Living In Rhythm

I am never not in love with music. That's pretty much a given by now, right? I'd hope so. If you have any doubts about that, you have probably only just stumbled upon this blog and you should probably scroll back and read a little more.

The love? It's permanent.

I know I always say I'm looking for new music. This is true. I'm always searching for the next voice that's going to make me crazy with adoration.

But really, there's only so many 'new' people I'm going to love that way. Let's be honest, for a music snot like myself, it's not easy for me to listen to someone and fall in love at first listen. And I'm not just saying that because it usually takes two or three for me to really decide. Nine times out of ten, I don't even like something new that I'm listening to, I'm merely testing it out (so glad iTunes bumped up previews to 1:30!). It's not like every artist or band that comes out is a Chris Young or a Needtobreathe.

I have this thing for re-falling in love with music. Yes, re-falling. Verbed it.

There are artists who will always be in the heavy rotation pile, so to speak. Mayer, Urban, Paisley, Legend, McKnight, Kanye, D'Lo, Aretha, et. al. That love's not going anywhere and I'm exposed to it daily.

My album collection is still in totes from the move that happened a full year ago. It's almost shameful, really. For a while I didn't have CD storage, and now I do, but I can't decide how I want to organize my albums. Leaning towards alphabetically by genre, but I still have this really weird, very strong desire to do them alphabetically by region, just to see what that looks like.

I'm getting away from my point.

All the albums I listen to regularly have been uploaded to my laptop. Explains why I have well over 3,000 songs on here. However, I have over 400 albums sitting in totes (or, as the case may be, in stacks on my shelves surrounding my stereo). Obviously not all these albums are on my laptop. There are complete catalogs of artists not on my laptop.

I want to listen to them. I want to be reminded why I bought these albums, why I fell in love with them. Or, as I'm sure I'll find, didn't.

I know I failed on the whole 'Listen To All My Albums In Alphabetical Oder' thing. This is basically that project on a smaller scale, and it allows me to skip over Jack Johnson, because, let's be real, there's no effing way I'm listening to that garbage, okay?

I basically want to listen to Norah Jones like it's 2002, or Mat Kearney like it's the day after seeing him open for Jason Mraz in Stanley Park.

I'm going to start, however, with Bonnie Raitt. Because I'm pretty sure no bad thing has ever started with Bonnie Raitt.

This post is archived under aretha franklin, brad paisley, brian mcknight, chris young, d angelo, john legend, john mayer, kanye west, keith urban, needtobreathe, new music, the collection

One of my favourite things to say and, without sounding like the cliché I am not, live by, is this: Art inspires art. This goes for hearing a song and wanting to write good songs, or reading a book and wanting to write good books, or looking at a Monet and wanting to paint good paintings. Or seeing a painting and wanting to write a song. Et cetera and so on.

I have not been happy with the way I'm writing lately. Not necessarily the quality, but the speed and, shall I say, ease. There are many theories I have as to why, but I won't bore you with them here. It's just becoming increasingly harder and harder for me to sit down and write 10,000 words in a day. How dare my muse do this to me? (Tongue in cheek, folks...)

I often encounter artists whose work I listen to, read, or see, and think to myself, "I want to be as good at anything as he is at his craft." (Some examples: Just about any musician ever mentioned on this blog, John Green, Lawrence Hill, the guy who does chalk drawings on the sidewalk in downtown Ottawa.)

Think about it: If I was as good at writing words as John Mayer is at writing songs, I'd be a millionaire by now. Clearly it doesn't work like that. (Neither does wishful thinking, but I digress.)

I wanted background music to write to, simply because the silence was irritating me. I grabbed my headphones (honestly, if I'm going to listen to music, I want to hear it) and set myTunes to shuffle, figuring since I had no set mood, no desire to hear any specific song or artist, I'd just leave it up to my computer to decide.

Sometimes my computer makes good choices.

A song by one of, in my opinion, the best voices in country music came on about five songs in. The song is just vocal and piano, and it's about choosing a woman (and a life, really) over alcohol. The artist is Joe Nichols and the song is An Old Friend Of Mine. The song is brilliant, especially when you consider that Nichols actually did battle addiction.

Anyway, his voice.

You can't teach talent. You can't. You can shape it, hone it, build on potential. You cannot teach talent. Someone can either sing or they can't. Someone has natural artistic talent or they do not.

Joe Nichols' voice is a gift. From whom or where, I have no idea, but that doesn't really matter. Somehow, he drew the card to have a voice that sounds like that. Clear, clean, emotive. I'd almost say effortless.

This is how I feel about my writing. It's the one thing I do that comes naturally. Of course it takes thought and work, and like any other art form, there is a certain amount of evolution involved in the entire process, piece by piece as well as over an entire body of work. My ability to write is my gift.

So who's to say I won't eventually be as good at writing as Mayer is at lyrical turns of phrase? I'm not deluded enough to think that's even entirely possible, let alone for me, but why rule it out? Why think negatively and accept a reality which may not even be true, that having a talent that a lot of other people have for the same thing may mean I can't excel at it?

I honestly don't even know what I'm trying to get at here. I just had this really weird realization that writing less might mean writing better, and that maybe that whole evolution of the process thing is forcing me to take a step back and ask 'why?' A lot of whys.

Somehow that all ties into music, as just about everything does for me. I hope you can find a point here, because I really did, and now I'm going to try and make sense of that.

This post is archived under joe nichols, john mayer, writing

John Mayer says stupid shit from time to time. This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. He's been doing it for years. Taken out of context, a lot of the things he says can be, and often are, absolutely ridiculous.

But you know what? At least he says what's on his mind. He'll never be one of those 'celebrities' you look at and wonder just who in the hell he is. We know who he is, because he tells us. Through his music, mostly, and sometimes through his interviews.

And maybe he goes to far, says the complete wrong thing and doesn't make his point as clearly as he could or should. But he tries. He ventures to explain things that no one else can or will. Even if he fails at that, isn't there something to say about him going for it? I think there is.

In recent years, it seems that the majority of people seem to think that freedom of speech is great!.....

Freedom of speech, but only if what you're saying doesn't piss anyone off. That sounds like a great policy to me! (That's sarcasm, by the way.)

There is, frankly, too much media in the world today. Absolutely too much. Probably about 400% too much. And about 95% of the excess is absolutely trash; garbage that no one should support. But they do, and then artists get asked for more frequent interviews, and they have to think of new things to say. They get asked about things that they have no business commenting on, just because the interviewers need to have something to ask, something to record on their little tape players and take back to their editors.

My point is that if you actually read the interview, an open-minded person can comprehend what he was going for, what point he was trying to make. He may not have done a stellar job of it, but he wasn't being malicious, racist, or anything else. He was just a guy giving his opinion when he was asked for it.

All this has nothing to do with me thinking that he can do no wrong. I've been accused of this before, and it's absolute bullshit.

I respect him because he doesn't have a problem saying 'This is who I am. Take it or leave it.' He doesn't pander to the masses, though he certainly has the masses he could pander to. At the end of the day, he says what he wants, makes the music that he wants, and he can do it because he's a brilliant musician. This isn't to say that gives him a free pass to just say whatever he wants to say and there won't be consequences, and I think he knows that too.

And he's a smart and gracious enough person to give genuine apologies when he knows he has to.

Can't really say that happens too often with celebrities these days, can you?

This post is archived under john mayer

You know I was going to do it. You had to.

The only thing is, I'm good at making the lists, but I'm absolutely horrible at putting things in order. I can never pick a favourite, not with something like this. It's just too hard for me to choose one album as better than all the rest. Sure, I could pick my personal favourite, but without an explanation, it's all just opinion. Granted, that's what most of this is anyway (obviously, I haven't heard all the records released in the last 10 years, and my taste varies from other peoples', etc., etc.) But I have my reasons.

So here they are, in no particular order. My list of top albums of the decade:

Jay-Z, The Black Album
One of, if not the, best rap albums of all time. Jay-Z retired, then came back, and while a lot of people were saying that it was a cash grab or some sort of publicity stunt, Jay-Z was in the studio, putting down an innovative blend of rap and rock that no one had really heard before. He was working with Rick Rubin (what!?) and Kanye West (who!?) and doing crazy things. And why? Because he's Jay-Z, and he can. He's a guy who's never really content with the way the 'rap game' is going, but he doesn't complain about it. He changes it.

Corinne Bailey Rae, Corinne Bailey Rae
I can distinctly remember getting in my brother's car a couple years ago, and Seasons Change was coming through the speakers, and he turned to me and said, "You have this record, right?" (Of course I did.) He goes, "Good. This chick is the real deal." For a guy who's record collection consists of (a majority of) jazz and metal (strange combination, yes), that's pretty high praise. There's something about Corinne. Musically, she's brilliant. Her voice is unique but familiar and comforting at the same time, and her songs are beautiful, no matter what the tempo or subject matter. But if you listen to that album beyond the vocals and lyrics? It's just incredible. The players are tight, the production is flawless, and it all just comes together perfectly. I can't wait until her next album comes out in January.

Marc Broussard, Carencro
Without a doubt, one of my all time favourites. It's always in my heavy rotation pile. From the opening seconds, the heavy thump of a bass drum, you can't help but move a little bit. Maybe you tap your foot, maybe you bob your head, but you move. If you're like me, you don't stop until the last song. And then the hidden track comes on and he pulls at your heartstrings because he's singing about his son. He's gotten much bluesier, much more soulful in recent years (since it was released on a major label, Carencro, he's said, didn't give him the creative freedom he wanted). I prefer the new sound, but I still consider this record his best. From Home, to The Beauty of Who You Are, Lonely Night in Georgia, and The Wanderer, this record is full of gems. It'll go down in history as one of the best (in my opinion.)

Kanye West, Late Registration
Sure, The College Dropout gave us Jesus Walks (one of the best tracks of the past 20 years, probably) and Graduation gave us Stronger, but Late Registration gave us Gold Digger and Diamonds From Sierra Leone (holy eff, that song is amazing). More than that, though, it proved that Kanye was more than a one-record man. It proved that the hype was not hype, it was truth. It proved that Kanye's talent went beyond just making beats for Jay-Z and rapping about Jesus. Late Registration is like a story book, if you listen to it from beginning to end. If you want to know who Kanye is as an artist, I'd say listen to Late Registration first. On Diamonds From Sierra Leone, he boasts, "I forgot better shit than you ever thought of." I don't doubt it for a second.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cold Roses
It still amazes me that I bought this album for $12 at a Best Buy in Watertown, New York. Why? Because it's so good, such a complete album, that I feel like it's just really, really weird that I didn't pay more for it. And it feels like the kind of record you put on order from your local record store and have to wait weeks for it to come in. That probably only makes sense to me (such a situational example). Listen to When Will You Come Back Home, Now That You're Gone, or How Do You Keep Love Alive, and try to tell me this record isn't fantastic. And that's just on the first disc. The thing with this record is, it feels like it's quintessential. Like anyone who listens to Ryan Adams at all, has this record, because it feels like him. It's a little weird at parts, it's a little quirky, a little romantic, lyrically profound. Maybe it's weird to say, but when I listen to this album, I see Ryan Adams. All his records are good, but none are as good as this one. It's a masterpiece.

John Mayer, Continuum
This is the album that John Mayer fans were waiting for. Anyone who'd seen him live around the time Heavier Things came out, said to themselves, "Why doesn't he do more of that?" because his live show was full of blues breakdowns (Come Back to Bed and Covered in Rain gave us a taste) and guitar chops that hardly anyone would have expected. Sure, Room For Squares showcased his lyrical abilities and his cute-guy pop sensibilities, and Heavier Things was more grown up, lyrically, with him talking about relationships in a more literal way. It had more guitar and deeper meanings. Continuum was on another level. It is, as an album, the most accurate representation of his talent. (Battle Studies doesn't count just yet, since I'm still digesting it.) Every song on the album is a brilliant piece of work. The songs are well-written, well-played, and well-produced, but it's more than that. There's some intangible thing about this album that's hard to explain. It's almost like his career has been a coming of age tale, and Continuum is the record where he'd found himself, his place in the world (and the industry) and said, "Okay, guys, check it out." He lets the songs speak for themselves, and for him, and what's left at the end of it is a collection of songs that an entire generation of 20-somethings can listen to and say, "I get it. I get it now."

D'Angelo, Voodoo
This album will be on a lot of lists. It had better be, since it's probably the best of its genre seen in recent years. And yes, I consider 2001 recent, because this record, when you put it on, still feels current. Not a lot of records from 2001 feel that way. D'Angelo can sing. That's not a secret, and it's not anything anyone can dispute. Voodoo doesn't feel like a showcase of his vocal ability, not like most R&B records are (see Usher, Joe, Chris Brown, et.al.). Voodoo is D'Angelo showing how much more he can do than just sing, or maybe more importantly, how much more he can do while singing. His arrangements are practically mind-blowing, and the group of artists and players he gathered only helped to prove how good he is as a musician, above and beyond just being a talented singer. And we can't forget the Untitled (How Does it Feel) video. No, we can't.

Lee Ann Womack, Call Me Crazy
It still blows my mind to think of how many people don't know how talented Lee Ann Womack is. She'll probably go down in history as the woman who sang I Hope You Dance, and that's a real shame, because the rest of her repertoire is, in my opinion, much better than that song. Call Me Crazy is a collection of songs that somehow bridge the gap between old country and new country, with the majority of the focus being on the former. She makes it relevant, however, singing of heartache, losing yourself, the trappings of not-quite-lost love, and 'the greats' (on I Think I know, which in itself is reason enough to pick up the album). Country music needs more people like Lee Ann Womack and Jamey Johnson to remind it that synth drums and screeching guitars aren't always the way to go. Sometimes we all need a little mandolin, steel guitar, and a song with a hook like, "If these walls could talk, they'd pray."

Patty Griffin, Children Running Through
You knew it'd be on here. All of Patty's albums are fantastic. Flawless in a really flawed way (in a beautiful way; the way you can hear sirens in the background [accidental] on the original studio recording of Let Him Fly). I feel like Children Running Through was her chance to show that while the songs are amazing, timeless, she is too. Her voice is incredible, there's no denying, and her tone alone invokes goosebumps if you let it (and why wouldn't you?). Though the album is more polished than her others, somehow more 'professional' in it's production quality and overall feel, it's, as always, the songs that make it what it is. Patty can make you cry, from nostalgia alone (Burgundy Shoes), from a story that's probably made up (Trapeze), from happiness (Heavenly Day) or from the inspiration of her singing about a man she never met (Up To the Mountain). She should have won the Grammy for this one. And her upcoming Downtown Church album, I just know, is going to be an amazing way to kick off the new decade.

Alicia Keys, The Diary of Alicia Keys
Most of the lists I've seen outlining the decade's best have listed Songs In A Minor, which I suppose I can understand, given that it was the album that thrust Alicia Keys into the lives of the masses with her spirited piano playing, braided hair and insane voice. Fallin' is probably one of the most easily recognizable songs of the decade, one that people will say they remember for ages. The Diary of Alicia Keys, however, is a more well-rounded album. It's more than just vocal acrobatics and "look at me!" piano playing (both of which I loved about Songs in A Minor.) It's got a sweetness about it, a heart that I think was missing from her first album. The songs about love are more universal, applicable to everyone. If I Ain't Got You is one of my favourite songs to this day. If I Was Your Woman is a classic (one I lovelovelove) and Diary is just a gorgeous concept. Alicia's musicality isn't overshadowed by anything, and in fact her lyrics showcase how talented she is at her craft. She makes her songs sound like the ideas behind them, and that's no easy task.

Fall Out Boy, Infinity On High
Honestly, I could have picked any Fall Out Boy record and made a case for it being one of my favourites of the decade, but this one is just above...above. The fact that Jay-Z appears on the first track to kick things off doesn't hurt. From Under the Cork Tree showed the fun side of FOB, the punk/emo stylings they needed to bolster their following. That certainly worked. But Infinity On High was their homecoming, it felt like. It was more mature than Cork Tree, and more musically refined. There is just more depth to the songs, musically and lyrically. This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race is fantastic, and Take Over, The Break's Over has provided me with hilarious memories of driving around with my sister in my parents' van singing "Wouldn't you rather be a weeble than a divorcee" (the real line is "Wouldn't you rather be a widow than a divorcee," which is incredible.) I could list every track and tell you all the things I love, but it'd be redundant. Infinity on High shows a more grown up FOB, one that grows as its fanbase does. Smart.

Justin Timberlake, Future Sex/Love Sounds
If Justified was Justin's successful break into the solo pop/R&B scene, then Future Sex/Love Sounds is his explosion into a genre that he's created in his own mind and somehow convinced his record label would translate to the masses. It did. Needless to say. So many people want so badly to write him off as just a pop singer, unable to do much more than just that. I'm not sure if they owe him an apology or if he owes them one, but either way, it's almost impossible to hate on Justin Timberlake. LoveStoned/I Think She Knows is a brilliant piece of music, parts a and b, that is probably only a glimpse at what Justin is capable of. Losing My Way tugs at heartstrings and headspace and makes people think about their lives (if it hasn't for you, it should; I'd advise to listen to this on headphones real loud and close your eyes when the choir comes in). (Another Song) All Over Again has jazz sensibilities that JT probably has no business possessing. The record leaves you wanting more. The thing with Justin is, his next record will probably be completely different from this one. And only JT could make a career of changing his style entirely every few years.

Miranda Lambert, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
If Gretchen Wilson is a redneck woman, Miranda Lambert is the girl stealing Wilson's boyfriend while she makes her weekly trip to Walmart. Lambert got her start on Nashville Star, country music's version of American Idol (but that's just to put it broadly; Nashville Star actually showcases contestants' songwriting ability, rather than merely being glammed up karaoke). I watched her sing Greyhound Bound for Nowhere, just a verse and a chorus, and I was hooked. And her first album was great, with that song, Kerosene, What About Georgia, etc. But if anyone ever asked me who Miranda Lambert is, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the album I'd point them towards. The title track is full of energy and rage and whiskey, and the music sounds like the idea; angry, bitchy, and at points, a little drunk. More Like Her and Desperation show a softer side, a heart beneath the armor (literally, she's got the tattoo of the revolvers to prove it) and Dry Town and Love Letters are a bit of a throwback, something she's kind of become known for. The fact that she covers Patty Griffin's Getting Ready (though, I have to admit, it isn't quite as good as the original) doesn't hurt either. She's left of center, and she doesn't apologize. There's no one out there like her, and as the years pass and she puts out more albums that build on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's success and niche, I don't think there'll ever be anyone like her.

Honourable Mentions
India.Arie, Acoustic Soul
Gavin Degraw, Chariot
Lupe Fiasco, Food and Liquor
Jay-Z, The Blueprint 3
Joe Purdy, Last Clock on the Wall
John Legend, Get Lifted
*NSync, No Strings Attached
Ray Lamontagne, Trouble
The RH Factor, Hard Groove
Erykah Badu, Mama's Gun
Brad Paisley, Part II
John Mayer, Room For Squares

There are probably more that I'll think of and want to add here. The 00's was a decent decade for music, I'd say.

This post is archived under alicia keys, corrine bailey rae, d angelo, fall out boy, jay z, john mayer, justin timberlake, kanye west, lee ann womack, marc broussard, miranda lambert, patty griffin, ryan adams

Every now and again, a song comes along that grabs you by the heart and holds onto you. You realize that the song is, somehow, written like a song you would have written. Does that make sense? I just mean that it feels in some strange way like it came from your own head and heart and not someone else's.

I've talked about it before, the idea of an artist growing with you, or you growing with an artist, as the case may be. I guess there's no real difference; both those things are the same, ultimately connecting you in some way with someone you have never and probably will never meet. I think most people know that John Mayer is this artist for me. I feel like John at 24-25 was me at 18-19. John at 29 was me at 22-23. John at 32 is me at 25.

It's so weird that sometimes I think I'm making it up, but it feels like he writes exactly what I need to hear, exactly what I'm feeling but just can't (or won't) express.

His new album comes out next week, and it was leaked (of course). I told myself I wasn't going to listen until I get the album, but I had to listen to Half of My Heart, a song he blogged/posted a video of when he was in the process of writing/recording it. I loved it even then, when all he was showcasing was guitar and some cool harmonies on the chorus. Taylor Swift sings BGs on the final cut.

This song is killer. I have a feeling this album is going to represent the best of all three of his prior albums. Acoustic rhythm, blues riffs, and rock undertones. I think he's taking all those incarnations of who he is as a musician and melding them all together into something really, really special.

And what's more, his lyrics slay me. Absolutely slay me. For instance:

I was born in the arms of imaginary friends
Free to roam made a home out of everywhere I've been

Half of my heart has a real good imagination
Half of my heart's got you
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you that
Half of my heart won't do

Half of my heart in a shotgun wedding
To a bride with a paper ring
But half of my heart is the part of a man
Who's never truly loved anything

This post is archived under john mayer

I once read an article written by John Mayer in Rolling Stone where he was asked to write about Jimi Hendrix in 'The Immortals' issue (one of the best issues ever, FYI). And not surprisingly, he said something that is not only poignant in regards to Hendrix's influence on the music industry, but also in regards to just music and artists in general.

Mayer said; "Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix."

And so as I go through some old albums, ones that I listened to as a 'kid', really, I realize that I have done the same thing. Who I am as a vocalist is defined by my failure to become Wanye Morris or Justin Timberlake. Who I am as a musician is largely defined by my almost obsessive need to learn the harmony lines in each and every *NSync song. It was a compulsion. I'd listen to the albums, certain songs, even, for hours on end, headphones over my ears, laying on my bedroom floor at 15 years old, trying to emulate Justin's phrasing and runs and musicality.

It's an interesting thing, too, because I listen to these songs now, headphones over my ears as I sit in my office, and I can still sing those runs. I can still pick Joey's voice out of the five part harmony and sing his line if I want to, then switch over to JC's part the next line. It's a little crazy, because at 25, I have both no business listening to *NSync (but I will not stop, because I maintain that they are brilliant), and I have no business remembering such musical intricacies from an album released in 1998. But my best friend and I loved them, and we were/are both singers. At 15 and 17 respectively, we decided that I sounded more like Justin and she sounded more like JC, so we'd sing those songs, each guys' parts claimed as our own, until we got them perfect.

And it was a perfect learning experience that I didn't even realize I was part of. As part of the audition process to get into the vocal jazz program I was eventually accepted to, I was required to prepare a 'lift'. What that means is that you listen to a song by another artist, and you emulate their intonation, phrasing, and style as best you can. Well, not to sound conceited, but I aced it. I'd been doing it for years, since I bought Boyz II Men's II album on cassette (the first album I ever bought) and decided that I wanted to be able to sing runs like they could. The first vocal competition I placed first in, I sang Open Arms. I essentially copied Mariah's version.

I can still transform my voice to copy whoever I'm listening to, which freaks out my brother (a semi-professional musician who has toured the globe with an award-winning artist). He laughs when he hears me singing like Justin, that bit of a smokey, sultry rasp. He thinks it's hilarious that the next second, I can sing with all the swing of Ella. I can bust out a Miranda Lambert song and have a Texan accent singing Famous in a Small Town. Granted, this is usually after a few drinks, when everything is a little funnier. And it's even weirder, because when I sing my own songs, that's when my true voice comes out. Sometimes I hear myself on recordings of my own songs and it startles me a little, because I spend so much time singing like other people, that it's strange to hear myself.

There is no doubt that I'm an auditory learner. I'm not sure if that's innate or learned, or maybe a little bit of both.

And in one of those evenings, after quite a bit of Mount Guay rum, my brother and I, both of us saxophone players, got to talking about *NSync and how good this song is, and we decided it'd be awesome to work out a 5-part saxophone arrangement (one baritone, one tenor, two alto, and one soprano).

We never did it. I still want to. I may just have to talk to him about that...

This post is archived under Boyz II Men, ella fitzgerald, jimi hendrix, john mayer, miranda lambert, music, nsync

Music is one of the only things that, if you really think about it, is so intensely complex, it'll hurt your head to comprehend it. (Architecture is probably the only other thing that I feel this way about, and maybe even more so, because I at least understand music to a degree. Architecture just amazes me.)

Music is just so multi-faceted, so many things on so many levels, and there is absolutely no one in the world who can possibly understand it all. No one. I am convinced of that. Lyrics, notes, percussion, chords, 3 or 4 or 10 or 20 or 60 or 100 piece bands. Think about that, the complexity of 100 people on so many different instruments, playing different lines, on different cues, sometimes in different time signatures. And one writer writing it. Think of a orchestral piece, strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion, instruments in different keys and pitches, and one mind puts them all together into something so incredible. Talk about a beautiful mind.

I just got goosebumps thinking about it.

I was listening to John Coltrane today, and Coltrane is one of those musicians I cannot ever, ever, ever listen to on shuffle, and here's why: Coltrane is an artist whose progression of talent you can hear, starting from his earliest recordings, moving on to his latest. You can quite literally hear him getting better. When I was younger and all my friends (every last one of them) was in the jazz program at the college we went to, we had an indepth discussion about this. The transformation of early Coltrane to late Coltrane is masterful, and apparently there are spades of unreleased material that we may or may not ever get to hear.

And sure, every artist progresses, but it doesn't seem to happen the same way anymore. Everything is so polished, and the artists worth listening to (there are so, so many who aren't) have, to a degree, started to master their craft before they even cut their first record. And a lot of those won't release more than two albums.

So it makes you wonder what it's like to be in someone else's mind, someone else who obviously has a better handle on it than you do. I don't mean, like, Bach or Beethoven. I mean someone like John Mayer (typical of me, I know). But when you hear a John Mayer song, you know you're hearing a John Mayer song. Not because he's got a formula or there's anything predictable about it, but because he's got a feel. Layering, and yes, a distinctive guitar tone. I can't even comprehend what it's like to be in his head when he's writing. I know what happens in my own, but I am not the musician or writer he is.

Or someone like Alicia Keys, who is such a brilliant artist. In my opinion (one that a lot of people might scoff at), she resurrected R&B in the early 2000's; bridged the gap between more adult contemporary artists and the 'whisper singers' like Ashanti who did absolutely nothing for the genre. Alicia writes her own songs, and does it brilliantly. I've seen clips of her in the studio, and when she's in the zone, it's almost like you're afraid to look at her, like you're witnessing something too personal, but you can't help it. She's intense and focused, like whatever idea is in her head is going to torture her until she gets it perfectly on paper and on record.

I realize I don't really know that feeling. Sure, I am a bit of a perfectionist, and I'm creative, and I'll wake up at three in the morning and write for hours, because if I don't write this, right now, it's going to disappear. It'll be gone forever and I'll never get it back, and what if that was the perfect thing and I let it slip away?

I wonder if that's a neurosis every artist has.

But if it is, I'm almost certain that it's that very neurosis that fuels the progression.

This post is archived under alicia keys, john coltrane, john mayer, music

So today, while enjoying some downtime after deadlines, a friend of mine asked me a question I wasn't prepared for.

The question was this: "What 5 musicians would you most want to sing with?"

Sounds simple, right? I'm sure most people would rattle off five names and that'd be that. Not me. I had follow up questions. Would it be studio recording or live performance? What kind of venue are we talking? Can the artists be dead or alive? Any specific genre?

You get the idea. So she set the parameters as such: The artist must be alive, it would be a live performance in a small-ish venue (1,000-5,000 people). And yes, we got that specific, or it would have taken me ages and ages to compile my list of five people. The links will take you to some awesome live videos.

1: John Mayer. This one wouldn't matter what the details were. Dead, alive, performance or studio. I'd just love to pretty much do anything with him. Write a song, lay down some vocals, sit and watch in awe as he took a solo. Whatever. That said, I've got a wicked harmony part worked out for Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. Just sayin'.

2: Vince Gill. One of my all time fave singers. Totally brilliant musician who, though he's been nominated for and won almost every award out there, is so underrated it's not even funny. His was the second concert I ever went to. He was brilliant. I was 12 years old, and I fell in love with his music even more. That love affair hasn't ended.

3: Marc Broussard. Marc and I could get it funky, and I don't mean that in any dirty way (the guy's married and has three kids!). His music just makes you smile. He could pick any song and tell me to sing the BGs and I'd be game. Hell, he could tell me to sing on every song and I'd be game. Just love this soul/R&B/funk vibe he's got himself into. It's his sound; no one else out there has it.

4: Patty Griffin. You know how I feel about her. I can hear myself singing Trapeze or Burgundy Shoes with her. Or Heavenly Day, the song that can turn my mood around no matter what.

5: This is a tie, because I simply cannot choose between these two men. Brian McKnight and D'Angelo. Love them both immensely. It's ridiculous, really. Brian is a master. D'Lo can sing like nobody's business. Don't know what else to say. These two are each geniuses in their own right. With Brian, I'd want to sing 6, 8, 12. With D'Lo, probably Send It On or Untitled (How Does it Feel) or maybe Brown Sugar.

So there you have it. My list of five. Sort of. I know it's a cop out to have a tie, but...well, it's my list, and I say it's allowed.

This post is archived under brian mcknight, d angelo, john mayer, marc broussard, music, patty griffin, vince gill