I shamelessly surf gay blogs for MP3s to feed my iPod, because I find my musical tastes often tend to coincide with those boys’. Let me say just one word unto you: disco!
Oh, and heart-wrenching, neurotic, sexy ballads. Yesterday I downloaded this amazing track* from The Sean Show. And after listening to it and being amazed (the artist apparently had a four-octave working range), I surfed for more information only to learn that the vocalist had died years ago. After releasing only one complete studio album, Amazing Grace, Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississsippi in 1997.
I had five octaves when I was in operatic shape, but only three – maybe three and a half – were really working octaves.
I’d never heard of him until yesterday, in spite of a famous father and an award-winning documentary called Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley that made the film festival rounds in 2004. Where in the holy hell have I been?
Oh yeah, right. Iowa. I’ve been in Iowa.
Living in Iowa means you don’t listen to the radio, because all they play is classic rock, country, and Christianity. If you’re me and you hate TV, you don’t watch TV either. Compounded with an almost total lack of culture and print news, you got yourself a kind of media blackout.
So I’ve missed not only musicians since I moved out here from Oregon in 1992, but entire fads completely.
To make up for it though, there’s a lot of good music happening in town this weekend, including my gig at Revelations Friday night at 8:00. Come see me sing!
* Username is file, password is exchange.
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Dude – I just loaded that album into my iTunes last week! (In preparation for that iPod I’m going to get someday) (hehe)
Love his work. 🙂
Especially his cover of hellelujah – it makes me cry.
Buy that damn iPod before the baby comes or you’ll *never* get one. When baby arrives, s/he will get all the money first. I’ve seen it happen a buncha times!
Haven’t you learned by now that we queers have surpassing taste? LOL
I’ve never heard of that dude either. I guess I need to revisit you when I get home tonight and see if I like that music.
I don’t know how many octaves I have. Let’s see, I think 3.5? It’s harder for baritones and basses, esp to have such a large vocal range because there’s so much that just bottoms out.
If I remember my vocal ped classes, most people speak with about a 1 octave range. A singer has two octaves available. A good singer has three. A really good singer has four. Anything beyond that is just showing off, because not even Mozart wrote pieces over an octave and a half for any one singer, unless you’re a trained storyteller. They can actually use up to five octaves in their craft.
On early dates before I got myself an amazing boyfriend, I would often play “Everybody Here Wants You” and look for a reaction. If that song doesn’t make something within your soul move, you are a corpse. Or Republican. Same diff, really.
I wouldn’t even think of dating someone not affected by Jeff Buckley’s music. EVER.
Anyhow, glad you like my blog. Music is always posted Mondays and Fridays, though I try to squeeze at least one more in sometime during the week.
P.S. I humbly disagree about the gays having good taste in music. Generally, I think their taste runs along the same lines as the TRL crowd, and that stuff is CRAP.
xo-
S!
heck mush, i thought that i’d fer sher played you some JB in the past 5 or so. maybe redbone made me turn it off.
re: iPod before Baby
plan is to get the iPod next month, when I stop sleeping on the bus all the time. (heh) (and have my iTunes STOCKED before then.)
re: hating TV
how few people are there that truly understand how annoying energy-pitch can get when the toob’s on all.the.time? i swear that noise has driven me to within inches of putting a sledgehammer through the screen more than once.
i love the ‘off’ button.
amped!: BUY. THE. IPOD. I will here no argument from you, o knocked-up one. I expect a report next month in which you wax orgasmic about your new toy.
Jon: Yeah, a lot of you do have good taste. Better than a lot of straight guys. 😉 Of course, the world being what it is, the opposite is also occasionally true… in startling examples.
s: NICE TEST! I had that with Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me. I’m amazed at how many people can maintain a solid belligerent, redneck drunk through that tune. And sure, sure, there’s a bunch of slammin’, mindless, repetative crap passing as music out there, and fags are listening to it. But let’s us just not listen to it, k? I’ll just come to YOUR blog and let YOU feed my iPod. (You and troubled diva. Love that stuff!)
truckunsafe: Really? Was it one of his more guitar-hero tunes, maybe? I would probably have tuned that shit out. But if you didn’t play the man for me, you’re in fucking trouble.
” If that song doesn’t make something within your soul move, you are a corpse. Or Republican. Same diff, really.”
Or, maybe, it just means the other person doesn’t happen to share the same taste in music. Man… music fundies are as annoying as Jebus fundies.
Oh, no, no no no, you’ve got to hear this track, Stanley, oh F’s S F. I mean, seriously – it would fail to move only dead people. It’s universally gorgeous. Download it! I defy you to hate it!
Plus, I don’t think S. was being a fundie; I think he was trying to express how much he loves this track. And be funny. You are *such* a fussbudget sometimes.
I did download it. I listened to it. I didn’t like it. The guy obviously has a great voice, but I found the song itself to be low-energy, downer music. I can just as easily say it takes a wannabe corpse to actually enjoy stuff like that. Move my soul? More like salt it like it was a fucking slug.
Oh. Wow. Okay, then. Just as long as you gave it a try then. Cheerio.
I’m becoming more and more aware of how I clash with the world at large and I’m really tired of being put down because of it. A big part of it is being a meat-eating sodomite in a Hindu enclave of Jesusland. But, it’s a recurring theme in all the little areas, too. And, at some point I gotta speak up. That point was when a fellow faggot, someone who *really* should know better, basically insulted me because I don’t have the same taste in music. That dynamic is no different from the heterosexsists who bash gay people.
And, to insult people because of their taste in music?? That;s fucked up. Hell, Petra and I have been married for 18 years, and there is a lot of music that is NOT enjoyed in common by the two of us. But, that doesn’t mean I sling insults at her because she loves ABBA.
And here I am spamming rants across my workplace closing out arguments of relative artistic validity of Coldplay vs. Foo Fighters (answer: Foo Fighters are perfect pop craft and Dave Grohl is the secret force behind all that was grunge in the 90’s, and Coldplay SUCKS ASS. “It was all YELLOW” is all you gotta say…)
Stanley, I’m with you, bro. I find Buckley to be boring, overly wrought and depression inducing. Circumstances surrounding his death were possibly strange enough to infer foul play–methinks either one of his fans decided to close the book for him, or he just decided it was time to quit whining and fucking top himself.
Boo fucking hoo.
Neato! Everyone’s got their drawers all in a wad and all I said was that (a) I’d never heard of the guy until I downloaded the MP3 and (b) I liked the damn song!
I don’t even know who the hell Coldplay is. (Let’s keep it that way. Don’t anybody be emailing me MP3s, now.)
I can sympathize with the alienation of being a meat-eating queer in the middle of a Hindu enclave in the middle of the bible belt, and though I’ve only been married for four years I already hate half the shit my dear husband likes to listen to.
P.S. You should consider starting a blog titled “a meat-eating sodomite in a Hindu enclave of Jesusland.” Because that shit’s FUNNY.