classic artists. I first noticed it late last year, I believe it was, when a special anniversary edition of the final full-length album by The Jam, The Gift, was released. Don’t even diehard Jam fans feel that album is pointless beyond 3 songs? That was a memorial ceremony, not an anniversary celebration.

Recently, things went from bad to weird with the box set special anniversary edition release of Bob Dylan‘s critically lambasted Self Portrait. The new special anniversary edition, packaged as Another Self Portrait, includes digitally remastered alternate takes of the original turd as well as outtakes from the equally dismissed—I’m sorry, “under-appreciated” is the revised critical term—New Morning. If that’s not enough to get you to cough up an anniversary gift, the package throws in some outtakes from The Basement Tapes and Dylan’s personal collection of tasteful nude Polaroid shots of Edie Sedgwick. I think I’ll wait for the special anniversary edition of Infidels.

Where do you draw the line on buying a special anniversary edition release from one of your favorite artists?

Rock ‘n Roll Stand-Up

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Sep 092013

Now you funny too!

I’m not a joke teller. I can’t tell a joke to save my life. I think I tried to tell a joke only one time, when I was about 12. I’ve never attempted telling another joke since then. Some of you, however, can tell jokes. And do. In a recent thread, Townsman Bobby Bittman impressed me with the following rock ‘n roll stand-up joke:

A guy goes on vacation to a tropical island. As soon as he gets off the plane, he hears drums. He thinks, “Wow, this is cool.” He goes to the beach, he hears the drums. He eats lunch, he hears drums. He goes to a luau, again with the drums. He tries to go to sleep, and he still hears drums.

This goes on for several nights, and gets to the point where the guy can’t sleep at night because of the drums. It’s driving him nuts! Finally, he goes down to the front desk.

When he gets there, he asks the manager, “Hey! What’s with these drums? Don’t they ever stop? I can’t get any sleep!”

The manager says, “No! Drums must never stop! Is very, very bad if drums stop.”

“Why?”

“When drums stop…bass solo begins.”

This got me thinking: there must be more rock ‘n roll jokes, old-fashioned jokes that joke tellers can tell at parties, out there. I know there are lots of drummer jokes, which have probably been documented elsewhere, but what else have you got?

I look forward to the laughter.

Rock Town Hall’s Saturday Night Shut-In: Generations Part 2 – Us Versus Them

Posted by cliff sovinsanity

Sep 072013

Sounds of the hall in roughly 33 1/3 minutes!

So here’s the promised sequel to the my previous SNSI episode on Generations.

This set got me thinking about past and future generational clashes. The last significant generational clash was in the late ’60s, I think (or has that generation grossly exaggerated that era). To be sure, the punk movement rattled the elder’s cages but that was just a toothless threat. Now with kids living with the parents well into their 20’s it’s getting more difficult to foresee future generations organizing a righteous movement against establishment. Perhaps there should be a movement forcing the baby boomers back to work so they don’t completely drain social services for future generations.

Generations Part 2

RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 113 by Mrmoderator on Mixcloud

All-Star Jam

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Sep 072013

The All-Star Jam is the place where YOU can turn the knobs! Newcomer with something to share? Here’s the place. Not enough time to log into The Back Office and craft your own new thread? Get it rolling here.

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