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mirkwoodshewolf · 3 years

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On set visits; Queen x reader x Borhap boys pt. 1

*Author's note*

Alright so this part is broken up into 2 parts so here is the 1st part of the Bohemian Rhapsody film set visit. Part 2 will be up in just a second after I get done with this author's note. So expect some crazy stuff happening, fluffiness and the Rock Angel reminiscing on her past with the boys.

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@simonedk

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@queensdivas

@queendeakyy

@wormzteef

@geek-and-proud

@starswin

@isabella-bby

@onebigfangirlworld

@labessieisallama

@5sos-wdw

@ssa-sadboi

@naturalswifty89

@bohemiansweede

_________________________________________________________

*Sept. 2017. Filming Bohemian Rhapsody*

I almost couldn't believe it myself. I mean I knew that the boys were planning on a film about themselves and that it was taking them almost 10 years just to get it off the ground. But now after multiple rewrites of the script and better casting, the film was ready to get off the ground.

"So you're absolutely sure I can stop by whenever I feel like it? No matter how many times?" I spoke into my I-phone.

'Absolutely love, just as long as you don't spill any secrets.'

"Please Bri, when have I ever revealed anything to anyone about you guys?"

'Well there was the time—'

"That was a fluck and you know it!" I snapped.

'I'm kidding love, you've never spilled any secrets. You've gotten better at lying lately.' Brian chuckled.

"Well when you say it like that it makes me feel guilty."

'As it should love. So when can we expect you?'

"I'll try to get there before the filming starts, so I may end up going to bed now so that way I can get on the road early enough to beat traffic."

'I know Rog is looking forward to seeing you again.'

"I just did the summer tour with you guys, how could he already miss me?"

'It's a mystery to all of us, but he is your father after all.'

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay well I'll see you tomorrow Bri."

'See you then (y/n). sweet dreams and drive safe tomorrow.'

"Will do. Love you."

'Love you too poppet.' I then hung up and couldn't help but grin.

"You still going over to see them film tomorrow?" I turned and low and behold after a long day's shift there was my husband coming in from his police work.

"Well, well, well, look what the cat threw up." I teased.

"Ha-ha you're hilarious my love." He said as he undid his tie and unbuttoned his short. "So the film's finally taking off the ground?"

"Yep, and they finally found a better Freddie Mercury."

"Yeah cause I remember when you called and told me about Sacha Baron Cohen."

"I just couldn't stand the fact that he was wanting to expose the dark side of Freddie. I mean yeah he had the parties, and the drugs, the sex, but that's all what Rock and rollers did back in those days. Plus that's all he seemed to care about. The scandal that came with Freddie's name, nothing about the music. I'm only just glad Bri sided with me on it." I ranted as Jack came up after taking his shirt and undoing his pants and began to rub my shoulders.

"I know love. You're as protective of this project as Brian and Roger are. So do you know who exactly they got to play Freddie this time?"

"No, but I'll find out tomorrow."

"Okay well, my team's got a heavy lead on the case so I won't really be available tomorrow."

"I understand. Just—promise me you'll be careful my love. I haven't forgotten that one killer that shot you in the line of duty."

"I survived didn't I? Plus now we both have a bullet story to share." He leaned his forehead against mine.

"Not funny Jack." I muttered.

"I know. C'mon let's get some sleep. We both have got a long day ahead of us tomorrow." I nodded and then we both got into bed and we fell asleep.

Early the next morning I was on my way over to the set driving in my own car without a driver. As I approached the set gate of course I was stopped by security.

"Badge and proof of visitation ma'am." I handed him the badge that Roger had sent in for me and some documentation that I needed to show him saying that I was not only visiting but a consultant for the movie to help the actors get to know the true Queen. "Everything checks out Mrs. Kline, here you go and have a good day."

"You too uhh—Marvin." I read his nametag before putting my VIP badge around my neck as the gate opened and I drove on inside.

After about 10 minutes I finally was able to find a parking space. I got out of the car and locked it up before walking towards the set. I was told by Brian that the actors had been prepping for the biggest scene they were going to film, the Live Aid sequence.

When I came around and actually stepped up onto the stage, I was blown away and taken back to the summer of 1985. Jesus they—the production got every single detail down to the paint chippings. The rigged lights that Queen had the day they performed, Roger's kit and the grand piano with Freddie's Pepsi cups filled with beer.

"Oh my god. Jack if only you were here to see this." I muttered to myself. It was then I saw Brian talking to someone but—wait did he? Did he seriously dye his hair back to its original dark curls? I walked up to him but waited till he was done talking to some of the producers. Once he was I tapped his shoulder and he turned around and—oh wow I just....wow.

I don't know whether this is a prank or time travel does exist but I swear I'm literally looking at Brian the day I had met him.

"Okay it's official. I think I have finally cracked." I said as I placed my hand over my forehead.

"I'm sorry ma'am do you need to sit down or can I get you a cup of water?" Oh god he even sounds like Brian.

"Ahhh seems you two have already met. And here I thought I could surprise you." I turned and there was—Brian? My Brian with the grey curls now. Wait what!? What is going on here!?

"What the f—"

"Ah, ah language young lady!" Brian scolded.

"You must be the Rock Angel (Y/n) Kline, Brian and Roger have told us a lot about you. Pardon me, Gwilym Lee." He said as he extended his hand to me. I shook it and said in awe.

"Ahhhh, now I see it. Sorry Gwilym dear, never did I think I'd see two Brian's at once. I swear to god you look—exactly like Brian when I met him."

"Anita said the exact same thing. Cheeky woman was even trying to flirt with him." Brian said as he pouted towards the end..

"No she didn't." I gawked.

"I'm afraid it's true." Gwilym said with a blush. I shook my head softly laughing.

"Oh that woman I tell you what."

"Well I can tell you one thing I know a certain someone of the cast who will flip out once he sees you." said Gwilym.

"And just who might that be?" I asked him.

"The young lad whose playing Deacy, Joe Mazzello."

"Kept ranting on and on about your Live Aid performance and how you and Deacy used to interact with each other in your performances together."

"Ahh yes. Me and my dear brother mine." I sighed with a solemn smile.

"I—I'm sorry I-I-I didn't mean to......"

"No, no Gwilym it's fine. While sometimes I do wish he could still be around, I completely understand why he chose to leave the band. Hell without Brian and Rog I—I don't even want to think what I would've done after Freddie died." I soon brushed my sorrows away and said, "Now come here Gwilym I want to get a closer look at you." he came up to me and we stood face to face of each other.

I placed my hands on his shoulders and looked him up and down before cupping each side of his face gently.

"God they chose right for my Brian. I swear, it's like Gwilym is your long lost son Bri." I said as my eyes turned toward Brian.

"I'm beginning to think you might be right." Joked Brian. I stepped back from Gwilym and said to him.

"I can't wait to see the full Live Aid recreation with you all in full costume."

"I hope we do you proud Mrs. Kline."

"First of all, call me (y/n). Secondly, I'm already proud. From what I've heard from Brian and Roger, I have no doubt in my mind that we've entrusted the right group of actors with Freddie's and Queen's upbringing tale to absolute rock gods."

"You flatter us too much (y/n)." Brian gushed.

"Only because you old fossils deserve it." I teased as I stuck my tongue out at him to which Brian did his little eyebrow quirk at me. I giggled softly and continued. "Well before filming starts, I'm gonna continue to look around the set. I'm told the lower decks where all the performers were settled in are just like how they were when we were there. Ciao Brians'." I walked away from them with a wave of my hand.

After exploring more of the set design and going down memory lane it was then I came across another look-a-like. Holding the famed natural Fender precision Bass guitar and wearing that god awful tacky shirt that I secretly wished I had told him not to wear, and having the iconic mushroom fluffy hair was the actor who was playing Deacy, Joe Mazzello.

One of the hair designers was fluffing up the wig to make sure it was up to Deacy's standard. And god just like with Gwilym, Joe was practically identical to Deacy.

It was just like seeing Deacy again back when he was happy and content with where Queen was at, just before finding out about Freddie's illness (which I had found out from Spike several years ago that Deacy had actually known since the last tour Queen ever did with Freddie).

I smiled softly as I watched him get ready for the camera. His wide smile reminded me so much of Deacy's. Slowly I walked up towards him and as the hairdresser looked him over Joe asked.

"So how does it look?"

"I think you look terrific." I said.

"Wait who said—OH MY GOD!!!" he screamed as he turned around and saw me. Like all usual fanboys, he jumped back, his mouth was gaped and his eyes were wide.

"Close your mouth please Joe dear we are not a codfish." His mouth immediately closed.

"Y-you-you-you're....."

"The Rock—"

"Rock Angel." We both said together slowly. "Call me (y/n)." I greeted as I extended my hand out to him and he took it hold of it and shook it.

"I just—I can't believe that I'm-I'm-I'm actually standing beside the Rock Angel." I softly giggled.

"Just know that beyond the glam and the rock star female empowerment, I'm just a normal 55 year old woman."

"But you still look good." He said. I quirked my brow at him so he quickly tried to save himself, "Not that you're old or anything. I mean I don't mean to offend you I just....."

"Joseph. Relax dear. I'm not offended at all. Freddie always said that I would end up being an eternal beauty. At first I thought it was just Freddie being Freddie but as the years have passed I think he—that he must be behind giving me this youthful glow."

"The Rock Angel called me dear," he first gushed with a shy smile. "Sorry I just...... I grew up listening to your albums along with Queen and the first time I saw one of your broadcast performances, I kinda had a little crush on you" He said gently.

"Aww I'm flattered Joe, really I am." I said as I gently cupped the side of his face and gave his cheek a stroke of my thumb. At that point he looked like he was about to melt into a puddle with how much joy he was probably filled with. "Now Joe forgive me for saying this, how long have you been acting?"

"I was a child actor actually. I've—always been in the acting business. Why do you ask?"

"Well besides seeing some of my brother's features I feel like I've—seen you in something before."

"You might recall a little film that came out in the 90's known as Jurassic Park?"

"Wait hold on—you...." I gasped. "You played little Tim Murphy!?!"

"Yes, yes I was Tim Murphy."

"Oh my god. When that film came out my twin boys were literally obsessed with that movie. Would not watch anything else for a full year. They even wore out the old VHS tape we had for it. Oh my god how could I not recognize you sooner?"

"Well I was 8 just turning 9 while we were filming it."

"You had a birthday while filming?"

"Yeah. It was during the kitchen scene with the raptor. I actually got injured on that day."

"What? What happened?" he then proceeded to tell me exactly what had happened. Of how the raptor they used was on wheels and he was running toward the fridge and he was supposed to go left while the raptor was supposed to go right, but the guy controlling the raptor lost control and went the same direction as Joe and he ended up getting hit in the face with a metal claw.

And it was at that moment the director Steven Spielberg and the rest of the crew sang Happy birthday to him.

Then of course he tried to ask Joe at that moment if they could try it again, but when Joe proved he couldn't do it, they wrapped for that day.

"Oh you poor thing."

"It's okay, I survived."

"Well I hope you never suffered an injury like that since then. And on your birthday too? That's never a good birthday present to get a concussion."

"I was cleared out with no concussion, just a little dizzy and a bit of bruising."

"Oh I'm sorry love, it's my inner mother instincts kicking in."

"She always was an overprotective mother." We both turned around and I saw Roger walking up sporting the black beanie I gave him for Christmas last year and another actor who was sporting the Roger Taylor look he had for Live Aid.

"Oh look who's talking smother father! For years since I've known you you've been the definition of helicopter parent." I gawked at him. "You still sometimes even threaten Jack with missing out on our dates cause of our jobs."

"And I've always told you that boy would be trouble one day." He teased as he came up to me.

"Wow so it is actually true, you guys do look at each other as father and daughter." Said the young actor playing Roger.

"Yes Ben, my adoptive daughter (Y/n) Kline, otherwise known as the Rock Angel." Roger introduced.

"So you're the young actor playing my main father figure eh?" I said as I looked at the young man.

"Yes. Ben Hardy, it's a real honor to meet you in person Mrs. Kline. To say I was nervous to meet Roger is nothing compared to the thought of meeting you."

"Are you saying I'm intimidating and unapproachable?" I asked offendedly.

"Wha? No! No! God no I-I-I-I didn't mean it that way I was just...." I interrupted him with a laugh and said.

"Dear, relax. I was just pulling your leg."

"And be thankful she was. Otherwise, I'd beat your arse boy for insulting my daughter." Roger protectively stated.

"See there you go you old hypocrite. Besides Rog you haven't been able to kick anyone's arse in years. Don't want you breaking a hip now do we?" I mocked him.

"You're lucky these boys are here little missy." Roger scolded me.

" Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now then Ben, you were once on EastEnders right?" I said turning my attention back toward Ben.

"Yes. I played Peter Boyle on the show. My recent film before this was the new X-Men movie that came out about a year ago. X-Men Apocalypse."

"Ahh yes, my youngest son is always obsessed with all the superhero films. Marvel or DC. Now I'd like to see you two more closely, stand together." Both Joe and Ben followed orders and I looked both of them up and down.

Circling around them before cupping each of their faces once by one. And yes Ben was a bit more muscular than Roger was and of course they didn't get his hair right for this part in time, but there was just something in Ben's eyes that just made me think back to the first day I met Roger.

That sparkle of mischief but also protectiveness that shown through those blue eyes of his.

"That is most definitely my Roger. You both have the same spirit in your eyes. I can't wait to see how you play the drums up on that stage."

"Yeah, me neither." He said with a hint of nervousness. I then went over to Joe and cupped his face too. Just—my god just like with Deacy the profile was just uncanny. Of course, Deacy's eyes were more of a hazel type while Joe's were like a brownish type color. But I couldn't deny he looked so much like my brother. "And you my dear Joseph. Gwilym isn't the only one to resemble the man he's playing."

"It was kinda scary after getting the wig on. So much so that I called my mom and asked her what she was doing in 1983?" I laughed and said as I took my hands away from his face.

"Unfortunately, I can tell you for a fact that John Deacon is not your father. The only lady he's ever loved and will love is Veronica."

"I know." I chuckled softly.

"Now then Joe if you'll come with me there's important things I need to discuss with you."

"Like what?"

"You'll see. It was wonderful to meet you Ben, I hope we can get to know each other better later after you all film the Live Aid concert."

"Yeah of course, it was wonderful to meet you Mrs. Kline."

"Please call me (y/n). Dad you better not be too hard on this one, I like him."

"Don't worry I won't break him too much." The four of us went our separate ways.

Joe and I arrived at my trailer (all thanks to Rog and Bri). We entered inside and I told Joe to take a seat. He sat down on my couch while I went over to the kitchen.

"Tea?"

"Yes please. One sugar please."

"Just like how he liked it." I muttered to myself.

"What was that?"

"Nothing love, nothing." I prepped the tea for him and once it was done I handed him his cup and he thanked me. I watched him take a sip and he said,

"Ahh never gets old. I'm telling you after this I may just be the biggest tea fan ever."

"It is good for the soul. I myself have always found Jasmine to be the way to nirvana." I paused for a brief moment before saying, "Joe." He looked at me giving me his full attention, "As you know probably from weeks of research and maybe even from Roger and Brian themselves, Deacy chose to exempt himself from all forms of stardom. To live a quiet life with his family."

"Yeah. When I first got the part I did reach out to him on just any personal advice on certain quirks that he did. Cause even though I've played real life people before, this is the first time I'm playing someone whose still alive, and I wanted to do him justice."

"Yes, quite."

"However all I got back was just that he approved of the project and just for me to take it as any other actor would. Not that I'm saying that I'm mad at him for saying that. But I just—"

"I get it. Really I do." I took his hand and gripped onto it comfortingly. "Look. Ever since Freddie died, Deacy has been—grieving. Just like he did for me, it was Freddie who helped bring Deacy out of his shell and become more involved with the band. Not just being the bass player or the quiet guy."

"The King of the one liners, the tie breaker of Queen." Joe stated.

"Yes, although John could be loud and rowdy when he wanted to. He was definitely Queen's wildcard, but he was also their Ace. Unpredictable but incredibly brilliant. Never have I met a bass player quite like him. Nor do I think I ever will." It was quiet for what felt like forever when Joe asked me.

"Do you—do you still speak to him? I mean, cause I read that you both basically grew up close together, even for being 11 years apart from each other."

"Yes. We actually lived 20 minutes from each other back in our youth. He was and will always be my brother mine." I sighed heavily. "And to answer your question, I must remind you he's always been.....a cautious subject to me. Any remembrance of Freddie just makes him break, and as I'm sure you've seen from my concert footages I, sometimes, subconsciously find myself doing some Freddie movements on stage. Whether it's flicking my wrist like he did, strutting around the stage or waving my arms like he did. Deacy's.....he knows those things. But he's always there for me when I needed him. The last time was—on the tragedy of 9-11."

"Wait you mean....."

"Jack's cousin Jared and his wife Gen, they—they were on the plane that was overtaken by the terrorists. Took five days to finally find their bodies. Jared holding Gen in his arms. It was a risk but—I knew Jack needed more support than just his American family. So he and I went over to John and Veronica's place. We went at the early mornings of course just so that way no one would spot us driving in midday and try to track us down, then at sunrise we walked up to the door and—there he was. When Jack told him what had happened, he—actually invited us in and allowed us to stay the entire time. He ended up being the right support Jack needed."

"Your husband and John were close?"

"Oh yes. More alike than you know. Both incredibly talented bass players. That's how Jack got Deacy's approval when Jack and I started hanging out. He even gave my husband private lessons."

"Wow."

"Yes. They were practically inseparable the two of them for that summer. Even during their rehearsals, you would see Deacy go in the corner and practice what riffs he'd teach my Jack next. However that was the last time I ever actually saw Deacy, 16 long years ago. Haven't gotten in contact with him since. But occasionally, at least according to Brian, he asks them how I'm doing as well as Jack."

"I hope he's living a quiet and happy life with his kids and wife."

"I know they are. I still keep in contact with Ronnie whenever I can, sometimes we go out shopping, fawn over grandchildren pics, and just catching up. She was the mother I needed when I first had Kelly."

"Sounds like she was the ultimate mama."

"You have no idea." I felt Joe place his free hand on top of mine that still had his. I smiled softly at him before I got down to the real reason why I brought him here. "Joseph, now I know that when it comes to acting, Hollywood can pick whomever they deem worthy for a role, especially if it's for a real person. I'll be honest with you; hearing your American accent puts me a little on edge. Cause I have heard some pretty bad English accents on screen that just make me want to pull my ears off agonizingly slow. Now I know Deacy has probably the most unique accent from anyone in Leicester, I mean you hear my accent and I sound nothing like his dialect. So what I want to ask of you, just for the sake of you playing my brother, may I hear you speak with John's accent?"

"What-what would you like me to say?"

"Maybe say what you did for the audition. Or anything that comes to your head. It doesn't even have to be an interview Deacy did, I just want to hear your accent." He nodded before sitting back on the couch while I leaned back on the chair.

He adjusted himself before finally miming that he was driving a car before he finally spoke about when Deacy first joined the band. The one interview he did during the 'News of the World' tour with Bob Harris.

I felt like at that moment my heart had stopped. My hands slowly covered my mouth in a prayer style while the corner of my eyes watered. And sure there were certain words that he said that still sounded American but—this was my brother. I....I was actually looking at my brother right now. They got it right.

By the end of it, Joe looked at me and his eyes grew concerned as he said.

"Did I screw up?" I stood up from my chair in silence. I then walked over to him and knelt down in front of him cupping his face. A wide smile spread across my face as I immediately hugged him and softly sobbed.

"You are my Deacy! My brother mine." I then felt him embrace me back and the two of us rocked side to side. I looked up to the heavens praying that Fred was looking down knowing he would've loved Joe playing his Deacy. "If you ever need any advice or help, I'm here for you. Promise me Joe Mazzello that you will come to me with anything regarding Deacy."

"I promise (y/n)." he still spoke with Deacy's accent which filled me with both sorrow and happiness.

We stayed that way for god knows how long. After composing myself, we left my trailer when one of the volunteers came up to us and said.

"Joe, they're ready to start filming the concert."

"Shall we go on?" I asked.

"Yes, let's." God he had my brother's quick wit already. He crooked his arm out which made me grin softly. I looped my arm through his and the two of us walked on towards the Live Aid stage.

I stood alongside Roger, Peter Freestone (Freddie's former assistant and the other consultant for the film) as well as Brian's youngest daughter Emily (who in every way was so much like her father from the hair to the smile).

"I think this will be a great shoot, don't you think (y/n)?" asked Peter.

"Indeed Pheebs. And I'm sure Freddie would've loved to have seen it."

"He would indeed." He said as he wrapped an arm around me and soon Brian came and stood beside us after being backstage with the young actors who then came out just as Queen did that day back in 85. When I saw the young actor playing our Freddie, I was already impressed.

Sure he was skinnier than Freddie was, but seeing him move about just as Freddie did it was like I was seeing Freddie right before my eyes. The boys got into position and soon began to perform the entire Live Aid concert.

Besides actually being there and seeing them perform from the wings that day over 30 years ago, this was about the greatest concert performance I had ever seen.

The boys in full costume had everything down. Gwilym channeled Brian's solo on Bohemian Rhapsody, Ben was pretty impressive on the drums, Joe had Deacy's rhythmic moves down, and the young man playing Freddie he—it was beyond what I could imagine. He wasn't just moving like Freddie, it was like he knew why Freddie would move a certain way to a song.

I was in awe cause it felt like I had actually traveled back in time and was watching Queen's most historical performance once again. I stood behind Brian and wrapped my arms around his shoulders leaning up against his head smiling from ear to ear, I felt Brian take one of my hands and gently patted it every now and then.

When the Aye-Oh's happened I could help but lowered my head and holding my laughs of joy. I swear when this is over, I need to talk to this new actor playing Freddie cause unlike Sacha, this was our Freddie. Soon Hammer to Fall came on and I couldn't help but bop my head along to the song.

I felt a tap at my shoulder and I turned to see Emily holding her phone out with the notes app open. In the app it read.

'Is this how you remember it Aunt (y/n)?' I walked towards her and gestured for me to have her phone. She handed it to me and I typed out.

'Everything and more. God I wish your cousin Kelly could've been here to see this as well as your uncle Jack. They would've loved it.' I showed her my message and she came up and wrapped her arms around my shoulders as the two of us smiled happily up at the stage.

When Hammer to Fall concluded, the extras and even me and team Queen applauded. I let out a loud whistle from the sidelines as I applauded and took pictures with my own phone to show Jack and the kids later. Now I recall that it was at this time the guys ended up surprising me and the world with our duet "Set it all free" instead of the planned 'Crazy Little thing called love'.

Now I've been skeptical about having a biopic film about me, even though I knew both Queen and Elton were starting theirs at the same time, hell one of the producers Dexter Fletcher is currently directing Elton's film 'Rocketman' as we speak right now. So I didn't know if they would plan to do Crazy little thing or if they'd go the set as it was all those years ago.

I got my answer however when Ben started to play the drum intro to my song.

"You guys didn't." I muttered.

"We wanted to be historically accurate with the Live Aid set." Brian started.

"So we cooked up a little surprise for you." Roger said. It was then I heard the actor playing Freddie began chanting out along with the audience "An-gel! An-gel! An-gel!" it was then I saw a young girl come out and—by god it was like looking at my younger self from that day.

She was dressed exactly how I was with a pregnant belly suit underneath her shirt. Her hair was designed the same way as mine was, everything just took me back. Instead of a playback that the Freddie actor was using for all the singing, this young woman was actually singing and she had a pretty good voice.

I continued to watch in awe as the young woman basically became me doing each step or movement I did that day on Live Aid. I felt Brian and Roger wrap their arms around me as I couldn't even take my eyes off the young woman up on stage. I could hear the extras singing out the lyrics, even some of the crew members were bopping their heads and singing along.

She walked across the stage at the second verse right towards the Freddie actor and just like Fred and I did, they stood forehead to forehead singing the duet before she walked back out and went back to center stage. When the guitar solo came on, my eyes turned to Gwilym and he amazed me that he actually could do my hard rock solo.

After the song was over, the crowd applauded and cheered and I turned to the guys and hugged them and whispered into their ears.

"If this is you guys way of trying to get me to sign onto a biopic film......I'm highly considering it after seeing her."

"We'll introduce you later." Said Roger as we separated from the hug and we turned our attention back to the guys as We Will Rock you now began playing. I couldn't help myself by stomp my feet to the rhythm and mouth out the words.

I was just amazed by not only Gwilym's guitar playing but also the young man who moved just like how I remembered seeing Freddie move, using the mic stand as Fred always did (the cheeky man), even the facial expressions that he made were exactly like they were.

It wasn't until when 'We are the champions' came on that I could barely hold my tears in. Seeing not only Fred's actor but my actor singing the famed Queen anthem that has literally been played in every victory sport or award winning singing competition.

Seeing the two of them interact with each other, it was pure nostalgia.

By the end of the song, tears welled up in my eyes and I looked toward the heavens hoping that Freddie could see this and running through my mind I already knew what he'd say.

"Amazing jobs my darlings, not as fabulous as me but very, very close." When the extras and even some crew members cheered, Brian, Roger, Peter, Emily and myself all applauded and cheered for the boys and that's when the director called cut.

"This.....is gonna be a great movie." I said.

"I think so too. After just seeing them come together like that, I think we've finally casted the right people to play us." Said Brian.

"I agree you two, I'm liking what I've just seen so far." Roger said.

"And—I'm sure he would've liked this too." I said solemnly. I felt Roger gently rub my back and Brian said.

"I know he would."

After a few more takes of filming the Live Aid concert, the director said that it was enough for today. I walked around the set to find the producer Graham King and when I approached him I asked him.

"Graham tell me, who's the young man you got to play Freddie?"

"Oh his name is Rami Malek. His recent project was a show called Mr. Robot."

"Ahh yes I've heard of that, my Freddie is obsessed with that show. Never misses an episode."

"When we were casting Freddie I happened to come across an episode and when I saw him I—just thought I was looking at Freddie. So we brought him in, he gave us a mock interview as well as an audition that your boys saw when they first met him. And from then on it just fell into place. Do you approve of him? Is there a problem Mrs. Kline?"

"Absolutely not. Do you know where I can find Rami at right now?"

"Probably in hair and makeup getting undressed."

"Well, when he is done would you be so kind as to bring him to my trailer?"

"Of course (y/n)." I nodded in gratitude and walked off to my trailer.

I sat there once again on the chair looking through an old photo album. Each picture held a deep and personal memory for me, I thought back to the day that each picture was taken and remembered exactly what was going on at that very moment.

A knock was soon heard at my trailer. I composed myself with a deep exhale and said.

"Come in." the door opened and there without costume or the tache was Rami Malek.

"Graham said you wanted to see me Mrs. Kline?"

"Yes Rami, love please come in." he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. "Take a seat." I gestured towards the couch. He sat right where Joe had sat down earlier this morning and I said. "Would you care for a biscuit, or as Americans call them cookies?"

"Uhh yes please." I smiled and handed him a tray of biscuits I always kept around me (hey a woman's gotta have her sweet tooth fix right?) and handed him my best plate of chocolate chip cookies (all thanks to my mother in law's secret recipe). He thanked me as he took one and took a bite out of it. "Mmm. Oh my god," he cleared his throat and closed his mouth before finishing the biscuit up. "This is so good."

"Thank you, it was my mother in law's secret recipe. She passed it onto me shortly before Kelly was born." He took another bite of it and swallowed that piece before saying as he set it down on a napkin that I had also provided.

"What-what was it you needed to see me for Mrs.—"

"Before we continue, I'll ask you to call me the same way I've asked the other three of the band to call me. Call me (y/n)."

"Yes of course, (y/n). What was it you wanted to see me for? Is it to talk about what you saw out there? Did I screw it up already?"

"No, no dear relax. This is nothing in the way you're thinking." I saw him take a sigh of relief.

"Oh good. Cause I know I obviously wasn't the first choice for the job."

"In my books Rami, you should've been the first one to be called for the role."

"Really?"

"Oh yes, but first there's a couple of questions that I want to ask you that Brian and Roger might not have asked you, and I want you to answer them as Freddie would've."

"Okay." I smiled softly and stood up from my seat as I set the phot album aside.

"Who is Queen not without?"

"That's easy. It's you darling. There's no Queen without their beloved Rock Angel, and no Rock Angel without her four aging Queens." I felt my heart clench at hearing Rami speak with a British tone. The softness of his voice almost sounded identical to Freddie's voice. I turned towards him and walked towards the kitchen area of my trailer.

"Who is it that you trust the most?"

"Mary. Mary is the one I trust the most. For she knows me like no one else ever will." I reached the kitchen and rested my hand against the island.

"Who are you?" Rami looked at me before finally answering something that would forever stun me.

"I've been asked that all my life. By my family, student peers, professors, the entire world. I've been told who I should strive to be but I say fuck what they say. They don't define me. No, I decided who I am. I'm going to be what I was born to be. A performer who gives the people what they want." He pointed towards the ceiling as he whispered, "touch of the heavens." He dropped his hand before finally answering, "Freddie Fucking Mercury."

My lips quivered and I ducked my head as tears began falling down my face for—god knows how many times right now.

"Oh (y/n) I—I'm sorry I didn't mean to make you cry, I—did I say something wrong?" Rami said urgently as he stood up and stood in front of me.

"No." I choked out. I sniffled and that's when he handed me a tissue. Oh ever the kind gentleman and concerned about my wellbeing, just like Freddie was. "No you—you've prove to me that you know just who Freddie truly was."

"Didn't want to be put in a certain category or be stereotyped." He said. I nodded as I wiped my tears with the tissue he had given me.

"For as long as I have known Freddie, especially to his last, various people have chosen one of two sides. There's the one side that the press made him out to be. The one that-that—bastard Cohen wanted to portray Freddie as. The wild, crazed, homosexual drug addict. That he deserved what he had gotten because he was so reckless and stupid. That AIDS was his form of suicide. Never did I want to punch and murder so many people. Every time I got asked about whether Freddie's death was his own fault, I just wanted to rip the interviewer apart."

"I can see why. I bet a lot of true fans and the people who knew Freddie well would've done what you've felt like doing."

"But people like you Rami, who understand that Freddie wasn't just a frontman or greatest performer to ever live. That he did come from a harsh background but rose above all the trials and tribulations that came his way to define himself as he sought out to be. That's why he was my biggest idol." I grabbed the photo album and sat down on the couch and opened it up taking out a picture that was always a favorite of mine.

It was a picture that Deacy took of Freddie and I together just after my very first performance as the Rock Angel at Madison Square Garden. Fred's arms wrapped around me as he had picked me up, huge wide smiles were spread across our faces. I felt a dip on my left side I looked up to see Rami sitting close beside me. He looked down at the picture before saying.

"Was this your first performance?"

"Yes. Out of four members of Queen, it was Freddie Mercury who truly believed that I could make a name for myself in the industry. Taught me everything there was into getting the self-confidence I needed to get up on that stage. Sure we had our ups and downs, but through all the falls we had, he never gave up on me. He gave up on no one that he loved. And Rami," we looked at each other and I told him the utmost truth, "If he were alive today, he would've loved you."

He smiled as I gently touched his cheek and the two of us looked through my photo album of every picture Freddie and I took throughout the 11 years I knew him.

At the end of the day, just before the four boys left to go hang out at a pub nearby, I stepped in and offered.

"Why not have dinner over at my place boys?"

"Oh we couldn't impose." Said Joe.

"Nonsense Joe, I insist and I won't take no for answer. Plus it'll be a more homely environment. You boys can't live on catering and pub foods for the next several months to a year. No I absolutely won't have it."

"Best go along with her boys, she got her persuasion from the best there was." Roger added in.

"Well—if you think it's a good idea." Said Gwilym.

"Of course it is. Now come on, you four can fit in my car. Let's go. Meet you there Brian and Roger?"

"We'll be right behind you love." Said Brian. I gestured the boys to follow me to my car. Ben sat up in the passenger seat, Joe sat behind him, Rami was in the middle and Gwilym sat behind me. I turned the engine on and told everyone to buckle up (mama instincts what can I say?) and we pulled out of the gate and I drove us on home.

"So (y/n), what other kind of music do you listen to?" asked Joe.

"Whatever song has a good voice and a good beat, with no autotune I will love. You can look through my Spotify and see what I have." Ben took my phone out of the phone holder and turned around as Joe took over the controls and went to my Spotify.

"Wow there are a lot of songs. And I thought you would've just stuck with what you grew up on."

"Unlike most rockstars like Roger who think everything after 1979 basically became trash music with the rise of pop or as they called it 'disco'. I'm a little more open minded. But I deny all songs that use explicit language every three words, degrading women, or promotes violence."

"You even got some old Christina Aguilera songs on here?" asked Rami.

"Who do you think helped produce her?"

"Shut the front door. You produced Christina Aguilera?"

"Yeah. I even gave her rights to a song that I wanted to do. But even singing it brought back some old wounds. So since I was helping her produce her album at the time, I turned to song over to her."

"What song was it?" asked Ben.

"Fighter."

"Shut up! That was literally my jam."

"I can attest to that. Throughout the filming of The Pacific, he would never shut that song off when getting into Eugene's character for certain episodes." Rami rose his hand.

"Yeah. I have an entire playlist of some songs I helped produce or make. You can play that playlist if you'd like. Or my typical playlist my boys best songs."

"I think in the light of our first day filming, we should go with Queen. What do you guys say?" Joe asked.

"Agree."

"Yep."

"Oh yeah."

"Aright then Joe, we'll each pick our favorite Queen song. You're up first little Tim." He grinned and scrolled through my playlist until Somebody to love came up on the speakers. "Read my mind Joseph." The piano began playing and that's when I vocalized alongside Freddie and the five of us began singing the song at the top of our lungs.

The entire car ride contained each of us picking our top favorite songs. Ben did 'White Queen' which I commended on him cause people nowadays tend to forget the old Queen songs, Gwilym picked Love of my Life, Rami chose Radio Gaga, and I, of course chose Bohemian Rhapsody.

Thanks to Wayne's world (yes I saw the movie and yes it was silly but just the opening scene alone made the movie worth watching) we basically did the same motion by motion that those boys did in the film when the operatic section came on. And of course when the headbanging rock out came on, the boys proceeded to bang their hands while I did mine not as aggressively (responsible driving kids!)

We continued to rock out to the song and it wasn't until by the end of the song that we soon arrived at my home. I pulled the car up into the garage and hit the clicker button which opened up the garage door and I pull inside just as the last line came up and Roger's gong rang off. I shut the engine and said.

"Here we are boys, welcome to casa de la Kline." We all exited out of my car and right behind us as scheduled were Brian and Roger with Bri getting out of the driver's seat. "Bout time you two got here, I was beginning to worry that I'd need to call in an ambulance."

"We're old dear, not dead." Roger sassed at me.

"But I still love you old coots. Just like I said all those years ago."

"That I do remember, the day right after you got so shitfaced after your 21st birthday. You remember that Brian?" Roger said.

"Indeed I do Rog, I even remember what we did to her to get her to apologize, think we need to do it again?"

"That might have to be arranged."

"Oh no you guys don't! We're not doing that now, now let's get inside before we all catch a cold." I guided them all inside. Once we stepped through the backdoor of the garage I could already smell something cooking, and I knew who exactly was cooking at this rate. "Baby! I'm home!" I called out from the hallway.

We turned the corner and soon came to the kitchen where a young man of 19 (going on 20 in a couple months) stood by the oven. He shut it off and turned around. He was every bit like his father when I first met him back in '83, but he had my eyes. When he saw me, he softly smiled and I came up to him.

"Sorry I didn't call in advance telling you that we would have more guests than your uncles."

"No worries mom. You know I've always cooked way more than I should." I smiled and cupped his face and we kissed each other's cheek. "Uncle Brian, uncle Roger."

"Hello Fred." Brian greeted.

"Hey lad, how's school been?"

"Oh you know, NYU's a challenge but I manage." He then directed his attention towards the young actors but when he eyes landed on Rami, he quickly grabbed my arm and whispered to me. "You didn't tell me you'd be bringing Rami Malek to our house!"

"Again slipped my mind." I teased him.

"Mom how dare you bring my celebrity crush here without telling me, look at me I'm a mess."

"Oh you're fine. Now best behavior." I wrapped an arm around my son and said. "Boys, this is my youngest son Freddie Mercury Kline. Fred, these are the boys that will be playing your uncles. This is Joe Mazzello, he'll be playing your uncle Deacy. Ben Hardy who's playing your old uncle Roger."

"Watch it lion cub." Rog warned me. I gave him a cheeky look before continuing the introductions.

"Gwilym Lee will be playing your uncle Brian, and you know Rami, he'll be playing the man you were named after."

"Uncle Freddie?"

"Yes. And—from what I've seen so far, you'll finally get to meet him through the screen."

"I don't doubt that. I'm a big fan of yours Rami, your role in Mr. Robot has been—amazing."

"I'm honored."

"Alright since we've all had a long day today, let's get some grub. Everyone grab a plate." I grabbed some extra plates from the cabinet and handed four plates out to the actors and we all assembled around the island to grab a piece of lasagna, peas, mashed potatoes with gravy and Hawaiian rolls.

Once we gathered around the table I set out the iced tea Jack had made a couple of days ago as well as some champagne or wine. "Okay guys, before we dig in I want all hands on deck." I extended my hand out.

Freddie immediately placed his hand on top of mine, Brian and Rog soon followed after and it was then Rami, Gwilym, Joe and finally Ben placed their hands on top.

"Thank you for this family, thank you for this meal. Thank you for this day. It'll be a wild ride, but I feel this movie will soar, and—that this new family will forever stay." I said ending the traditional family prayer. The young actors looked at me with warm eyes and soft smiles.

"Alright, let's dig in. You boys will never eat the same way again once you taste (y/n)'s cooking." Roger said.

"That bad?" joked Joe. I gawked at the young cheeky actor.

"On the contrary she's the best chief on this side of London. Even when she was an intern she made us this one Christmas pudding that was to die for." Brian spoke on my behalf.

"It's true. She put all the other PTA mom's to shame when it came to my school's bake sales." Freddie said as he took a bite of his lasagna.

The entire dinner was filled with talks about our lives, stories and embarrassing moments in life. Not a single person was excluded from a conversation. After dinner, Rami and Gwilym helped Freddie with the dishes while I got some other scrapbooks out and bonded a bit with Ben and Joe about my time with Rog and Deacy.

"Now this Joe was taken during my first Japan tour. At the very garden where Queen went to near the Tokyo tower, Deacy refused to let me leave without having a cherry blossom crown."

"He seems to be doing good in the picture."

"Except one twig got so tangled in my hair it literally took 15 minutes just to get it out." We both laughed before I turned the page and found a great picture of me and Roger. "Now this picture Ben, both Roger and I have this picture, this was taken after my first Hyde Park performance."

"She performed to an audience of half of what Queen did when we performed at Hyde Park." Roger spoke.

"She could've performed for more but times changed and better security measure for the public's safety prevented it from happening again." Brian added.

"One thing's for sure, I was damn well proud of her for performing at her biggest crowd at the time just barely two years into her career." Roger spoke again. I looked up and winked at him.

"You guys really do have that father-daughter bond don't you?" Joe said.

"Have ever since she gave me the real 1 and 3/7th's sugar."

"It wasn't until Brian told me the next day that Roger just says that to pull people's leg. God I felt embarrassed after that."

"Aww lovie, but it was due to that I became your favorite. And I don't regret it as I'm sure you don't."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." As Gwilym, Rami and Freddie came back in I continued going through the scrapbook sharing my photos of my days with Queen with the boys, and allowing Freddie to finally hear all the stories that he was denied cause of my grief.

As the night got darker and darker, the young actors at this moment were so full of food and exhausted from a long day's filming they actually passed out along my living room. Joe and Ben cuddled up on the couch, Rami asleep on the recliner, while Gwilym was curled up along the loveseat.

Meanwhile I was watching over them and couldn't help but think it was like seeing my boys all over again. I remember back when I was still an intern and would see the guys all passed out whether at Freddie's parties or in the studio, I always had to provide the guys comfort (which I never minded). So seeing these four young men passed out just brought me a sense of nostalgia.

"I got the spare blankets mom."

"Thank you dear. Your uncles tucked in the spare bedrooms?"

"Uncle Brian's in the room across yours and dad's and uncle Roger is in Georgie's old room."

"Good boy." I then proceeded to cover up and adjust the young actors. I wrapped both Joe and Ben in the same blanket and closed Joe's mouth gently so that he wouldn't drool in his sleep, followed by giving them each a soft kiss goodnight. Without trying to wake him up, I uncurled Gwilym from his pretzel position and covered him up.

I gingerly stroked through his hair before placing a soft kiss to his temple. He groaned and lifted his head up which allowed me to place a pillow underneath him. He hummed in content as he snuggled into it. I then went over to Rami and adjusted the seat so that he would be more comfortable. Pressing the button on our automatic recliner, his legs slowly rose up before finally stopping in full recliner mode.

I tucked him in while looking down at him. God even without the tache it was like looking at Freddie from when I first met him in person at a concert, long before I became an intern. I gently kissed his cheek before faintly stroking his cheek.

Sitting outside along the deck, Freddie and I were looking up at the stars.

"So you think this movie's gonna be a hit?"

"Critics are always hard to please, no matter if it's music or movies. From what I've read of the script yes there's misinformation but that's why it's called a biopic. There's some truth but it's the touch of Hollywood in order to make the film not a boring documentary. But those four boys, they are just how I remember your uncles being when I not only worked with them, but grew up with them hearing their music."

"I wish I had gotten the chance to meet uncle Freddie." Fred said after a brief moment of silence. I turned to him to see him looking down sadly.

"So do I love. He would've loved you as much as he did your brothers and sister. And he would've been over the moon had he found that I had named you after him." I brought my baby close and he wrapped his arms around me as we both looked up at the moon and the stars together.

The star right by the moon glowed the brightest, the very same star that shined just as bright the night after the tribute concert we did back in '92. I couldn't help as a tear slid down my face and a smile spread across my face.

I knew that it was Freddie's star, telling me that he was watching us and that he was proud.

123 notes · View notes

irwinkitten · 4 years

Text

colours | c.h

notes: so it’s birthday boi’s birthday and i figured i’d finally finish this. it’s the final instalment of the bi!reader series. mahooooosive shoutout to @burncrashbromance who triggered the entire series off lmao. love u jill. warnings: none word count: 6.4k

luke, michael, ashton

donate to my ko-fi here

“C’mon mate! It’ll be a good laugh and maybe you’ll at least get talking to a new chick. You need to forget about Jodie.” Calum stared at Luke for a full minute before sighing.

“Fine. But I swear to god if you’re trying to set me up Hemmings, I will hunt you down and give Sierra something to complain about.” Calum scowled and Luke smirked.

“I’m a music major, not a football player.” Calum snorted.

“So I’ll just break your hands. Don’t play me Luke.” Luke met Calum’s stare for a full minute before huffing.

“God, why are you so fucking difficult sometimes?” Calum knew that the barb was playful and the smile took away any bite from his words. “It’s colour coded. There are glow sticks at the door, they’re pretty strict on this rule because these parties have had such high success rates and minimal damage.”

Calum raised a dark eyebrow at Luke who grinned from his spot on the couch.

“You could’ve said this at first. I’d have been more inclined to not argue with you then.” Luke shrugged.

“You’re still coming, regardless. Green is single, red is taken. Yellow is looking for friends. They even have colour choices for gender preferences. Pink if you’re looking for ladies, blue if you’re looking for a man. Purple for any.” He continued the explanation and Calum nodded, silently letting him know as he continued through his photos.

“What time is the party?” Calum finally looked up from his finished photos and Luke beamed in relief.

“It starts at eight, curfew is two.” Calum sighed before holding down the home button on his iPhone.

“Hey Siri, set a reminder to get ready for the party at seven thirty.” The automated voice replied with the reminder set and Luke laughed.

“Trust me Cal, you’re gonna love it.” He pushed himself up off the sofa, heading towards the door. “Want me to pick you up any food? I’m gonna get some snacks and a couple of beers?” Calum shook his head at Luke who saluted before disappearing out of their dorm and he sank down into his spot, going through the images.

He enjoyed this side of his work but with the notepad beside him, he made the notes of annotations for later, knowing that he was never going to remember each choice later on.

He’d barely heard Luke returning. His eyes studying each photo until he reached the last one, stretching out his back as he glanced at the time.

Six thirty.

Opening a word document, he re-adjusted himself before he began to type, checking references of each photo and noting down even the smallest changes compared to the original.

It was the shrill reminder going off that jolted him from his annotating and he scowled at his phone for a second before reminding himself that he promised Luke and he could come back to this in the morning.

Once his work was saved, he collected his stuff and made his way back to his room. It didn’t take much for him to put on a fresh black button up, leaving the top few buttons undone, swapping his grey joggers for the black dress pants, tucking the shirt into his waist as he stood in front of the mirror, eyes studying his blond hair.

It took him less than five minutes to sort his hair out, fingers running some gel through the strands and pushing it into a quiff. A dab of cologne later and some deodorant, he stepped out of his room just as Luke did who had opted for an olive green shirt, seemingly sharing the same idea as Calum to leave the top few buttons undone.

Luke grinned at him, curls falling to the side.

“Look at you all dressed up.” Calum pushed his friends shoulder with a laugh before they headed into their kitchen, pulling out and sharing a couple of beers.

“Just because I prefer to hide behind the camera doesn’t mean I’m completely useless, Luke.” They both laughed before there was a knock at their door and Luke headed over to open it, letting in two of their other friends.

It was definitely a group that many wouldn’t have thought friends. Ashton was the star football player, majoring in business with a minor in music. Michael was majoring in music with Luke, taking a minor in english. And there Cal was, doing his major in photography and media studies, whilst doing a minor in music. It was the one thing that had joined the four of them together and their friendship had bonded almost instantly and it’d been tight since day one.

“You’re coming out with us to the party? Wicked!” Ashton greeted Calum, pulling him into a one armed hug before the two pulled away, wide grins on their faces.

“Luke had me convinced, otherwise I’d have been hidden in my room working on the fuckin’ annotations of every single photo I’ve been editing.”

“You definitely need to let loose tonight. And I’m going back to Sierra’s place if you do decide to bring any ladies back.” Luke waggled his eyebrows, making the other two laugh as Calum’s cheeks flushed a light pink.

“You’re all assholes and I’m not drunk enough to deal with you all. Who’s up for shots?”

By the time the four boys had piled themselves into an Uber, once they arrived to the club that was hosting the party, Luke smirked at the line of people waiting to get in.

Once he’d given their names and they’d flashed their I.D’s to the bouncer, groans erupting from the queue that was steadily growing longer, they shared matching grins as they headed to the small station, a young guy monitoring the glowsticks.

Calum could see the benefits, snapping a green and pink one around his wrist, watching as Luke snapped red and yellow around his wrists, whilst Ashton followed his lead and instead of a pink, Michael snapped a purple one around his wrist, earning a look from Luke.

“You guys knew.” Michael deadpanned and Luke snorted.

“But tonight of all nights you’re going to practically announce to campus that you like both?” Michael shrugged, a grin on his lips.

“No better way to do it really. And hey, if I meet someone cute, even better.” This made Calum laugh as they headed into the main area, the loud bass thudding through the floor as the four of them reached the bar, Calum raising a twenty to flag down the bartender.

Once drinks were ordered and paid for, they kept to their group before Sierra showed up and pulled Luke onto the dancefloor. Michael split off not long later and then it was just Ashton and Calum, surveying the group of young adults, dancing, drinking and just generally having fun.

That was when Calum first spotted her, a gleaming purple wristband paired with green, chatting up a pretty blonde who was wearing a pink one. Her eyes met his as she looked around for a second, a smirk flickering onto her lips. He nodded towards her, a smile on his own as he watched the two disappear amongst the crowds and he found himself chatting with a few girls who had the red and yellow bands around their wrist, the conversations easy, even after Ashton had his attention captured by another girl, making Calum laugh.

He continued to drink, content to stay close to the bar as people chatted with him and went, Callie from his class appearing with her girlfriend in tow, wrapping him in a hug as her usual greeting before promising to catch up with him over lunch in the next couple of days.

Eventually he pushed off from the bar and headed out to the smoking area. Pulling the cigarette to his lips, lighting up, he felt a delicate shoulder tap and his eyes turned to see the same girl he saw earlier, the purple wristband still around her wrist and a bright smile on her face.

“Sorry to bother, but could I borrow your light?” He returned her smile and held the lighter out to her. “Thanks man.”

“No problem. You enjoying the party so far?” His question set off a smug grin and his brain registered the girl she’d been talking with before.

“I mean, I’ve certainly enjoyed it so far. Enjoying not having any worries or having to take anyone back to my place.” And Calum chuckled.

“Nice. I’m Calum.”

—

Despite not originally wanting to go, Calum left the club with her number, piling into an Uber with Michael who had decided to call it quits when it hit one am. Luke and Ashton couldn’t be found and both knew that if they needed help, they’d call.

Calum fell into bed easily, the silence of his dorm comforting as he fell asleep, head buried in the covers.

The next morning, he was woken by his usual alarm, a groan escaping and his mouth tasting like cotton as he threw an arm over his eyes whilst he twisted onto his back, determined not to open his eyes as he blindly fumbled for his phone, managing to hit the off button before turning back over to shove his face into the pillow.

He was far from a morning person and he felt annoyance at himself build up for having not switched off his alarm.

Glancing at his phone, he noticed a new name on his screen, alerting him to a new message. Clicking on it he felt himself remembering the rest of the night before.

‘Thanks for not being a dick when I turned you down. If you’re up for it, how about grabbing some lunch. I want to learn more about this photography exhibition you’re lookin’ to make.’

He laughed before replying with an affirmative, to which she sent one of the local cafes which wasn’t inhabited by students. Glancing at the time, he saw he still had a couple of hours, so he allowed himself a couple of more hours rest.

When he finally made his way to the small cafe, he spotted her easily and pointed to the menu board. She lifted her own drink up, indicating that she’d already gotten her order in, so he went and made his order, picking up the iced coffee before making his way to where she sat.

“Nice to meet you properly in the daytime.” She teased and he offered a shy grin in return.

“If I hadn’t left my alarm on, I doubt I’d have left my dorm before sunset.” The comment was casual, making her laugh as their food orders were called up.

“Grab some napkins for us, please?” She asked as she went to collect their food before he had a chance to offer to get hers. Rolling his eyes with a playful smile, he went and did that, collecting cutlery before returning to the table.

The smell of their food set Calum’s stomach off and he realised how hungry he actually was when he took the first bite of food.

“So, last night.” Calum finally started after they’d both had a few bites of their respective meals.

“Hm?”

“How come you did turn me down? Out of curiosity.” Her eyes turned wary and he held his hands up in a surrender position. “I’m not looking for anything, I’m just curious because I saw you disappear with Lucy.” Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

“How do you know Lucy?”

“Same class.” She snorted at that.

“Should’ve figured. It’s not that I wasn’t interested, I just didn’t particularly fancy sleeping with you last night.”

Ouch.

He snorted at that as she realised what she’d said her he watched in amusement as her eyes widened.

“Wait, I didn’t-fuck-that came out wrong.” Calum remained silent for a moment longer before he gave in and laughed, her wide eyes closing in embarrassment as she hid her face in her hands.

“It’s fine. It’s nice that you’re honest that you didn’t want to sleep with me. Do you know how many times I’ve had girls throw themselves at me for something? It’s why I mostly talked to girls who wore red bands last night.”

“So you weren’t out to get laid like Irwin was?”

“Oh boy, how bad was he?” This made her laugh.

“Let’s just say I wasn’t the only one who took advantage of the restrooms last night and if you didn’t know already, dude has definitely got a daddy kink.” Calum chose the wrong moment to take a sip of his coffee, the drink going down the wrong way and he ended up spluttering, spraying iced coffee over her.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He heaved once he stopped coughing, handing her napkins as she laughed at his reaction.

“You didn’t know? Man has such a dom vibe.” She shrugged, a grin on her lips as he picked up some napkins for himself to clean the spray of coffee down his shirt.

“It’s not shit I like to ask him. I didn’t expect to find it out from someone else.” He was fighting the blush and she knew it, an evil smirk on her lips as she leaned forward.

“Oh and what tickles you pink, Mr Hood?”

“Not that.” He deadpanned, making her laugh as they chucked the ruined napkins on their empty plates.

“Damn.” She muttered before grinning at him. Calum returned the smile with a playful smirk of his own.

“Gonna have to try harder to get that information from me.” This made her laugh as they both pushed from the table and made their way out.

“I’m planning on it. I’m gonna get that information one way or another, Hood.” He laughed, throwing his arm across her shoulders.

“Good luck with that, sweetheart. For now, I’ve still got a day to kill. How do you fancy heading to the new exhibit that’s just opened on campus?”

“Man after my own heart.”

—

Over time, she was a frequent visitor to his dorm.

Meeting the other three seemed to open her to making new friends, Calum’s friends seemingly enjoying winding her up until Luke made a comment about her relationship status.

“Luke, I like you and all-”

“Probably the only person to like him.” Michael interrupted, earning laughter from the group, even Sierra giggling at her boyfriend’s dilemma.

“As I was saying, I like you and all but if you say something like that, I will not heistate to seduce and fuck your girlfriend.” Sierra’s cheeks burst into colour along with Luke’s and the other three weren’t too sure how to react until they saw the smirk on her lips.

“Oh you are so in for it.” Luke groaned when he realised she was teasing him.

“But seriously, I’m happy being single. I’m not good for relationships at the moment.” She explained softly and they realised that they needed to let the subject drop.

More often than not, she could be found doing her work on Calum and Luke’s table, books scattered as she studied and worked on her assignments.

“You really detest working on campus?” Sierra teased her once as she sat down next to the girl, her eyes taking in the copious amounts of notes and work that she’d done.

“Not really.” Stretching out, both girls winced at the sound of her back cracking. “I just can't be dealing with the idiots. I know Cal is still asleep and I think your man is either on his way from class or just left it.” This made Sierra laugh.

“The fact you’re around here enough to know when Lu finishes his classes.” She grinned cheekily to Sierra.

“What can I say? I’m a sucker to notice the small details.” This caused the two girls to giggle before she began to pack away her stuff, flexing her hand every so often to reduce the cramp that had built up.

“You gonna see if he’s awake?”

“Nah, gonna get a cuddle.” She waved to Sierra who disappeared into Luke’s room before gently pushing open Cal’s door after knocking gently.

His room was dark as she closed the door once more, tucking her bag next to his before crawling into the space that he’d made for her.

It was all too frequent for her to stay around at his, especially on the darker nights, he was reluctant to let her go back, so she always made sure she made it back to her place if she had classes the following day, if not, she more often than not stayed over at Luke and Calum’s.

“Get your work finished?” His voice was tired and heavy. She smiled into the darkness, curling into his back.

“No. But I’ve only got the citations to do, so I’ll worry about those tomorrow. M’tired.” A yawn escaped her lips, making him chuckle into the darkness.

“Get some sleep princess. I’ll see you in the morning.”

It was the following morning when she had woken up before their alarms, relieving her bladder and crawling back into the warm bed that she felt something in her mind shift.

She lay there, her eyes studying the way Calum slept, his lips parted as he took in slow deep breaths, his face relaxed from any of the stress of college. And she could feel her heart encompassing him into a list that barely existed. But he sat there, pretty brown eyes and plump lips with a curved smirk as he called her princess.

And that was when it hit her as she lay there, the soft rays of the sunlight breaking through the curtains and hitting his skin, the patches of light giving him an almost golden glow.

She was crushing on him and there was nothing she wanted to do to stop it.

So instead of worrying or overthinking, she snuggled herself closer to his warm body, his own seemingly adjusting for her intrusion and allowed his slow deep breaths to lull her into an easy sleep, taking advantage of the fact that neither of them had classes that day.

—

The semester was taking its toll on her. Anyone could see that.

But what was making it more difficult was the news articles that kept appearing, and the way that people seemed to group together in protection. When she found one of her previous flings, her heart sank as she scoffed in her face when she asked about joining the groups they had going for the LGBT students.

“What, and have you and other straights pretending to be gay, turn up and disrupt the peace of our space? No thanks.”

She’d hidden the hurt from her features at that one but she still felt the sharp stabbing sensation in her chest.

Calum could see the stress around her eyes when he invited her around for a games night with the guys and their girlfriends.

He wanted to ask her if she was okay, but she gave him a tight smile, her lips pressed together to stop anything from escaping her lips. She knew that the second he asked, she’d cry.

But it was when the games were put away and the others were relaxed, catching up when Luke had asked the innocent question.

“What about you, my not-roommate-roommate? How’ve you been doing?” Six pairs of eyes turned to her and she could feel her resolve crack as she whispered,

“Not good.” Before promptly bursting into tears and leaving the six of them shocked at her reaction. Sierra was first to react, being the closest to her, she reached out and took her hand.

“We’re all friends here. What’s going on?” And before she could stop herself, everything came spilling from her lips. From the constant fear she felt, to the disgusted looks she got from people within her own community, to the stress of not being able to complete her work. They quickly realised that she’d been holding onto this for a long time and Sierra didn’t let go of her hand whilst she got everything off her chest.

Five minutes after she’d fallen silent and her tears had stopped, she could feel her embarrassment and frustration, eyes unable to lift up to meet any of theirs.

“Sorry, you guys didn’t need to hear that.”

“Yes we did.” Ashton interrupted her. “You’re our friend, and we need to know when we need to step in and help you. How can we be supportive when you’re not even telling us the problems? Fuck those people in the community who treat you like shit.”

She gave him a watery smile in return.

Luke and Calum offered for her to stay on their couch but she declined.

“I’ve got things I need to finish up tonight so I can spend tomorrow in bed and not move.” She murmured and he didn’t push it.

The following morning she felt like she’d been hit by a bus as she dragged herself into her living room.

It took far too long for her to realise that her coffee was ready and that she needed to get up for it. She was certainly regretting the four am bedtime, but she knew that with her assignment submitted, she didn’t have to worry.

By her second cup of coffee, she was certainly more alert but let herself sink into the couch cushions as she debted switching on the TV or grabbing her laptop. That was when her phone blared, frightening her for a second before she answered it.

“You better have a good fuckin’ reason, Hood.” She grumbled when she spotted the caller ID.

“I know this is short notice, but my model ditched and I need to get these last shots done for the portfolio. I’ll buy you dinner if you can please be my model?” Her cheeks grew warm at the way Calum had presented the offer, her eyes glancing to the mirror before the clock and sighing.

“Give me thirty minutes and I’ll be at yours.” She caved easily before ending the call and throwing her phone onto the sofa, heading into the bathroom to sort her hair out and get ready for the day. She opted for minimal make-up, remembering Calum’s comment about his portfolio of natural beauty, so it was easy to pick out a warm outfit for the November weather her scarf wrapped securely and her jacket pulled tightly around her as she slid into her own car, heading onto campus to pick him up.

When she pulled up to his row, she was met with a relieved looking Calum, backpack hitched over his shoulder with a camera bag strapped across his chest.

“You know where we’re going for photos then, or is it just one of those natural ones?” She teased him playfully and he rolled his eyes.

“Head to the wooded area by the camping ground. Whilst we’ve still got sunlight, there’s a good spot which is mostly meadows and gets good sunlight filtering through the trees.” He explained and she grinned.

“I know the place. So we’re hiking a bit?” And he chuckled as he strapped himself in, jamming his kit between his legs and sitting back.

“So what happened to the other model?” She asked once they were off campus. Calum’s head moved back and hit the headrest repeatedly.

“Apparently she’s close friends with my ex, didn’t know that bit of information. But I got a text from my ex saying how do I like to feel being left hanging. I still don’t know why she sent that, unless she’s referring to deadlines which meant that yeah, I focused on those instead of her.”

“Ooo, you might have just hit the nail on the head there, buddy.”

“It’s not like I ignored her completely! Once I was done with each deadline, I took her out and apologised. I didn’t want her to think I was neglecting the relationship, but apparently five days of deadlines was enough neglect for her to cheat on me.”

“Harsh. So you reckon they cooked up some kind of plan to basically sabotage your grade?” She concluded and he nodded. “Well looks like you’re about to have the best goddamn model who can look like some sort of wood nymph.” She teased and his lips curved into a smile.

“Knew I could count on you.”

“Hey, what are friends for? And if you’re lucky and I can find the small stream that runs through the woods, I might even dip my toes in the cold water, but it means we’re bringing towels and blankets with us.” She warned him and he could feel the tension disappear from his shoulders.

He had a plan and he could work with it, especially if they found the stream.

“That’s fine if it means that I get my shots, I’ll gladly look after you if you get sick.”

“I might just take you up on that, Hood. Regardless of whether I get ill from today or just this weather in general.” She smirked at him as they rolled up to the camping grounds, her car driving across the fields before coming to a rest at the edge of the woods.

As they walked through the forest, she could hear the shutter of his camera going off and so she started to dance ahead, making him laugh. She was no natural for modelling, but being her carefree, silly self was something she could do and Calum found himself enjoying himself even more as he snapped every photo.

As they reached the stream, he instructed her on what he wanted and she followed the instructions he gave her and they kept it up as the sun began to set, bathing her in a golden glow.

She stood there for a solid five minutes, her eyes shut with a smile on her face as she basked in the last of the warmth, a soft hum escaping her lips. The shutter had gone off a few times but then it fell silent.

Finally, as the sun set, she turned to Calum who had the softest smile on his lips and she felt her heart skip a beat as they made their way back to the car.

“You’re a lifesaver, honestly.” He murmured, pulling her into his side and kissing her temple, her arms wrapped around his waist, squeezing him in return.

“Just helping out. It was nothing and I had fun.” She could feel her cheeks growing warm and he scoffed.

“Well I’ll still send you some of the shots that don’t make it onto my assignment. Sound like a good deal?” She felt her lips twist up into a wide grin.

“Only if it means that I can come around to yours and we can have a pad thai night.” She countered and he grinned.

“Wouldn’t be our night without it. Want me to see if Luke and Sierra can join?” She thought about it for a second before nodding her head.

“Yeah, it’d be nice to spend a bit of time with them too. And Luke might even let me do his nails again, since you won’t let me.” She scowled playfully as they finally reached her car and he grinned unashamedly.

“One day, princess and you might actually get me painting my nails. But for now, it’s a no.”

She groaned as they got back into her car and she dropped him off at the dorm, heading back to her place for a quiet night with a glass of wine and a new understanding that she was crushing on Calum.

Sometimes she hated boys.

—

She knew that Calum didn’t date. But it still drove her mad that she knew her feelings for him weren’t going away.

A few times she’d tried to go out and have quick fucks, but she couldn’t even commit to that. It felt wrong for her that it wasn’t him with her.

The first time she’d gone on a Tinder date, part of her hated that she’d done this to try and drive him from her mind. But it wasn’t working as planned.

Her current date was cute. But it wasn’t enough for the lacking personality.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you back to your dorm? You could come back to mine.” She pushed his hand off her waist, shaking her head.

“Thanks, but no thanks. You’re cute and all, but honestly I don’t feel anything for you.” She admitted and he scoffed at her words.

“You’ve not even kissed me, how could you know that?” And before she could say anything else, he kissed her.

It was only brief, her hands pushing him away from her body, a scowl on her face.

“If you think that’s going to get you a girl, rethink your methods, asshole.” She snapped before walking away, hitting Calum’s name.

“Am I worthy of your time now?” Calum’s teasing voice made her let off a little laugh.

“Mind if I come to yours? Date really was not it.” Calum didn’t hesitate.

“Come on then princess.” And it was almost like coming home when she got to his, and his arms were open in comfort as she hugged him tightly.

He had a beer ready as well as an ear as she bitched about her date and what he’d done. And if she didn’t already have feelings for him before, his reaction practically secured them in place.

“Who was the fucker? I’ll teach him a lesson on how to treat a lady.” He’d launched for her phone but she’d pushed it out of the way, shifting so that she was straddling his lap.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m with my best friend and I’m safe. It was nothing but an unwanted kiss. It could’ve been so much worse but it wasn’t.” What she hadn’t expected was his arms to wrap around her body, pulling her flush against his chest.

“You’re too important and too fuckin’ precious to get hurt like that. At least let me be your standby if another date goes anything like that?” And she couldn’t argue it.

“Sure.”

When she’d finally gotten off his lap and they’d settled for movies, she was certain about her feelings towards him and she knew she needed to take a leap of faith.

—

Calum could see that she was tense in the Uber back to her apartment. His fingers threaded through hers and he squeezed it gently.

“This isn’t where you say you’re an axe murderer, right?” The joke was stupid and maybe a bit off key, but she laughed and her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly.

“Damn, you catch onto my plans so fast.” She teased in return and Calum smiled, leaning towards her. She understood the silent message and their lips met in the middle, a soft, single kiss before parting, his cheeks growing warm.

He could see her relax as the uber pulled up and she thanked the driver before getting out. He followed suit and her place looked nice.

“It’s nothing fancy, but I only have to worry about neighbours below me.” She explained and he smiled at that. As she guided him to the lift and kept a firm grip on his hand as it went up to the top floor. As they stepped out, to his left were stairs heading back down, and in front of them was a plain white door.

“It’s not much, but this is home for me. I-I don’t usually bring anyone back. Friends or otherwise.” Her voice was quiet. Had there been any noise, he would’ve missed her words. But he heard the and his fingers brushed over her knuckles, bringing them to his lips.

“If this is too much, we can head back to mine. I know that Luke is fine with you staying around.” As much as he wanted to see her place, to see what she lived like in her own comfort, he knew that this was an obviously big step for her.

She could see the curiosity in his eyes, but his honesty touched her heart and she knew that she could bring him into her space, to allow him to see this side of her. A side that did not see the negative judgements, no harsh words or derogatory comments.

Her fingers wrapped around the slim key and she pushed it in the lock, twisting it before pushing the door open. Immediately his eyes took in her place. It was mostly open plan, he could see that much.

They stepped into the open living room that connected to the dining room and kitchen. There was a closed wooden door at the back of the kitchen, and an open door in the dining room, his eyes turning to her curiously and she smiled.

“As you can see, living room, dining room and kitchen. Through that door is my bedroom,” she pointed to the closed door, “through that one is the bathroom. This is my home.” And he could see how she’d made it her home.

There was an L shaped couch, pushed into the corner, his eyes taking in how it was positioned to see the view of the sunset that was shining through the floor length window.

It was open and light. It was absolutely her and he could feel his heartbeat a little bit faster as he realised that she’d let him into a space that was so her, so free.

“This is also where I felt I might as well admit to you how much I actually like you.” She couldn’t meet his eyes but when his fingers tucked under her chin, coaxing her to look up, she didn’t argue it.

“Are we talking like, or like like? Because if we’re sharing those kinds of secrets, then I really like you too.” HIs voice was barely a whisper and she could feel her heartbeat stutter as his eyes held hers.

She couldn’t stop herself as she tilted her head towards his, a small smile on her lips and she leaned forward.

He got the idea and met her lips with his and she was certain that she felt her heart practically soaring.

They traded a few kisses before she pulled away and pulled him further into her place, showing him how she’d decorated it properly.

“I love it.” He whispered softly, watching as her face lit up and shoulders sagged in obvious relief. And he did. He could see the artwork that decorated her walls, the large windows giving the assumption of more space. His eyes drifted over the pieces before they came to a stop at-

“My piece. You’re the person who bought it?” His eyes trailed over the familiar photograph. It had been one of his favourites to shoot, the cold winter with a blinding sunset. She beamed at him.

“When you told me that you were selling it, I had to snap it up. So I may have been sneaky about it and gotten Luce to step in as a third party because I knew that the second you found out that it was me buying it, you’d have either given it to me for free or dropped the price.”

“Instead you picked the one person I was jealous of over that party and you knew that-”

“You’d make it a bigger price out of spite. Yeah, I figured you out pretty quick.” She teased him and he drew her closer, his arm circling around her waist as he pressed his lips to her cheek.

“I promise to do no such thing if ever you want to buy my stuff again. However, I will not be held responsible for any gifts you may receive if you like a specific photo of mine.” He teased and she giggled, pressing her hands against his chest, turning her head to meet his lips with hers.

“I might be able to forgive you if they’re presented as rightful gifts. So birthdays, anniversaries and christmas presents.” He beamed before she pulled him over to the sofa, the dying sun making for a beautiful sight, but as the sun hit her face, his eyes were captured and he couldn’t look away, not even for something as beautiful as the sun setting across the clear sky.

“Anniversaries huh?” And she found herself falling quiet before glancing at him and noting the grin on his face.

“I mean, if that isn’t too presumptuous of me?” Her voice was hesitant but he grinned at her, pressing a gentle kiss to her lips.

“Would you rather I did a song and dance to ask you out?” And he laughed at the look of horror that crossed her face.

“God no, I might like you but I think that would genuinely kill me.” They shared a look before laughing.

“Would you at least let me take you on a proper date? But also would you be my girlfriend in the meantime?” And she snorted before kissing him gently.

“I think I can do that.”

As they settled on the couch together, a sitcom playing in the background, she had her legs thrown across his lap, his fingers tracing lines against her jean clad legs.

“So, what’s off limits in the bedroom then?” His words were a tease, and she could see they were harmless by nature, making her scoff and roll her eyes, a crinkled eyed grin appearing on his lips as one hand reached over, pulling her closest hand to his lips and he kissed the back of it as a silent apology.

“Choking I’m okay with, but not to the point where there’d be visible bruises.” She finally spoke after a few minutes of silence and his hand froze on her leg.

“What?” The choked out word made her smirk.

“You heard me, Hood. I love it when my partner takes control. But not all the time. Girl needs an ego boost from time to time.” His eyes studied her face and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he realised that she was being serious.

She then took him by surprise again, shifting herself so that she was straddled across him, her knees resting on the couch as her hands rested on his shoulders, his hand going for her waist.

“Also, another thing you should know is the threesome myth with bisexual people is bullshit with me. I’m fucking possessive in the bedroom and I don’t want to share you with another guy or girl.” And the breath of air escaped him as she kissed his lips, her hips grinding down on his visible hard on, a whine falling from his lips.

“Good job I’ve only got eyes for you then, princess.” He breathed out and her entire body relaxed at his words, her lips curving up into a smile.

And she knew whatever the world would throw at her, she had a good man by her side.

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norepetitivebeats · 6 years

Video

Power Jam Featuring Chill Rob G - The Power (Vocal) (1990)

Another reviewer wrote about the Power Jam Featuring Chill Rob G release of “The Power” on Wild Pitch: "The Original that Snap Ripped-off”. That’s a rather short and misleading history of this record. The Wild Pitch release features the tag line: “A Wild Pitch reconstruction of a Logic reconstruction of a Wild Pitch production by DJ Mark, The 45 King.” So, here’s the extended version of the story: Logic refers to the German label that at the beginning of January 1990 released the 1989 production “The Power” of Frankfurt-based producers Michael Münzing (AKA Benito Benites) and Luca Anzilotti (AKA John Virgo Garrett III). Münzing had been an owner of clubs such as El Cid in Tel Aviv (1977), Eisbär in Frankfurt (1980) and, together with Sven Väth and Matthias Martinsohn the Omen in Frankfurt (1988) which was arguably the birthplace of the German Techno/Rave movement of the 1990s. Working as a DJ, Münzing incorporated electronic musical instruments in his sets at the legendary Dorian Gray in Frankfurt during the 1980s and used elaborate extended edits of songs which he created by splicing 1/4″ tape.  Anzilotti started DJing in London but when he moved to Frankfurt in 1982, he was immediately inspired by Michael to buy a Korg MS10 and a Roland TR606. Münzing and Anzilotti start producing their first records together with Väth under the name “OFF” (Organisation For Fun) in 1985 and later (without Väth) under the name “16 Bit”. In 1989, they embark on a Studio project which combines their previous electronic productions, the budding house genre and elements of hip hop, which until then had no place on German radio nor charts and was an underground sound as far as clubs is concerned. Concerned about negative preconceptions of Germans making such music they chose new aliases for the Production credits of the project: Münzing calls himself Benito Benites and Anzilotti becomes John Virgo Garrett III. As an artist name they chose “Snap!” – inspired by a function in their sequencer. The first result of their work was an enormously successful track called “The Power” which trail-blazed a string of successful Euro-Dance releases by cleverly combining mainly pre-existing material with a few added touches: For the beats they sampled a part of Mantronix' 1988 record "King Of The Beats" which in itself is a collage of samples from Rufus Thomas ’ “Do the Funky Penguin”, The Winstons “Amen, Brother”, The Meters’ "Same Old Thing", Kool & The Gang’s “Jungle Jazz”, Pleasure’s “ Celebrate the Good Things”, The Magic Disco Machine’s "Scratchin’", Bob James’ Take Me To The Mardi Gras” and Original Concept ’s “Pump That Bass”. The Mantronix beat used for “The Power” is the section based on the Meters’ tune. There have been no reports about copyright litigation over this, possibly because Mantronix’ own work is sample based. The famous female chorus "I've got the power" is of course Jocelyn Brown sampled from the accapella of her 1985 single “Love's Gonna Get You". Many years later, Jocelyn was still awaiting financial compensation of this unauthorised use of her vocals: In 2009 it was reported that she (together with Warner Brothers) was planning a lawsuit valued at 11.5 million Euro (at the time: $16 million, £10 million) to gain 50% of the global earnings of the Snap track, which has reportedly appeared in more than 500 adverts and films (think Jim Carey’s “Bruce Almighty”, for example). (Search Youtube for "Jocelyn Brown discusses her voice behind SNAP's record "The Power" on BBC1 TV Interview" for an interview with her.) In their defense, the producers of “The Power” have reportedly claimed that the hook is actually not a sample, but a re-recording by a studio singer. In the video for “The Power” a woman called Jackie Harris (Pittsburgh born Jacqeline Arlissa Harris) lip-syncs to the chorus and any other parts of the female vocals. Harris was just a visual stand-in for the studio singer they had used for various tracks on the Snap album that featured “The Power”: Penny Ford (sister of Sharon Redd). Münzing and Anzilotti had tried to hire Chaka Khan for their Snap! Project. At that time (1989) Chaka shared an apartment in London with Penny and told her: "I don't do rap. You know how to do that stuff, you go do it." Penny continues: “And the rest is history. I went to Germany to sing on some stuff I thought I'd never hear again. I sang for three days, collected a fee, and thought I would never hear of it again […] [I]t was more or less [Münzing and Anzilotti ] picking me up by the scruff of my neck like a pit bull and throwing me in the [recording] booth with a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of champagne and turning the mike on. That's how it happened. (laughing) And I'd just create. I just sang the first thing that came off the top of my head, because I didn't understand that music, and I didn't think I'd ever have to hear it again. […] I was just making [lyrics] up as I go along.” Some of Penny’s ad libs on “The Power” are for example a rerecording of “Some Love” by Chaka Khan. (Check Youtube for Penny’s original interview with songfacts by searching “Why the real Snap! singer wasn't in the video for The Power”.) The judicial progress of Jocelyn Brown’s and Warner Brother’s claims is unknown, indicating that Brown might have settled out of court. More likely she probably had to accept that, being “simply” the singer of the words “I’ve got the power” she had no enforceable copyright to the songwriting credits of Love's Gonna Get You". That credit goes to Toni Colandreo… It is not known whether anyone apart from those involved in the production of the Snap! recording received any royalty payments. As Penny Ford explains: “Meanwhile, the Germans [Münzing, Anzilotti and Logic] signed with Ariola Munich, who were a sub-company of Arista, which was parented by BMG, Bertelsmann, which is a German company. This was before BMG got to America and it was still RCA in America. […] [The songwriter credits are] still being maneuvered. Basically, what happens is you have people who are published by Sony, you have people who are published by Warner, you have people who are published by BMG or Jive, as I was, and then BMG buys Jive, and then BMG and Sony partner, so where are all these people and where is all the paperwork? So then you have to hire what they call a forensics guy. The have to do CSI: The Musical Version. Which costs money. And if you didn't get your money to begin with, how do you hire a forensics guy? So it's kind of a vicious circle, isn't it?” So, on to the rap then: Session singer Penny Ford, who later became a member of Snap! and toured with the group, explains that Münzing and Anzilotti’s production with the Rob G. vocals “…was the first take of it. They had recorded it and nobody knew it was going to be a hit, and it was long before it was released on any major level. It was a work in progress, and basically what they [later] did was just took him [Rob G.] off of it and put another rapper [Turbo B] on it.” She actually does not refer to Rob G.’s vocals as a sample and explicitly states: “Well, there was a rapper named Chill Rob G, and he had recorded it with them. And I guess he [later] decided that he didn't want to make an alliance with them.” This account seems inaccurate and unreliable, which is understandable, considering that she had just gone to Germany and “sang for three days, collected a fee, and thought I would never hear of it again”. She does not mention ever meeting or witnessing Rob G. recording it for Münzing and Anzilotti. So, here is the more believable and widely documented version: US rapper Chill Rob G, born Robert Frazier, was part of the Flavor Unit collective, which included DJ Mark The 45 King, Lakim Shabazz, and Queen Latifah, among others and received lots of airplay support by DJ Chuck Chillout (98.7 Kiss FM and 107.5 WBLS, in New York City) and especially DJ Red Alert (98.7 Kiss FM, NYC). Before he was signed to any record label he recorded two demo tracks with Mark The 45 King which they passed to Red Alert for airplay. At that time the owner of the newly created Wild Pitch record label, Stu Fine, was looking for artists to sign to his label. He heard the show, called Red Alert and got in touch with Rob G. who agreed to sign his first record deal in 1987. After his solo debut “Dope Rhymes / Chillin’” in 1988 Wild Pitch released Chill Rob G’s second 12” record in 1989 called “The Court Is Now In Session / Let The Words Flow”. The record was produced by Mark The 45 King and features Vocal, Dub and Acapella versions of both tracks. In an interview in 2006, Rob G says: “…see, I told Mark we shouldn’t keep putting accapellas! I said it, and it happened! ‘If we keep putting accapellas on these records, somebody’s gonna snatch the accapella and make a whole ‘nother record of it’. That’s exactly what they did!” Münzing and Anzilotti sampled four verses of Chill Rob G’s vocals from the Acapella of “Let The Words Flow” and used them as the rap for their Snap! production (as well as two saxophone / horn riffs for good measure…). Rumour has it that Wild Pitch’s Stu Fine had consented to the sample being used in Germany. Rob G. speculates: “I think Stu Fine probably had a deal under the table with Arista records out in Germany, and he actually licensed the record to them – but they didn’t have a deal for the US. So since the record was doing so big out there, Stu came to me as if he had no idea what was going on and he said ‘Yo Rob, let’s put the song out. I mean it’s doing really well in Germany, we might as well make some money out [of] this’. I mean it was me, it was my stuff, so I said ‘Cool, let’s do it’. So we put the song out” on a Wild Pitch12inch credited to Power Jam Featuring Chill Rob G. and on Rob G.’s debut album “Ride the Rhythm”. Chill Rob G.’s own 12” of “The Power” on Wild Pitch features no background vocals to replace Penny Ford part on the Snap! release. The only female voice heard on the Mark The 45 King production is the Jocelyn Brown sample though the Wild Pitch cassette from 1990 (which I haven’t heard myself) credits “additional vocals” to a certain “Kim Davis”. The notion that Power Jam was another moniker for Münzing and Anzilotti is discredited by the remarks that can be found on the Wild Pitch vinyl and cassette releases: “A Wild Pitch reconstruction of a Logic reconstruction of a Wild Pitch production by DJ Mark, The 45 King.” and “a Wild Pitch reconstruction mixed by Nephie Centeno / original production by DJ Mark, the 45 King”, respectively. Meanwhile, Snap’s “The Power” started to blow up in more and more countries outside Germany. Rob G. recalls: “…and then the next thing you know Arista Records decided that they wanted to put it out over here [in the US] too, but since they couldn’t use me – they couldn’t just put out the same record [Münzing and Anzilotti’s production with the Rob G. sample] – that’s when they got Turbo B to go in the studio […] Turbo B, born Maurice Durron Butler on 30 April 1967, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA used to be a drummer in a heavy-metal band. He enlisted with the US Army in July 1985 and eventually was sent to Friedberg, Germany to join the 60th Ordnance Company in Ray Barracks. After completing his service in the Army he returned to the USA but went back to Germany shortly thereafter to tour with The Fat Boys doing Human Beatboxing. He eventually stayed in Germany and in the late 80s joined the “We wear the Crown“ crew in Frankfurt, another member of which was a certain Moses Pelham. Pelham adopts the stage name “Moses P.” under which he records his solo debut “Twilight Zone” as well as Ay - Ay - Ay (What We Do For Love)” with Rico Sparx, both for Münzing and Anzilotti . When the need arises to release and promote “The Power” internationally Münzing and Anzilotti have to address the problem that Wild Pitch is releasing the Mark The 45 King reconstruction of their song in the USA with Chill Rob G adding newly recorded verses and that they themselves are missing a face for the rapper in the Snap! video needed to promote “The Power” adequately. Looking at their roster and wider circle of potential contributors they identify Turbo B as a suitable replacement just as they find a replacement for Penny Ford in Jackie Harris, Turbo B.’s cousin. The commercial success of their Arista backed single is enormous around the world while the Wild Pitch single in comparison remains an ill promoted independent release. As Rob G. says: “it was Arista records versus Wild Pitch Records, you know what I’m sayin’? So Wild Pitch lost – big time. ‘Cause Arista was global and Wild Pitch was like “Who’s Wild Pitch?” I was still running around, doing what I could do to help our cause, but we just couldn’t beat that money, man.” Over the years this changes in certain circles: Being on a highly regarded label from Hip Hop’s “Golden Age” and being one of a handful of releases by Chill Rob G. some hip hop aficionados hold his version in higher regards. Due to the popularity of Rob’s flow and Mark’s raw(er) production amongst Hip Hop cognoscenti the Power Jam version has been put on a pedestal by some commentators who are concerned about preserving “the true art form”. They dismiss Turbo B.’s rap as a failed attempt to sound similar Rob G. while adding some dubious rhymes of his own lines, like “Maniac brainiac winning the game / I'm the lyrical Jesse James” as well as “so please, stay off my back / Or I will attack and you don't want that” and ironically "copywritten lyrics so they can't be stolen". Turbo B’s commercial success under Münzing’s and Anzilotti’s production is unquestionable. It is interesting though that on what is supposedly the “Official Snap!/Turbo B. Website” his accolades reach the climax in this story from The Universal Zulu Nations 30th Anniversary (October 2003 in Harlem): “Turbo B. was pleasantly surprised when after [the] announcement of him and his accomplishments, he received a standing ovation to the strands of "The Power" by Hip Hop's elite, and AFRIKA BAMBAATAA (in full view of MELLE MEL, one of Turbo's chief inspirations) personally inducted him into The Universal Zulu Nation...” Source for Penny Ford quotes: http://m.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/penny_ford_of_snap_/ Source for Chill Rob G. quotes: http://www.unkut.com/2006/12/chill-rob-g-interview-part-1/ Source for Turbo B quote: http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/universalgroupnj/snapbio.html

- Yemsky via discogs.com January 19, 2012

#power jam #snap!#the power #chill rob g #rap #hip-house #hip house #1990 #oldskool #old skool #pop rap #breaks

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oceanlyricss · 4 years

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Bob Dylan

Robert Allen Zimmerman, 24 May 1941, Duluth, Minnesota, USA. Bob Dylan is without doubt one of the most influential figures in the history of popular music. He is the writer of scores of classic songs and is generally regarded as the man who brought literacy to rock lyrics. The son of the middle-class proprietor of an electrical and furniture store, as a teenager, living in Hibbing, Minnesota, Robert Zimmerman was always intrigued by the romanticism of the outsider. He loved James Dean movies, liked riding motorcycles and wearing biker gear, and listened to R&B music on radio stations transmitting from the south. A keen fan of folk singer Odetta and country legend Hank Williams, he was also captivated by early rock ‘n’ roll. When he began playing music himself, with school friends in bands such as the Golden Chords and Elston Gunn And The Rock Boppers, it was as a clumsy but enthusiastic piano player, and it was at this time that he declared his ambition in a high school yearbook ‘to join Little Richard’. In 1959, he began visiting Minneapolis at weekends and on his graduation from high school, enrolled at the University of Minnesota there, although he spent most of his time hanging around with local musicians in the beatnik coffee-houses of the Dinkytown area. It was in Minneapolis that he first discovered blues music, and he began to incorporate occasional blues tunes into the primarily traditional material that made up his repertoire as an apprentice folk singer. His first album, called simply Bob Dylan, was released in March 1962. It presented a collection of folk and blues standards, often about death and sorrows and the trials of life, songs that had been included in Dylan’s repertoire over the past year or so, performed with gusto and an impressive degree of sensitivity for a 20-year-old. However, it was the inclusion of two of his own compositions, most notably the mature and affectionate tribute, ‘Song To Woody’, that pointed the way forward. Over the next few months, Dylan wrote dozens of songs, many of them ‘topical’ songs. Encouraged by his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, Dylan became interested in, and was subsequently adopted by, the Civil Rights movement. His song ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, written in April 1962, was to be the most famous of his protest songs and was included on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, released in May 1963. In the meantime, Dylan had written and recorded several other noteworthy early political songs, including ‘Masters Of War’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, and, during a nine-month separation from Suze, one of his greatest early love songs, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’. At the end of 1962, he recorded a single, a rock ‘n’ roll song called ‘Mixed Up Confusion’, with backing musicians. The record was quickly deleted, apparently because Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, saw that the way forward for his charge was not as a rocker, but as an earnest acoustic folky. Similarly, tracks that had been recorded for Dylan’s second album with backing musicians were scrapped, although the liner notes which commented on them and identified the players, remained carelessly unrevised. The Freewheelin’ record was so long in coming that four original song choices were substituted at the last moment by other, more newly composed songs. One of the tracks omitted was ‘Talking John Birch Society Blues’, which Dylan had been controversially banned from singing on the Ed Sullivan Show in May 1963. The attendant publicity did no harm whatsoever to Dylan’s stature as a radical new ‘anti-establishment’ voice. At the same time, Grossman’s shrewd decision to have a somewhat saccharine version of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ recorded by Peter, Paul And Mary also paid off, the record becoming a huge hit in the USA, and bringing Dylan’s name to national, and indeed international, attention for the first time. Here, then, was Bob Dylan the poet, and here the arguments about the relative merits of high art and popular art began. The years 1964-66 were unquestionably Dylan’s greatest as a writer and as a performer; they were also his most influential years and many artists today still cite the three albums that followed, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited from 1965 and 1966’s double album Blonde On Blonde as being seminal in their own musical development. Another Side Of Bob Dylan was to be Dylan’s last solo acoustic album for almost 30 years. Intrigued by what the Beatles were doing - he had visited London again to play one concert at the Royal Festival Hall in May 1964 - and particularly excited by the Animals’ ‘folk rock’ cover version of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’, a track Dylan himself had included on his debut album, he and producer Tom Wilson fleshed out some of the Bringing It All Back Home songs with rock ‘n’ roll backings - the proto-rap ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and ‘Maggie’s Farm’, for instance. However, the song that was perhaps Dylan’s most important mid-60s composition, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, was written immediately after the final series of acoustic concerts played in the UK in April and May 1965, and commemorated in D.A. Pennebaker’s famous documentary film, Don’t Look Back. Bob Dylan said that he began to write ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ having decided to ‘quit’ singing and playing. The lyrics to the song emerged from six pages of stream-of-consciousness ‘vomit’; the sound of the single emerged from the immortal combination of Chicago blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield, bass player Harvey Brooks and fledgling organ-player Al Kooper. ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was producer Tom Wilson’s last, and greatest, Dylan track. At six minutes, it destroyed the formula of the sub-three-minute single forever. It was a huge hit and was played, alongside the Byrds’ equally momentous version of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, all over the radio in the summer of 1965. Consequently, it should have come as no surprise to those who went to see Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25 that he was now a fully-fledged folk rocker; but, apparently, it did. Backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Dylan’s supposedly ‘new sound’ - although admittedly it was his first concert with supporting musicians - was met with a storm of bewilderment and hostility. Stories vary as to how much Dylan was booed that night, and why, but Dylan seemed to find the experience both exhilarating and liberating. If, after the UK tour, he had felt ready to quit, now he was ready to start again, to tour the world with a band and to take his music, and himself, to the farthest reaches of experience, just like Rimbaud. Bob Dylan’s discovery of the Hawks, a Canadian group who had been playing roadhouses and funky bars until introductions were made via John Hammond Jnr. and Albert Grossman’s secretary Mary Martin, was one of those pieces of alchemical magic that happen hermetically. The Hawks, later to become the Band, comprised Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Levon Helm. Bob Dylan’s songs and the Hawks’ sound were made for each other. After a couple of stormy warm-up gigs, they took to the road in the autumn of 1965 and travelled through the USA, then, via Hawaii, to Australia, on to Scandinavia and finally to Britain, with a hop over to Paris for a birthday show, in May 1966. Bob Dylan was deranged and dynamic, the group wild and mercurial. Their set, the second half of a show that opened with Dylan playing acoustically to a reverentially silent house, was provocative and perplexing for many. It was certainly the loudest thing anyone had ever heard, and, almost inevitably, the electric set was greeted with anger and dismay. Drummer LevonHelm was so disheartened by the ferocity of the booing that he quit before the turn of the year - drummers Sandy Konikoff and Mickey Jones completed the tour. The most infamous date took place at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England; known erroneously as the ‘Royal Albert Hall’ concert for many years, the recording was officially released in 1998. After an angry folk fan shouts out ‘Judas’ from the audience, Dylan responds ‘I don’t believe you! You’re a liar!’ and turns round to the band and instructs them to ‘play fuckin’ loud!’ as they begin playing the last song of the night, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. Offstage, Dylan was spinning out of control, not sleeping, not eating, looking wasted and apparently heading rapidly for rock ‘n’ roll oblivion. Pennebaker again filmed the tour, this time in Dylan’s employ. The ‘official’ record of the tour was the rarely seen Eat The Document, a film originally commissioned by ABC-TV. The unofficial version compiled by Pennebaker himself was You Know Something Is Happening. ‘What was happening, ’ says Pennebaker, ‘was drugs...’. Bob Dylan was physically exhausted when he returned to America in June 1966, but had to complete the film and finish Tarantula, the book that was overdue for Macmillan. He owed Columbia two more albums before his contract expired, and was booked to play a series of concerts right up to the end of the year in increasingly bigger venues, including Shea Stadium. Then, on 29 July 1966, Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Bearsville, near Woodstock, upper New York State. Was there really a motorcycle accident? Dylan still claims there was. He hurt his neck and had treatment. More importantly, the accident allowed him to shrug off the responsibilities that had been lined up on his behalf by manager Grossman. By now, the relationship between Dylan and Grossman was less than cordial and litigation between the two of them was ongoing until Grossman’s death almost 20 years later. A US tour followed. Tickets were sold by post and attracted six million applications. Everybody who went to the shows agreed that Dylan and the Band were fantastic. The recorded evidence, Before The Flood, also released by Asylum, certainly oozes energy, but lacks subtlety: Dylan seemed to be trying too hard, pushing everything too fast. It is good, but not that good. What is that good, indisputably and incontestably, is Blood On The Tracks. Originally recorded (for Columbia, no hard feelings, etc.) in late 1974, Dylan substituted some of the songs with versions reworked in Minnesota over the Christmas period. They were his finest compositions since the Blonde On Blonde material. ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, ‘Idiot Wind’, ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’, ‘Shelter From The Storm’, ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’, ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’... one masterpiece followed another. It was not so much a divorce album as a separation album (Dylan’s divorce from Sara wasn’t completed until 1977), but it was certainly a diary of despair. ‘Pain sure brings out the best in people, doesn’t it?’ Dylan sang in 1966’s ‘She’s Your Lover Now’; Blood On The Tracks gave the lie to all those who had argued that Dylan was a spent force. After three turbulent years, it was hardly surprising that Dylan dropped from sight for most of 1982, but the following year he was back in the studio, again with Mark Knopfler, having, it was subsequently established, written a prolific amount of new material. The album that resulted, Infidels, released in October 1983, received a mixed reception. Some songs were strong - ‘I&I’ and ‘Jokerman’ among them - others relatively unimpressive. Bob Dylan entered the video age by making promos for ‘Sweetheart Like You’ and ‘Jokerman’, but did not seem too excited about it. Rumours persisted about his having abandoned Christianity and re-embraced the Jewish faith. His name began to be linked with the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcher sect: the inner sleeve of Infidels pictured him touching the soil of a hill above Jerusalem, while ‘Neighbourhood Bully’ was a fairly transparent defence of Israel’s policies towards its neighbours. Dylan, as ever, refused to confirm or deny his state of spiritual health. In 1984, he appeared live on the David Letterman television show, giving one of his most extraordinary and thrilling performances, backed by a ragged and raw Los Angeles trio, the Cruzados. However, when, a few weeks later, he played his first concert tour for three years, visiting Europe on a package with Santana put together by impresario Bill Graham, Dylan’s band was disappointingly longer in the tooth (with Mick Taylor on guitar and Ian McLagan on organ). An unimpressive souvenir album, Real Live, released in December, was most notable for its inclusion of a substantially rewritten version of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. The following year opened with Bob Dylan contributing to the ‘We Are The World’ USA For Africa single, and in the summer, after the release of Empire Burlesque, a patchy record somewhat over-produced by remix specialist Arthur Baker but boasting the beautiful acoustic closer ‘Dark Eyes’, he was the top-of-the-bill act at Live Aid. Initially, Dylan had been supposed to play with a band, but then was asked to perform solo, to aid the logistics of the grande finale. In the event, he recruited Ron Wood and Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones to help him out. The results were disastrous. Hopelessly under-rehearsed and hampered both by the lack of monitors and the racket of the stage being set up behind the curtain in front of which they were performing, the trio were a shambles. Dylan, it was muttered later, must have been the only artist to appear in front of a billion television viewers worldwide and end up with fewer fans than he had when he started. Matters were redeemed a little, however, at the Farm Aid concert in September, an event set up as a result of Dylan’s somewhat gauche onstage ‘charity begins at home’ appeal at Live Aid. Backed by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, it was immediately apparent that Bob Dylan had found his most sympathetic and adaptable backing band since the Hawks. The year ended positively, too, with the release of the five album (3-CD) retrospective feast, Biograph, featuring many previously unreleased tracks. The collaboration with Tom Petty having gone so well, it was decided that the partnership should continue, and a tour was announced to begin in New Zealand, Australia and Japan with more shows to follow in the USA. It was the summer’s hottest ticket and the Petty/Dylan partnership thrived for a further year with a European tour, the first shows of which saw Dylan appearing in Israel for the very first time. Unfortunately, the opening show in Tel Aviv was not well received either by the audience or by the press, whose reviews were vitriolic. The second show in Jerusalem was altogether more enjoyable, until the explosion of the PA system brought the concert to an abrupt end. Between the two tours, Dylan appeared in his second feature, the Richard Marquand-directed Hearts Of Fire, made in England and Canada and co-starring Rupert Everett and Fiona Flanagan. Dylan played Billy Parker, a washed-up one-time superstar who in all but one respect (the washed-up bit) bore an uncanny resemblance to Dylan himself. Despite Dylan’s best efforts - and he was probably the best thing in the movie - the film was a clunker. Hoots of derision marred the premiere in October 1987 and its theatrical release was limited to one week in the UK. The poor movie was preceded by a poor album, Knocked Out Loaded, which only had the epic song ‘Brownsville Girl’, co-written with playwright Sam Shepard, to recommend it. Increasingly, it appeared that Dylan’s best attentions were being devoted to his concerts. The shows with Tom Petty had been triumphant. Dylan also shared the bill with the Grateful Dead at several stadium venues, and learned from the experience. He envied their ability to keep on playing shows year in, year out, commanding a following wherever and whenever they played. He liked their two drummers and also admired the way they varied their set each night, playing different songs as and when they felt like it. These peculiarly Deadian aspects of live performance were soon incorporated into Dylan’s own concert philosophy. Down In The Groove, an album of mostly cover versions of old songs, was released in the same month, June 1988, as Dylan played the first shows of what was to become known as the Never-Ending Tour. Backed by a three-piece band led by G.E. Smith, Dylan had stripped down his sound and his songs and was, once again, seemingly re-energized. His appetite for work had never been greater, and this same year he found himself in the unlikely company of George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison as one of the Traveling Wilburys, a jokey rock band assembled on a whim in the spring. Their album, Volume 1, on which Dylan’s voice was as prominent as anyone’s, was, unexpectedly, a huge commercial success. With his Traveling Wilbury star in the ascendancy, and fresh from his induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Dylan’s next album emerged as his best of the 80s. Oh Mercy, recorded informally in New Orleans and idiosyncratically produced by Daniel Lanois, sounded fresh and good, and the songs were as strong a bunch as Dylan had come up with in a long time. However, for reasons best known only to himself, it transpired from bootleg tapes that Dylan had been excluding many excellent songs from the albums he had been releasing in the 80s, most notably the masterpiece ‘Blind Willie McTell’, which was recorded for, but not included on, Infidels. Indeed, despite the evident quality of the songs on Oh Mercy - ‘Shooting Star’ and ‘Most Of The Time’ were, for once, both songs of experience, evidence of a maturity that many fans had long been wishing for in Dylan’s songwriting - it turned out that Dylan was still holding back. The crashing, turbulent ‘Series Of Dreams’ and the powerful ‘Dignity’ were products of the Lanois sessions, but were not used on Oh Mercy. Instead, both later appeared on compilation albums. Not without its merits (the title track and ‘God Knows’ are still live staples, while ‘Born In Time’ is a particularly emotional love song), the nursery-rhyme-style Under The Red Sky, released in September 1990, was for most a relative, probably inevitable, disappointment, as was the Roy-Orbison-bereft Traveling Wilburys follow-up, Volume 3. However, the touring continued, with Dylan’s performances becoming increasingly erratic - sometimes splendid, often shambolic. It was one thing being spontaneous and improvisatory, but it was quite another being slapdash and incompetent. Dylan could be either, and was sometimes both. His audiences began to dwindle, his reputation started to suffer. The three-volume collection of out-takes and rarities, The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 (Rare And Unreleased) 1961-1991, redeemed him somewhat, as did the 30th Anniversary Celebration concert in Madison Square Garden in 1992, in which some of rock music’s greats and not-so-greats paid tribute to Dylan’s past achievements as a songwriter. The previous year he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammies. There was, however, precious little present songwriting to celebrate. Both Good As I Been To You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), although admirable, were collections of old folk and blues material, performed, for the first time since 1964, solo and acoustically. Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994) threw together a clump of old non-hits and Unplugged (1995) saw Dylan revisiting a set of predominantly 60s songs in desultory fashion. Even the most ambitious CD-ROM so far, Highway 61 Interactive, while seemingly pointing to a Dylan-full future, wallowed nostalgically in, and was marketed on the strength of, past glories. Although Dylan’s live performances became more coherent and controlled, his choice of material grew less imaginative through 1994, while many shows in 1995, which saw continued improvement in form, comprised almost entirely of songs written some 30 years earlier. In 1997 it was rumoured that Dylan was knocking on heaven’s door. Although he had suffered a serious inflammation of the heart muscles (pericarditis brought on by histoplasmosis) he was discharged from hospital after a short time, eliciting his priceless quote to the press: ‘I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon’. It was time, perhaps, for doubters to begin to consign Dylan to the pages of history. However, as time has often proved, you can never write off Bob Dylan. He is a devil for hopping out of the hearse on the way to the cemetery. The Lanois-produced Time Out Of Mind was a dark and sombre recording, with Dylan reflecting over lost love and hints of death. It was his best work for many years, and although his voice had continued to decline, the strength of melody and lyric were remarkable. One outstanding example of Dylan’s continuing ability to write a tender love song was ‘To Make You Feel My Love’. Both Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood recorded excellent versions for the movie soundtrack Hope Floats in 1998 (Brooks took it to number 1 on the US country chart). That same year, the official release of the legendary bootleg, recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966, received a staggering amount of praise from the press. This was completely justified because the concert of familiar songs reminded and confirmed his towering importance as a songwriter. Dylan’s first recording of the new millennium was ‘Things Have Changed’, the Grammy-award winning main and end-title theme for Curtis Hanson’s movie Wonder Boys. His new studio album Love And Theft received generous praise, far in excess of its overall quality. Only ‘Mississippi’ could be classed as a great Dylan song. The quality of the material was thrown into sharp relief by two further superb releases in the Bootleg Series, a compilation of live recordings of the Rolling Thunder Revue from 1975, and a 1964 concert from the Philharmonic Hall in New York. Dylan, meanwhile, was concentrating on completing the script for his next venture into the world of film. The star-studded Masked And Anonymous was greeted with resounding indifference when it was first shown in 2003, with reviewers either puzzled or openly repulsed by the cryptic screenplay. Dylan fans took another view; it was weird but brilliant. A various artists soundtrack album, featuring several radical reworkings of classic Dylan material, was released at the same time. The following October Dylan published the first volume of his memoirs, Chronicles: Volume One. While retaining hints of his trademark opacity, Dylan’s prose evinced a clarity and generosity absent from his previous written output. In September 2005, the Martin Scorsese television film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan was broadcast on public television channels in the USA and UK. This remarkable film focused on Dylan’s life and music from 1961-66. Dylan embarked on a series of radio broadcasts in 2006 when he presented Theme Time Radio Hour, another astonishing addition to his talent portfolio. Few would have thought that he could have carried it off with such warmth and devilish humour, but the shows, together with some exceptional music, became an unmissable weekly event for Dylan fans. The musical world welcomed Dylan’s 2006 release Modern Times with open arms. The reviews were remarkable and fully justified in their praise for what was his greatest work since Oh Mercy. This was no gratuitous coincidence as the album hit the US chart at number 1, making Dylan the oldest person ever to do so. After almost 50 years of writing lyrics he still has something to say; now with a weathered tone and dry humour, but interesting and profound nonetheless. His standing was confirmed the following year when he was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize, the first rock ‘n’ roll artist to achieve such status. Whatever the quality of his musical output will be in the future (and at present the future looks good), Bob Dylan is unquestionably the greatest musical poet of the twentieth century and certainly one of the most important figures in the entire history of popular music. Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze. Read the full article

#america #BobDylan #bobdylanlyrics #minnesota #oceanlyric #rock

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meiizumi · 5 years

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Castle of Shikigami: An informal rant nobody asked for about my most obscure obsession to date

STOP i spent like 2 days writing this post and im only posting it on tumblr because it’s the one website i’m a member of that can hold the most text. i wanted to infodump somewhere...... read this to learn something i guess (´･ω･`)

Bad voice acting is the Peak of comedy to me, and while I was looking for something to laugh at one day, I found this game called Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2. The US version of the game's dialogue is rife with machine translated text that makes no sense, and awkward voice acting to boot. They even have voice actors saying the wrong lines, voice actors speaking implied commands, and a few voice lines are left in Japanese. Apparently, Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog's current voice actor) was in this game but I don't think he's even credited?! I think I know which character he voiced but I’m not exactly sure.

The history behind this game’s localization is REALLY weird. Castle of Shikigami/Shikigami no Shiro was originally an arcade bullet hell shoot em up game. The series was created by Alfa System and it was one of Alfa System’s main IPs. There are three main shmup installments and a text adventure game for the PS2, Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku. Nanayozuki was practically fanservice for whatever number of CoS fans there were back then. Each main game in the series was originally an arcade cabinet, but they were all ported to PC and home consoles. In CoS 2′s case, it came out on the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast, but only the PS2 version got localized. The western publisher, XS Games specializes in publishing quality budget titles such as “Bass Pro Shops: The Strike” for the Wii. I theorize they didn’t care too much about the actual content of CoS 2 and were more focused on selling a game quickly for a low price, so they just machine translated it and adjusted a few things. If you’re wondering if Castle of Shikigami 1 was also translated this badly, the answer is No. XS Games instead removed all the dialogue from the western release of CoS 1, and released it with the title “Mobile Light Force 2″.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Mobile Light Force TWO’ if Castle of Shikigami 1 is the first game in the series?” If you want to know what Mobile Light Force 1 was, it’s GUNBIRD; another shmup game, but by a completely different developer than Castle of Shikigami. I don’t know why they did that. What really kills me though is that both MLF 1 and 2 use the same boxart, which is COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual contents of either game. AFJQHJFOKLJFDS look at this

There’s more hilarity behind Mobile Light Force that isn’t hard to find so you can search that up if you’re interested. But thankfully, Castle of Shikigami 3's Wii edition got more of a proper localization by Aksys Games.

Now I would bluntly say something like “stan castle of shikigami” but:

1. This series’ lore is insanely convoluted. It’s an essential part of this expansive fictional universe referred to as “Mumei Sekaikan” (I don’t know what this translates to in English) where there’s like, 7 different parallel worlds. There’s more obscure ass games and manga that are tied to this universe, and I think there’s even a tabletop RPG made based off it. Have you heard of “Gunparade March”? Most likely you haven’t; it’s an obscure video game made by Alfa System that also got adapted into an anime, and I feel it can be described as Mechas x Persona. One of the characters in CoS 2 is just one of the GPM characters going undercover to find her senpai who traveled to the CoS world. Or something like that. The 7-world universe isn’t explicitly talked about in the game but they make so many references to it without defining anything that it’s like you Must know about it. There is NO documentation in English about the Mumei Sekaikan I could find on the internet, although there is a wiki in Japanese where I got a ton of knowledge from (GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND) I feel like I might be THE person in the United States who has the most knowledge on the Mumei Sekaikan, and I could go on another tangent talking about what I know so far (and who this one specific dude Shibamura Yuuri is) but I won’t.

2. The writing isn’t excellent and can be pretty Unwoke ™; the first game came out in 2001 and the third game came out in 2005 if that gives you a sense on what era these writers were in. As far as the games dialogue goes, the characters appear kind of flat. CoS 1 and 2 Kotaro (i refuse to use the official “Kohtaro”) is stupid and driven by JUSTICE to a point where it’s annoying. I can’t tell if Hyuga is trying to be a Ladies Man in CoS 2 and 3. Kim, a religious tae kwon do instructor, spends CoS 2 thinking about how he should atone for his sins, then he turns himself into jail at the end. Sayo’s backstory is that she was a shrine maiden raised as a “human weapon” to have no emotions and her only goal in life was to kill god and then die, something like that. However, after CoS 1, she gets a crush on Kotaro because he actually treats her like a human and Of course that’s what you’d expect from the main teen girl and boy in the series. In CoS 3, Sayo's character is mostly played out to be a major tsundere for Kotaro even though surprisingly HIS character in this game changed a ton compared to 1 and 2 (he had to kill an illusion of his older brother, who he learned actually died earlier, and now he has to kill an illusion of his childhood sweetheart... damb that shit sucks :/). He’s still stupid though

There’s a gag in CoS 2 that I can’t clearly remember where it’s like, Niigi makes Sayo and Fumiko, who are both romantically interested in Kotaro, think that he’s only into little girls? Meanwhile, Fumiko’s magic goes wrong and her appearance turns to that of a child though in response she’s like “hee hee maybe Kotaro will like this”. basically more On-Brand early 2000′s anime unwokeness than average. Speaking of Fumiko, she’s a 400+ year old militaristic witch who constantly teases Kotaro (who’s like 16 or 17) and she wants to marry him for his magical potential since he’s like one of the candidates for becoming God??? From the official CoS 3 character descriptions, “Her hobby is to steal the men from other women. Her second hobby is trampling upon people.” She canonically stole her stepmother’s husband from her stepmother (the 3rd boss of CoS 3). I don’t get how that shit would have worked

3. The game itself is HARD af but to be fair I’m a scrub gamer. I can’t get past stage 3 on easy difficulty without continuing. Yes i bought CoS 1 on Steam, Yes it has a port on steam i feel like i should have mentioned this earlier

4. Besides CoS 1 having a port on Steam, CoS 2 and 3 might be hard to obtain legally. The poorly translated CoS 2 was apparently super cheap back then, but since it’s an old game, its value might’ve increased. When I tried looking up prices for English CoS 3, all the listings were like at least $40 and being broke I wouldn’t want to spend more than $29 for a Wii game in 2019... honestly I just emulated CoS 2. shout out to PCSX2

Last month I was desperate, bored enough, and deep enough in the Shikigami rabbit hole that I tried to find the manga based off of it online. The CoS manga only tells the events of the first two games so I still don’t really get anything about CoS 3, like who Mihee, Batu, and Emilio are supposed to be. However, the plot events also differ. For example, Roger Sasuke exists as a character in CoS 3 but in the manga he literally Dies. There’s 11 total volumes of this; 3 volumes dedicated to CoS 1 and the latter 8 (the “Twisted Castle arc”) dedicated to CoS 2. Only the very first 3 chapters were scanlated to English all the way in 2011. Fortunately, I did find the entire manga uploaded though............... in CHINESE. So you know what I did? I “read” the entire thing using my phone’s Google Translate OCR app to take pictures of each page and comprehend the translations. Of course I still don’t understand CRAP because of the Mumei Sekaikan jargon + machine translation but I understood enough to get emotionally attached to some of the characters. I wish I hadn’t. At least through the manga I learned that the characters DO have some depth and pre-established relationships. For instance, the reason why Roger Sasuke became a ninja is because when he first landed in Japan as a kid, he was getting bullied or something and he didn’t know Japanese then Kotaro saw this and told the bullies to stop. Then after Roy /sorry i mean Roger learned that he was set to home-stay with the Kugas in the first place, he decided to dedicate his life to Japan in order to protect Kotaro back. I think. DO U SEE HOW ABSURD THIS SHIT IS Anyway Nanayozuki takes place between the second and third games and sets things up for CoS 3. There’s a full playthrough of it uploaded to YouTube and I think it contains a lot of juicy lore, but it’s just too much to go over with Shitty Google Translate OCR. There’s also Shikigami no Shiro novels which apparently contain the most backstory, but I have a 0% chance of finding these online for free. Not to mention that these would ALSO be too much effort to Google Translate.

in conclusion: You don’t HAVE to play Castle of Shikigami. Like, I’m not gonna recommend it for the content, but if you love shmups and are looking for a shmup game you haven’t heard of then I will recommend it for the gameplay (old touhou mutuals assemble theres a POWER-UP-BY-GRAZE MECHANIC). I’ve counted like 4 total fans outside of Japan that like this series for the story, and I don’t think that number is going to increase because I doubt CoS 2 will ever get retranslated and ported. I just want you to know that this series exists and that there’s a ton of wacky shit behind it besides the bad Castle Shikigami 2 dub. also if someone knows enough japanese or chinese and has an INKLING of interest in this series umm talk to me and help me decipher stuff

I‘m kinda sad that the series is pretty much Dead though. This is the most recent piece of official Castle of Shikigami art I could find, and this was for the 2018 New Year. The next most recent piece of official CoS art I found was also drawn by the character designer Sonoda Miku all the way in January 2008, commemorating the end of the CoS manga serialization. Alfa System released a spiritual sequel to Castle of Shikigami on the Japanese Switch eShop called Sisters Royale, with character designs I think are still by Sonoda. By “spiritual sequel” I mean that it has some of the EXACT same shot types as CoS and the same mechanic where grazing bullets increases your power and score. This is the closest we’ll get to a Shikigami no Shiro 4. I wonder what the business decision behind that game was but it actually looks like fun and I want to play it so OK Go off i guess

#bees are good #castle of shikigami #shikigami no shiro #video games #i feel: DISEASED

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mnranger5 · 5 years

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Goodbye Ranger 170VS, 4/29/19

Early in the summer of 2013, I got the boat itch. I was 34 years old, and had never owed a boat. I didn’t know the first thing about owning a boat, maintaining a boat or trailering a boat from one lake to the next. One thing I did know: I loved to fish. So naturally, a boat was what I needed to fuel my fishing passion.

I started scouring Craigslist, iBoats.com and boattrader.com. I knew I wanted a Ranger, small enough to fit in the garage, and new enough where I hopefully wouldn’t have to worry about fixing things and maintenance. I looked at many local boats, including one with my mom! It was a beautiful candy apple red, 21’ Ranger, located in Farmington. It was a magnificent boat, but it was WAY too much boat for me. Plus, I had my heart set on a black boat. I had seen sparkly black bass boats on the lake, and I was sold on the look. I quickly found out that small black bass boats proved difficult to find in MN.

I expanded my search to out of state. That’s when I found it. A seller from Indianapolis had a 2009 Ranger 170VS. It was only 17’ in length and would fit (snugly) in the garage. I contacted the seller immediately to inquire if the boat was still for sale. The boat had been on the market for some time and he had recently reduced the price from $20,000 down to $18,000. He was motivated. The boat was 3.5 years old, but was virtually brand new. There was only 11 hours on the 4-stroke Mercury. Within a couple of days, I had struck a deal to buy the boat for $16,000, and made arrangements with the seller to pick the boat up in Lafayette, Indiana. On Saturday, June 22, 2013, I picked the Ranger up. I was a boat owner for the first time in my life.

The first time the grils saw the boat they were just as excited as me. Get this, they even asked to sleep in the boat (in the garage) that night. Who was I to say no? Pajamas: check. Dolls: check. Books: check. Ready for a slumber party!

As excited as I was to be a boat owner, I had no idea how to actually get the boat from the trailer, and into the water. I met up with my buddy Jesse at Lake Byllesby in Cannon Falls.

Jesse showed me all the in’s and out’s of my boat. He also told me to start wearing a hat because the wind made my hair look completely ridiculous.

But most importantly, he showed me how to launch and load the boat from the boat ramp.

I distinctly recall the first time I tried to put the boat in the water by myself. After talking with one of the guys from a local bass club, I identified Circle Lake as good first lake to practice launching/loading the boat without a crowd watching me. So Dyan and I headed over to Circle Lake on 6/25/13 for an afternoon of fun. Dumping the boat in the lake proved to be a piece of cake. And fishing was successful too. This was the first fish I caught in my new Ranger!

Loading it up for the day proved a bit more daunting. But hey, it was the first time doing it by myself.

Five days and two lakes later, Dyan and I successfully launched and loaded the boat in front of the big crowds at Crystal Lake. The launch was crazy hectic with weekend warriors, but we pretty much looked like pro’s. I also caught my first Tiger Musky that day!

2013 had some really fun adventures as well.

I took the boat out to Bismarck, ND to visit Mom and Dad, and we dropped the Ranger in Nelson Lake, a power plant lake!

The early morning steam rising off the 85 degree water made this an eerie yet cool place to fish with Dad. Dad even took home the prize for biggest fish of the day. The only time he ever won that award in the Ranger!

Dyan and I also spent an entire weekend in the Ranger roaming Lake Pepin and the deserted sand bars.

Virtually the entire summer of 2013 was spent on the water. Every free weekend was Dyan and me trailering the boat from one lake to another. It never got old. Why did it take so long to buy a boat?

In July, Aaron and I fished our first bass tournament together. Not gonna lie, I was super nervous. Not only did I have the smallest boat, smallest motor and least amount of fishing experience, we had to launch and load the boat in front of all these semi-pros.

To this date, I have yet to put my finger on what caused our success other than dumb luck, but Aaron and I found a school of 3 to 4 pound bass that bit on just about every cast. We ended up with a sack of fish weighing about 21 pounds and won the tournament!

In an August tournament, Jesse and I won Big Bass in the Ranger with this 4 pound lunker. In the process of landing the fish, my super high quality (Wal-Mart special) landing net broke and landed somewhere in the bottom of Cedar Lake!

The money we earned on this fish went toward buying a real net from Cabelas.

2014 was just as busy on the water as 2013.

The kids got into boating as we had them fishing, tubing and swimming in the lake.

On fishing opener in 2014 at Prior Lake, I got my first taste of bed fishing when I plucked Miss Piggy off her spawning bed. What a thrill. I fished for this big girl for nearly an hour before she finally opened that big mouth and chomped on my worm.

It got to the point that we absolutely loved taking the boat to new lakes. Each one was unique, and more of an experience because each one seemed to involve it’s own adventure. Here is a list of all 32 bodies of water we’ve had the Ranger 170VS on:

Crystal Lake (Burnsville, MN)

Marion Lake (Lakeville, MN)

Lake Byllesby (Cannon Falls, MN)

Lake Minnetonka (Wayzata, MN)

Prior Lake (Prior Lake, MN)

Lake O’Dowd (Prior Lake, MN)

Spring Lake (Prior Lake, MN)

St. Croix River

Minnesota River

Mississippi River

Missouri River (Bismark, ND)

Nelson Lake (Center, ND)

Sweet Briar Lake (New Salem, ND)

Lake Auburn (Victoria, MN)

Balsam Lake (Balsam Lake, WI)

Lake Pepin (Lake City, MN)

Orchard Lake (Lakeville, MN)

Lake Mille Lacs (Onomia, MN)

Cedar Lake (Aitkin, MN)

Cedar Lake (New Prague, MN)

Lake Mazaska (Faribault, MN)

Shields Lake (Faribault, MN)

Cedar Lake (Faribault, MN)

Sakatah Lake (Waterville, MN)

Tetonka Lake (Waterville, MN)

Lake Jefferson (Cleveland, MN)

Lake of the Ozarks (Eldon, MO)

Lake Okoboji (Arnold’s Park, IA)

Mike Minnewashta (Arnold’s Park, IA)

Lower Gar Lake (Arnold’s Park, IA)

South Lindstrom Lake (Lindstrom, MN)

Chisago Lake (Lindstrom, MN)

Probably my favorite adventure ever on the Ranger was in August of 2014. Dyan and I took a 101 mile, 9 hour round trip excursion from Eagan to the Afton via three waterways - the Minnesota River to the Mississippi River to the St. Croix River.

The experience took us underneath the flightpath of MSP, gave us a picturview window of downtown St. Paul and showed us real quick how out of our element we were when we had to navigate Lock & Dam #2, in Hastings, MN.

By 2016, the Ranger was starting to push past her prime. I (who are we kidding? The marina) had to start doing more than just preventative maintenance. I had just had knee surgery in the spring of 2016. I was antsy to get out of the house after being cooped up rehabilitating. I talked Dyan into braving the strong currents of the Mississippi River with me.

We fished all day avoiding catastrophe (due to the current and me almost falling in the river because of my bum knee) on a couple of occasions. While on the river, I had an unfortunate run-in with a gigantic submerged tree and the trolling motor. Let’s just say, that was the beginning of the end for that motor.

Later on that summer, Aaron and I had to forfeit a tournament due to the trolling motor and battery issues. Over the next week I watched youtube videos on fixing the cable drive of the MotorGuide, which temporarily worked. Just long enough for me to catch this giant 5.27lb bass on Lake Marion. My personal best to date.

But the trolling motor continued to give me fits the rest of the summer.

By 2017, we had much bigger issues than the trolling motor. On our way to the Ozarks, we nearly lost a trailer wheel when the bearing overheated due to some heavy duty braided fishing line that somehow worked its way into the bearings.

This incident caused me to do an entire refurbishment of the the trailer prior to the 2018 season. I (the marina) put on new bearings, hubs, tires, as well as updated the trailer with full LED lights. While in the shop, the motor had an issue with the fuel float. I won't pretend to know what it was, but it was sure expensive to diagnose and repair.

Also in 2018, I finally got fed up and replaced the trolling motor. The days of not knowing which direction the boat was going to go when giving the trolling motor some juice were finally behind me. And the money pit continued as soon as Aaron and I got the boat on the water for the first time and realized the cranking battery was dead. By May of 2018, I had spent more money YTD on the Ranger than I had in all the years combined since 2013.

And 2019 started off with more fixes. This time, I spent nearly $300 having the shop diagnose what was thought to be a bad fuel filter or faulty fuel pump. Neither were the correct diagnosis. The issue ended up being cheap spark plugs.

The Ranger is a great boat and has been almost like a companion to me over the years. She was always ready to hit the water as soon as I said, “Let’s go!” This blog would not exist if I never would have bought her. The original premise of this blog was to document my experiences on the water in that little boat. Obviously, this blog has come a long way since then, but the Ranger deserves the credit for encouraging me to write!

But now, she’s getting older and doesn’t fit our growing family. In the past two years, we have not gone out as a family of 7 because the boat just isn't big enough for us.

Although we made it work when the kids were younger, I am not sure that boat ever was big enough for all of us. Hell, I am not sure there is a boat in existence that is big enough for all of us! But we didn’t let the size deter us from having some memorable trips to the lake.

And that brings us to where we are today. Given the problems I had been having with the Ranger, I was ready to sell. I had contacted a couple of local marinas and they were willing to give me between $9,000 and $11,000 if I traded it in on a new boat. Not too bad of a value considering I paid $16,000 for it, and owned it for 7 years. So I decided to list it on Facebook Marketplace for $17,000. I knew I was way overvaluing it, but hey, it gave me room to negotiate. I was hoping to get $12-13K.

The boat was listed for 5 days. In that time, I had 12 people make serious inquiries, with 3 setting up appointments to test drive it. I must admit, I was a bit relieved. Relieved in that despite the issues I had with the boat people were still interested in this 10 year old vessel.

Then a guy named Greg messaged me. He was very interested in the boat. From the moment Greg reached out to me, he was hook, line and sinker. Greg even went as far as telling me to cancel the test drive appointments because he was planning to bring COLD HARD CASH when he stopped by to buy it. There are some flakey buyers out there in cyber space, so I tried my best to not get my hopes up. I was anticipating Greg to go silent at some point and never to be heard from again. But that wasn't the case. For 3 straight days Greg messaged me over and over asking questions about the boat. I felt like many of my responses to home were disappointing such as, “No Greg, the trolling motor is not linked the the Humminbirds.” “No Greg, the trolling motor is not Minn Kota.” “No Greg, the rod box doesn’t fit a rod over 7′.” I felt like all my responses were going to deter Greg from buying the boat, but every time his counter was, “I can work with that.”

As it turned out, Greg was a real guy and not just some cyber punk wasting my time. Greg showed up at my house and looked the boat over before signing paperwork that transferred the title over to him. And the craziest part about it, he really did bring $17,000 in cold, hard, cash. Fat stacks of $100 dollar bills!

It was a surreal moment. The boat was no longer mine. However, I just received $1,000 more for the Ranger than what I originally paid for it! How is that possible? Quite the return on my investment!

Despite the great deal I had just made on the boat, it was painful to watch my baby pull out of the driveway destined for a new home. I watched the Ranger head down the street, knowing I’d never see her again. Only when those brand new LED tail lights were out of sight did I finally head inside. I was no longer a boat owner. But, I now had some discretionary money burning a hole in my pocket... What shall we buy Dyan?

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beatlebob64 · 7 years

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Q&A with Paul McCartney about the Sgt. Pepper album that took place at Abbey Road’s Studio Two – the very room where the album was recorded! PaulMcCartey.com [PMc]: Do you remember coming up with the cover and band concepts? We understand that the original concept came from you doing a doodle on a plane based around an Edwardian military band? Paul McCartney [PM]: Yeah! Well, what really happened was I was coming back from a trip abroad with our roadie, Mal Evans, just the two of us together on the plane. And we were eating and he mumbled to me, asked me to pass the salt and pepper. And I misheard him. He said [mumbles] “saltandpepper”. I go, “Sergeant Pepper?” I thought he said, “Sergeant Pepper”. I went, “Oh! Wait a minute, that’s a great idea!” So we had a laugh about it, then I started thinking about Sergeant Pepper as a character. I thought it would be a very interesting idea for us to assume alter egos for this album we were about to make.

So that’s what we did. And yeah, I started doing drawings of how the band might look. I sort of got this military look thing going and one of my ideas was that they were being presented by the Lord Mayor of some Northern town in a park. And in the old days they used to have floral clocks, they called them. It was like a clock that was made out of flowers. So I did drawings of the floral clock and then, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band”, AKA The Beatles, getting an award. So they’ve got a big cup and they’re getting some sort of award from the town.

So that’s where the idea came from and then I just talked to all the guys and said, “What do you think of this idea?” They liked it and I said, “It will mean, when I approach the mic, it’s not Paul McCartney. I don’t have to think this is a Paul McCartney song”. So it was freeing. It was quite liberating.

So, you know, we didn’t keep that idea up all the time, but that was the basic idea that we would make something that was very free. Something that this other band might make, instead of doing something that we thought The Beatles ought to make. It originally came from that mishearing of salt and pepper!

PMc: Were you doing the drawings on the same flight? PM: I don’t remember if I did the drawings on the flight, or whether that’s just got morphed into the same story. But definitely on the flight coming back. That was the start of it when I misheard that. So that’s the essence of the whole idea.

PMc: Had you already started to write the songs for that album? PM: No, but when I got back I started thinking, “Okay, what would their theme tune be?” So I wrote what became the opening song where they would introduce themselves and then they would introduce another character: Billy Shears, which was Ringo.

It was just to give us all alter egos, to give us all invented characters. So that now we were making this album like a piece of theatre. We were now going in to the studio as other people. And we came down to Soho, in the West End, and had our uniforms made by Berman’s the theatrical costumiere.

PMc: Was there any reason for the different coloured outfits? PM: No, we just chose a material. Said, “I’ll have that, he’ll have that”. There was no concept, no. It was just whoever wanted what colour.

PMc: We understand there were two drum skins created for the cover. Was there any specific reason for that, or was it just to make sure you had different options? PM: No, I think the drum skins - as I recall - were organised by Peter Blake, who had someone he knew who did painting for fairgrounds. So you see the rides in the fairgrounds - like the Waltzer, or you know, the House Of Fun and all that - it’s always lettered and painted a certain way, which is quite an ancient tradition, apparently. There’s a specific look to it all and there are people who specialise in those, so I think Peter had those done by those people, and I suppose he just had a spare one made as well. I think we probably would have just said, “That one”.

PMc: We realised in the office that there are some grammar mistakes on the drum skin: a semicolon after ‘Sgt’, and there isn’t an apostrophe in ‘Peppers’. Is that just an accident? PM: Yeah, that’s an accident! The guy doing it was, as I say, a fairground guy, so all this sort of stuff [Paul points to the logo on the album cover] - the filigree and all these decorative things - are the kind of things you would see on the side of a Waltzer, when you go to the fairground. It’s covered in this kind of stuff.

So I think he will have just been told “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, and instead of putting a dot after the ‘gt’ of ‘Sgt.’ - which I think you might naturally do - I think it just looks better as a composition to be down there. And there’s no particular reason for it being a semi colon. It could have just as easily been two dots, or something. And then no apostrophe? There’s no reason for it. He was asked to do that and he came up with that beautiful design.

PMc: Do you remember who’s idea it was to have the cut outs that came with the album? The moustache, medals, stripes and band stand up? PM: I think those were Peter’s ideas. I certainly gave him the basic idea of the Sgt. Pepper band. There was the floral clock that got changed into the little flower arrangements on the cover. And then the idea was that each of these characters in the “play” would have their own background. So I asked all the guys to come up with a list of people who their character might be fans of. So everyone did that like as a bit of homework, kind of thing.

PMc: Was there anybody who kind of didn’t make the final collage on the cover? PM: Oh, yeah! I mean, some, because it was just a fun thing. You know, I think someone brought Hitler. And that was vetoed immediately: “No!” And then Jesus was in there. You know, he was an understandable hero. But there were certain ones that might have offended people.

I mean, Hitler, I think was just a joke. No way he was gonna get on there. Jesus was not so much a joke. He could have been in there but we didn’t want to offend Christians.

PMc: Do you remember any specific names you suggested? PM: [Looking at the album cover] I think these were mine: Aldous Huxley, because I had been reading a book by him. H.G. Wells, Fred Astaire. And then there was Dylan Thomas.

There’s a footballer there, I think that’s Dixie Dean. I mean this is all documented exactly who they are. Laurel and Hardy, we liked them. William Morris, Marilyn Monroe, Terry Southern. This is what the floral clock became at the bottom of the cover. And then people thought this was marijuana, which they weren’t. They were just plants! But, of course, in those days everyone read everything into everything we did.

But that was it. We all had a list of favourites. George put in an Indian guru, that’s Yogananda. And Babaji is in there. So we just each put people in that we admired through history, so that was the idea. It was really just so if a fan magazine had said to the characters in this fictitious band, “Who are your favourites?” They’d go, “Oh, these people”. We’d go, “Okay this character, is that kind of guy. George: he’s more into mystical people, you know. Paul: okay, he’s more into literary ones, or whatever”. So it would give us each an identity. It was really just for background.

There were certain ones we all liked, like Oscar Wilde. Max Miller was a British comedian. And then there’s Stuart [Sutcliffe], who had been our old bass player, who died. Aubrey Beardsley, the artist. The Bowery Boys, they were a TV series when we were growing up, and there was one of them who wouldn’t do it. One of them wanted money for it.

We just wrote to everyone and said, “Do you mind?” Well, at first we didn’t. But the head of EMI, Sir Joseph Lockwood came to my house and complained! He said, “This is going to be a nightmare. There are going to be legal battles!” I said, “No, no, no. People are gonna love it! They’re all on The Beatles cover, you know! It’ll be a laugh, they’ll understand”. He said, “No, you’ve got to write to them all”.

So we did. We got a letter out: “We are planning to do this using your image. Do you mind? Is it okay? Please give us the okay”. And all of them did, except for one of the Bowery Boys who wanted to cut a deal. And we thought, “You know what, we’ve got enough people on here!”

PMc: Did that delay the album release? PM: No. No the cover wasn’t shot. We had the idea… Or it may have been, it may have been actually. Yeah, I think it was shot, but we just had to ask them all.

PMc: Would you pick different people for the cover today, compared to 1967? PM: I’m not sure. You know probably, yeah. But just because it wouldn’t be the same time.

PMc: We’ve read that the Sgt. Pepper moustache came about because you had been in a bike accident. Is that true? PM: Yeah! I had a moped and was with a friend of mine up in Liverpool. It was Tara Browne, who was one of the Guinness family. He and I were going to visit my cousin Betty on these mopeds that we had, little motorised bicycles. And there was a very full moon and I said, “Wow, look at that moon!” Then I suddenly realised I’d lost my balance and I looked back and I smacked the pavement and bust my lip! And we went to my cousin’s house with my hand over my lips saying, “Hey Bett! Don’t be worried”. And she’s thinking, “Oh, isn’t he funny”. And then, “…Ahh!”

So, Betty said, “Oh, I’m gonna get this guy”. This doctor, he’s the local doctor and he came over. But, tell you the truth, he’d had a few. So he said, “I’m gonna have to stitch you!” And I said, “Oh!” Because, you know, it was Christmas time or New Years time, and he definitely was over the limit!

So he got his needle, and he could barely thread it, he couldn’t thread it even. So I think Betty sort of said, “Here, let me do that”. So she threaded his needle up for him and I went, “Ahh… Here goes nothing!”

So he put it in – no anesthetic. Bang! ��Oww!” You know, and then he put it through and made a stitch up, put it through the other side, “Oww! God!” I was just sort of standing there. It was not wonderful, but I thought, “Well, he’s got to do it”. He pulls it right through, and the thread comes out. “Oh, we’ve got to do that again, then.” “Jeez.” Was I happy? No!

But yeah, so after that I started growing this moustache to hide quite a big, sizeable bump. There’s a bump still there. But it was quite a good gash, and I broke a tooth!

Yeah but anyway, so he had to do it. He finished it off. It wasn’t a brilliant job. So then, as I was recovering, I let this grow as a moustache. I wasn’t really in the public eye for a while, so then the first thing people knew was that I’d grown that moustache. And the other guys liked it and so we all grew them. It was just like a fun thing. So that’s that!

PMc: At the end of the album - following ‘A Day In The Life’ - you have that very high-pitched tone. And then you have the inner groove loop on the record. Where did those ideas come from?

PM: Okay, so the loop thing was that at that time people were partying a lot and getting stoned a lot. And one of the things is you would be in a party with everyone, you’d be playing an album on vinyl and so the record would end. But everybody would be so sort of stoned that the record would just go [mimics the noise of the record player getting stuck in the inner groove]. You’ve all been there! And people would go, “Ahhh… Yeah…” And no one would turn it off!

So we went, you know what, we should have something there. We should put in a little loop so when that happens, there will be something there! So that was the basis of that idea. So we just recorded something, we just all got around the mic, and we just said stupid stuff. It’s just a loop cut out of some stuff we said.

I think John said something like, “Cranberry sauce, cranberry sauce”. And that was just a little bit of fun for us, because we were always trying to be different from other people who made records. So this would be a very “Beatle-y” thing to do. So we did it, and it was just for that moment where [mimics record player playing the inner groove]. It would say something instead of just, “Cuh-chug, cuh-chug”.

The crazy thing was, as I said, everyone read into everything we ever did in those days. So somebody arrived at my house and the rumour was that if you played it backwards, it said something. If you play it in that groove backwards and then we thought well none of us have ever tried. So I said, “No, it’s nonsense. That’s not true, at all!” And they said, “It is! It is! It is!” And they insisted. So I said well come and show me. So he took it, and somehow, we just went against the player’s motor, turned it backwards, the loop. And sorry folks, excuse my expletives, but it was supposed to say, “We’ll fuck you like supermen”. I went, “This is just ridiculous!” But sure enough, “We’ll fuck you like supermen, we’ll fuck you like supermen”. It sounded like that!

PMc: So that was just by complete chance? PM: It was, yeah! It was pretty random, but those things happen with the readings, you know. Because people would look into it so much, and that was that.

PMc: And no one had done that kind of inner groove loop before, is that right? PM: Yeah, nobody had done it on a loop like that. It’s a silly idea. No one was as silly as we were!

But the other thing, that was fascinating: the high-pitched noise [whistles]. We would have great conversations with George Martin in the studio, because he was very swotty, George was. Very mathematics, and he knew the science behind a lot of what we were doing, whereas we didn’t. We just enjoyed it and loved it. But he was talking about frequencies. He said, “There are so many frequencies”. For instance, he said, “Your ears are all younger than mine”. He said, “Let’s do a little test’. So he took a little oscillator that we had and went [whistles from a low to high pitch]. And he got it up to [whistles very high]. And he said, “Can you hear that?” We go, “Yeah…” He goes [whistles higher]. He said, “I can’t hear that, can you?” We go, “Yeah!”

Then he took it higher so even we couldn’t hear it and said, “It’s still there”. The noise, the frequency was still there. He said, “Dogs can hear that. Dogs have a different framework, a different range of hearing”. We went, “Fantastic! We’ve gotta put that on the record!” So when suddenly when everyone’s listening to it, no one can hear it and the dog would perk up. You know, prick his ears up: “What’s that?”

So that arrived from those great conversations. And the other end of that conversation was he said, “Lots of people know this, this frequency thing. And one of the things Hitler had was these sort of PR people, who did movies for him. You know, Leni Riefenstahl. And there was a PR machine behind everything he did”. He said, “And one of the things, and it’s suppose to be true, was that at these rallies, hundreds and thousands of people would arrive, and you see film of it. And he wouldn’t arrive, he wouldn’t be there. And what they would do is they would put a subsonic noise [makes low-pitched hum] through the speakers. But no one could hear it, but it was sort of was rather discomforting. So you can’t hear it, but it kind of puts you off a bit.” It’s like a super sub-bass at a big club. It’s like, it can actually sort of get to you, it can bother you a bit, so he said, “They used to play this, this is the story, and then just before Hitler showed up they would turn it off”.

PMc: So they would get a sense of relief? PM: Yeah! Like, “I feel so much better, now he’s here!” You know, and nobody knew that there’s a subsonic noise.

PMc: And George Martin told you that story? PM: Yeah, George Martin. This was all one conversation: “The Highs And The Lows” by George Martin. But you know, we took it all in. We loved him. We loved these little chats and we used it all in our music.

You know, if someone put a tape machine on backwards by mistake once, the tape op, and we were like, “Oh! What’s that?” Whereas I always say any other band would have just gone, “You’ve got it on backwards, stupid! Put it on right!” But we were always, “Ahh, how can we use that?”

George was such a good producer and got it. And he would say, “Well, we could do it. And if we did this, and if we did that…” And so that really made it interesting, because there were all sorts of physical things like that that he would educate us with. Like half speed things. If things were very fast, the guitar solo in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ [sings the song]. It was very hard to play normal speed. So George would say, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do…” So we took it down to half speed on these studio machines. You have to take it down an octave, that’s what was intriguing. So half speed, the octave would go down. You would play it on a bass guitar or a guitar [sings song again, lower and at half speed], and it’s easy to play! And then you just put it back up [sings at full speed]. So if you listen to that solo that’s at double speed. So we had a lot of fun with that, you know, it’s gonna go down an octave, we’re gonna play it slow.

PMc: I’ve always wondered if you guys slowed down ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ because your voice sounds slightly higher? PM: Sometimes I would just speed things up a bit. Often, when you make a song you record it and then you think, “It’s not quite fast enough!” So rather than do it again, you just lifted the tape. These days you can lift the tape and not lift the pitch, with Logic and a few other machines. But back then you would actually lift the pitch a bit.

PMc: So another question we quite often see is, in hindsight, do you wish ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’ had been included on the album? And if so, where would you have placed them? PM: No, I was happy. So we won’t even get into placing them! I was happy that it was the precursor to ‘Sgt. Pepper’. And the thing was, you know, we always liked to release things fresh. We had just made those tracks, so the thought of waiting until we had completed the whole album would not have appealed to us. You know, we liked that as soon as it’s made, at the nearest point to the actual making of the song and the record, we would like to put it out. So I was glad how we did it and it was like a fanfare, that single. Another thing we liked about it was it was simple value for money. You really got two A-sides. But it kind of heralded what was to come.

PMc: Kind of like a road sign showing what was on the way? PM: Yeah!

PMc: Another question we see is: Did you have any kind of idea at the time just how big this album would become? PM: No, not really. The only thing we knew was that the music press, I’m not sure who it was – it would probably have been The New Music Express or The Melody Maker, the two music papers that were very big at the time – one of them, somebody from one of those music papers said, “Oh, The Beatles have dried up. They’ve finished. We haven’t heard anything from them, you know, they’ve run out of ideas”. So we were quietly tinkering away at Abbey Road knowing we hadn’t run out of ideas and knowing it was gonna be really great to be able to say, “No, we didn’t run out. Check this out!” And give them ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and go – “Take that back!”

In fact, when it did get released, the music critic from The New York Times said it was terrible. And Linda said she met him in the street and said, “You’re crazy, man. It’s a great album! What are you talking about?” And there must have been a lot of people that said it to him that week, because he took it back a week later. He said, “You know what, it’s grown on me. I like it’.

PMc: And looking back now, what always blows our minds, is that you were only 24 when that album was recorded. That’s quite incredible! PM: Yeah, I mean there’s quite a few people who feel they’re very grown up when they’re 24. And we did! We’d been doing the group since, well, since we were kinda 19 and 20. So four years at that kind of pace was a long time. And we all smoked Rothman cigarettes. And we had Carnaby Street stuff, so we thought we were pretty hot. So 24 didn’t seem young to us, because we had just been 20!

I mean, I always tell the story of when were 17, me and George - and George would have been 16 - and we used to go round to see John at his Art College, which was next door to our school. We were where LIPA now is, The Liverpool Institute. Next door was the Arts School which is now part of LIPA as well. But that’s where John was, so we’d go round just to hang out and see him during lunchtime and there was a guy who was in John’s year, who was like older than the class. You know that phenomenon and he was 24 and we felt so sorry for him! No, we really did, like a genuine sorrow. [Whispers] “He’s 24? God, it must be awful!” You know, now looking back he was like a child. But, you know, so by the time we were 24, we felt like we had done quite a lot. We had done enough to sort of think we were pretty grown up!

A coda from PaulMcCartney.com: After we stopped recording our Q&A, Paul carried on telling us some very cool stories, such as how one day in the studio the ‘A’ string on John Lennon’s guitar began to resonate when he leant his guitar against an amplifier. The band jumped up when they heard the noise, saying, “What’s that?!” After George Martin explained how certain frequencies will make objects vibrate, it was agreed they would record this new sound for the start of ‘I Feel Fine’.

Paul told us how he really loved that about The Beatles: when those “happy accidents” happened, the band would want to use it in a song somehow. He likened it to how a painter might see a small, unintended brushstroke on a canvas and decide to leave it in, rather than painting it out.

Another story Paul told us was about how one of the engineers threaded the tape machine the wrong way in the studio during a session. When they pressed “Play” the song played backwards and again, up they jumped asking George Martin if they could use that somehow. Paul told us George’s response was always to rub his chin, look thoughtful then reply, “Well, I suppose we could…” And the rest, as they say, is history!

#paul mccartney #the beatles #sgt.pepper

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ziggyreturns · 7 years

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Two special Bowie releases for Record Store Day anniversary

~ CRACKED ACTOR (LIVE IN LOS ANGELES 1974) 3 x LP SET

~ BOWPROMO SINGLE-SIDED ALBUM BOXSET FEATURING ALTERNATE MIXES OF HUNKY DORY ERA TRACKS AND EXCLUSIVE PRINTS IN A PRESENTATION BOX

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day on April 22nd, Parlophone will be releasing two limited edition David Bowie albums, CRACKED ACTOR (Live In Los Angeles 1974) and a facsimile of the ultra-rare Hunky Dory-era promo album BOWPROMO.

The former is the first official release of this Philly Dogs Tour show from September 1974, some of which was featured in Alan Yentob’s BBC documentary, Cracked Actor. The full concert is documented on this triple vinyl five-sided album. The sixth side features an etching of the Diamond Dogs-era Bowie logo.

All of the multi-track tapes were finally reunited in one place in November of last year and mixed officially for the first time by long time Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti. The packaging features newly commissioned artwork with rare and unseen photographs from the 1974 Universal Amphitheatre show by Terry O’Neill and Jamie Andrews in a gatefold sleeve.

The album differs greatly from Bowie’s David Live album (also from 1974), as it features a new band line up including soul legend Luther Vandross on vocals. It also has a different set list including two tracks that had just been recorded for the album The Gouster, which was finally released for the first time last year as part of the critically acclaimed ‘Who Can I Be Now?’ box set.

DAVID BOWIE - CRACKED ACTOR (LIVE LOS ANGELES ’74) (3 LP SET)

Side 1:

Introduction

1984

Rebel Rebel

Moonage Daydream

Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing

Side 2:

Changes

Suffragette City

Aladdin Sane

All The Young Dudes

Cracked Actor

Side 3:

Rock ’n’ Roll with Me

Knock on Wood

It’s Gonna Be Me

Space Oddity

Side 4:

Diamond Dogs

Big Brother

Time

Side 5:

The Jean Genie

Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide

John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)

Side 6:

David Bowie logo etching

Recorded live at Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles on 5th September 1974. Produced by David Bowie. Mixed by Tony Visconti at Human Studios, NYC in October/November 2016.

Musicians:

David Bowie - vocals, guitar, harmonica

Earl Slick - guitar

Carlos Alomar - guitar

Mike Garson – piano, Mellotron

David Sanborn - alto sax, flute

Pablo Rosario - conga

Doug Raunch - bass

Greg Errico – drums

Backing vocals - Warren Peace, Anthony Hinton, Luther Vandross, Ava Cherry, Diane Sumler and Robin Clark.

BOWPROMO was originally pressed in very small quantities in 1971 and it features alternate mixes of some of the songs that would eventually be released on the Hunky Dory album.

The A-side contained seven Bowie tracks, relatively new material at the time, five of which would appear on Bowie’s next album, Hunky Dory. On the B-side were five tracks recorded by another artist on the GEM roster, Dana Gillespie.

This RSD, one-sided release faithfully replicates the original promo featuring Bowie's seven tracks plus five exclusive Bowie prints and new sleeve notes regarding the original promo, all housed in a special presentation box.

BOWPROMO SINGLE SIDED BOXSET LP

Oh! You Pretty Things (3.18)

Eight Line Poem (2.59)

Kooks (3.01)

It Ain’t Easy (3.04)

Queen Bitch (3.21)

Quicksand (5.09)

Bombers / Andy Warhol Intro (3.39)

Produced by Ken Scott (assisted by The Actor), mixed by Ken Scott at Trident Studios, London.

Musicians:

David Bowie – vocals, guitar, piano, phased piano

Mick Ronson – guitar, vocal

Trevor Bolder – bass

Woody Woodmansey – drums

Rick Wakeman – piano on Kooks and Quicksand

David Bowie Enamel Pin

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omg-gwizz · 7 years

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TWO SPECIAL BOWIE RELEASES FOR RSD ANNIVERSARY “Crack baby crack, show me you're real...” TWO VERY SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION DAVID BOWIE RELEASES TO CELEBRATE RECORD STORE DAY’S 10th ANNIVERSAY ON 22nd APRIL 2017 ~ CRACKED ACTOR (LIVE IN LOS ANGELES 1974) 3 x LP SET ~ BOWPROMO SINGLE-SIDED ALBUM BOXSET FEATURING ALTERNATE MIXES OF HUNKY DORY ERA TRACKS AND EXCLUSIVE PRINTS IN A PRESENTATION BOX To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day on April 22nd, Parlophone will be releasing two limited edition David Bowie albums, CRACKED ACTOR (Live In Los Angeles 1974) and a facsimile of the ultra-rare Hunky Dory era promo album BOWPROMO. The former is the first official release of this Philly Dogs Tour show from September 1974, some of which was featured in Alan Yentob’s BBC documentary, Cracked Actor. The full concert is documented on this triple vinyl five-sided album. The sixth side features an etching of the Diamond Dogs era Bowie logo. All of the multi-track tapes were finally reunited in one place in November of last year and mixed officially for the first time by long time Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti. The packaging features newly commissioned artwork with rare and unseen photographs from the 1974 Universal Amphitheatre show by Terry O’Neill and Jamie Andrews in a gatefold sleeve. The album differs greatly from Bowie’s David Live album (also from 1974), as it features a new band line up including soul legend Luther Vandross on vocals. It also has a different set list including two tracks that had just been recorded for the album The Gouster, which was finally released for the first time last year as part of the critically acclaimed ‘Who Can I Be Now?’ box set. DAVID BOWIE - CRACKED ACTOR (LIVE LOS ANGELES ’74) (3 LP SET) Side 1: Introduction 1984 Rebel Rebel Moonage Daydream Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing Side 2: Changes Suffragette City Aladdin Sane All The Young Dudes Cracked Actor Side 3: Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me Knock On Wood It’s Gonna Be Me Space Oddity Side 4: Diamond Dogs Big Brother Time Side 5: The Jean Genie Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide John, I’m Only Dancing (Again) Side 6: David Bowie logo etching Recorded live at Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles on 5th September 1974. Produced by David Bowie. Mixed by Tony Visconti at Human Studios, NYC in October/November 2016. Musicians: David Bowie - vocals, guitar, harmonica Earl Slick - guitar Carlos Alomar - guitar Mike Garson – piano, Mellotron David Sanborn - alto sax, flute Pablo Rosario - conga Doug Raunch - bass Greg Errico – drums Backing vocals - Warren Peace, Anthony Hinton, Luther Vandross, Ava Cherry, Diane Sumler and Robin Clark. ************************************* BOWPROMO was originally pressed in very small quantities in 1971 and it features alternate mixes of some of the songs that would eventually be released on the Hunky Dory album. The A-side contained seven Bowie tracks, relatively new material at the time, five of which would appear on Bowie’s next album, Hunky Dory. On the B-side were five tracks recorded by another artist on the GEM roster, Dana Gillespie. This RSD, one-sided release faithfully replicates the original promo featuring Bowie's seven tracks plus five exclusive Bowie prints and new sleeve notes regarding the original promo, all housed in a special presentation box. BOWPROMO SINGLE SIDED BOXSET LP 1. Oh! You Pretty Things (3.18) 2. Eight Line Poem (2.59) 3. Kooks (3.01) 4. It Ain’t Easy (3.04) 5. Queen Bitch (3.21) 6. Quicksand (5.09) 7. Bombers / Andy Warhol Intro (3.39) Produced by Ken Scott (assisted by The Actor), mixed by Ken Scott at Trident Studios, London. Musicians: David Bowie – vocals, guitar, piano, phased piano Mick Ronson – guitar, vocal Trevor Bolder – bass Woody Woodmansey – drums Rick Wakeman – piano on Kooks and Quicksand #BowieRSD #RSD2017 #BowieVinyl #CrackedActor #BOWPROMO

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halfcupofcoffee-blog · 7 years

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I actually slept all night. I was sure I would be awake all night again. Well, now I'm gonna tell you about my troubled childhood *dramatic music* I was born December 12, 1997 in Winchester, Virginia. We lived in Martinsburg, West Virginia where Dad's family (and at the moment Mom's) live, but after bad experience with the Doctors there with my older sister, Mom and Dad decided not to go to the hospital there to have me. Two weeks after my birth, we moved to Atlanta, Georgia where my Mother's parents had recently moved. We actually lived in Decatur, GA but it's not really important. I obviously don't remember most of the first two or three years of my life. Somewhere in those years, my younger sister was born. We moved houses twice before I was four. When I was 7, my Dad's job was going to move us to a small Mayberry sort of town called Bristol, Tennessee. So we packed up all our stuff and about a week before we were going to leave, we came home to a house that had been broken into. I'm honestly surprised it took that long. We didn't live in the greatest neighborhood. It wasn't one of those clean sweep robberies. It was actually one of those ones where it looked like they decided our stuff wasn't all that great and only took things we would miss like our TV and a couple DVDs. I remember going inside and all of us stopping in the front hallway at the door. Us kids didn't realize what had happened, but we knew something was wrong. I remember looking into the kitchen and seeing every single cabinet and drawer open. I remember asking mom is she left them like that before they shoved us back in the car and locked the doors while they checked the rest of the house. A couple of people from our church came over and this girl we were friends with cane and sat with us in the car. I remember my older sister crying a lot. The rest of the week we stayed at our grandparents house. Dad still had to get all our stuff out of the house and kept asking if we wanted to go help. We were all to scared to go, but I remember going with him one day. I didn't help at all, I just remember being too scared to go into my own bedroom. Anyway, we moved to Tennessee and I don't remember much until we were completely moved in. The first day I remember is the day we met a girl who lived up the street from us. Her name is Lauren and she became my best friend. We lived there until I was 11. We went to public school, which is the first experience we had with anything but homeschooling. I went through 2nd-5th grade in public school. I liked it quite a bit. I mainly liked riding the bus to and from school. I had my bedroom in the attic and at the time I hated it because it was always too hot or too cold up there but now I wish we hadn't moved. I loved Bristol. It was a whole lot safer than Decatur. And then we moved BACK to Atlanta. We lived in a nice house where I got my own room for exactly 10 months. The walls were sea foam green. We went back to being homeschooled, thus began the loneliest four years of my life. When those ten months were up, we moved to a house that was basically in my grandparents' back yard. That house was where I spent all my time reading books. I read too many books to remember them all. I read all the original Percy Jackson books there. That Place was also where my mom finally let me read Harry Potter. My walls were covered in Harry Potter posters and Taylor Swift posters. I was 12 what can I say? Me and my younger sister spent a lot or our time playing in the half finished basement and in the woods behind the house. And then we moved again after about a year. We moved to a house just down the road and around the corner, on the same street with my grandparents and my Aunt. We lived there the longest so far. It was three years we lived there. There I got into music. I bought my first guitar for $109.93. I paid in cash all the way down to the Penny. I named him Joe Beatle because of a Joke in the TV show from the 60s called The Monkees. I also started writing there. I wrote really bad FanFiction. We didn't have WiFi so I was just saving them into documents on the computer. When we did get a connection finally, I joined a FanFiction website and posted there. I got pretty popular with The Beatle community on there. All this time I didn't have a single person my age for a friend. Just my younger sister who also was writing bad FanFiction. We took turns reading each other's stories. When we got online we had friends there who we talked to for years over skype and messaging but they faded eventually too. Our Dachshund died when we lived there. He was old when we got him and he lived with us until I was 16-ish. We had a mutual hatred for each other. My dad buried him in our grandparents back yard. We also joined a homeschool group where I gained a friend who I only see now because my younger sister is friends with her younger sister. And then we moved again. This time into my grandparents' house where I shared a bedroom with both of my sisters because of lack of space. We lived there for two years and the only good thing about it was there was a pool and a roof we could sit in outside our window. Living there was probably the worst place we ever lived mainly because we were plunged into someone else's life. Before we could do what we liked mainly. Now we had extra chores and we had to hear the constant chatter of news talk radio that my grandad listened too. When I graduated, my grandad gave me a blue Fender stratocaster with an amp. Greatest gift I've ever gotten. I named him Chrysanthemum Cleaver (after a reference to a character in Eragon) or Eric (after Eric Clapton). That same summer was actually the best I'd ever had. I got to see Jimmy, who I hadn't seen in like 6 years, and another guy called Caleb who I hadn't seen in 8 years. I had known them my entire life. I used to see them every summer but things changed and that didn't happen for a long time. Then we got to go to a Twenty one Pilots concert, which was actually the best concert even though I've only been to two in my whole life. The other was Colton Dixon and Building 429 in October but it wasn't as good. TØP was amazing. We moved into the house we live in now in August. I share a bedroom with my younger sister and we share a bookshelf -- where we keep all our books, which is quite a lot -- a record player where we both have quite a few records, and we share that corner to store our instruments. Combined, we have two electric guitars (both mine. The fender and a Gretsch Pro Jet named NEZ), two acoustic guitars (one mine the other is hers), a Fender Bass named Macca, and two ukuleles. In November Caleb and Jimmy came for a visit. That was a really good week. We had a lot of fun and generally drank a lot of hot tea. But that's basically it. My life up until now. Pretty boring and unnecessarily long. No idea what I'll post next. Maybe I'll talk about Dr. Who? Which is on TV right now. Probably not, though...

#probably not though #doctor who #life #fender #Gretsch #music #books #the Monkees #the Beatles #Harry Potter #Percy Jackson #Atlanta #Bristol

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sheilacwall · 5 years

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Velvet Negroni is Trying to Make Music That’s Built to Last in an Ethereal Digital Age

When we chat his most recent record, NEON BROWN (via 4AD), has been out for less than a full week. But it’s already beginning to add layers to an increasingly mythological narrative. It’s not just Nutzman’s background being gradually woven together with each new review and published blurb, but it’s also the behind-the-scenes contributions that penetrate larger swaths of popular culture. The track “Waves” from Velvet Negroni’s previous release T.C.O.D. was played by Justin Vernon at Kanye West’s famously rural writing camp in Wyoming, resulting in a contribution to opening track “Feel the Love” on Kanye and Kid Cudi’s collaboration album, Kids See Ghosts. More recently, he’s lent vocals on both “iMi” and “Sh’Diah” from Bon Iver’s new album, i,i.

READ: First Look Friday: Meet Donavon — the Soul of the Algorithm & Disciple of D’Angelo

These high-profile contributions aren’t just Wiki-friendly Easter eggs and fine print liner notes; they’re a clear indicator that both Nutzman’s voice and creative direction possess a unique resonance that is parting the seas of an oft-impenetrable musical kingdom.

NEON BROWN offers an accessible entry-point to hear Jeremy Nutzman’s evolving artistry at work. Album highlight “Wine Green” is an instantly recitable, dancehall-esque anthem awash in peppy adlibs and ascending jabs of bass. “Poster Child” showcases a catchy, iridescent love-song-hook that glows vividly while the downtempo “Feel Let” spins out soft, palatable utterances that feel as if they’re being belted from a woozy, late-night cab ride home.

We talked with Velvet Negroni to explore the album, his creative inspiration, and a rapidly changing music landscape.

Title: Girboix Carmelo Artist: Velvet Negroni

Can you walk me through your contributions on Bon Iver’s album and Kids See Ghosts?

Justin Vernon played [Kanye West and Kid Cudi] “Waves” and it was the first thing that perked their ears that day so they got into it a little bit. There’s a part of the song that goes, “I can feel it in my bones!” I think it was basically just that little snippet that they just took that energy and vibe into “Feel the Love.”

So the inspiration was more cadence than lyrics or production?

Yeah, there wasn’t a sample. While Justin was in Wyoming, I was at his crib working, I was there rehearsing to perform a couple of dates with him. He had helped to work on the record a little bit previously.

How did you two originally link?

I play in a band with a couple of cats that he grew up with essentially and so that’s how that intro went long ago. It was kind of fun. We were just around sometimes, and we got to know each other a little bit. And then my friend Ryan Olsen had played what I had so far of the record for him, he was really excited by it and the next time he saw me he kind of just opened up his place as a base, like “If you need somewhere to finish this or work on it you should come out.”

Source: Artist

Can you tell me about the recording process and what went into your new album, NEON BROWN?

A lot of different things but mostly just good vibes, a good schedule and good hours. We would at least kind of sketch out one or two tracks, at least two things every day. Then after a little bit of that, circle back to one that we had worked on previously. The ones with real potential kind of just flowed out of the fucking mess and felt kind of obvious-ish, I guess. It’s like sifting for gold, eventually you keep whittling it down into a body of work that’s ready.

How do you feel now that it’s out?

It’s just exciting that people are listening to it. The album has been done for a pretty sizable chunk of time, that happened long ago it feels like, but now it’s just, knowing that people can listen to it…that’s exciting.

There’s a wide range of sounds on the album, some heady and stirring but also lighter notes. It’s interesting to see you do both.

It’s a natural thing in the songwriting process. Especially when I’m working with Elliott (Tickle Torture) and Simon (Psymun), there’s no off-limits. There’s that many more influences, like each person has a toolbox. Then there’s that added onto the writing process. So, we’re taking from a pretty wide range of shit just in everybody’s own mind and then putting them together. I don’t think any of us think about the style of the song as it relates to the album until after the fact.

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What new artists inspire you right now?

I’ve been excited about Yves Tumor on Warp and listening to this cat Mk.Gee. I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that I’ve really been jacked on. I’m kind of just stepping back into remembering that I can listen to other people’s music you know, like on my own, really just listen to music. Usually, I’m just in such a creative mode in my headspace, or I’m not listening to anything, or I’m working on my shit.

When you were first discovering music at an early age, finding discarded records on a neighbor’s lawn, which albums were especially formative for you?

In that pack of CDs that I found, I remember some 311, Soundgarden, some Metallica, Lords of Acid. I think there was a Crime Mob CD, some Tupac and even Marilyn Manson. Those were my youngest memories of having music that wasn’t church music.

That was huge for me. But I was so young that when I was playing music, I wasn’t coming at it from a composing aspect at all. It was beyond me how you could even make something like that. I didn’t have any of the experiences that I have now to desensitize me to the wonderment of music in general.

Photo Credit: Rachel Kauffman for Okayplayer

What was the original intention of keeping you from being exposed to that music?

I mean those were just my parents’ rules. They were religious and didn’t think that anything else was worthwhile except for Christian music. I was practicing playing piano for at least one hour every single day and my mom would sit on the bench next to me, there was no getting out of it really.

We’re now living in a totally digital age. How do you feel the streaming era is changing music?

Oversaturation is a real thing, but there’s also so much more of a platform. I think that, eventually, for the most part, good stuff will be discovered. Like there’s too many people listening, seeing and talking amongst themselves deep in the Internet at all times that I think that the good stuff, the truth will prevail. It’s just a different style with music in general, because it used to be the furthest thing away to just go to a bedroom somewhere and record. Most people couldn’t afford to even rent studio time, let alone rent a studio and then then take their time writing songs in the studio as they go. People used to write a song, arrange a song, figure it out, get really good at it and then go record it. Now, it’s pretty much the norm to write a song as you’re playing and then you have the ability to manipulate audio. It changed the format.

When I first got into recording on my own, an amazing feature of it was that it moved so fast and I found myself making a couple of happy accidents. It was really exciting. Like, wow, what happened there? It went from writing songs and then finding happy accidents to just showing up and relying on happy accidents, rather than really spending time with the chord progression of the arrangement ahead of time.

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I think from the critic or audience’s perspective, you also have less time to win over an audience with a shrinking attention span. Not everyone is even really around for a full album to listen from front to back.

That’s huge, yes. You can grab your albums out of thin air. There was no way to pirate an album unless you stole it from a store. So, it was physical, and I think it meant more just inherently then. It meant more on a tangible level. Like, I paid eleven bucks for this album, I’m not sure if I like it yet, but I’m gonna listen to it and keep listening.

The attention span is so fast that I think there’s more people trying to just jump on a wave or catch a wave and make stuff that’s relevant right then, instead of thinking like a whole album. Instead of maybe making a piece of work that is supposed to stand the test of time.

What’s it like to be a musician in 2019? Especially considering it’s increasingly rare to make a living off your art.

You’re correct with that being a rarity, it also depends on what one person’s definition of living and what you’re satisfied with. I’ve been making music for a real long time, but only recently have I even taken into consideration, oh yeah, I guess there’s a chance I could make some money from this. Really. I can only try and imagine what it was like doing what I’m trying to do right now when the Internet wasn’t the Supreme Being.

Photo Credit: Tim Saccenti

Adam Isaac Itkoff is a freelance writer living in New York City. You can follow him (and us!) on Twitter.

The post Velvet Negroni is Trying to Make Music That’s Built to Last in an Ethereal Digital Age appeared first on Hip Hop World Music.

from Hip Hop World Music https://hiphopworldmusic.com/velvet-negroni-is-trying-to-make-music-thats-built-to-last-in-an-ethereal-digital-age/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=velvet-negroni-is-trying-to-make-music-thats-built-to-last-in-an-ethereal-digital-age from Hip Hop World Music https://hiphopworldmusic.tumblr.com/post/187545891383

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jazzworldquest-blog · 6 years

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USA: "That's Right!," CD Debut of Trumpeter Brad Goode's Quintet Featuring Tenor Titan Ernie Watts, Out Oct 19 on Origin Records

"That's Right!,"

The Recording Debut of

Trumpeter Brad Goode's Quintet

Featuring Tenor Titan Ernie Watts,

Set for Oct. 19 Release by Origin Records

Original Trumpet Stylist Backed by Longtime Collaborators

Adrean Farrugia (Piano) & Kelly Sill (Bass)

Plus Newest Member Adam Nussbaum (Drums)

September 17, 2018

That's Right!, the recording debut of trumpeter Brad Goode's quintet featuring tenor titan Ernie Watts, documents the virtuosity and versatility of one of the tightest working bands on the contemporary jazz scene. Set for October 19 release by Origin Records, the album is a powerful showcase for Goode's ideal quintet as well as the soloing chops and writing skills of each of its members.

Watts and Goode first shared the front line in a concert at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where the trumpeter is an associate professor of jazz studies, in the early 2010s. "It was just one of those things," Goode recalls. "We played together for a little while, and then we looked at each other and said, 'Hey, you know what? This is good!' There's something that happens when the two of us start playing, and we've been making efforts to do what we can together ever since."

Also featured on the new CD are Canadian pianist Adrean Farrugia and Windy City veteran bassist Kelly Sill, both of whom have been playing with Goode since 2005. The unit's newest member, drummer Adam Nussbaum, joined in 2017. "I tell my students this: If you want to make the biggest change to the sound of your group, change the drummer," says Goode.

That's Right! contains three originals by Goode, one by each of the quintet's other members, and the standards "Blues in the Night" and "I Want to Talk About You." The final track, "Jug Ain't Gone," is a tribute to Gene "Jug" Ammons by the late Chicago jazz giant Von Freeman, Jug's high school classmate and one of Goode's mentors. It's a hard-swinging blues that's become something of a theme song for Goode. "Von and I used to play it at every gig but he only recorded it once," he explains. "I run a jam session with students every Monday night, and I make that the closing tune. It's just my way of keeping Von's tradition of the jam session alive -- and keeping Von's memory alive."

L. to r.: Ernie Watts, Adrean Farrugia, Brad Goode, Kelly Sill, Adam Nussbaum.

Born in 1963 in Chicago, Brad Goode took up the violin at age four, switched to guitar at eight and trumpet at 10. At 15, having moved to East Lansing, Michigan, he began learning the bass. Even when he decided to pursue music as a career, he couldn't settle on one instrument: He earned his B.M. in classical trumpet at the University of Kentucky, and an M.M. in classical bass at Chicago's DePaul University.

Goode's early career was a period of extended apprenticeship, as he performed with the bands of jazz legends Von Freeman, Eddie Harris, Ira Sullivan, Jack DeJohnette, and Curtis Fuller. He led the house band at the Green Mill in Chicago from 1986 until 1997, when he left Chicago to pursue college teaching. Since then, his musical career has been expansive. He works often in the areas of world music, experimental harmony, and fusion. He is in high demand as a lead trumpeter, traveling widely to perform and record with big bands and orchestras, and is recognized as a master teacher of brass technique. He currently tours as the featured soloist with West African drummer Paa Kow's Afro Fusion Orchestra.

In 1997, Goode joined the faculty at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. In 2004 he accepted a position in Boulder, Colorado, and the following year formed a new working band with Kelly Sill, whom he'd known since the mid-1980s. They were joined by pianistAdrean Farrugia, whom Goode had met at a jam session, and drummer Anthony Lee, one of his Cincinnati students who lived in New York.

The quartet stayed together for a decade, becoming a quintet with the addition of Watts in 2015. Lee's 2017 departure brought in Nussbaum on drums. Goode flew the band in to perform at the Jazz Education Network (JEN) conference in Dallas in January 2018. "I had them all there, and I thought we should do a recording," he says. "After the concert we spent two days at a studio in Dallas."

While That's Right! is his 18th album as a leader, Goode doesn't see it that way. "I think of this as a debut album by a new band," he says. "I feel this is a pretty special act. When Ernie and I do this together, people kind of freak out. So this album is a way to get that across to people who haven't seen it live yet -- that it's gonna be exciting." The quintet plans a series of dates in Spring and Summer 2019.

Brad Goode in performance: 10/13 w/ Paa Kow's Afro Fusion Orchestra, Dazzle, Denver; 10/20Brad Goode Quartet at Jazz Association of Macon, GA (where he is 2018-19 Artist in Residence); 11/3 Utah International Trumpet Guild Presents Brad Goode; 11/9 Jazz Institute of Chicago Tribute to Von Freeman; 11/14 Brigham Young University (Idaho), in concert with BYU faculty trio; Every Monday -- Brad Goode Jam Session at Muse Performance Space, Lafayette, CO; 4/19-20/2019, Brad Goode Quintet Featuring Ernie Watts, Green Mill, Chicago.

Photography: Patricia Watts (quintet), Jim Bohm (Goode).

BRAD GOODE QUINTET: Reverse the Charges

Web Site: bradgoode.com Like:

Media Contact:

Terri Hinte 510-234-8781 [email protected] terrihinte.com

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2pOgT40

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bradleyhartsell · 6 years

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What’s God For?

Kendrick Lamar- DAMN. 2017 (32nd of Top 100)

When Kendrick Lamar released To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, critics and fans alike lauded it as a generational monument. The consensus record of the year became a voice for blackness in America. The album did so as it tracked through Kendrick emotionally bottoming out after his breakout debut, until finding a sort of redemption after visiting Africa. Though vastly different sonically, the record’s movement from dark to light is akin to good kid, M.A.A.D. City, which was comparatively much smaller-focused (centered on his gang-affiliated teenage years, then finding Jesus after their homie gets shot, thus reflecting on his complicated but essential relationship to his hometown of Compton). These were albums documenting a hero’s journey.

Enter DAMN., Kendrick’s most compelling album. Being almost a half-hour shorter than the previous two LPs, DAMN. feels much more confined, which helps underline the darkness rooted in it. The pathos of DAMN. certainly feel surprising, as it’s hard not to project being the black advocate, voice of a generation onto Kendrick, especially with the imagined positive reinforcement he would’ve received in light of To Pimp a Butterfly’s unequivocal success. But Kendrick is prescient with how he ends that album, which brings in a lot more ambiguity than we might remember because of how empowering the album’s second half becomes (post-Africa, narratively speaking); “Mortal Man” closes the record with Kendrick speaking to Tupac, only for Pac—Kendrick’s spiritual compass—to suddenly disappear: “Pac? Pac? Pac?!” If there’s a hint of something being lost, the world’s realities over the ensuing two years inform this dejected incarnation of Kendrick Lamar.

“BLOOD.” opens the record with a ghostly Bēkon, who acts almost like an ominous Greek chorus throughout the album, asking, “Is it wickedness?” This question is followed by a pregnant pause, then, “Is it weakness?” A sturdy bass strolls over a warped and chilled cinematic score, like a haunted 45, as Kendrick recalls his offering to help a blind woman who’s dropped something. Oh yes, you have lost something…You’ve lost…your life. She shoots him, and he spends the next 53 minutes trying to process being angry, confused, frustrated, longing, and self-righteous, all to see the closer “DUCKWORTH.” reverse itself and reintroduce us to Kendrick from “BLOOD.”: “So I was takin’ a walk the other day.”

Placing revolutionary hope in To Pimp a Butterfly is naïve and idealistic, sure, but what’s happened since its release—I mean, could things have gone any worse? A longtime punch line ascends to the most powerful position on Earth? Racism and misogyny are more belligerent than ever. It’s surreal for an American of a certain type, much less to one of the most socially aware and important artists in the world today. DAMN. reflects so much of that.

The 2017 record is so raw and so stilly produced, it harnesses the most captivating side of Kendrick. He returns to the bass-and-drum-forward sound, minimally lined with cracked and spectral flecks of soul, R&B, and ‘90s West Coast hip-hop that he so deftly used on good kid. This style has a two-pronged effect: the first being stripped-back beats are deferential and allow the best pure rapper alive to demonstrate his virtuosity. That hollowed-out ‘90s West Coast sound on “DNA.” gets subsumed by Kendrick, who rides the swaggering, bouncy groove into a dazzling bar: “I know murder, conviction / Burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption / Scholars, fathers dead with kids and / I wish I was fed forgiveness.” Elsewhere, “FEEL.” has a spaced-out, fluid, and slippery beat that sounds like mercury pulsing over light hi-hat shuffles as Kendrick expertly spits all of his perceived slights (“Look, I feel heartless, often off this / Feelin' of fallin', of fallin' apart with / Darkest hours, lost it / Fillin' the void of bein' employed with ballin'”). Suddenly, the song boils over and Kendrick goes aggro, “Fuck your feelings, I mean this for imposters.” It sends chills down my spine every time.

The second of the production’s two-pronged effect is how jarringly (and fittingly) empty the space feels when Kendrick sounds withdrawn. The best song here, “YAH.,” has a sound similar to “FEEL.,” with its sauntering, lava lamp beat that is continuously fascinating as Kendrick slides in and out of the groove brilliantly; the incisive, drilling Kendrick of “FEEL.” is replaced with a casual, seemingly stoned Kendick: “I got so many theories and suspicions / I’m diagnosed with real n**** conditions.” It’s a mesmerizing shade of Kendrick, sounding like him at his most natural, which is apt given his removed and philosophical public persona. Just as poignant is his seemingly complicated relationship with religion, which “YAH.” begins addressing three songs into DAMN.: “I'm not 'bout a religion / I'm a Israelite, don't call me black no mo' / That word is only a color, it ain't facts no mo'.” The skit on “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” shares Kendrick (and his homies) being led to the redemption of Jesus Christ; five years later, on “YAH.,” he casts aside religion, almost audaciously, in order to transcend limiting racial labels. In the next line, Kendrick relays the thesis of the album, and he does so placidly, because, on this circular album, he’s already made peace with his understanding, or more likely, because he’s resigned to the world’s fate: “My cousin called, my cousin Carl Duckworth / Said know my worth / And Deuteronomy say that we all been cursed / I know he walks the Earth.”

This call from Carl is tagged onto the end of “FEAR.,” which reaffirms both the centrality of the reveal in “YAH.” and the interlocked-nature of the album. In fact, this documenting of a cursed world pervades throughout DAMN. The very first words on the album by Bēkon are likely wondering about the origin of these curses; the meditative song takes a turn when the blind woman guns down Kendrick. Then, the last third of “DNA.” switches from a throwback West Coast vibe to a scratched-up trap beat that shows Kendrick at his most aggressive (“Tell me when destruction gonna be my fate / Gonna be your fate, gonna be our faith / Peace to the world, let it rotate / Sex, money, murder—our DNA”), while the final movement of “ELEMENT.” slogs to half-time, incongruent with Kid Capri’s hype-man praise and Kendrick’s braggadocio (“If I gotta slap a pussy-ass n****, I’ma make it look sexy”). Given the chest-puffed-out beat and the trickling piano in the chorus lending the boastful Kendrick his purported elegance, when the beat slows at the end and he says, “They won’t take me out my element,” he sounds exactly that—out of his element. That is this stricken man’s lot in this cursed world, the one who continually reminds us that “Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me.”

DAMN. is made even more interesting with three seeming outliers, which are actually just as weighted down by some looming burden. The first is “Loyalty,” with its strobe light melody and genuine positivity that’s a full-on pop song, if rap is the new pop (which it is). Rihanna guests with Kendrick to swat away pettiness and bullshit in order to seek a real and honest connection: “Tell me who you loyal to,” they each demand. Perhaps the presence of megastar Rihanna hides this, but what’s inherent in this song, though, is that there’s an enormous burden of proof on someone—anyone—to prove their loyalty in spite of this me-first world. “LOVE.,” meanwhile, is a full-bodied and luscious R&B beat that Kendrick professes an authentic love, presumably for his fiancée. In a vacuum, it’s a doting love song, but it conspicuously follows “LUST.,” the same song that he turns the mirror back on society as the root of these curses: “As blood rush my favorite vein / Heartbeat racin' like a junkie's / I just need you to want me / Am I askin' too much? / Let me put the head in / Ooh, I don't want more than that / Girl, I respect the cat.” In all likelihood, this lascivious and uncomfortable chorus is a metaphor for fame, public adoration, and materialism more than actual (coercive) sex, but the language is striking and it taints the authenticity of “LOVE.” Lastly, “DUCKWORTH.” closes the album with its smashed-up soul sample, akin to old Kanye, that has a brightness and a garishness unlike anything else on the album. This isn’t an accident, as Kendrick drops the biting introspection for pure narrative, this one about his father not being killed in a KFC robbery by Top Dawg when he was working; the only reflection Kendrick does in the song proper is wonder what if Top Dawg killed my dad…then I’m not here, not rapping to you. But of course, we know the song reverses itself and puts Kendrick right back in the line of fire with the malevolent blind woman.

It’s a taut 55 minutes, in which Kendrick knows he’s the best rapper alive, yet knows that success leaves him feeling empty. To Pimp a Butterfly is open, in part, about his depression, just as DAMN. admits To Pimp a Butterfly didn’t solve the issues, personal or societal, that he hoped it would. He feels he’s given his all to be a voice for the marginalized and injustices, but he’s deflated to realize nobody’s praying for him. Carl’s voicemail gives Kendrick the only possible answer to all of this—Trump, racism, misogyny, mass shootings, climate change, lies, injustice, lust, depression, emotional voids. It’s that we’ve pissed off a higher power and his curses have come to collect.

DAMN. may not be life-affirming or heroic or Odyssean, but sometimes you don’t need explanations, sometimes hope feels naïve. If it can often feel like we’re living in the worst of times, at least we have DAMN. to commiserate with.

Now, can somebody start praying for us?

#Kendrick Lamar #damn #to pimp a butterfly #good kid m.A.A.d city #dr dre #kanye west #bekon #rihanna

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keithdcourtney · 7 years

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Top 25 Fingerstyle Guitar Players

I’m not sure it’s possible to definitively say who are THE best 25 fingerstyle guitar players in the world. But I’m gonna try.

Here are the top 25 fingerstyle guitar players, presented in alphabetical order. I couldn’t bring myself to try to rank them. In fact, I’m not sure that’s even possible. But even with that disclaimer, it’s very likely that you may disagree, want to add or subtract a player. If that’s the case, please:

Add other worthy players to the comments below so that the list is truly complete. Thanks!

Here We Go…

Chet Atkins (1924 – 2001)

One of the “Great Ones” of fingerstyle guitar, Atkins took “Travis picking” (see Merle Travis further down the list) and turned it into an entire genre of country-based, jazz-flavored, fingerstyle genius. Chet Atkins is often quoted as a prime inspiration by contemporary players, particularly Tommy Emmanuel.

There’s a lot of material to choose from when listening to Chet, but a popular song to start with is “Windy and Warm”.

More info on Chet Atkins >>

Pierre Bensusan

A French-Algerian guitarist wielding DADGAD in a dazzling display of modern fingerstyle guitar. While his playing throughout his career has spanned a variety of formats, his recent solo acoustic playing has won awards and made it’s way into soundtracks.

To get a sense of his style, listen to “So Long Michael“, a tribute to Michael Hedges (see list below) upon his passing.

More info on Pierre Bensusan >>

Antoine Dufour

The Montreal-based guitarist – who won the Canadian Fingerstyle Guitar Championships – deftly navigates pop covers like Coldplay’s “Talk” and original compositions like “These Moments“, and has the hippest website of the bunch. This guy’s the real deal.

More info on Antoine Dufour >>

Tommy Emmanuel

The man himself! Tommy Emmanuel is an Australian fingerpicker who has dominated the fingerstyle guitar scene in recent years thanks to a combination of impeccable Chet Atkins style playing, high energy stage presence, great songwriting, and good old fashioned Aussie personality. His TED talk probably helped, too.

Check him out playing “Classical Gas” (over 12million views!).

More info on Tommy Emmanuel >>

Ed Gerhard

Ed Gerhard is an exceptional fingerstyle player on steel string acoustic, dobro, and weissenborn. I have to admit, while he plays some great steel string tunes, I fell in love with his playing thanks to this weissenborn tune.

More about Ed Gerhard >>

Jon Gomm

This British phenom is widely known for his “Passionflower” YouTube video, where he somehow combines harmonics, over-the-neck fretboard work, percussive slapping, singing, AND using tuners to change note values mid-riff…and manages to make it sounds like a compelling song. Crazy. By the way, how did he know this song is up first in my current Spotify playlist?

More about Jon Gomm >>

Calum Graham

A young player coming out of Canada who has already gotten the attention of the fingerstyle community with tunes like “Tabula Rasa“. He’s already had the chance to work with movie soundtracks, the Olympics, and Antoine Dufour. Pretty amazing. You can sign up for some Skype lessons on his site (more info here).

More about Calum Graham >>

Alex de Grassi

Alex de Grassi has been producing groundbreaking acoustic fingerstyle guitar work since the late 70’s. His work with the Windham Hill label produced fingerstyle classics like “Turning“. And his impeccable playing has even been documented into a teaching method for fingerstyle guitar: The Alex De Grassi Fingerstyle Guitar Method. A true legend.

More about Alex de Grassi >>

Michael Hedges

Michael Hedges is widely acknowledged as the consummate fingerstyle guitarist. His avante garde approach to acoustic guitar broke out in the late 80’s, paving the way for thousands of guitarists after him to employ new techniques to the instrument. His definitive album is Aerial Boundaries, on Windham Hill Recordings. Check out the popular track, “Ragamuffin“. (Like the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the thing to remember is that, while you’ve heard stuff like from other players, he did it first. He was the guy that made the other guys go, “Hmm. You mean we can do that?”)