Pink Floyd - Mother

This post was originally supposed to be about the new Japandroids album "Celebration Rock." That however, will have to wait until next week because on Saturday June 23rd, 2012 I got to see Roger Waters perform "The Wall". This isn't the first time that he's brought the wall to Toronto, but the Rogers Centre is the biggest venue he's played. I can't see how you could fit 40,000 people in a smaller venue.

To try and describe how the stage was set up is kind of hard if you've never been inside a baseball stadium. So I'll include this photo from where I was sitting. The stage literally stretched all the way from left field to right field.

One of the coolest parts of the show was the usage of the actual wall. Instead of having giant video screens surrounding the stage, they used the wall as a giant projection screen. As the wall was slowly built throughout the first half of the show, the projectors used more and more of the wall to display the video. Once the wall was complete, you could see why no extra screens were required. It had the most jumbo-est of jumbo screens. The only downside to having the massive wall built was that you couldn't seethe actual band that was playing the music. Roger Waters was out front but the restof the band was hidden. It didn't really matter though. You would've been distracted from the awesome spectacle taking place before your eyes.

There were a few standout moments from the show. One of my favourites being when a children's choir from Regent Park came out to assist with the chorus of "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2). But the standout moment in my eyes was when Roger Waters sung a duet with Roger Waters. Thats right. He had a duet with himself. Projected onto the wall was a Pink Floyd performance in 1980. There a younger version of Roger Waters sung the song "Mother." All while present Roger Waters sung along. This is as close to time travel as we can get right now. Take it or leave it. I thought it was awesome.

Especially after the line "Mama can I trust the government?"

On the wall they projected the words "NO FUCKING WAY"

Anyways, if you want to know what the album is like, Rolling Stone magazine rated it #87 on the top 500 albums of all time. I would probably rate it higher. So here's a sample from the original 1979 pressing of "The Wall". It still sounds better than something you could produce on Pro Tools today. So I'll give it 5/5 stars? 

I need to come up with a different system.

Buy Pink Floyd's "The Wall" here:

http://search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZContentLink.woa/wa/link?path=pinkfloyd

or buy it from their website:

http://www.pinkfloyd.com/store.php

Bobby Womack ft. Gil Scott Heron - Stupid

I decided that for my first post, I would grab one of my more recent albums. 

So I'll start off by saying this: HOLY CRAP YES.

I'll admit it, I had no idea who Bobby Womack was until I heard him on the Gorillaz track "Stylo". So really, I have to thank Damon Albarn for opening my eyes to Womack's wonderful catalogue.

What initially made me want to get this album stems from Womack's work on the Gorillaz "Plastic Beach" album. First off, I went to a Gorillaz concert way back in October 2010 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. At that point in time he would have been sixty-six years old and had recently been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

He STILL had the best voice on that stage. That has to stand for something. 

An added bonus for this album was the fact that Damon Albarn helped produce "The Bravest Man In The Universe". So I figured it would be similar to what I had heard previously on "Plastic Beach".

It was hard to pick a standout track to record, so I picked the track that has the Gil Scott-Heron intro.

Gil is awesome too but I'll save that for another entry.

I suck at this. Here's an actual review, in case you're interested.

http://www.metro.us/newyork/entertainment/article/1145967--bobby-womack-the-bravest-man-in-the-universe

I guess I need to come up with some sort of rating system.

So I'll give this a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Does that make sense?

Whatever.

GO BUY IT.

Here, I'll help you.

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Bravest-Man-In-Universe/dp/B007PAAO0Y/beggarsgroup-21

iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bravest-man-in-universe/id522068118

XL Recordings:

http://shopusa.xlrecordings.com/featured-xl-homepage/the-bravest-man-in-the-universe

Introduction

I think it was two years ago that I started buying vinyl records. I assume it was that long ago because I started full time employment around that point in history. However, my employment history isn't important to what I'm trying to do here.

I've decided to start a blog for a few reasons:

1. I apparently have no life, and can't fill the entire day with angry birds.

2. I enjoy music. Specifically old recordings.

3. I started to share my vinyl collection on facebook, and actually got positive feedback.

4. Committing a couple of hours a week to trying to write a blog will help fend off Alzheimer's. I think I heard that doing crossword puzzles does that. But I suck at crosswords/sudoku's.

So I guess I'll do one entry per week and see how it goes.

The idea is that I will be taking music straight from my records (with the help of modern technology), and placing them in a blog with a review. To hopefully avoid copyright infringement, I will include links to where you can buy it etc. To be safe I think I'll only do it one track at a time instead of entire albums. I don't really want to get sued for millions of dollars I don't have.

So I guess that's it.

It starts now.

- SD