Feb-tastic!

Well my dears, it's been awhile since I've talked about my music here, and oh so much has happened that I need to step into the way back machine to recap. Last July I ended Banter/3.1 as I reported here. Soon after I began working on a new live show entitled Horses Changed My Life which was to be part music, part storytelling, with some sort of film in the background. Then, as many of you know, in November my Mac crashed, leaving me with access to none of the work I had done for that show. As of this writing the data issue is still unresolved (anyone got a spare two grand for recovery?) Then along came xxxmas, and despite always striving to be naughty, santa brought me the new version of Pro Tools that I asked for. However. It requires 1gb of memory and my old pc only had 512mb. At that point I had a bit of extra scratch from working my ass off over the hollandaise, so I bought a barebones kit and built a new computer. And just in time, because February is going to be a busy month.

First, I am taking the Recording Project Month Challenge. The idea is to write and record an entire album in the month of February. I ain't scared. After all, I did record Beyond Beautiful Mountain in only three weeks. My plan is to write a new song every day for the first ten days, and then edit the shit out of them for the remaining 18 days. A tease of the new sound can be heard here. It's the last song in the player, appropriately called A taste of what's to come. The resulting work will be the first album by Something Like Banter & the Cybernetic Inevitable All-Stars.

In CockSlap news, we have a show coming up at AS220 on March 4th. Be there. Trust me. We are currently building The Chicken which is an interactive beast controlled by you the audience! You won't want to miss this exciting opportunity to be a part of the CockSlap experience.

"Well, what about the horses?" you may ask. Horses Changed My Life is now going to become a feature length silent film with an all original soundtrack. In many ways it is going to be the sequel to Sweeping up the Popcorn only this time set in a record store. Pre-production will begin in March after I get past the enourmous amount of work I mentioned above.

So, as you can see, I've got quite a bit of work ahead of me. But, that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it.

Dear Mr. President

In honor of our new leader I was able to get away with an all black playlist at work today. This was actually more difficult than it would seem, but keep in mind I have a very limited palette to work with, and loose guidelines about current popular music being played at certain times of day. Again, seems easy right? However, we basically do not play rap at all, so as popular as say T-Pain may be, it would never get played in the store. (Not that I'd want to, it's just an example.) The mornings are a little easier, and to my liking, because we can play a bit of Jazz and Blues. So here, with commentary, is the list:

Herbie Hancock ~ The Joni Letters It's Herbie, what more need I say?
Buddy Guy ~ Skin Deep An excellent disc, and the message of the title track made all the more poignant by the significance of today.
Tracy Chapman ~ Our Bright Future I haven't had much chance to absorb this album yet, but what I've heard has been decent.
Al Green ~ Lay It Down My biggest coup of the day, the Reverend was playing as Obama was being sworn in.
Keyshia Cole ~ A Different Me This is where things start to get crappy.
John Legend ~ Evolver Although, for some inexplicable reason, I really like this album. I think it might be because it doesn't have the standard lame guest rapper thing. (correction: Andre 3000 is on Green Light, but I'm ok with that)
Beyonce ~ I Am... Sasha Fierce Dear Mrs. Z, please go away.
Seal ~ Soul The man can sing, and is surprisingly well suited to this type of material, but the song choices are mostly horrible.
Jennifer Hudson The fact that I'm qualified to say that this is one of the worst Idol related discs out there scares me. "Ima hit you with my pocketbook"!!?? Seriously? Are you secretly 85?
Alicia Keys ~ As I Am Gotta say, I don't mind this one. I'd never go out of my way to listen to it outside of work, but she's ok. On a liner notes aside; pictures of a pretty lady in a tight Miles Davis t-shirt surrounded by top-notch keyboards are ok by me.

If I had more control over the music I could have put together a bangin' list, but I worked with what I had.

p.s. Mr. President, I hope you do an excellent job. I wish you the best.