#groovys been enabling me

[oatsynalliums]

guess who's been busy gang

[jaskierx]

hey crew i need your help

as you might have seen, my pal quill @edandstede has been getting some absolutely vile transphobic asks. this abuse is coming from one or more self-described izzy fans who are targetting quill bc they've taken offence to some mildly izzy critical posts and his ongoing top surgery fundraiser. these anons are persistent - turning off anon means they pop back up whenever it's re-enabled. blocking them means they make burner accounts to continue the harassment. it's a really fucking nasty situation that has understandably made quill feel threatened and unable to enjoy being on tumblr. he's now had to turn off asks altogether.

fuel has been thrown on the fire today by the izzy-anti-archive account openly admitting to block evading and posting screenshots of quill's blog in the name of defending the canyon, as if the main issue here is the canyon's feelings and not quill's safety. none of these screenshots are censored, quill's url is plainly visible, and as a result the archive has basically put up a neon sign advertising that quill is 1. receiving transphobic hate and 2. 'wrongly' blaming the canyon for this. which really isn't great and has made quill feel even worse considering it invites yet more harassment of somebody who is already facing way too much of it.

do me a huge favour will you x

1 - report this post

the more reports the post receives, the more likely it is that staff will take a look at it

2 - block the archive

quill is not the first person to be harassed by the archive and unfortunately he probably won't be the last. blocking them reduces their reach and also means it's less likely to be you next

3 - donate to quill's top surgery fundraiser if you can

donate here

share the fundraiser here

thanks guys stay groovy x

[wendytestabrat]

WHAT I THINK THE ICARLY CHARACTER’S BIG 3 ARE IN ASTROLOGY

ok time for icarly edition of the big 3. it’s the layers of an onion. i talk abt the rising sign first bc that’s how u come across to others on first appearance, then the sun sign is like ur identity & shit, and your moon is ur deep emotional side. all of the icarly characters’ birthdays have been confirmed so yeah all of these sun signs are canon but the rising & moons are my wild guesses. imo these sun signs are ON POINT and the icarly writers or whoever the fuck did a good job picking the characters’ birthdays lol. except for spencer tho idk if scorpio would’ve been the best sign i’d pick for him. okie….

CARLY:

yeah carly is DEF a libra rising she comes across super nice, sweet, polite, & friendly and she’s always mediating conflicts when sam & freddie are fighting LOL. but yeah when u peel back the onion she’s a canon leo (her bday is july 24) bc when u get to know carly better she’s not as sweet as she seems and she’s actually rlly bitchy and bossy AF like a leo LOL. (which is why her & sam get along bc sam is an aries which is also a fire sign so that’s why carly enables sam’s cruelty and bad attitude sometimes AND why they both like to be in the spotlight). she’s a total diva & an egomaniac bc the bitch named the webshow after herself and thinks it’s all about her (look i know how to make fun of my own sign isn’t it great how we leos know how to take a joke) & carly is a HUGE leader too. i’m also a libra rising leo sun so i have the same problem where i come across all nice & sweet at first to most people but then when they discover my leo they realize how much of a cunt i rlly am LOL (and then they hate me bc they thought i was someone they could use & manipulate at first but then they discover i’m not so they’re like oh shit bye i’m done with you). i feel like most of us leos are like carly we’re all nice & friendly and shit but we’re not afraid to let out the sass and be mean if we have to which is carly af LOL. and then carly is a capricorn moon which explains why she’s def the responsible one of the group. carly is rlly mature for her age and has her shit together considering the fact she’s always the one who ends up parenting spencer and not the other way around.

SAM:

sam def gives me earth rising vibes so i feel like she’s a taurus rising. sam comes across rlly dependable and loyal (she sticks by carly’s side through thick and thin) and sam keeps shit real too like a taurus. AND she loves food too LOL. but yeah peeling back the onion she’s DEF an aries which is EXTREMELY fitting bc they’re the aggressive, feisty, impulsive ones of the zodiac and that’s literally sam’s entire character. but yeah peeling back the onion even MORE i think sam is a cancer moon bc deep down sam is sensitive AF like a cancer and she’s rlly intuitive too which is why she’s so manipulative in so many episodes LOL. jennette mccurdy is a cancer irl so i feel like there’s a lot of cancer vibes in sam’s character too. it also makes her aries outbursts like 100x more volatile and emotional bc of all the mood swings she has. sam is a rlly caring person she just doesn’t like to show it prob bc of her aries sun lol. AND she’s protective af too like remember that time she whooped that girl’s ass at the groovy smoothie after she was bullying carly?

FREDDIE:

yeah he’s def a virgo rising. freddie comes across rlly brainy and analytical & he’s extremely dependable too and quick to lend a hand and help someone out if they need it. peeling back the onion he’s actually an aquarius which is fitting AF. freddie is a total tech nerd and aquariuses are the innovators of the zodiac lol & he’s rlly aloof and overly logical abt shit but freddie is still rlly friendly, nice, & easygoing like a typical aquarius. but deep down freddie is a pisces moon bc freddie is sensitive AF and gets butthurt easily lol. he’s a rlly passive person and he gets pushed around easily and taken advantage of like a pisces which was why he let carly string him along for 47373892 years and let sam bully the shit out of him LOL. freddie is too nice for his own good and has a total martyr complex bc he helps bitches too much who don’t deserve his help.

SPENCER:

spencer is an aquarius rising bc yeah spencer comes across weird af. he’s constantly inventing shit and sculpting random ass art projects and he does NOT like to live life the conventional way hence why he has no real job. but yeah spencer is actually a scorpio (which honestly isn’t the best sign for him i’d rather him just be an aquarius sun) which makes sense to some extent how he’s RLLY passionate and focused on his art projects and shit. spencer is also rlly loyal, caring, & protective like a scorpio and he has his occasional moments where his stinger comes out and he gets overly protective like that time he didn’t want carly dating the peewee baby dude LOL. but yeah spencer is a sag moon bc he’s SUPER energetic, spontaneous, & adventurous and he does NOT like to settle down. i mean the dude was only in law school for 3 days and then dropped out that is some sagittarius shit right there. spencer has to have some fire in his big 3 bc he’s the dude who literally starts fires all the time soooo LOL.

GIBBY:

yeah gibby is a sag rising he comes across SUPER outgoing & adventerous and he’s always down to do the craziest shit. he’s a fun guy u wanna hang out with. and he also can be aggressive af too like u do NOT wanna mess with gibby, remember when he whooped nora’s ass???? but yeah gibby’s bday is jan 20 which is RIGHT at the beginning of aquarius season (i deadass thought he was a capricorn at first) so yeah he’s an aquarius bc he’s weird AF. gibby doesn’t give a fuck and he does his own thing. he likes dancing with his shirt off. only an aquarius would do something so humiliating. but deep down he’s a taurus moon. gibby def gives me earth vibes he’s chill af and he’s rlly solid & dependable and always there for everyone. he keeps it 100% real no bs. gibby doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not. gibby is gibby.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

OH MAN OH BOY 👁️ 👄 👁️

Consider this post the sequel to my unhinged gushing over the Tsumsted Wonderland Riddle and Leona cards 🤡

GVDFG8OYADGDSOAFQHYEQE1671VADFOsqutv THEY DIDN'T MISS WITEH THESE, THE TWST TEAM KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOi NGH 😭

Like the previous two Tsumsted Wonderland SSR Groovies, the Azul and Kalim uncap artworks are references to the short animation that plays out whenever Tsum!Azul and Tsum!Kalim's abilities are used in the TsumTsum mobile game. They translated over really well to TWST, but there are also just enough new elements to make the illustrations stand out on their own and be representative of each respective dorm!!

ADBHAFSUFYOAVADFI I LIKE HOW AZUL'S GROOVY IS SO FUCKING AFSNHBHIASDOBIYSABI OVERDRAMATIC?????? It makes me think about all the crocodile tears they shed, especially during episode 4. FWJvskudgyoDWBWIdb OBVIOUSLYT I'AMDS BIASED TOWARSD ATH i S ONE OVER THE TSUM!KALIM onE , SORRY nOT SORRYB ASMD KALIM You can see from the background that they appear to be standing at the top of a stairwell and that the angle is a slight worm's eye view; Azul is also framed in a theatrical spotlight (similar to how he was spotlighted in episode 3 when he introduced himself as 220 students' new "master"). The twins, his beloved minions, on either side of him, shrouded in the shadows. Even the bubbles floating up appear ominous in the dim lighting, so high in volume that it gives the impression of franticness, like someone's been kicking and thrashing about, struggling in the water... until Octainvelle approaches. Everything about this image is such that you, the onlooker, is being forced to look "up" to them as your "saviors". Azul seemingly points right at you, a confident expression on his face--almost like he's calling you out specifically, daring you to approach him with your woes and wishes. AGVSVIUtaidsOVASD thE n THER'S E HIS TSUM JUST. BOUNC IN' ON DOWN WITH THE LITTLE HAT 😭Floyd regards you with barely a care in the world, tossing his magical pen up into the air before he catches it again, waiting for the order to close in on his target. And then Jade... YLDDlvhvyldQTF376324O8QERVUOQEFOYQFWOY He's on standby also waiting orders (and probably also just “standing by” in the sense of enabling his brother) but. 🤡 Unlike Floyd’s very open posture, Jade's keeping his own magical pen close, just like he keeps all of his metaphorical playing cards close to his heart. The magestone embedded in his magical pen is pressed to his lips, sealing the secrets within with lies. A ABSHJFAHAFLifI GoD I WANNA BE THAT MAGAICAL PENa SO DC BAD A NMRIGH TNoW 3yug41go8ayofoqegfyofyg2tdafogfadpbadfbfeyqcbaiyoidf OTL

Kalim's Groovy is also framed from a slight worm's eye view angle, but it creates a very different atmosphere! It feels more jubilant, like they're pulling off one last, big stunt to close off a night of partying and merrymaking. (The background here reminds me of the closing scene to Aladdin!) Are you ready? 1, 2, 3...!! And then the dark desert skies are born anew, bathed in the warm lights of fireworks popping off, fiery flowers blooming between the diamond-like stars. At that moment, Tsum!Kalim excitedly leaps up. Its rotund body is painted in shades of crimson and gold--as though Tsum!Kalim was the sun itself, come to pay a visit to the moon. Scarabia's dorm building and all the palm trees around you become nothing more than shadows, and you're taken in by the explosions above, sound and light rippling through the night. But the party's not over yet, the Scarabia duo reassure you. Come on, let's sing! Let's dance! The night is still young. Kalim may be holding his special staff in the Groovy art, but it doesn't really make him seem more authoritative or serious. It feels like he's just dropped an easy-going command to try some crackers or to join him for a dance! By contrast, Jamil kind of already looks like he's mid-dance 😂 with a leg lifted up and the fabric at his waist flowing out. With his magical pen pointed up like that, it gives the impression that Jamil set off the fireworks?? Which makes me think back to the Scalding Sands Fireworks event, when he had a very similar honor. ABHLDbkfvuoafvqeou1357968o2rb BY THE WAY IF YOU LOOK CLOSe3l y JAMIL'S DOING HIS INFAMOIUS TONGUE BLEP TOO qnisqtiyfetqfqvioad S NE V Er CHANGE, JAMIL. NEVER FUCKING CHANGE. THE TSUMSTED WONDERLAND SSR GROOVIES ARE TRULY UNMATCHED 😩 THIS IS THE HILL I WILL DIE ON, MY MIND CANNOT BE CHANGED. MY ASKN I N IS CLEAR, MY CROSPS HAVE BEE N WATERED, ALL IS RIGHT Wi TH THE WORLD and yes, I still want to chew up the Tsums and become one with their marshmallow-like cuteness--

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Orange Juice - The Haçienda, Manchester, England, June 15, 1982

We're staying in early 1980s Manchester for a little bit longer. Did Richard & Linda Thompson pay a visit to the Hacienda? I'm going to say no ... but who knows?! Anyhow, this pro-shot B&W video showed up on the official Orange Juice YouTube channel late last year — not sure if it had circulated previously. Whatever, it's great, a groovy moment in time. We've got a kinda transitional period for OJ here, with new drummer Zeke Manyika behind the kit, giving a little added rhythmic heft to the You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever numbers, which had just been released in February of 1982. The guitars sound glorious here, that perfect strummed-out blend of Chic and "What Goes On." One more question — were all of The Smiths at this show, furiously taking notes? It's pretty likely.

Dave Haslam (Hacienda DJ): Walking into the Haçienda, you wouldn’t have thought it was a mainstream commercial operation. I think I would have been more surprised if someone had told me, “They're making a shitload of money in this venue.” It was passionate, endearing amateurism – the same as John Peel on the radio. It was in the spirit of the club, and the spirit of the record company, that if there was an interesting, talented individual somewhere within orbit, they would take that person into the family and give them pretty much free rein to live out their own little dream. It was a very enabling experience.

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/there-is-no-other/

There Is No Other

The mother sitting across from me at the lunch table sighed when I asked about her daughter.  “She’s thinking about moving to Pennsylvania.  Since she works from home, she can live anywhere.  Rural Pennsylvania seems to be the one place where houses are affordable. “ The dilemma is common. Several of my friends with well-educated children between the ages of 20-35 continue to provide shelter for their offspring. The American dream is a hard slog for younger generations, I’m sorry to say.  Nor am I happy about the state of the planet they are inheriting.   If we older Americans had anticipated climate change, we might have purchased fewer gas-guzzling cars.   Or, maybe not.  Our species has a penchant for choosing present gratification over making plans for the future.  Even so, some of us might have girded our loins to fight climate change sooner. What I ponder at present is whether the older generation is cheating those who have followed. If so, society might rightly adopt the Inuit practice of leaving the frail elderly to die on ice floats.  Fortunately, Michael Hiltzik, writing for the L.A. Times doesn’t think old folks are to blame for the state of the economy. Social Security and Medicare aren’t the oft-cited reasons the young have fewer possibilities.      Most seniors, he reminds us, paid for their Social Security benefits during their productive years. Only the working poor receive more from the agency than their lifetime contributions. Even so, few wish to punish people who struggled all their lives on slave wages. And, as a benefit to all, we should remember that for decades the U. S. government has borrowed from the insurance fund to satisfy other debts. The elderly do receive government assistance to pay for prescription drugs. The tab would be less if Congress allowed Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma.  Hiltzik points to Joe Biden’s success in reducing the cost of diabetes medication once Congress granted him a waiver. Any perceived schism between youth and age is a false one, the author proclaims. America has more than enough resources to meet all the social needs of all generations. A shortfall exists because of the tax cuts enacted by Republicans for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy.   To support his claim, people remark that in the Dwight D. Eisenhower years, taxes on the rich could reach 91% of income.  However, they forget much of this money was never collected. Scott Greenberg of the Tax Foundation writes that tax laws have long enabled tax avoidance. …the existence of the 91 percent bracket did not necessarily lead to significantly higher revenue collections from the top 1 percent.  As proof, who over the age of 50 has forgotten businesswoman Leona Helmsley’s words? Only the little people pay taxes.  Or, Donald Trump’s brag that he was too smart to pay taxes? Whether Hiltzik’s point about our economics is right or wrong, few deny the super-rich exercise an undue influence over the  government. Elon Musk’s money allows him to imagine he can engage in discussions with Vladimir Putin over the conduct of the Ukraine war. In 1953 multimillionaire Lewis Stauss fed Robert Oppenheimer to the lions when the scientist opposed the construction of the hydrogen bomb. (“The Fallout of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Story Lingers, an interview with Kai Bird, Concerned Scientist, Volume 23, Fall, 2023, pg. 13.)  Dr. Anthony Fauci’s treatment at the hands of Donald Trump is a recent victim of the same abuse.   Even so, money doesn’t buy happiness.  One Indian philosopher warns most often money buys burnout. (“Groovy.” By Mickey Rapkin, Town&Country, Dec. 2023-Jan 2024, pg. 141.)  Another warns, When you have exhausted everything outside the only way to go is in. (Ibid, pg. 140) Those who take that path of introspection enter a tulgy wood of doubt and shadows. If they finish the journey they may come to realize life has nothing to do with acquisitions. Life is about mergers. When we see an individual not as a competitor but as an extension of ourselves, the way a wave is an extension of the ocean, we stumble upon a moment when a glimpse of universal harmony is possible.   

[fantrollology-bios]

these are your nerves, this is how they taste

Last Updated 4/6/2023

Back to Select Page

— intro —

Your name is IGGLIT PTRATA, but most just call you IGGY. You have a penchant for groovy, brassy music, and you can often be found playing on your BASS CLARINET or GOING HAM ON SOME KEYS with your JAM BAND. Your musical prowess is enabled by some remnants of your grubhood, that is to say, your BUG LEGS. Thankfully your MUTATION only became apparent after your pupation, or else you’d surely be a splatter of blood on the wall of some cavern instead of a shrimpy, nearly unemployable 16 sweep old. Phew!

You tend to hop from 9-5 to 9-5. You’ve been fired probably over a dozen times, and have never received a promotion. You think that’s a LOAD OF HORSESHIT. You’re a good worker and have a knack for the tedious and laborious, you just also have a tendency towards NOT GIVING TOO MUCH OF A SHIT, and end up getting CAUGHT DOING DUMB STUFF. This stuff doesn’t really affect your work, you think, but c'est la vie. Your COWORKERS are always there to provide GLOWING REFERENCES for your next incredible minimum wage adventure.

Getting around suits your interests, anyways. You’re a bit of a HOARDER, and you’re okay with admitting that. You have an odd fascination for others PERSONAL AFFAIRS, whether this be receipts, phone messages, bills, letters, or anything else that gives a unique glimpse into the humdrum complexity of it all. You hardly have the words to describe it, but you get a little SENTIMENTAL. Typically, you just say you think it’s NEAT. Your cluttered hive says the rest.

— basics —

Name: Igglit “Iggy” Ptrata Pronouns: he/they, femme terms OK but she/her will make him go ???? not negative just confused

Orientation: Whatever

Age: ~16 Sweeps

Height: 4'10"”

Location: City apartment

Occupation: Changes often. Currently unemployed.

 — alternia —

Caste: Yellow #CCB933

Lusus: House Centipede, very long. (Alive)

Weapon of Choice: None

Abilities: Psychic wall crawling. Doesn’t know how to use it offhand, but seems to work in times of emergency.

— personality —

Sign: not sure yet

Likes: Artifacts of everyday life, funky music, loud/busy places, mindless/repetitive work, nonfiction books & poetry, antiques, playing piano & bass clarinet, being small

Dislikes: Cooking, having to articulate emotional thought, arguing/debating, silence

— plot —

Current Status: Looking for a job!

Goals: To have a chill time and not die!

Past plotlines:     ●   None yet!

Open hooks:     ●   Does your troll also enjoy funky music? Backplot with me and be in his jam band! If you want an example of music he likes check out his playlist!

— relationships —

Romantic:

    ♥   Matesprit Name - #None - [N/A]

    ♦   Moirail Name - #None - [N/A]

    ♠   Kismesis Name - #None - [N/A]

Platonic:

    ●   None yet!

— links —

Playlist ● Character Tag ● Art

Interest Tag ● Asks

[boredout305]

Baron of Love: Moral Giant

A chapter preview from Ross Johnson’s upcoming memoir on Spacecase Records. Out late September 2020. 

CHAPTER 30: DICKINSON As in James Luther Dickinson or Jim Dickinson or simply Dickinson as he was referred to by friends and strangers alike. I always addressed him as Jim, but if we were playing a recording session or a live gig we always wondered aloud if Dickinson was going to show up. And often he didn’t for reasons of health or personal ones that were highly private. I often felt Jim wouldn’t show up because he felt something was wrong with the context of the gig or session, that something was unlucky somehow. I never asked him about this, just a feeling I had. If he didn’t show, there was disappointment but no offense taken. If he did show up he always elevated things in what felt like a magical way, for lack of a better term        I will repeat a story here I told in the liner notes of Goner’s Make It Stop! about meeting Jim. I repeat stories verbally all too often, but I don’t like to tell the same story over in print or in filmed interviews. I was working as a sack boy in the summer of 1972 at one of the local Big Star (yep) chain groceries. Jim would usually shop for groceries there mid-afternoon Friday while my drumming idol Al Jackson Jr. shopped at the same Big Star on Friday around dusk. They were the only customers who ever tipped me for carrying their groceries out. One day I got the nerve up to speak to him as I was loading groceries into his car and said: “You’re Jim Dickinson, aren’t you, and you recorded with the Flamin’ Groovies on Teenage Head, didn’t you?” Years later Jim admitted that he thought I was going to ask about The Rolling Stones but was impressed when I mentioned the Groovies instead. We had an extended conversation in the parking lot about the Teenage Head session and he enthusiastically mentioned that he got paid $700 by producer Richard Robinson for one night of work on the record. I got in trouble with grocery store management for staying in the parking lot so long, but the conversation was worth it.         There are so many stories about Jim I could tell, but I’ll relate just a few here. When I started playing with the Panther Burns in 1979 he remembered our parking lot chat about the Flamin’ Groovies. I’ve said it before, but I always considered Jim an unofficial member of the group because he produced and played on several of our recordings as well as joining us on many live performances. Recording with Jim and Alex was not often easy; there was always some tension left over from the Sister Lovers sessions. There was also a lot of attitude on display at Panther Burns recording sessions and I often felt out of my league, musically and emotionally speaking. Jim sensed this and one day he followed me outside Phillips Recording Studio when I was taking a mental health break and he told me I had as much right to be in there as Alex, Tav and the other players. Jim could always sense what was going on psychologically among musicians at a recording session and produced accordingly. My favorite production technique that Jim used was the stories he would tell before cutting a take. Sometimes the stories were oft-repeated, but I loved hearing him tell them over and over. I often asked him to tell stories about the late, great guitarist Jesse Ed Davis. He always obliged. During the last few years we recorded together we would inevitably talk about the Klitz and his early efforts to produce them. He always thought they should have been hugely successful. I agreed.        In 2008, co-producer and Reigning Sound drummer Greg Roberson set up a pro-bono session at Jim’s Zebra Ranch Studio for me to record a number of favorite covers and one original about legendary Arkansas rockabilly singer Bobby Lee Trammell. Greg did a great job of putting a band together, drumming so I could concentrate more on “singing” (almost all my solo rant records were done live with me singing and playing drums at the same time) and co-producing the record with Jim that became Vanity Session by Jeff Evans and myself that was eventually released on Spacecase Records. Rather than using booze and pills as my muse for the session, I opted for a herbal concoction that enabled us to record 13 songs in a little over three hours.         During a break, Jim and I went outside to talk privately. Both of my parents had died not long before the session and I could tell Jim was not in the best of health himself so talk rather naturally turned to death. I won’t disclose what we said that day since the conversation was private, but the topic of death was on both of our minds. A little over a year later Jim would be dead in the late spring of 2009.        Jim was a mentor, father figure of sorts and friend to me as he was to an untold number of other musicians. I was going through a bad patch with depression in the spring of 2009 and Greg Roberson thoughtfully told Jim I was rather down at a time when he was gravely ill. Nevertheless, he penned a very encouraging email to me then which lifted my spirits considerably. He did so during a period when his own life was ebbing away. That was Jim, always involved with what others were thinking and feeling. A few years later I sent that email to his widow Mary Lindsay Dickinson because I wanted her to know how concerned Jim was about other people until his death. Of course, she already knew as did her sons, Luther and Cody, the North Mississippi All Stars. I agree with the title of Jim’s memoir, that he is merely dead but not gone. I always imagine him being onstage or in a studio when I perform live or record since his death. I couldn’t have a better revenant or muse.

[cjostrander]

My Chemical Romance: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

Good morning everyone! Today i was feeling motivated to scratch off one of my crucial anniversary albums for the year. This album turns 15 years old and is one that would be a shame if i let slip through the year. It is arguably the band’s most iconic release though it would be a hard debate between this and The Black parade in terms of overall popularity. I feel that the latter will be picked out by future generations but this one will be the one for their original fanbase. Let’s get started because i’m really going to enjoy this one today!!

Helena (Single): We begin with the first of the band’s many staples on this album. The music video for all of the singles are amazing and definitely worth viewing if interested. Gerard begins with a soothing vocal harmony that creates a fitting sense of mourning before the guitars and drums arrive to infuse a moving rock edge. Gerard’s vocal presence infuses a very firm level of emotion that delivers a very powerful chorus; which will be very hard not to sing along to during a live performance. The lyrics are easy to follow along to and provide heavy substance into the track. I believe the track deals with his grandmother’s passing but i’m not exactly certain. Either way; the instrumentals do a solid job of standing out on their own and delivering a high dose of punk rock energy for a first time listener to fall in love with. It is direct and straightforward and perhaps a direct benefactor of middle school nostalgia on my behalf; but it begins the album rather solidly and sets the listener up for a very engaging listening experience. 10/10

Give ‘Em Hell, Kid: This next track begins with a groovy bass line and joins with the guitars to shift the album into a more aggressive jam direction; thus fitting of the song title. Gerard delivers a very energetic performance that would be amazing to see being done live. He is a bit muffled at times but it creates an authentic sense of chaos that translates nicely what their live energy would be like. Naturally the lyrics will not have much coherency as a result but the chorus will clean things up enough to help balance out this short two minute jammer with ease. 9/10

To the End: Gerard begins over some sinister guitar riffs to create a dark demeanor that still retains a building energy. The instrumentals build up firmly into another very lively jam track that benefits from emotionally raw backing vocals. Gerard as a result achieves a layered vocal presence that helps to keep their signature chaotic foundation intact. The lyrics are decent to follow along to but the overall atmosphere and emotion is what makes this track really stick out. The jam solo segment towards the latter half is a nice stand out moment that will showcase the band’s technicality quite nicely. 9/10

You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison: Keys begin this piece with a nicely classical vibe before the instrumentals arrive to further infuse it with a very groovably rhythm. Gerard warms the track up nicely and once the guitars go into full motion he pours more of his emotionally crazed vocals into the chorus. It helps the band to really achieve a proper jam foundation that other band’s would find hard to replicate on an album without feeling rehearsed. It definitely is a bit more raw than the previous tracks but the jam solos will help this one to stick out nicely during a first time listen. 8.5/10

I’m Not Okay (I Promise) (Single): This next band highlight begins with an emotional guitar opening and is supported by energetic drum beats. Gerard enters with an emotionally high powered vocal demeanor that delivers his lyrics with a very honest sense of emotional despair. These lyrics are some of the strong on the album to follow along and keep things simple but highly substance filled. This will make them the primary focal point of the single but the solos will stick out very nicely to give you a dose of blissful melody. They build up a nice emotional breakdown segment that really brings home a state of mind from that narrator that rings true even today with the mentality of somebody in school. 10/10

The Ghost of You (Single): This track begins with a somber guitar/ key opening that Gerard uses to deliver a more serious sense of turmoil to the listener. The chorus is direct and very powerful in tone and emotion. The lyrics fit very well with the music video and i highly recommend checking out during your first listen; because they really represented this single perfectly with it. Instrumentally it will be straightforward but it’s simplicity enables for Gerard to really pour his heart into his delivery; which is really where this band shines when you deconstruct everything. I’m not knocking the instrumentals of course but without that emotional connection; they wouldn’t have the same impact by a longshot. 10/10

The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You: This track picks up from the last song and leads into a nice organ opening before the instrumentals construct a rather soothing opening. It is blissful and danceable while Gerard warms the track into a nice rocker. The chorus is direct but works with the instrumentals to create a nicely balance energy that will keep the listener from getting overwhelmed or bored. It keeps the album flow consistent as result without the risk of getting stale and would be another decent addition during a live performance. 8.5/10

Thank You for the Venom (Single): This final single begins with an energetic guitar opening and develops a nice foundation that would be very nice to dance along to during a live performance. Gerard thrives on the energy of the instrumentals to deliver a firm rock n roll presence that would be amazing to see live. The chorus is perfect with firm instrumental support and demanding emotional control from Gerard as well. This will be a highlight for the jam tracks in the album and lyrically is very engaging to follow along to during a first time  listen. The little solo segment towards the end builds up some nicely melodic tension before shifting full speed into a nice finish before Gerard takes the reins again to nail this song down perfectly. I really miss this Band! 10/10

Hang ‘Em High: This track begins with a fitting western tinge before shifting into a chaotic drum bash. Gerard takes over and delivers an equally choatic vocal performance that will rile up a live audience with ease. The lyrics are very easy to follow along to and will have very little difficulty in giving the listener ample elements to focus on throughout it. The chorus is a bit more muffled but creates a layered vocal presence as a result that further showcases their live elements. 9.5/10

It’s Not a Fashion Statement; It’s a Deathwish: Guitars begin this song with a climatic level of tension that Gerard naturally jumps into with ease. The instrumentals create a very energetic jam approach that falls in line with the rest of the album without being a detriment as a result. Gerard continues to thrive in this atmosphere and uses a dire level of angst to really impress the lyrics onto the listener. These lyrics are very strong and focus driven; which creates a finale setting which would of been a perfect choice for a closing track if needed; but i firmly pick this as a track to listen to if for some god forsaken reason you decide to only browse listen. Trust me; this album is too good for that; so treat yourself right and blast the whole album during your first listen. 10/10

Cemetery Drive: Drums begin with a nice marching vibe and guitars create a soothing atmosphere that enables Gerard to deliver some very blissful harmonies. His lyrics are pretty fitting with the nature of the track and help to create an atmosphere very representative of someone transitioning from a tortured life into eternal rest. This helps to set up the album for its finale track and wind things down a bit without taking away any sense of emotional strength or purpose. 9/10

I Never Told You What i Do for a Living: This finale track begins with another healthy heaping of chaotic instrumentals and angsty punk vocals from Gerard. He uses the tempo of the instrumentals to really lose himself in his performance. The lyrics are easy to follow along to and space things out enough to keep subtle moments of melody to seep through the guitar strings. It will help to keep things feeling fresh and climatic for this closer. They have a build up segment that leads into a decent breakdown segment that showcases their angsty side at full force. 8.5/10

Overall album rating: 9.3/10

Well it easily took the spot as my highest rated MCR album and for good reason. It is a nostalgic album that culturally stood out as significantly in the mid 2000′s as Green Day’s American Idiot did. I highly suggest checking this album and band out if you haven’t already because they are a band that ended arguably at the top of their game. Their more experimental Super hero themed Danger Days albums was probably their weakest release but was still an interesting one in the end. At some point i’ll have that one on here for you; but i’m really hoping Gerard Way comes out with another solo album soon because it’s been too long for him to not use his amazing vocals.

*Reviewer’s Pick*

[dustinreidmusic]

DR. JOHN BIO

“All my sisters married doctors”, said Dorothy Cronin Rebennack, the mother of Mac Rebennack. “ But only I had a Dr. John”. Indeed, there can be only one Malcolm Rebennack, aka “ Doctor John Creaux, the Night Tripper”. There can only be one walking repository of the storied city of New Orleans’ thriving musical history. There can be only one author of such classic songs as “ Right Place, Wrong Time”, “ Such A Night”, “Litanie Des Saintes”, and “I Walk On Gilded Splinters”. There can be only one torchbearer for the Crescent City sound as it second-lines its way into its fourth century. So Mrs. Rebennack was right -- physicians are indeed a dime a dozen in this doctor-clogged country; but a musician of her son’s caliber comes along but once in a very blue moon. Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. was born in New Orleans a full month after term on Thanksgiving Day (November 20) 1942. Weighing a full ten pounds, Mac, as he came to be called, was born into a music-loving family in America’s most musical city. While still an infant, Rebennack starred as a model for various baby products, and showed remarkable musical ability in early childhood. By the age of three he was already hammering out melodies on the family piano, and soon exhausted the talents of the nun who was hired to give him lessons some years later. “If I play what his next lesson is going to be”, the sister complained, “he will play it right behind me, note for note”, His good-timing Aunt Andre, who it can be safe to assume had funkier taste than the nun, taught him the “Pinetop Boogie-Woogie”. My aunt was a groovy old broad”, Rebennack recalled in “Up from the Cradle of Jazz”. “I used to drive everybody mad playing it”. Malcolm Rebennack Sr. was an appliance store owner who, as is traditional in New Orleans, also stocked the latest hit records. Thus young Mac was privy from early childhood to almost any music he wanted. Some years later the Rebennack appliance store was forced to close, and Mac lost his pipeline to the goldmine. But soon his father found work in a line even better suited to those of musical bent: PA system repair. The two Rebennacks would often be seen trundling in tandem to various nightclubs around town, bloodbucket dives with names like the Pepper Pot and the Cadillac Club. Always forbidden to enter the clubs, Mac would wait for his father to repair the system, and then peer in and dissect the musicians. It was at the Pepper Pot, in fact, and in this manner that Mac first saw Professor Longhair’s magical keyboard frolics. At the age of seven Rebennack suffered through a bout of malaria. Even as a child, the over-modest Mac had decided that he could never cut it as a pianist in New Orleans. As he remembered wondering, “How was I going to complete with killer players like Tuts Washington? Salvador Doucette? Herbert Santina? Professor Longhair himself? And the list only began there”. He had, even before his illness, agitated to take up the guitar. His long convalescence enabled him to air his plea with such incessancy, such vehemence, that his beleaguered parents finally gave in. He was sent for instruction to Werlein’s Music Store on Canal Street, already at that time a New Orleans institution and still in business today. His teacher soon sussed that Mac was going to be a difficult, if talented student. The instructor delivered a verdict along the line of, “Good ear, will never learn to read music”. The fancy, store-bought lessons ceased forthwith; but Mac was still hard at it. He locked himself in his room for weeks on end, learning by ear the licks of his twin idols of the time: T-Bone Walker and Lightning Hopkins. “If I can’t make it as T-Bone, I’ll try Lightning, he told himself. His father, seeing that his son had a talent and drive, and being himself connected in the music scene, made a wonderful decision. He persuaded Walter “Papoose” Nelson to instruct his son. Papoose was Fats Domino’s lead guitarist (and the son of Louis Armstrong’s lead guitarist) and had long been a hero to Rebennack. As Mac recalled: “The first lesson, Papoose listened to my chops and said ‘Hey, man, you can’t play that shit and get a job. What are you, crazy? That outta-meter, foot-beater jive. You gotta play stuff like this’. Then he started playing legitimate blues, which I was on the trail of with T-Bone Walker. It was the Lightning shuffle that was off the wall as far as Papoose was concerned”. Papoose’s primary contributions to Mac’s musical education were twofold. First, it was Nelson who finally won Mac over to the benefits of learning to read music. Second, to impart musical discipline, Nelson would force Mac to play rhythm guitar for hours on end, never allowing him a solo. Mac’s next teacher, Roy Montrell, also imparted a valuable lesson. To his first lesson with this new teacher, Mac bounded in with his brand new guitar, “a cheap but flashy-looking green-and-black Harmony”. Roy took at the guitar and (said) ‘Why’d you bring this piece of shit over here?’ ‘It’s my guitar’, I said. ‘Give me that guitar’. He took it, walked outside into the backyard, laid it on the ground, picked up an axe, and split it right in half. Then he broke it in pieces and threw it in the neighbour’s yard”. That done, he called Malcolm Rebennack Sr. on the phone and arranged for Mac to come back next week with a second-hand Gibson, an axe that Mac found himself working overtime with his father to pay for. By the time Mac was on the cusp of his teens, he was a somewhat streetwise musician, hanging out in black clubs and scoring drugs in the projects for his older “junko partners”, or drug-buddies. Soon he was smoking pot himself, and in due course he progressed to pills, coke, and eventually junk. All the while, he was attending the south’s most prestigious Catholic high school, New Orleans Jesuit. In class, he daydreamed and wrote songs, which he would deliver to the offices at Specialty Records, and plotted gigs with several high school bands. Something had to give, and as one can imagine, it was school. He dropped out a year of graduation and later, while in prison, obtained a correspondence course diploma. Not that in his lines of work he needed any such qualification. Soon he was a fully-fledged constituent of the New Orleans underworld. In addition to his burgeoning songwriting work, his session playing, and road gigs both local and regional, Mac attempted half-hearted sidelines such as pimping, forgery, and as an auteur of pornographic movies. His running buddies included street characters with names like Opium Rose, Betty Boobs, Stalebread Charlie, Buckethead Billy, and Mr. Oaks and Herbs. Meanwhile, he entered into a star-crossed, drug-sodden marriage to Lydia Crow. Lydia, though no shrinking violet herself, did attempt to go straight from time to time. But Mac would hear nothing of it, and their marriage ended by 1961. His personal life a shambles, Mac’s professional life was faring better. He was kicking serious ass in the studio, and it is his guitar one still hears today on Professor Longhair’s, “Mardi Gras in New Orleans”. Mac-penned tunes like “Losing Battle” (a hit for Johnny Adams) and “Losing Battle” (recorded by Jerry Byrne) (the same song?) were just two of his fifty compositions recorded in New Orleans between 1955 and 1963. But (as is well-known today) the record companies of the 1950’s were not exactly ready coughers-up of royalties, so most of Mac’s compensation came from his sessions, gigs, and mostly ludicrous street tough sidelines. One such example of the corruption of the New Orleans music business of the ‘50s will suffice. Rebennack wrote a song entitled, “Try Not To Think About You” which languished unrecorded in the offices at Specialty Records for a while. Unrecorded, and more importantly, uncopyrighted. It eventually came to the attention of Lloyd Price, who changed the title to “Lady Luck”, switched record labels, and changed the composer’s name to - you guessed it - Lloyd Price. It would have been Rebennack’s biggest hit up to that date. After literally stalking Price, gun in hand (Mac planned on wasting him backstage after a show) for some time, he finally cooled off and chalked it up to bitter experience. An absurd coda ensured, when Rebennack’s parents unknowingly hired Price’s own attorney to sue Price for the royalties from “Lady Luck”. The lawyer, Mac related, “pocketed the change and did nothing. for a minute, I was afraid if I ever ran across that bastard, I’d kill him, too”. Such chicanery aside, New Orleans of the 1950s was a paradise for musicians. Always a wide-open town (by American standards), the Crescent City was never more raucous and hard-partying than it was then. Gigs abounded in the all-night bars, bordellos, tourist joints, society haunts, and neighborhood taverns. That Rebennack was far ahead of his time regarding race helped him find work, but also earned him some less-enlightened enemies on both sides of the color line. He began to run into flak from the two musician’s union (one black, one white) for having the temerity to play with opposite-hued musicians. Eventually these unions and the crusading, publicity-seeking New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison were to conspire to run Rebennack and most of the rest of the New Orleans music scene right out of town. The union began levying exorbitant fines on Rebennack (officially for playing scab sessions) and blacklisting record producers (like the legendary Cosimo Matassa) who dared to buy the latest equipment. Their short-sighted thinking was that new equipment would equal less studio time instead of more polished records and bigger hits. Garrison, for his part, launched a crusade on vice which closed down the thriving whorehouses and gambling dens, both important sources of income for both the music and tourist industries. Rebennack’s troubles were only beginning. A fracas with a Jacksonville, Florida hotelier resulted in Rebennack getting the ring finger shot nearly off his left hand. Doctors reconstructed the finger to a degree, but not to the point that would enable him to resume making a living with a guitar. He was forced into playing bass with the tourist-oriented French Quarter Dixieland bands, a gig that convulsed him with boredom. He sank deeper than ever into heroin, and it was then that his marriage ended. To top it all, he was busted by Garrison’s goons for heroin possession, a charge that was to send him eventually to a Federal prison hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. There he served as a guinea pig for the various and infamous rehabilitation experiments then -as now - rampant in the land. He was released embittered but not in the least rehabilitated. He returned briefly to New Orleans and was given some pointers on the organ from Crescent City keyboard maestro James Booker. However, he soon soured on Garrison’s Brave New Orleans and at the invitation of an old friend (saxophonist/arranger Harold Battiste) flew out to Los Angeles. A contingent of New Orleans musicians had already set up shop in the City of Angels, and Rebennack fell quickly to work doing studio odd jobs under the auspices of Battiste. Battiste was the brains (ahem) behind Sonny & Cher, and was a close associate of Phil Spector. Battiste mortared Rebennack in on some of Spector’s sessions, but Mac did not enjoy being just another brick in the ‘Wall of Sound’. He called it, “a monument to waste with echo all over the place! It was just padding the payroll, as far as I could see”. He held down a brief stint as Frank Zappa’s pianist, but found that stultifying as well. This gave him an entrée into the acid rock world, in his words, “all these little acid groups springing up like mutant fungus after a chemical spill”. He attempted to work with Iron Butterfly, whom he termed “Iron Butterfingers” and Buffalo Springfield to little if any effect. A frustrating term as in-house producer with Mercury Records followed, but Rebennack and his cohorts suspected that it was just a tax dodge. He was more musically frustrated than he had ever been in New Orleans, and his drug woes continued unabated. As a parolee, he was under the watchful eyes of a great many government agencies as well. But slowly, the concept was forming that was to take him to heights he wouldn’t have dared dreamt possible. Growing up in New Orleans, Rebennack had eagerly immersed himself in the City’s myriad native traditions and home-grown Afro-Latin religions. He himself was a half-hearted practitioner of gris-gris, New Orleans’ own unique branch of the voodoo tree. In his avid studies of the history and religion of the city, he had thrilled to the stories of John Montaigne aka Bayou John aka and most frequently, Dr.John. John was a Senegalese of self-proclaimed royal lineage who had been taken from Africa by slavers to Cuba. There he won his freedom, and shipped out as a sailor before eventually choosing to settle in New Orleans. He set up shop as a shaman, telling fortunes, healing, and selling a cornucopia of hexes. He was good at his job, and eventually prospered to the point where he even owned slaves himself. The kicker for Rebennack was coming across an account of a 19th Century vice bust in which John was arrested with one Pauline Rebennack for voodoo-related offences and suspicion of operating a whorehouse. For years, Mac had felt a spiritual kinship for Dr.John, and this account raised the quite possibility that one of his family had had the same feelings. Even so, the idea that Rebennack had been ruminating cast his friend Ronnie Barron in the roll of Dr. John. But when the project was finally greenlighted, Barron had other contractual duties and Rebennack reluctantly assumed the mantle himself. Between Sonny & Cher sessions, virtually on the sly, Rebennack recorded the “Gris Gris” album with a band of New Orleans natives. Atlantic executive Ahmet Ertegun was at first displeased with the move. “Why did you give me this shit”?, Rebennack remembers Ertegun bellowing. “How can we market this boogaloo crap”? Eventually the canny Ertegun sniffed something in the late-’60s zeitgeist that could enable an off-the-wall act like Dr.John to sell, and he (to Rebennack’s surprise) released the album. On “Gris Gris”, Rebennack played very little keyboard, contributing only organ parts on two tracks (“Mama Roux” and Danse Kalinda”). His aim was to introduce America to New Orleans’ mystical side, and also to “let us musicians get into a stretched-out New Orleans groove”. The album sold well enough to appease the suits, with very little backing, and meanwhile Rebennack’s fertile mind was cooking up a killer road show. Drawing on the venerable southern minstrel tradition and the pageantry of the Mardi Gras Indians, Dr.John and the Night Trippers’ road show boasted snake-festooned dancers, magic tricks, and costumes manufactured from the carcasses of virtually every living creature that ever crawled, slithered or flew in the bayou country. As Rebennack recalled, “When this stuff started coming apart in pieces, I had to start hanging around taxidermy shops big-time, scavenging new material.” He and his similarly attired band of New Orleans roughnecks unleashed this act the acid-drenched southern California of 1968 to no little astonishment. But by the time “Babylon”, the Night Tripper’s second album came out, the band began to dissolve. Rebennack (along with the most of the rest of America) felt the end time was at hand, as the title implies. The album reflects Rebennack’s chaotic personal life - his drug use and police persecution, his dissolving band -- and the state of American life in 1968, a year in which it seemed that violet revolution was at hand. It was a year in which both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King fell to assassins, riots consumed black ghettos in flames from Miami to Watts, and the Vietcong launched the ferocious TET offensive. The album features odd time signatures (11/4, 5/4,10/4), doom-laden lyrics, and hybrid Afro-Caribbean/avant-garde jazz feeling. As Rebennack later said, “ It was as if Hieronymus Bosch had cut an album”. Who better to chronicle those disorderly times? Things were about to get extremely untidy for Rebennack again, as well. While touring in support of “Gris-Gris”, the Night Trippers had been busted in St. Louis, and Rebennack as frontman shouldered the load. A lawyer arranged a deal in which Charlie Green (the manager of Sonny & Cher and Buffalo Springfield) was to pay off the St. Louis bail bondsman. The bondsman, unbeknownst to Rebennack, never collected. Green and partner Brian Stone then confronted Rebennack with the proverbial “Offer you can’t refuse”. Since he had gotten Rebennack sprung, Green put it to Mac, we get to manage you from now on. Rebennack, frazzled, saw no alternative. Green proved to be the worst of all managerial archetypes, the would-be star. Mac recalled, “He thought of himself as the star and me as the roadie of the operation. Even though I wasn’t on no kind of star trip or nothing, I didn’t want my manager hanging around, running some kind of Jumpin’ Jack Flash number and trying to upstage me. Beyond that was the basic problem: a drugged out band hooked up with a starry-eyed manager results in a chemically unbalanced situation and, in general, a fearsome sight to behold.” While at work on “Remedies”, the third of five of Rebennack’s Atlantic releases, Green and Stone persuaded Rebennack to check himself into a loony-bin, with an eye toward having him declared incompetent. This move would allow them to help themselves to a slightly higher percentage of Rebennack’s earnings than their current 25%, something more along the lines of 100%. Rebennack quickly wised up, escaped from the asylum, and exiled himself to Miami. Meanwhile, the managers had released the unfinished “Remedies” album. One of Rebennack’s chief aims for the album was to spread the news about Louisiana’s notorious Angola Farm, then as now America’s most deplorable and inhumane prison. Rebennack, incommunicado in Miami, was thus unable to put wise the Rolling Stone reviewer who took his lament Angola Anthem to be a protest song about the nation of Angola. A disastrous European tour followed, one in which was Mac was hamstrung by a third string band (most of the Night Trippers were unable to get visas). The tour was augured in by Mac from backstage the electrocution death of the Stone the Crows guitarist Les Harvey at a festival. At Montreux, his bass player without warning dropped his bass and brandished a trombone which he had concealed in the wings, and proceeded to (Rebennack related) “start dancing around the stage, playing Pied Piper to the audience’s mountain villagers”. At the end of this arduous road, Mac headed for London to round up session players for the album “The Sun, Moon, and Herbs”. Graham Bond, Eric Clapton, Ray Draper, Walter Davis Jr., Mick Jagger, Doris Troy, and a battery of drummers from virtually every West African and Caribbean country were on hand for a days-long, Opium and hash-fuelled epic of a session. He delivered the finished article to Green for post-production work a happy man. Some weeks later, Rebennack returned to find his beloved album chopped, diced, and filleted by Green. Material was added and deleted, more was overdubbed. Most of what Rebennack felt was the best music was simply gone. In addition, it came to his attention (when he was alerted to a pair of bounty hunters at his doorstep) that Green had not, in fact, bailed him out of anything. Green was summarily dismissed, and Rebennack and some engineers endeavored to salvage what they could of the “Sun, Moon, and Herbs” album. He signed next with manager Albert Grossman, of Joplin, Dylan, and The Band fame. He was the manager who “electrified” Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, which touched off a brawl between himself and folklorist Alan Lomax in front of several thousand bemused folkies. Lomax, though, was not the only one in the music scene who wanted a piece of Grossman. Soon enough, Grossman and Rebennack came nearly to blows. Grossman’s style was to play it cool with his artist, while his “bad-cop” flunkie Bennett Glotzer delivered such news as, “Thanks for signing with us. We now control 1/3 of your publishing”. Glotzer and Rebennack had two punch-outs, and things got so bad that Rebennack turned to his native gris-gris. He would each day leave a dead bird on Glotzer’s doorstep, surrounding by black candles and sprinkled with “goofer dust”. Eventually, this hell-broth boiled over when, in a tête-à-tête with Grossman, an enraged Rebennack snatched Grossman’s beloved peyote button, a pet psychedelic Grossman had been nurturing for three years, and devoured it, skin, pulp, stem and all, in front of his very eyes. The relationship dissolved into a maelstrom of threat and counter-threats, and now Rebennack had not one, but two oddball ex-managers scheming for his destruction. Somehow, Mac found the time to sit in the Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street” sessions, and also to record one of his best albums ever. (While in the studio with the Stones, he discussed with them his and New Orleans songwriter Earl King’s idea for an album of dirty blues tunes. Back in the fifties, when he played the after hours joints, he had often played for an audience of street characters x-rated versions of old blues tunes. The Stones demurred, but later released “Cocksucker Blues” on their own, which irked Rebennack. He felt that since he had given them the idea, he should be compensated) His own effort produced “Gumbo”, an album steeped in the New Orleans of his youth. Featuring covers of songs by King, Professor Longhair, and several other lesser lights of that time and place, the album was his most direct tribute to his home turf to that date. To back the album, Mac ditched the voodoo shtick he had employed on the road since 1967 in favour of a revue format. As Mac termed it, he had “enough of the mighty-coo-de-fiyo hoodoo show”. The Gumbo tour, backed heavily by Atlantic, reached Carnegie Hall and other such bastions of the high life, and a single, ”Iko Iko”, cracked the top 40. The dark cloud to this silver lining was that hard on the heels of his chart success, several of his past employers saw fit to release albums of demos. Among them were Green, Huey Meaux (with whom Rebennack had worked as a session producer) and an unknown cast of characters. This very collection is one such unfinished product. Meanwhile, Rebennack had seen fit to employ yet another volatile, less than 10% straight forward manager. Phil Walden, who had hit the big-time managing Otis Redding was then cresting on the Allman Brothers doomed wave, and he also handled Rebennack’s New Orleans chums, The Meters. Clearly Rebennack thought, here at last was a manager with the Midas touch. In 1973, Rebennack and the Meters hit the studio together to record “In The Right Place”. At first, things with Walden and the album went swimmingly. Walden booked Mac and The Meters on some Allman tours, on which Rebennack enjoyed himself immensely, both professionally and personally. The album scored him both his biggest hit (the title track) and perhaps his most enduring composition. “Such a Night” is a stone-cold classic, a song that sounded as old and enduring as music itself from the very day it was waxed. This writer was astonished to learn that it was written by Rebennack in 1973, as I had always assumed it emanated from Cole Porter or some such. The relationship with Walden, which had been going so well, came to a screeching halt when Rebennack returned home road-weary to find his house bereft of furniture, furniture that had somehow found its way across town to Walden’s recording studio. It was this move that finally put an end to Rebennack’s reliance on anyone else to handle his business affairs. Since then he has managed himself. Later in 1973, a collaboration with white bluesman John Hammond Jr. and Mike Bloomfield brought forth the “Triumvirate” album. Meanwhile, Rebennack embarked on a tour of shows benefiting the Black Panthers, which, he recalled, “had the immediate effect of bringing serious federal heat down on our asses! I discovered that we’d jumped into a whole new level of criminality. We weren’t garden-variety dope fiends any more; now we’d become political activists, the most fouty-knuckled lames of them all”. The year ended with Rebennack attempting to aid a drink- and coke-addled John Lennon make the album “Rock ‘n’Roll” with Rebennack’s old boss Phil Spector. As active and fruitful as 1973 seemed (in addition to the above there were sessions with Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr), Rebennack was still broke and very bitter. He seriously pondered retirement, and had developed a reputation as a pain in the ass. The rest of the early seventies passed by in a blur of drug abuse and fallen sidemen. James Booker, the classically trained, extremely eccentric genius of the New Orleans keys, came and went from Rebennack’s band several times, before dying of a cocaine overdose in 1983. Ray Draper was whacked by New Jersey loan-sharks. Percussionist Albert ”Didimus” Washington was killed by a Cabbage-juice diet designed to heal his ulcers. As the seventies wore on, though, things very slowly began to turn around for Rebennack. A collaboration with legendary New York songwriter Doc Pomus (“Save The Last Dance For Me”, “Lonely Avenue”, “Suspicion”), produced the song “There Must Be A Better World Somewhere”, which B.B. King later picked up and won a Grammy. Tommy LiPuma persuaded Rebennack and Pomus to sign with his A&M-affiliated Horizon label. “City Lights”, the label’s second release, quickly followed. The album is something of a semi-autobiographical rock opera, co-written by Rebennack, Pomus, and Henry Glover (“ I Love You, Yes I Do”; “Drown in My Own Tears”) concerning the exploits of some ex-pat New Orleanians in the Big Apple. “Tango Palace”, another Mac-Pomus offering, came hard on the heels of “City Lights”, but not soon enough. The label foundered almost immediately after “Tango’s” release. Rebennack recalls the interlude with Horizon, during which he also gigged with 50’s R& B legends Hank Crawford and Fathead Newman, as being rewarding musically, if not commercially. In 1980, Rebennack began an association with Jack Heyrman’s Clean Cuts label. Heyrman persuaded Rebennack to confront a personal bugaboo and record two albums of solo piano and vocals. Rebennack had always had nightmarish visions of this being his end, that “I’d end up a solo-piano lounge act, staring at Holiday Inns or bowling alleys for the rest of my natural life”. Nevertheless, two Clean Cuts releases, “Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack” and “The Brightest Smile In Town”, ensued. On them, Rebennack erased the last vestiges of the Gris Gris act and tackled some more sophisticated and older forms of music. He wanted to appeal to “a spiritual awareness, not just that low-down meat level”, but hastened to add that, “The hardest thing to do is let the spirituality flow and turn the meat on. Doing that is creating art, radiating the 88’s”. Rebennack expanded on this with 1989’s “In A Sentimental Mood”, a collection of classics this time presented in a combo format. A duet with Rickie Lee Jones on Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson’s ”Makin’ Whoopee” took home the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Duet, and the album was one of the top-selling jazz albums of the year. Two more albums in a jazzy vein, “Bluesiana Triangle”, cut with Fathead Newman and the great Art Blakey; and “Bluesiana II”, cut again with Newman and others followed in the next two years. In 1989, Rebennack ended his 34-year relationship with heroin, and three years later released “Goin’ Back to New Orleans”, one of his most ambitious projects to date. Like “Gumbo”, “Goin’ Back” is solely a New Orleans affair, but it takes a much broader approach. Songs dating as far back as 1850 were recorded, with each of the ensuing cuts representing a stylistic breakthrough that has occurred since then. There’s a Mardi Gras Indian tune, homages to Jelly Roll Morton, Buddy Bolden, Louis Jordan, Professor Longhair, James Booker, and Fats Domino. The Neville Brothers, Wardell Quezergue, Al Hirt, and Pete Fountain, among a great many others turned out in support of the project. Any one volume CD that endeavors to cover 150 years of music from America’s most tuneful of cities is bound to fail, through as Rebennack says, “ the only thing that can beat a failure is a try”. Ultimately, the album ranks in the top 5% of all New Orleans releases, a too-brief primer lovingly and excitingly presented by the best musicians the city had to offer at that time. By turns wistful, violent, joyous and tragic, it never loses the twin hallmarks of the city that birthed it - a sense of humour at the absurdities of life (and death) and some of the world’s most pulsating rhythms. In 1994, Rebennack wrote with co-author Jack Rummel the excellent autobiography, “Under A Hoodoo Moon”. From it most of these notes were cribbed, and though this has proven to be by far my most verbose liner-note project, not one tenth of the story is yet told . Far from being a typical rock & roll, ghost-written autobiography, it is a hilarious, tragic, brutally honest, and inspirational tale of one erudite and talented man’s struggle to make some good music in a country in which this has become increasingly difficult. The chapter in which his reminiscences of Professor Longhair are recounted in side-splitting detail is alone worth the price of the book. The rest of the mid-nineties saw Rebennack’s voice become seemingly ubiquitous on American television, singing the praises of Wendy’s Hamburgers, among many another strange fruit from his American orchard. He has released several anthologies and two albums of new material - “Television” on GRP in 1994 and “Afterglow” on Blue Thumb in 1995. Any questions regarding this bizarre genius’ contemporary relevance were abolished in 1991 and 1993 when P.M. Dawn and Beck, respectively sampled his “I Walk On Gilded Splinters” for their own recordings, with utilising the Doctor’s tune in his breakthrough anthem, “Loser”. In 1997 he recorded a smoking duet with B.B. King on his collaboration with Doc Pomus, “There Must Be A Better World Somewhere”. He continues to tour and record, and still there is no bowling alley or Holiday Inn big enough to hold the audiences that pay to see him. Like the city he came from, Mac Rebennack is a survivor. So is the music that they share. That indefinable blend of French, African, Caribbean, Spanish, and American ingredients, that gumbo of a city and a sound, the certain je ne sais pocky way hollers out Crescent City, has no living acolyte truer or more faithful than Rebennack. Long may he ramble! ~John Nova Lomax, November 1998

[ben-winch-writer-rocker]

Live, Masonic Auditorium, Detroit, 01/14/1978

Fred “Sonic” Smith and Oppositional Defiance Disorder:

The appeal of MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith goes beyond his guitar work, savage, deft and incendiary as that work may have been, and far beyond what traces of that work remain via studio and live recordings. In this era of “over-diagnosed” psychological disorders, Smith’s “condition” might well be labelled, like Kurt Cobain’s, “oppositional defiance disorder”. But unlike Cobain, Smith had neither the drive to be a frontman nor the good grace (or self-doubt) to back down in the face of physical opposition. And unlike Cobain, he was no suicide; his anger faced squarely outwards, driven by a righteous indignation that, at first, was anything but self-implicating.

A famous MC5 creation myth paints the young would-be revolutionary. While discussing the band-to-come at a Detroit restaurant with Wayne Kramer and Rob Tyner, Smith knocked a glass over mid-rant and (according to Kramer) said, “Yeah, this is what we’ll do, we’ll just knock shit over if we wanna knock shit over. We’ll be powerful. We’ll take a stand.”

“That ain’t cool,” Tyner said. “That ain’t being powerful. You’re not taking a stand. You’re not proving anything.”

Smith: “Well what are you gonna do about it?”

Tyner: “I’ll do what I have to do.”

Smith: “Then let’s fight.”

So they fought outside in the icy parking lot. After a couple of punches it went to the ground and Smith, an athletic six-foot-plus, came out on top, fist raised. “I could smash your face in,” he said.

And Tyner said, “Well why don’t you?”

As Kramer tells it, for three teenagers this was deep, and they got in the car and drove around for hours analysing what had happened. For Smith, I suspect it was a turning point, maybe not just in his relationship with Tyner (“After that they were tight,” says Kramer) but in his understanding of what nowadays might be termed his disorder. Of course it didn’t stop him fighting (he’d spar with Tyner again, and tackle two policemen when they arrested MC5 manager John Sinclair), but just maybe it started him questioning, turning his ideals from “smash everything” to “smash what needs smashing”, and giving him the dignity and true-seeming righteousness that comes across so strongly in his future wife Patti Smith’s recollections. (Fred Smith died in 1994, aged 46. See Patti Smith’s book M. Train for some touching writing on the man.)

From Detroit delinquent to doting family man, Smith’s trajectory was always up, despite that the MC5 crashed and burned due to record-company hassles and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band never had the chance to repeat that ignominy, largely or partly, if the other players’ testimonies are accurate, because Smith willed it that way—because Cobain-like he taunted and insulted any A & R man plucky enough to make him overtures.

So, like the MC5, like the Flamin’ Groovies, like even—to some extent—the Stooges (whose masterpiece Raw Power was, production-wise, a misfire) Sonic’s Rendezvous Band are one of the great protopunk should-have-been-a-success stories. In a sense they may be the greatest, because of their failure, because of their mystique. And that mystique is rooted not only in mists-of-time semi-invisibility, but in the aura of rebel iconoclast Fred “Sonic” Smith.

Scott Morgan and the Tonic:

But since Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, despite the name, were a two-singer band, let’s discuss the second singer, especially as he was, by any traditional yardstick, the better frontman—louder, more professional, with clearer diction (Smith’s was, make no mistake, awful; fans will be arguing over the substance of his lyrics forever), and more possessing of what some listeners may have taken as charisma. And in any case, the first song on the album is his: “Electrophonic Tonic”.

Scott Morgan, a veteran of fellow almost-made-it Detroit rock band the Rationals, had cut his teeth as a frontman singing Otis’s “Respect” pre-Aretha’s-version and turned that song into a regional hit, which, thanks to the last-minute non-involvement of Jerry Wexler’s Atlantic, never made it national. (Faced with the Rationals’ lofty demand of five grand upfront, Wexler demurred, handed the song to Aretha, and the rest is history.) A soul singer, then, with a hard rock edge, which may simply have been what it took to get across in the intimate and sonically inadequate venues of Detroit in the late 1960s, Morgan delivers his parts here with an R & B frontman’s panache, positioning himself on the classic-rock continuum somewhere between Ted Nugent and Steve Marriot, though when he sets his band loose they kick harder—thanks to ex-Up bassist Gary Rasmussen and ex-Stooges drummer Scott Asheton as much as to Smith’s semi-insane, close-to-breaking-point, post-Chuck-Berry guitar solos—than almost anyone except AC/DC, and with a sheer abandon which the famous Scots-Australians, ever the professionals, rarely mustered.

But let’s back up a little. Harder than anyone? What about Sabbath, Zeppelin, Deep Purple? I’ll make it clear: Sonic’s Rendezvous Band doesn’t do lumbering. Much as they’re classic, classic as hell, you couldn’t call them dinosaurs because they’re too fleet-footed. But nor do they sprint, they’ve got too much distance to cover; every other track here clocks in at over five minutes, and two of them (Smith’s masterpieces “Sweet Nothin’” and “City Slang”) are nearer to seven. The tempo is Sex Pistols and up, the beat almost motoric. (Asheton focusses on hitting hard and keeping the pace; he hasn’t got time for fancy flourishes.) Their roots are in R ’n’ B boogie, just as Sabbath’s were in blues. And I’d say they were just about as ahead of their time as Sabbath, if inevitably (given they had no record deal) nowhere near as influential.

But back to the “Tonic”. It’s a good song: deft, workmanlike, shuffling the same old three classic-rock chords in a natural and not entirely expected fashion. There’s a nice halftime breakdown in the middle. It’s got grit. Those who weren’t bemoaning its classicism (this was a support slot at a Ramone’s gig, after all) were probably shaking their heads in disbelief at its onslaught, unless they were shaking their asses with sheer abandon, tearing up seating, going wild. As an opener and a mission statement, it kicks ass. But for me, it’s only in track two, “Sweet Nothin’”, that the magic happens.

Sweet Nothin’:

Who can say what arcane voodoo is at work here? On the surface it starts out not so dissimilar to track one. We’ve jumped from E to B though, a good sign. (B is a great guitar key, enabling riffs that E makes obscure.) But to start off with, at least, it’s the same three-chord theory. There’s a subtle key-shift in the pre-chorus, and then with the chorus we’re in new territory: the minor sixth—the “Raw Power” chord, the “Suffragette City” chord, the “Sonic Reducer” chord—rears its head and Smith puts his cards on the table. Like Sabbath’s embrace of the devil’s interval, this is a chord-change that would inspire an entire genre—postpunk—and it darkens proceedings and ups the drama as soon as Smith unveils it.

What can I say? “Sweet Nothin’” is an anthem, despite or maybe because of the fact that I can’t hear more than a few words of it. It’s a love song, that much I’m sure of, maybe penned for the soon-to-be Mrs Patti “Sonic” Smith. (Patti Smith was on the scene intermittently in Detroit around the time: the two had sparked up an affair—she was still married to her last husband—and SRB would support her in bigger venues, breaking away from their intimate, not to say dead-end, bar gigs, where according to legend they played for as few as six people.) Whatever the “message”, I don’t care; I feel it in my bones. And when Smith, after repeating the simple refrain “You’re really really something sweet nothin’” in the plainest of minor-key melodies five or six times before the final solo, sing-shouts “You take my breath away”, barely caring if he’s in earshot of the microphone, I know exactly what he’s saying. Besides, whoever said an anthem has to meansomething? What does “Pretty Vacant” mean? “There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply.” You either know it deep down, deeper than words, or you never will. “There’s more to the picture than meets the eye” after all, and “Sweet Nothin’” is as good an illustration as any.

To make it clear, “Sweet Nothin’”, in my opinion, is one of the top twenty rock songs ever. It gets in. It obsesses you, or obsesses me, and I say this as someone who discovered it at age 43, via Spotify, through a $200 portable Bluetooth player. As Roberto Bolañosaid, if you want to find out if something’s a masterpiece, translate it. Translate it badly. If it stillretains its power, there’s your answer. And this album, smothered in tape saturation and poorly mixed from the live desk, was hardly a good translation to begin with. It’s not a classic like Bowie’s Low, or Abbey Road, or even the flawed Raw Power—not a finely-wrought work of art. It’s more like a jam tape. And what’s more, like a jam tape that doesn’t half sound familiar. I’ve beenat those jams. I’ve played in them. Not that our jams were as powerful, but I’d say Sonic’s Rendezvous Band stake a convincing claim to sounding like what, to this day, many rock bands want to sound like.

Into the Red:

And so it goes, through the five-minute semi-psychotic choogle of “Asteroid B612” (weird name for Morgan’s declaration of righteous love for his woman, bisected by a brilliant, dexterous-soulful blues-at-11 solo from Smith) to Smith’s five-plus-minute slightly more contemplative but still excoriating “Gone With the Dogs”, which to tell the truth slightly pales, given that Smith’s voice is already hoarse and he’s just graced “Asteroid B612” with some of his tastiest guitar-work. But wait, that accolade may well go to track six, “Song L”, which attempts a truly strange percussive minor-chord motif that doesn’t quitework but adds a new-wave-like aspect to Smith’s palette (it almost sounds—wait for it—sophisticated), before the nuclear explosion of the solo. By now, admittedly, following Morgan’s “Love and Learn”, it all seems slightly like business as usual: high-energy rocker after high-energy rocker; two guitar solos a piece, apparently thrown in whenever Smith feels like it; each song culminating in a swelling classic-rock crescendo. Nonetheless it’s precisely the lack of dynamics that makes this feel so modern. It’s unrelenting.

And I wonder, was it only in the space above zero VU—well into the red—that Smith felt the thrill of being powerful, of knocking stuff over, that had made him want to play guitar in the first place, but without the need to do violence that had very nearly made him cave his friend’s face in? Whatever their motivation, for the remainder of the set he and his collaborators play their hearts out, so much so that by “City Slang”, pretty much the ultimate showstopper, it’s hard to believe they can still play at all. Yes, the performance is patchy compared to the seven-inch version (the only record released by SRB in its lifetime, and a flat-out masterpiece). Smith is barely enunciating by the last shouted refrains. But he always maintained he liked performers that stepped up to or over the line, and all four players do that here. It’s pure adrenalin.

Plainly no band could have kept up this intensity without some serious motivation. And the truth is that by “City Slang” Smith sounds tired. Probably he didn’t have what it takes to be a frontman, at least not a touring frontman, and possibly he knew it. Maybe all he wanted was to sing his songs—because they existed, because he’d written them, because if he didn’t no-one else would. And it’s this near-complete lack of ego—this hesitating on the verge of doing nothing at all, then throwing himself in regardless body and soul—that makes Smith’s performance here one of my all-time favourite perfomances by a male singer, despite its faults. It’s the tone, bluntly masculine but vulnerable, straight-talking, speaking calmly from the centre of the storm. What can I say? He means it, and he really doesn’t much care how it goes over. Or better put, sure, you can tell he’s humbled by the crowd’s ecstatic response, but get a record deal, tour the country, maybe get rich and famous? The song and its performance are their own rewards. And, just maybe, this degree of selflessness could only have come from a singer who didn’t think of himself as a frontman.

From playing back-up to Rob Tyner and sharing the stage with Scott Morgan, Smith transitioned, shortly after this recording, to playing husband and sideman to Patti Smith, collaborating on her 1988 album comeback album Dream of Lifeand its breakthrough single “The People Have the Power”. For someone who started with a will to destroy, the adult Fred “Sonic” Smith had learned humility. His story, or what I’ve managed to uncover of it, is a true inspiration, because though he never hit the bigtime he lived the dream, doing what he wanted how he wanted at maximum volume, and never with that preening strut of the peacock that suggests it’s all theatre.

Live, Masonic Auditorium, Detroit, 01/14/1978 is a flawed document, and who knows, it may be that Sonic’s Rendezvous Band were never going to break through outside of Michigan. Regardless, it’s a classic. It takes your breath away.

[purcommgroup7]

in bloom

Artist: Saito Soma

Year: 2020

Genre: Emo-Rock, Alternative Rock, Japanese Indie, Jpop

Saito Soma (斉藤 壮馬), one of the prominent and well-known voice actor and artist in Japan. Born on April 22, 1991, Soma is currently 31 years old with over hundreds of characters he voiced. Soma is an artist signed under 81 Produce as a voice actor, while Sacra Music is his music label. He specializes in vocals, lyrics writing, and guitar. He officially has over 7 singles, 2 albums, and 2 EPs (extended plays) wherein he showed his skills in writing as he is a Literature Major. Last December 23rd of 2020, Soma released his 2nd album called “in bloom” that contains 11 tracks. The said album reached a spot in peak charts, placing 5th.The genres that prominently surfaced in the album was Emo-Rock and Alternative Rock. 

First in the list is carpool. The song starts with a good play in strumming of guitars and bass that gives off the melancholic vibes from the very beginning. The verses of the song are well played wherein it gives the impression of the story. As the chorus comes in, it gives the emotion of longing and missing someone important or close to you. Maybe your lover, family, or best friend. Although the instrumentals are optimistic, the lyrics speak the opposite. The bridge and outro made use of the traditional rock that makes the song perfect. Additional to the instrumental and lyrics is Soma’s angelic voice. He was able to execute the emotion he’s been telling in interviews through the song using his ability in doing a good sounding falsetto.

Second would be Schrodinger Girl (シュレディンガー・ガール)  which kicks in with a groove. Drums, bass, guitar riffs – you name it! Schrodinger girl gave more than enough justice in portraying a good use of these instruments mentioned. A perfectly intense track that knows how to play tempos and tone of voice. Falsetto and vibrato mixed together gives the marvelous touch of the song. Job well done , Soma! 

Third, Vampire Weekend. One of my personal favorites in the album. The 3-minute and 25-seconds long music is a very great song to bop with. To be honest, this is the first kind of song that Soma had crafted that portrays all his appeal and personality in real life, which is why it is the most enjoyable song. Seductive, charismatic, alluring – anything that speaks of the energy that Soma gives in his looks and personality. The balance in funky guitar riffs, minimalistic EDM, and an intense, punchy bassline provokes the sexiness of the song while Soma’s voice added to the masterpiece. His perks as a voice actor gave him the privilege to play his sweet, sexy, and innocent side at the right timing and scene in the song. Overall, this song could hypnotize you as it is addicting even on your first listen. Mic drop to this song! 

Kitchen (キッチン)  comes next on the list. If I'm being honest, this song would be my least favorite. The song did not properly justify the vibe that the album exhibits. The energy has a loophole to the others, giving it a huge gap for me. Kitchen is a song that I may listen to, but not on a daily basis. Most likely, this song is a good way to energize a person who wants to cook something at midnight. Soma did save the song with his amazing vocals in which he used legato and crescendo. Overall, this song never shined so much for me – totally overshadowed by the rest. 

During the rainy seasons, Petrichor (ペトリコール)  is the best song to play!  The jazz, fancy sax, groovy bass, and classic piano enables the beat of the song. The melody may seem very happy and joyful under the rainy clouds, but don’t be fooled by Soma’s ability in hiding dark lyrics under the coat of the sweet melodies. Overall, a recommended song to play during rainy days as the title means the earthy smell of the rain. 

Contrasting to Petrichor is Summerholic! The song is best played during the summer. The playfulness of the instruments, especially the tambourine in the background and vocals were executed properly to let the listeners feel the energy that this is definitely a summer-worthy song! Soundscapes of the songs may even transport you to a beach or on a typical summer day in your room, eating watermelons or playing your guitar.

After all the good times in Summerholic!, Palette (パレット)  changes the game, turning a full circle for the angst it upholds. One of the heaviest songs that Soma managed to craft, palette plays with your emotions.It is loud, but at the same time, sad and hunts all the feelings of defeat, pain, and giving up. Yet, by the last chorus, after all the negativities it made you feel, Soma always reminds you that there’s hope in everything. There will always be a palette to color your days as seasons continue to change. In totality, the song is a good representation of how the old you takes a glance back to your childhood. The overall emotions were balanced properly. The emo vibes and the raw, polished vocals hints the feelings mentioned perfectly, leaving this song a great review. To tell you frankly, upon my first listen to this track, I can’t help but shed a few tears due to the heaviness of the song and the way Soma made use of low and mid tones totally grabbed the opportunity to thrust the overwhelming emotions. Palette would be the best song for you to listen to in the background if you feel like reminiscing or revisiting things you wished to experience again. Highly recommended to listen to palette during a rainy trip! 

Bookmark brings symphonic hits, upscale brass, groovy guitar riffs, and ephemeral synthesizers and has to be one of the songs that best plays the perfect bass lines. The song also consists of rap, which Soma excels in since long before and it is also a collaboration with rapper J. The song is smooth and dynamic. The soundscape of the song best represents the bonding that could be seen in a sleepover or party with friends and simply capturing the moment as if a bookmark to be remembered and revisited indeed. 

One of the mellow songs Soma has ever made is Canaria (カナリア). As if a bird caged in, the song is pretty much twisted and dark. The expressionistic acoustic slowly works its way into being more and more intense, giving off a dramatic effect. Similar to palette, this song also carries heavy emotions (though lighter than palette). Adding Soma’s use of chilling tones gives the melancholic feeling after. Pretty haunting I must say.

Isana (いさな) , which means Whale in English, is a song that I personally use every time I feel down. The 8-minute long song exhibits psychedelic rock. The piano that begins the song sets the mood of pulling you into the deep seas. Slowly, the song envelops you to dreamy melodies of piano and reverb basses. The song gives you the feeling of dullness later on, as if showing you a world of darkness. Chorus comes in as if light repeatedly says one same line in them, “You are in bloom, I meant to say I love you,” This song is more of an experimental one, but turned out to be a masterpiece. Call me biased but Isana overall is majestic! By the end of the song, it gives you a satisfied feeling that we, as humans, are still growing and blooming and that we shouldn’t be worried about our journey as we have our own pacing. Like whales, we may encounter heavy waves during our life or we might swim to our worst experiences for a while, but we always have to know that there will always be someone who loves and is proud of us.  

Closing the album would be Saigo no Hanabi (最後の花火), or translated as The Final Fireworks. This song unexpectedly unlocks a new side of Soma. The romantic Soma is born. A funky, wah-wah guitar riff and city soundscapes is also a first in Soma’s music career. The song is overall refreshing to listen to. Vibratos were exceptionally pulled by Soma in this concept, making it  the best closing song to the album. 

In final consideration, in bloom by Saito Soma is a highly recommended album that is worth investing time to listen to! The plays with the different instruments and the variety of vocals gives every song a unique yet enjoyable feel. Every song can also be connected one by one to see the full picture that is being painted by Soma for the in bloom album. The stories incorporated in the song shows how creative and intelligent Soma is as an artist and as a writer. In bloom should be considered a candidate for album of the year! 

This is Stella W. and you’re listening to in bloom.

Review and Poster done by Stella W.

[madvljacob]

Re-reading my tumblr posts and realising that all I want is for someone to understand me. Maybe that’s why I write what’s in my head, on here. In hopes that someone can fix me.

Truth is, I’m happy. I’m glad to be here and I’m loving being alive. This summer has been one of the best times in my life. I’ve made friends for life. I owe my life to them, so I guess this is for anyone that’s been with me this summer and if you’re reading this, I want to say thank you.

Thank you for letting me be me, unapologetically.

I feel different from the beginning of summer. My values in life have changed and I’m focusing on finding inner happiness a lot more.

Being ‘happy’ is a destination with no end point. It’s a continuous journey that we all hope to join during some parts of our lives and that’s okay. It’s okay not to be happy 24/7, as long as you can see that the journey will always be there for you to return to.

Let yourself feel sadness, because without it it’ll be hard to feel completely free.

Being free is what I’ve achieved this summer. I belong deeply to myself and I’m okay with that. I know that everything happens for a reason, including the way my brain thinks.

Understanding yourself is one of, if not the most valuable things you can teach yourself in life.

Understanding who you are will enable you to feel more. I promise

I hope you’re all groovy, if you’re not then that’s okay too. Just remember, the journey of happiness is waiting for you at any moment.

Peace n love, always

[independentartistbuzz]

7 From the Women with Brittaney Delsarte

Brittaney Delsarte is making a name for herself in the artistic world. She’s not only a powerful musician, but she’s a journalist, actor, and dancer too. She’s also produced, directed, and edited her own documentary for the National Urban League titled Master League: The Columbia Urban League. She’s a women born for the stage and believes her body is a vessel she uses her skills and gifts as a platform to enable Youth Empowerment and Education, Civic Engagement and Leadership Empowerment, and Civil Rights and Racial Justice Empowerment.

We got the chance to talk to Brittaney for our 7 From the Women series which you can find below:

What Have You Been Working To Promote Lately?

So my coworkers (I’m a marketing content producer) brought me to realize that basically I'm the real life Hannah Montana! When I announced that I am dropping an EP they were amazed by my multi-hynate career. From journalism to marketing, to social justice to acting, and finally now a self-producing recording artist, I have been around the block. However, It’s been an artistic rebirth to dedicate an entire piece of art to something that I love so dearly! 

I am so happy to share that on my birthday month, August, I dropped my first self-produced EP “Call Me Blossom” on Friday the 13th. Call Me Blossom is inspired by my Southern charm, my 90s childhood, and my whimsical, vulnerable poetry. It's the story of a young Southern debutante/ caterpillar blossoming into a fully realized adult butterfly. The sound drifts between R&B, jazz, subterranean trap, and airy dance-pop. 

Being an Independent artist is not for the faint and heart. Passion, hard work, tears, and lots of coins went into creating this art. So I ask that you please support this art by streaming the music! Add the songs to your playlist, repost and share! The link is here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5wqrLNuUlUBgMhNTpCWKs7?si=nvgJaxkaRhmB9ycIfkK6vA&dl_branch=1  

Also feel free to follow me on Instagram for music updates! https://www.instagram.com/brittandbroadway/

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded, or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

Going off my first impulse, my throat chakra wants me to tell the people to put some respect on Angela Winbush’s name! Not only can she melt the skin off your bones with her divine vocals, but she is a remarkable R&B songwriter, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. Women represent less than 5% of music producers and engineers; and yet, Angela was singing, writing, composing and producing in the 80s, a time when female producers and composers were not highly recognized or widely accepted by their male counterparts. Her work is meaningful to me because I too am a multi-hyphenated artist, and so I  studied her career in order to learn how to navigate as an artist who is completely hands on and takes ownership of my projects by writing my own songs, composing and producing my own vocals, in a male-dominated studio culture. One of my favorite songs that she’s written, composed and produced is a song off her “Sharp” album is Angel. Her range is BREATHTAKING on this song! She sang the hell out of this song! I feel every word she sings, the composition is so smooth and groovy and it is a transcendental cosmic vibration that your solar plexus needs. I highly suggest you stream this song if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Call me Ms. Winbush! I want to work with you!

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music/in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music? 

Wow! It means everything! Because women are everything in everything and everything is within us; and so with our celestial contributions to making music, and standing in our rightful place within the music business, we are able to advance the collective growth of women creators in entertainment and society at large! 

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

I have a song on my EP, Call Me Blossom, entitled “I Don’t Support.” My nerves are tap dancing in my belly because that’s one of the most vulnerable songs written and recorded. Between last year's murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others, and the problematic and homophobic statements that was made by rapper, DaBaby, this song couldn't be more timely. As a Black woman I deal with so much oppression from the outside world and then I come home only to deal with all of this subsidiary oppression within my community and it is hard. I'm tired of Black men calling Black women hoes and bitches in their songs. I'm tired of Black men killing Black folks of the LGBTQIA community. I am done defending, showing love for, supporting anyone that doesn't see value in my life when I see value in there albeit that person is black or white. I had gotten frustrated that I had to write a song about it.

Who’s your favorite female icon (dead or alive) and why?

Growing up, all I ever did was sing and dance with imaginary friends, Michael Jackson and Beyonce being among the few. Before developing knowledge of astrology, in retrospect, it only makes sense that I would share a connection with two fellow Virgos. I was the only child in my household for eight years and so Beyonce was the big sister I never had but always wanted. Instead of going outside to play, I studied many artists, but mainly, I studied Beyonce. I wore Beyonce purses, went to see her in concert, carried her album covers inside of my middle school and even my high school binders. My mother did a “Beyonce Intervention '' because she was tired of me choosing Beyonce songs for every talent show, singing competition, pageant, basically any and every performance that I did. I now understand that though I might have been a tad bit obsessed with her, It was only because I identified with her. I am DETERMINED to work with her and I look forward to the day that I can tell her thank you for lifting up women instead of falling into the trap of competition and envy, for representing all the SOUTHERN GALS; FOR BEING UNAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK; for giving us her all on the stage whether it's vulgar, vulnerable, or electrifying! For reminding me that being polite and being a business woman doesn’t match and that it’s okay to be A Boss! For taking the creation of art very seriously, and, for using her platform to “quietly” give back to her community.

If you could collaborate with any other female artists, who would you choose?

Oh this is easy! I already mentioned Beyonce and Angela Winbush so I’ll go ahead and mention these immaculate women: Stephanie Mills, Esperanza Spalding, Chante Moore, Rachelle Ferrell, Liza Minelli, Debbie Allen, Emily King, Chloe & Halle, Tinashe, Amel Larrieux, my cousins Toni and Tamar Braxton...the list goes on! 

What was the most challenging thing you have had to face as a female artist?

Dealing with my counterparts misinterpreting my southern charm and kindness for weakness. Not receiving enough support as it relates to setting up  my music business successfully so that I’m building revenue. The intimidation of male producers and creatives when I delegate to them what I want and how I want it because I pay them to get the job done as I see fit. They also don’t like when I assert authority over the mixing stage once recording is over, the contracts and agreements, yeah they don’t deal with that too well.

You can find Brittaney via:

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | TikTok | Spotify | SoundCloud

[craftfox71]

Spring Boot Start Tomcat

Unable to start embedded tomcat spring-boot 2

Spring Boot Doesn't Start Tomcat

Spring Boot Don't Start Tomcat

Spring Boot Not Start Tomcat

Spring boot: Unable to start embedded Tomcat servlet container , Try to change the port number in application.yaml (or application.properties ) to something else. In my condition when I got an exception ' Unable to start embedded Tomcat servlet container', I opened the debug mode of spring boot by adding debug=true in the application.properties,

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SpringBoot - Unable to Start embedded TomCat, Probably you can avoid this by changing your project sdk. In my project I initially used java-11-openjdk-amd64 as my JDK and had the same issue. Unable to start spring boot 2 embedded tomcat with trust store #21014. ajitdas91 opened this issue Apr 19, 2020 · 2 comments Labels. for: stackoverflow. Comments.

Your system need to have the following minimum requirements to create a Spring Boot application −. Java 7; Maven 3.2; Gradle 2.5; Spring Boot CLI. The Spring Boot CLI is a command line tool and it allows us to run the Groovy scripts. This is the easiest way to create a Spring Boot application by using the Spring Boot Command Line Interface. In this tutorial, we learned how to configure and use a Tomcat connection pool in Spring Boot. In addition, we developed a basic command line application to show how easy is to work with Spring Boot, a Tomcat connection pool, and the H2 database. As usual, all the code samples shown in this tutorial are available over on GitHub.

Unable to start embedded Tomcat · Issue #10 · spring-guides/gs , Stack trace of thread: java.base@10.0.2/jdk.internal.misc. WebServerException​: Unable to start embedded Tomcat 2018-10-22 09:55:16.880 INFO 8552 --- ( main) RELEASE) at org.springframework.boot.web.embedded.tomcat. @philwebb Thanks!. Here is the background: I have spring boot 2.0 + jsp. Therefore, I need extend from SpringBootServletInitializer. Last weekend, I noticed its package has been changed from import org.springframework.boot.web.support.SpringBootServletInitializer to import org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.support.SpringBootServletInitializer, which gave me the impression there might be

Unable to start embedded tomcat gradle

Unable to start embedded tomcat Spring boot, I'm working on Spring Boot Gradle application. So If you are using embedded tomcat you dont need the Tomcat dependency and 9001 for management, but when I tried to run it on Tomcat, it failed with the same exception you posted. Application run failed org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat server my build.Gradle dependencies config as follows.

Spring 5, Embedded Tomcat 8, and Gradle, As such, when starting a new Java project, Spring is an option that must be considered. Spring vs. Spring Boot. In the past, Spring was known for Unable to start embedded container Spring Boot Application org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: A child container failed during start 0 Not able run Spring boot application as runnable jar from command prompt

Unable to start embedded Tomcat · Issue #10 · spring-guides/gs , I simply cloned the repo and ran 'mvn spring-boot:run' on the 'eureka-service'. > (ERROR) Failed to execute goal So with the Angel.SR4 (or SR6) for cloud and running a gradle dependencies you will notice that spring-boot 1.2.x is pulled in. As described in the migration guide you have to change your build.gradle :

Caused by: org.springframework.boot.web.server.webserverexception: unable to start embedded tomcat

Spring boot: Unable to start embedded Tomcat servlet container , springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat. I have gone through all of the stackoverflow and articles related to unable to start web server; nested exception is org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat. I have gone through all of the stackoverflow and articles related to Unable to start embedded tomcat.

Unable to start embedded Tomcat org.springframework.context , jar confliction between 'starter-web' and embedded tomcat ,use the following instead. <groupId>org.springframework.boot< > (ERROR) Failed to execute goal org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-maven-plugin:2.0.5.RELEASE:run (default-cli) on project eureka-service: An exception occurred while running. null: InvocationTargetException: Unable to start web server; nested exception is org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded

SpringBoot - Unable to Start embedded TomCat, Thread.run (Thread.java:844) Caused by: org.springframework.boot.web.server.​WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat at @philwebb Thanks!. Here is the background: I have spring boot 2.0 + jsp. Therefore, I need extend from SpringBootServletInitializer. Last weekend, I noticed its package has been changed from import org.springframework.boot.web.support.SpringBootServletInitializer to import org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.support.SpringBootServletInitializer, which gave me the impression there might be

Unable to start embedded tomcat eureka

unable to start embedded Tomcat when running Eureka Server , unable to start embedded Tomcat when running Eureka Server. For now I just want to run the server on localhost and later I want to add a sample Microservice that registers to it. The Problem is that I get an error when trying to start Eureka Server. I develop in Eclipse with Spring and Maven in an ubuntu vm. Stack Overflow Public Unable to start embedded Tomcat | Spring Boot Eureka Server WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat at org.springframework

Can't start embedded Tomcat Server when running an Eureka , Can't start embedded Tomcat Server when running an Eureka Then added @​EnableEurekaServer. I'm unable to reproduce this error. Stack Overflow for Teams is a private, secure spot for you and your coworkers to find and share information. unable to start embedded Tomcat when running Eureka Chase chargeback phone number.

Unable to start embedded Tomcat · Issue #10 · spring-guides/gs , Working on a song book pdf. I simply cloned the repo and ran 'mvn spring-boot:run' on the 'eureka-service'. > (ERROR) Failed to execute goal > (ERROR) Failed to execute goal org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-maven-plugin:2.0.5.RELEASE:run (default-cli) on project eureka-service: An exception occurred while running. null: InvocationTargetException: Unable to start web server; nested exception is org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded

Spring boot tomcat admin console

Can I enable the tomcat manager app for Spring Boot's embedded , Does the embedded tomcat 7 used by Spring Boot contain a tomcat manager app. No, it doesn't and I'm not really sure that it makes sense to Does the embedded tomcat 7 used by Spring Boot contain a tomcat manager app No, it doesn't and I'm not really sure that it makes sense to try to add it. A primary function of the manager app is to allow you to start and stop individual applications without stopping the container and to deploy and undeploy individual applications.

Deploy a Spring Boot Application into Tomcat, Create a Spring Boot 2.1 app with Java 11 and deploy into Tomcat 9. Often you need console access to the server from which you pull the latest When you click on the Manager App button the user details you entered In this chapter, you are going to learn how to create a WAR file and deploy the Spring Boot application in Tomcat web server. Spring Boot Servlet Initializer. The traditional way of deployment is making the Spring Boot Application @SpringBootApplication class extend the SpringBootServletInitializer class. Spring Boot Servlet Initializer class file allows you to configure the application when it is launched by using Servlet Container.

How to Configure Spring Boot Tomcat, Learn how to reconfigure the embedded Tomcat server in Spring Boot for some common use cases. Spring Boot Configure Tomcat SSL over HTTPS. by MemoryNotFound · October 31, 2017

Standardengine(tomcat).standardhost(localhost).tomcatembeddedcontext() failed to start

Failed to start component (StandardEngine(Tomcat).StandardHost , Failed to start component (StandardEngine(Tomcat).StandardHost(localhost). TomcatEmbeddedContext()) at java.util.concurrent. void main(String() args) ( SpringApplication.run(SpringBootApplication.class, args); ) ) //ServletInitializer.​java Stack Overflow for Teams is a private, secure spot for you and your coworkers to find and share information. Learn more Failed to start component (StandardEngine(Tomcat).StandardHost(localhost).TomcatEmbeddedContext())

Unable to start embedded Tomcat · Issue #10 · spring-guides/gs , StandardHost(localhost).TomcatEmbeddedContext() failed to start -> (Help 1). I tried changing the StandardEngine : Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/​8.5.34 2018-10-22 09:55:15.309 INFO 8552 --- (ost-startStop-1) o.a.catalina.core. Spring boot built Failed, Failed to start component (StandardEngine(Tomcat).StandardHost(localhost).StandardContext()) Ask Question Asked 3 years, 5 months ago

Spring boot test fails to start tomcat due to some sleuth and spring , LifecycleException: Failed to start component (StandardEngine(Tomcat). TomcatEmbeddedContext()) at org.apache.catalina.util. StandardHost(localhost​)) at java.util.concurrent. #param args args */ public static void main(String() args) ( // BasicConfigurator.configure(); Set up a simple configuration that logs on the all i found solution for whatever you all get the exception like. org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component (StandardEngine(Catalina).StandardHost(localhost).StandardContext()). the problem with bulid path of the jars. To over come this problem. place all jars in 'WebContent/lib' whatever you need to in your project.

Unable to start embedded tomcat java 11

SpringBoot - Unable to Start embedded TomCat, Go to project structure -> Project -> Project SDK and change the java version. I hope it helps. A 'good' pom would have 'spring-boot-starter-web' (for convenience) or else all the dependencies included in the starter listed individually. Just check that you have them. Build artifacts, debug, and deploy to major application servers in the cloud. Apache Tomcat, WildFly, Payara Server, Docker and others.

Spring boot: Unable to start embedded Tomcat servlet container , You need to add the tomcat dependency in your pom <dependency> <groupId>​org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</​artifactId> </dependency> and then rerun the code ,and it told me that java.​lang. Chids 2,066○1111 silver badges○2020 bronze badges. unable to start web server; nested exception is org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat. I have gone through all of the stackoverflow and articles related to Unable to start embedded tomcat.

Unable to start embedded Tomcat · Issue #10 · spring-guides/gs , ApplicationContextException: Unable to start embedded container; nested exception is onRefresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:140) have included spring-boot-starter-web and spring-boot-starter-tomcat dependencies in your pom.xml 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. <?xml version='1.0' encoding='​UTF-8'?>. (ERROR) Failed to execute goal org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-maven-plugin:2.0.5.RELEASE:run (default-cli) on project eureka-service: An exception occurred while running. null: InvocationTargetException: Unable to start web server; nested exception is org.springframework.boot.web.server.WebServerException: Unable to start embedded Tomcat

Unable to start web server spring-boot

ApplicationContextException: Unable to start , Case 1: @SpringBootApplication annotation missing in your spring boot starter class. Case 2: For non web application, disable web application Spring Boot jar Unable to start web server due to missing ServletWebServerFactory bean Hot Network Questions Did Trump order tear gas to be used on protesters to clear a pathway to a church for a photoshot?

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Spring Boot Doesn't Start Tomcat

Ip cam viewer lite for pc. Exception starting up SpringBootApplication, Below is the stack trace in starting up a SpringBoot application. ApplicationContextException: Unable to start web server; nested exception is I have the following Main code in my SpringBoot application ```java package com.oc.springsample; import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication; public

Spring Boot Don't Start Tomcat

Fixing Spring Boot error 'Unable to start , I was building a new Spring WebFlux application with Spring Boot. ApplicationContextException: Unable to start web server; nested The solution is easy once the root cause is identified. We can either: Update Maven dependencies to exclude spring-webmvc, or; Set the web application type to WebApplicationType.REACTIVE explicitly, as shown below.

Spring Boot Not Start Tomcat

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[dowoonscookies]

Top 10 day6 songs and why -jaesgirlfriend ;))) (in this house we enable procrastination)

OK I’m gonna be upfront here and say that as a daydream supremacist, Hunt deserves to be on this list:in no particular order:Hunt - the other day i saw some scrub say that this was their least favorite day6 song and I just..... can they even call themself a real stan if they can’t even love this masterpiece? It’s so freaking epic, the guitars, the drive and rising tension that makes it almost seem like it belongs in an actions movie soundtrack during the chorus. Dare I mention young k’s rap? No more words needed.Lean on me - listen. wonpil recs oor, and they write a song like this? They listen to j-rock it’s Confirmed. But the style of the verse that’s a refreshing contrast? Art. It has such an open sound but the back and forth between drive and relaxedness of the beat is great. Also the supporting harmony line is a++++I smile - basic I know, but for the bridge alone this belongs on a top 10 list of anything. Need I say more? Though it kind of gets me that the rhythm of the post-chorus part has that freakin tambourine sound and rhythm agsjfkwhjd kind of offputting but also fits at the same timeMan in a movie - the chord progressions? Art. Also the melody line is just good okay. Tchaikovsky worthy. Jk. Not really. But the brass part starting in the second chorus is also really great. Also the bridge? Happiness and sunshine and everything great. Gotta love the compound quadruple meter even though the sampled piano chords in the beginning make the meter confusing as heckIt would have been - listen to this for a good cry. Wonpil’s part at the bridge shattered my soul and pieced it back together Better better - the bass? The melody? The chorus part in the bg? Also the shift in the use of percussion in the second verse? The bridge? After royal pirates, day6 are really out there writing bridges like that. An expansive sounding track. Sounds like home tbhWhatever - the backing vocalssss. the backing vocals things (sorry I don’t know music production) that has become a color of many day6 songs beginning from congratulations really stands out here. An overall feel good song. Good Stuff. guitars, progressions, color, 10/10. post-chorus makes me smile every timeBe lazy - classy as HECK, so groovy, the bass? The verses almost remind me of rp’s drawing the line? Amazing. an underrated gem, seems almost fitting of the daydream album? Bridge has some cool progressions as well. Synths are great too. Day6 are honestly Kings of writing not the typical 1564 or whatever it isI loved you - god the freaking repeating synth part that never ends is oddly so addicting. The one thing that had me Hooked from the first listen. The whistling part too in the verses. Nothing in specific stands out, but it’s just a song that makes me want to listen to it over and overI need somebody - I guess this isn’t a surprise? A masterpiece. Though I do have to say the timbre they chose for the melody of the first chorus should have just been saved for later since the rest of the track was still so thin. That’s my one big thing with it, since it would have let for a bigger buildup (similar to the bridge of fti’s wind, when they could have taken it an octave lower in the track when the texture thinned out). The bridge is soooo good though T_T wonpil’s part? lay me downSo that’s that. Kind of hard to choose only 10. Colors and sing me would have been on there but maybe that’s already a given? Also I didn’t get to include I wait.... Obviously idk anything about production lol so this is just a scrubby classical musician speaking. Sorry this took a while to write, but I’ve found that listening to their tracks, every time I find something new in them. Actively listening to them makes for a really fun activity tbh. Anyway thanks for the ask