Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

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ufug
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by ufug »

That's beer talk. I don't want to derail the thread, but in short the experience totally changed my expectations and motivations for making music. The artists I worked for were mostly older and well established (I can PM you the details if you're curious), and right after I started, Napster arrived. The agency was firmly entrenched in the old model, and that model collapsed faster than anyone can imagine in terms of advances and recording budgets for people who weren't moving massive quantities of units. At the same time, outside of work I was playing in an arty alt rock band that had great distribution and some solid reviews, but we sold nada and our second record was turned down by every label. I could see how long the odds were to begin with for any musician, and combined with the state of the late 90s music industry, the likelihood of finding any kind of sustained success was pretty bleak.

These days people have figured out the internet (mostly) and there's a gazillion different ways to find your niche, which is awesome.

I'm an old fart now and make music 100% for pleasure and a few friends who like it, play out every month or so in other old farts' bands, and have a darn good time doing it! So to your question: I produce it on the cheap and don't market it at all except for sharing it here and a few other related places. ;)
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

Interesting stuff! I may guess we'd have a few empty beer glasses on this topic :lol:

Ringside at the onset of P2P file sharing, what a place in history! You guys have some very stellar reviews there on Amazon, a quick check has located the album on Spotify as well, can't listen right now but am grabbing the album on my playlist, will look forward to listening tomorrow.

The internet is certainly fertile ground to invent (and re-invent) yourself in whatever way you want, add a few bucks and you can be on iTunes, Google, Amazon and Spotify so who needs label distribution!? The rub is the exposure shelf-life... everybody is on a newsfeed or timeline, 'fame' used to be measured in 15 minute increments, now it's milliseconds depending how much screen is exposed above the scroll point and what the competing hordes of facebook family and "Friends" have to say on any given day. I am also in the old-fart transition and at 49 have just lucked into willing accomplices to make original music with after 25 years of steady work doing covers. Like you I'm just going to do it because I can and because I want to, anything beyond that is gravy. I do feel bad for young artists like my son and his band who are legitimately talented but finding making headway in our self-absorbed Social Media Millennial society to be extremely challenging, months of work on an EP disappearing into the ether in the brevity of a Facebook post is completely understandable given our times, but also discouraging.

I don't know what's best... celebrity culture and it's ridiculous make-believe expansive gulf between the haves and have-nots or the post Youtube/Reality TV paradigm with it's "everybody is famous.... so nobody is". Anyway not really a judgement as much as an observation, but certainly good basis for some beer...
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by ufug »

The best thing about all of it, what you do, and I do, and your son and everyone here who makes music, or codes: we are compelled to create stuff out of thin air. That's pretty awesome and it's more rare than we might think. What a great gift to be able to pick up a guitar or a (computer) keyboard at the end of a (fantastic/crappy/boring/fruitful) day and make something cool happen! We're pretty lucky.
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

42low wrote:
GMaq wrote:Hi ufug,

Thanks for the very kind (but undeserved) words. Indeed 'Blues' is a funny genre these days,
Get out of here man! :mrgreen:
Blues is within al genres from these day's!! Blues is the mother of all!
Funny genre...pfffff...Don't start talking foolish GMaq. :wink: :D

Carry on talking to each other. Reading with pleasure. :cheers:
Hi 42low,

English is a very limited language..."funny" like "love" means too many things other than it's actual meaning..

I agree with you 100%, Blues is the foundation of modern rock, serious business and nothing "funny" about that at all. :wink:

I am totally inspired and influenced by Freddie King, Albert King, BB King, Buddy Guy and many more, for some reason their music really speaks to me even though I am a rural white middle-class Canadian country boy. I listen to pretty much every kind of music but when I write something what comes out is always blues-based. By 'funny' I mean it is difficult to take the legacy of these early masters who basically invented and defined electric blues and lived and experienced those terribly hard times and whose words were written out of their shared experiences and make it something that is also relevant and authentic to my own life and that speaks to other people like me. For me to merely imitate them and sing "my baby left me" or "can't pay the rent" doesn't feel like the right thing to do. I find it very challenging to take the inspiration of a music form that I love and is truly what I feel and make it something that is authentic and fresh but still pays tribute to those sacred influences.

When I listen to Satellite and internet blues radio I'm very disappointed by the high number of what I call 'sweat pants" modern artists playing big toned Stratocasters in hopes to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan (probably one of the last true blues artists) and singing the same old cliches. I'm supposedly a 'blues' fan but I can't even listen to that stuff. I'm certainly not saying I'm doing something better (hey, at least they're getting radio play) but I'm very intent on finding a way keep the spirit of the blues but also say my own piece. I'm probably doomed to fail but in the meantime I get to learn, improve and play with the best rhythm section ever!
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by ufug »

Yes, blues is a big house. It's definitely helpful to have words to describe styles of music, but it gets muddy real fast.

There's also 1000 different layers of race stuff involved with categorizing music. Look at Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. I don't know how you would categorize their music, but the have both been doing nearly identical styles of melodic, MOR pop for the past twenty years. Both are known as "blues" guitarists. But go check the bins at your record store--99% of the time Cray is in the "blues" bin and Clapton is in the "rock" bin. THEY DO THE SAME THING. :?
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

You're absolutely right! I remember a similar PM conversation with davephillips I had last year. On a side note davephillips is the actual Linux king of the blues... his focus has moved to classical and electronic influenced music of late but he is the REAL deal...

Anyway Dave who hopefully will stop by and correct me if I'm wrong also got bitten by the blues bug early in life and was into the Delta stuff (Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson and countless others). As a young man listening to these artists his friends would scoff "what's that crap!?". Years later Eric Clapton comes out with his Robert Johnson tribute and all of a sudden everyone is a Delta blues fan cause it's safe, white, popular and accessible. Now before we crucify Clapton it's the A&R departments to blame, Clapton has been very generous with his praise and advocacy of his influences from what I've read.

I'm always inspired to watch the documentaries 'Muscle Shoals' and 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown' and see soul music being invented by those amazing black artists and a bunch of backwoods white boys so in love with music that true Unity happened in the most unlikely place in the Civil rights era... Oh that we couldn't bottle a thousand 'Fame' studios for the current times...
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by finotti »

Really nice! Well done!
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

A snowy day (the last of the year I hope) and some curiosity about split-screen editing have spawned another video, a bit of explanation about this one below for musicologists, if that's not your thing then go right to the link here:

https://vimeo.com/212467186

Now a bit of background... this is a new cover arrangement of an old public domain blues song that has been interpreted many times, the original source is said to have been called "Rosie". Anyway it got a new arrangement in the mid-60's by The Animals and later tweaked big-time by Grand Funk who immortalized it. To me it is a quintessential example of a 'power trio' song. Jimi Hendrix and Cream get the big props for establishing the power trio as a band form but there were countless others in the late 60's like The James Gang, Blue Cheer and one of my favourites... Grand Funk (before they got all 70's-like)

The lyrics of the song have our poor protagonist imprisoned on a work farm missing his woman and looking forward to the day he gets out and they are reunited. The Animals version has the word "rebirth" in it as a description of his sublime joy when they are together again. For some strange reason whether by design or mistake Grand Funk changed the lyric to "reefer" (marijuana for the innocent reader) and then invented some other lyrics to go around that theme. As much as I love their version and musical arrangement of this song this alteration of the lyrics has always driven me nuts so in the spirit of re-interpretation I decided to get "rebirth" back and invent some lyrics to keep one cohesive theme in the song. The Grand Funk version is also 9 minutes long in keeping with the groovy and chilled out attention spans of 1969 we left about 4 minutes of tape on the cutting room floor for our version.

For the real hardcore music trivia fans there is an amazingly good quality video of Grand Funk performing this song on PBS public television in 1969. I can't imagine what many an Aunt Myrtle would have thought seeing these 3 hairballs rocking out with abandon and singing about reefer for 9 minutes with Mel Schacher's immense fuzz toned bass rattling their TV cabinet, an amazing moment in rock history!

For those who hung in for the whole post, enjoy! https://youtu.be/NxcOxvEsE_Y
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

Passing along a new video tracked live with Mixbus32C and edited with Cinelerra. In these times of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' we thought a plea to cut the BS was in order... This is our original song "Straight Up" from our 2016 album "Turnabout" and it obviously bows very reverently low to the unobtainable heights of James Brown and "jammin' on the one". It was also an excuse to play my old Harmony H78 guitar which due to it's age and fragility doesn't see the sun outside the studio..

https://vimeo.com/215511469

Thanks, Glen (Rated Blue)
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by ufug »

At the risk of over-praising you guys: killer work once again. These videos are so well done, and the band has a great vibe. That guitar needs more time up front!
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

ufug wrote:At the risk of over-praising you guys: killer work once again. These videos are so well done, and the band has a great vibe. That guitar needs more time up front!
Hi!

Thanks, BTW I'm still listening to your album as time permits, now that IS something to over-praise :D
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by davephillips »

GMaq wrote:... davephillips ... has moved to classical and electronic influenced music of late ...
But I haven't forgotten my promise to you. I sat down a while ago to record some material for you but I was so disappointed by my singing that I threw it all out. I'll work up some courage and get 'em done for you Real Soon Now (tm). Hopefully the vocals won't be so bad, I've been practicing a bit more lately.
Anyway Dave who hopefully will stop by and correct me if I'm wrong also got bitten by the blues bug early in life and was into the Delta stuff (Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson and countless others). As a young man listening to these artists his friends would scoff "what's that crap!?".
Revenge is mine. :)
Years later Eric Clapton comes out with his Robert Johnson tribute and all of a sudden everyone is a Delta blues fan cause it's safe, white, popular and accessible. Now before we crucify Clapton it's the A&R departments to blame, Clapton has been very generous with his praise and advocacy of his influences from what I've read.
I've been watching footage from those blues packages that toured Europe in the 60s. Man, Clapton and so many others benefited from direct instruction from people like Big Bill Broonzy and Freddie King. The lead singer for the Yardbirds learned harmonica directly from Sonny Boy Williamson, as far as I know he's the only white guy to have had that experience. Lucky guys.

And yeh, I agree re: Clapton, he's the real thing in blues. His work with Mayall is testament enough. However, as Glen knows, I'm not much enthralled by guitar virtuosi, especially in blues music. For me, the singers make it happen. Like flamenco puro, the original oldest blues forms had no instrumental accompaniment. Check out the work songs recorded in the 1920s or Leadbelly's a capella songs, they're not blues per se but you can hear its sources in those songs.
I'm always inspired to watch the documentaries 'Muscle Shoals' and 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown' and see soul music being invented by those amazing black artists and a bunch of backwoods white boys so in love with music that true Unity happened in the most unlikely place in the Civil rights era... Oh that we couldn't bottle a thousand 'Fame' studios for the current times...
Some fine blues docos have appeared on YouTube. There's one produced by a school in Georgia that focuses on the life and times of Blind Willie McTell (author of Statesboro Blues), it's an amazing work. The makers interviewed many family members who had clear memories of Willie, they completed a picture of his life that's quite amazing, he was a most remarkable bluesman by any standards. Educated (he could read Braille), articulate (listen to him handle John Alan Lomax's cracker questions on the Library Of Congress recordings), a virtuoso finger-picking & slide guitarist (12-string), and one of the greatest blues singer/songwriters. He's one of my heroes.

Anyway, didn't want to hijack the thread but I thought I heard someone say my name. :)

Best,

dp
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by GMaq »

Hi Dave!!

No hijack, glad you've joined us. The thread has long gone of course by my own hand anyway, When we post things here of course it's nice to share our 'art' but for me anyway the discussion it brings up is just as enjoyable (sometimes more).

You always enrich a good discussion and in the sporadic conversations we have I usually learn something new.. :D

As far as collaborating, no rush, no pressure, no deadlines, you have the magic no doubt, deploy it whenever you're ready... :wink:
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Re: Rated Blue tracking live with Mixbus 32C

Post by psyocean »

So good. Alive cohesively play - respect!
Guitar and synth tales... https://www.youtube.com/user/Psyocean/
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