Isak

I have a great little song for you today. I have had the pleasure of seeing Baroness live twice now, and the next time they roll into town, odds are I will see them again - that's how good I think they are. Baroness has quickly risen to be one of my favorite metal bands - and their debut album, simply called Red Album (they have since released Blue Record, Yellow/Green, and Purple) is a great debut album - and the song Isak just simply blew me away. And so I feel like sharing the song with you today - but not just in the original version...

I have also included a live version from Philadelphia in June 2017. The only member that has been a constant in Baroness - and who is featured on both tracks - is singer/guitarist John Dyer Baizley. The latest update saw Pete Adams (guitar) leave quietly and on very friendly terms and Gina Gleason arrive. With the second vocals on Isak being in the higher register, I was excited to hear her take on it, and while there are shakier moments with the newest member in the live version, it still rocks (and yes, that is a long tuneup in the beginning...) 

2017 - October 20 - Try To Disappear

It seems like this is happening from time to time with my blog - that I disappear for a few days, only to come back stronger. Maybe that's part of my personality - I never like crowds, so I try to disappear a little. Of course, given my stature and appearance, that is way easier said than done... But thinking back, that has always been what I have tried doing - finding a seat on the perimeter, shoulders pulled forward, head slightly down (and this was even before I had the excuse of looking at my cell phone). And trying to avoid manspreading, especially if it is crowded on either side, not giving anyone an excuse to talk about that big guy who invaded their space. Being a big guy makes making yourself smaller quite the challenge.

Granted, that's not the theme of the Baroness song Try To Disappear, but it is an awesome song, and I need a little Baroness in my life today. Time to change music in the car (although Motorpsycho's The Tower is great). Time for a new song here...

April 15 - Eula

I am cheating a little today. Today's song is the last song on Baroness' Yellow album, but since that only is available in tandem with Green and Green is the second of the two, the last track on Green, If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry, is the double album closer. However, since the two have distinctly different feel to them and indeed seem like two separate albums (the running time could fit on one CD, which I believe supports my take on the albums being seen as separate), I am choosing to accept Eula, which is the closer on Yellow as an album closer and the song of the day.

When Yellow & Green was released in July 2012, it received a pretty ecstatic reception. Following gradually increasing successes with Red Album and Blue Record, they were poised for greatness. Then they toured England, and on August 15, less than a month after its release, their tour bus fell about 30 feet (9 meters) from a viaduct near Bath. Original drummer Allen Blickle and the more recently added bass player Matt Maggioni both suffered fractured vertebrae and subsequently left the band. Guitarist Pete Adams suffered some injuries, but was treated and released rather quickly. Guitarist, singer, lyricist and only remaining founding member John Dyer Baizley had his left arm crushed and broke a leg. His injuries to his hand were the most severe; as online music magazine Spin points out, "It took two large titanium plates, 20 screws, a foot-and-a-half of wire and almost 50 staples to put the arm back together."

In the summer of 2013, almost a year after the accident, John Dyer Baizley and Pete Adams found drummer Sebastian Thomson and bass player Nick Jost and hit the road again, thanking their fans for staying by their side and supporting them in recovery. They found their way to Grand Rapids, where they held a show at very small and alternative venue The Pyramid Scheme. I had just been to the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts watching my daughters perform with the Flat River Dance Company, and was dressed fairly conservatively - polo shirt and dress slacks - which made me feel like the odd man out in the audience. It doesn't help that you are in your forties when most people around you are in their twenties. However, I quickly got over myself and enjoyed their opening act, Coliseum, before finally getting to experience the mighty Baroness live. And let me tell you that it was quite something. While they still were getting to know each other musically, there was such an exuberant joy coming from John Baizley and Pete Adams especially - you could simply feel how badly they really wanted this. And I don't care how much people were hardened metal heads in the audience, Baizley's heartfelt thank you to the audience should have moistened at least the corner of their eyes as well. I know it did mine - but then again, I am a sentimental sap. Anyway - one of the things they do really well is blending melody with ferocious power, and if you listen to Eula, that is exactly what you will hear!

January 15 - Paranoid

I really had hoped that I would have a song about a mixtape I could put in here, because that is really what this project is all about. As I stated on January 1, my goal is to bring you one new song every day - and hopefully tell you something more about me with each song. That way I hope this blog really lives up to its tagline: The music of my life - or my life in music. The entries from 2016 should really be the soundtrack to my life. That soundtrack would be something like my ultimate mixtape.

I have set some rules for myself - but not too many, and please don't hold me to them.

1. The songs need to be meaningful to me
2. The songs need to be triggering a post - although I will let the posts trigger my songs as well
3. I need to own the songs myself (they are a part of my personal record collection)
4. The songs I share are officially released versions

#4 is by far the most difficult to follow for me, as YouTube is filled with audience recordings that often are far more interesting than studio recordings or officially released live recordings, which often include overdubs and are not representative of what the band truly is capable of on stage. Also, I won't always have personal anecdotes to share, so I have to take brief breathers from time to time with respect to how much I put out there.

All that being said, the song that represents my ultimate mixtape today is a song I originally had on one of my less planned and more "accidental" mixtape. Back in 1984, the Cosby Show was on TV at home, but I also had a radio show to listen to. Every Saturday night (or early evening, to be precise), the radio show Heavyrockmagasinet aired. And every Saturday, I made sure I had a tape with at least some blank space in the radio/tape deck. On one of my first mixtapes like this, I distinctly remember having the song Paranoid by Black Sabbath (I am thinking it might still be around somewhere in my parents' basement. This last year, the song Paranoid showed up on a new release - but this time by Kylesa, a sludge metal band from Savannah, Georgia I discovered right around the same time I discovered Baroness. If you wonder what sludge metal is all about, just remember the tempo of Black Sabbath's Paranoid - and then compare that to this:

January 11 - Nobody To Blame (Best Albums of 2015)

It's taken a while... Although 11 days into the new year isn't really that long, I could have started earlier in 2015, but my #2 selection wasn't released until December 18... As usual, it is really hard to rank them individually, but I tried ranking my top 10. In reality, I am dead set on my favorite album being Chris Stapleton - and I think that #2-5 are better than #6-10, but I could easily change order within those groupings.

1. Chris Stapleton - Traveller
2. Baroness - Purple
3. Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls
4. Gavin Harrison - Cheating The Polygraph
5. Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase
6. Motorpsycho - En Konsert for Folk Flest
7. Faith No More - Sol Invictus
8. Torche - Restarter
9. Sunn O))) - Kannon
10. Kylesa - Exhausting Fire

After the first 10, there are 15 additional recordings that really deserve to be mentioned - they are all albums I really liked over the course of the year. I have listed them alphabetically - but there are no individual preferences here:

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

Chris Cornell - Higher Truth

Clutch - Psychic Warfare

Echolyn - I Heard You Listening

Steve Earle & The Dukes - Terraplane
Elder - Lore

Elephant9 - Silver Mountain

Enslaved - In Times

Ghost BC - Meliora

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress

Robert Earl Keen - Happy Prisoner The Bluegrass Sessions

Otis Taylor - Hey Joe Opus Red Meat

Richard Thompson - Still

Steve Von Till - A Life Unto Itself

Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss

Since Chris Stapleton's Traveller reached the first place on my list, I really feel like I need to let him be represented again - and this is a very country country song, which he plays with in the lyrics. Here is Nobody To Blame.

January 2 - Chlorine And Wine

I love best of lists. I am working on my personal lists for 2015, and I thought I'd use this space to highlight some of them. The first song is a latecomer - Baroness released their album Purple on December 18, and I am still digesting it. I was introduced to Baroness at Vertigo Records in Grand Rapids while I was working at Grand Rapids Community College and would make stops there frequently after work. I picked up Red and Blue, along with their early EPs before I started back at Montcalm Community College in 2010. Their double album Yellow and Green was released in 2012, and it blew me away (there's a great chance a song from that album will make it here sometime this year as well), and after 3 years, there was finally new music from this Savannah, Georgia based band. The lead off single was a grower for me, and here it is in all its glory: Chlorine and Wine.

Oh - and John Dyer Baizley does all of their artwork, along with artwork for other bands, Norwegian band Kvelertak among them.