Music and Musical Gear

Last year I reviewed Katy Perry’s CD “Teenage Dream “ and said: Let’s just be honest here: I would bet that Katy Perry spend much more time keeping her body in shape than working on her vocal range, breath control, or pitch. But that is pretty much the point – Katy Perry is a pure pop sugar package: an attractive young woman who gets packed into skimpy, tight-fitting clothes (Daisy-Dukes, bikinis on top?), and sings very catchy songs written by others to work around her limited vocal skills and allow her to perform them live without sounding awful while strutting…

The Beastie Boys landed on the scene in the late 80’s with a massive boom, as their ‘Fight for your right’ became an MTV mainstay after it was released in late 1986 and the song remains fresh and popular today. The Beasties have scored loads of hits and stayed on top of the cross-over rap/rock game for the last 25 years with a fresh and light approach. In early May their latest effort – Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 – will be released, marking their first new material in several years, and their first release since MCA underwent surgery for…

As our schedules around the house have jumped to ludicrous speed recently I have heard less and less pop music … which as you might guess is fine with me. And what we have been listening to is more focused – my kids used their Best Buy gift cards over spring break so we have new stuff from Kid Cudi, Rise Against, Panic! at the Disco, and DeadMau5 rolling. Until the other day … when my younger son was using up the remnants of an iTunes gift card. He bought some GrooveMaker packs for his iPod Touch, a few DeadMau5…

Can it REALLY be 30 years since I saw Rush live in concert for the Moving Pictures tour? I suppose it has been … My love for Rush came not from Geddy Lee’s screeching voice, nor the prototypical sci-fi prog-rock lyrics, and certainly not the popularity of the group with the ‘post Zepplin & Floyd’ crowd in the late 70’s. It was all about the music – and more specifically about the musicianship of the trio. Their songs wove together complex riffs, changing time signatures, and plenty of room for all three musicians to make individual contributions. For me –…

Everyone at GearDiary – just like everyone else on the internet – is an actual person, and behind the scenes we share some of the joys and difficulties of making out way through life. Not surprisingly, I often reflect on my own issues in life through music in one way or another. These past couple of weeks my father has been going through some health issues, and while all is doing much better, one song has been in my mind more than most others, the Horace Silver standard ‘Song for My Father’. The song was written as a reflection of…

This weekend my family was busy with a variety of stuff in our kitchen, which is a very large room including a separate island and our eating area and is generally abuzz with activities related to food, homework, computer use or who knows what else! We have a decent set of computer speakers on one counter that we generally hook our into our iPods. So I had my iPod Touch hooked up, and wanted to find something for all of us to listen to … so I pulled up the MOG streaming music app, searched Pearl Jam and then checked…

You know that commercial about ‘when once in a lifetime meant once in a lifetime’? Well, I just got an email about an event that is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity! As noted in the picture above, jazz guitar legend is going to be teaching a 5-day intensive workshop in Norwich, CT this August and bringing along his trio-mates Christian McBride (bass) and Antonio Sanchez (drums). Here are some details about the workshop : The National Guitar Workshop is proud to announce this exclusive workshop with world- renowned jazz musician Pat Metheny. This special event is a rare…

Remember the first time MTV aired Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video? It was a huge event that was wrapped around one of the greatest pop songs ever – but the video was even more! There was a story about a girl and a boy … who wasn’t an ordinary boy, which went on for a few minutes before launching into the great song with excellent choreography. Well, a couple of weeks ago there was a big deal made over the new Ke$ha music video for the song ‘Blow’. Featuring James Van Der Beek, there is some pseudo-story about two people…

Sunday would have been the 87th birthday of legendary singer Sarah Vaughan, who died in 1990. She is generally considered one of the great vocalists of the 20th century, and you can see that in the two videos I selected. I was fortunate to see Sarah Vaughan at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1984, where she put on an amazing set that showcased not just her great voice but also her love of performing for and interacting with an audience. One of my favorite songs of hers was a great interpretation of Errol Garner’s Misty. You can hear her doing…

Amongst the young artists performing at the Grammy Awards, Bruno Mars was one of the few who demonstrated the basic ability to … well, sing his songs. Everyone else simply showed how effective modern sound production tools are, and also that the Johnny Bravo phenomenon wasn’t just for the Brady Bunch! Growing up as a teen in the post-Vietnam era is very different than the world my own kids experience, so while we saw ‘War, what is it good for (absolutely nothing)’ and ‘buy all of your guns and explode them to space’,they get songs like Bruno Mars Grenade, in…

I have made my love for the Jazz Session well known in my music reviews – Jason Crane does a great job of finding lesser known folks from a broad spectrum of jazz styles and getting them to open up and talk about all sorts of stuff. He also integrates music into the interview in a way that allows you not only to hear the tunes but get inside what is happening. Over the last few years Jason has interviewed more than a hundred jazz musicians, and now his show has passed 1 million downloads! Here are the basics about…

If you grew up watching Eddie Murphy and Jo Piscopo parody Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra, or have only seen recent performances by Wonder in which he looks almost like a self-parody of what Murphy was doing, you probably don’t ‘get’ why so many call Stevie Wonder one of the great geniuses of modern popular music. When you look back at the period from the early and middle 1970s in particular, his compositions – songs like You Are the Sunshine of My Life, Higher Ground, Superstition, My Cherie Amour, Signed-Sealed-Delivered, and the entire albums Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale,…