Got more soul then a sock with a hole

bonjour internet. I'm in a bit of an old man phase so I'm going to follow up my post on vinyl with a post about radio. I love the radio. It starts me off every morning and tells me everything I need to know; news, weather, entertainment, everything. The morning announcers have become so familiar to me that it's almost as if they are in my house with me just having a nice conversation about what's going on. I especially love the programs on the CBC. My favorite program has to be the Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Vinyl Cafe it's a radio show that happens every Sunday. The show has Stuart McLean telling stories about Dave, owner of a second hand record store, and Dave's wife, Morley, their two children, Sam and Stephanie, and assorted friends and neighbors. I can't really explain it much more then that you really have to listen yourself to understand it in it's full glory. Other programs I enjoy are Age of Persuasion, (A show about advertising and the work that goes into making it) GO! (A live radio show with games, music and other random fun) Q (a Talk show hosted by Jian Ghomeshi) Vinyl Tap (A show hosted by Randy Bachman where he talks music and stories) and a whole bunch more CBC shows.
The only problem I really have with the radio is that I'm not always the one controlling the dials. Here in Halifax there are three different pop stations. Z103, 101.3 (The Bounce) and C100. This means that anyone who has access to a radio probably will pick one of those three stations considering no one my age really enjoys talk radio or classic rock. I'm going to use this to segway into an anger fueled rant about pop music today so if you're someone who likes that kinda music and would like to remain blissfully unaware of how crappy it is skip this next paragraph. Otherwise read on.

First off I'd like to start with auto-tune. Auto-tune started as a little program to fix little pitch errors in singers and what not. It wasn't used as an effect until Cher came out with a song called Believe. Nowadays there are people like T-Pain who are apparently big fans of how Cher sounds and use it in hip hop songs. To me this takes away all artistic credibility from artists who barely had any in the first place. I mean these people barely have any lyrical abilities since all they rap about is money and the things that come with it and now it's not even their voice. I love hip hop but it's getting to the point where with auto tune no artist is unique. T-Pain and I would sound almost identical with auto-tune so what's stopping me from taking his place? The answer to that is image. T-Pain looks like a rap star I'm just a little white kid, which brings me to my next point. Image should have nothing to do with musicians. Lots of musicians are ugly, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones and those are some of the biggest names in music history. Which leads me to one of my least favorite names in pop music Lady Gaga. For some reason Lady Gaga is viewed as this "visionary" and so "unique" I suspect it's because she dresses so strangely. That's all well and fine cause I don't know anything about fashion but I do know that she shouldn't be viewed as a good musician with lines like "let's have some fun/this beat is sick/ I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" and that's disregarding her "lyrics" that aren't even real words. In my opinion she should stick with fashion and get out of music. By far my least favorite thing about pop music today is one specific song. It's called sexy chick. In this song Akon says "I don't know how to describe this girl without being disrespectful" excuse my Caps but ARE YOU KIDDING ME! This is literally saying that Akon cannot call a girl beautiful or pretty or anything even close to that because all the things he calls girls are words like hoe and bitch. This song is extremely popular and I have to ask any girl reading this would you enjoy dating or being with a guy who doesn't know how to say you look good without calling you a demeaning word? No of course not but there are a lot of girls who mindlessly listen to this making it more and more popular. I'd be pissed if I were a girl and this guy was putting women down like that on such a massive level.

I'd like to apologize for the anger in that post it's just I'm forced to listen to the radio at work and I needed to vent it out.
To make up for it I'd like to unveil on the blog for the first time the Old Shug Film Co.! That's right Brendan and I (plus Jenna and Rob who are friends of ours) have started making short films here is a link to some of the ones we have made so far. There are two now but a third will be up soon. Enjoy!

I know I used caps lock earlier but just know it's not your fault and I still love you
-Grant

The Crowd Gets Caught like a Needle in a Groove.

Frequent readers of The Old Shug know that I'm an avid collector of vinyl records. I know a lot of people think that vinyl is a dead platform and that it doesn't stand up to the convenience and quality of digital music, but I honestly believe that if you listen to the same album on vinyl and CD you will have a much better experience with the vinyl copy. There are a few reasons that cause me to think this. I'll start out with the act of buying the album.

If you are shopping for an album on CD then you go into a store with thousands of CD's and DVD's and you find a CD that you want to buy. But, before you make the purchase you want to know about it a little more just to be safe. So you ask an employee. Now I've generally had some pretty knowledgeable people working at the major CD stores but every once in a while you'll have someone who has no idea about the music and see's working at the store as just another retail job. Now, on the other hand if you're buying the album on vinyl you walk into the store that is filled with records and CD's you flip through the milk crates until you find that album you're looking for. You pull it out and you have this amazing 12 3/4 x 12 3/4 inch piece of art. At most record stores you'll only find one person working but you'll find this one person has an incredible amount of knowledge so when you ask him or her about the album they almost always can tell you something about it because if they sell records you know they have a passion for the music and it's not just a retail job for them.

So now you have the album and you're at home ready to open it. I'll admit that I get just as satisfied peeling off the plastic on a new CD as I do a new LP, but opening the two is a different story. When opening a CD there generally aren't any surprises unless it has an ad in it for other new CD's from that label. Opening a new vinyl record, on the other hand, can come with any number of surprises such as, posters, stickers, or in the case of many new records a digital download or a CD copy of the record.

Now... for the best part of all... Listening to the record. With the CD there are two different ways of going about this. You can either put it in a CD player, or do what most people do now-a-days which is upload it on their computers and putting it on their MP3 players. Then when all that is done you can put on/in your head/earphones and finally hit play. The main problem with this is that, with the whole portable aspect of my iPod, I end up doing something else and not focusing on my album. The vinyl copy is much more satisfying to me because once you have it opened you can take out the inner sleeve and slip the record out. Now you have this physical object that you can hold, and if you run your fingers along the grooves you can literally feel the music. Now for the moment you've been waiting for, you gently put the record on the platter and drop the needle. As soon as the needle catches you get this warm, genuine sound coming out of your speakers which keeps you hooked until the very end of the record which you now can enjoy as an experience instead of just a collection of songs.

Some of you might think that even though all that is nice and good don't CD's have better quality then records? Well, that's actually not necessarily true. Vinyl records are recorded in analog which means that it reflects the sound waves in one constant stream. Cd's are digital which is more like taking little "snapshots" of the sound. This causes a lot of sound to be lost in the final product of the recording which ends up giving CD's a more dull, flat sound compared to vinyl. (More info)

One of the biggest reasons I prefer vinyl is not a matter of personal taste or enjoyment, but a matter of respect for the artist. Vinyl ensures that you listen to the whole record and not just the singles or the songs that you've already heard. There is no skip button on a record player so you have to hear the whole record just the way that the artists made it and recorded it and just in case you do get distracted there are two sides on a record so you have to flip it which will get you right back into it.

I understand that maybe there are people reading this who aren't quite ready to make the jump all the way back to vinyl but if you liked this article I ask that instead of downloading single mislabeled songs off limewire you go to your local CD store and buy a whole CD instead to support the artists because that's what it all comes down too. We need to support the people making the music we like so that they can keep making new music for people to enjoy. and you never know, maybe someday you'll be at a yard sale and you'll pick up a record player for a couple bucks and join me and my fellow audiophiles.

Thanks for listening, keep on spinning

-Grant

Pat LePoidevin Live @ Waterfront Campus

...yes another music review.
The other night I saw Pat LePoidevin play an acoustic show at the NSCC waterfront campus. I was blown away. Pat, accompanied by his good friend on drums, created a melodic mountain-folk sound using a variety of stringed instruments. LePoidevin used a looper pedal to build a fusion of self-harmonies that sounded more like a full band then a solo musician. His songwriting painted a beautiful scenery of the north-american wilderness in a simpler time. After the show I bought his new album "Moon Wolves" and now I can't stop listening to it. If you enjoy Fleet Foxes you will enjoy this man's music.

Here's a link to his myspace http://www.myspace.com/patlepoidevin
Shine on,
-Brendan

Gloryhound - Leave It Alone

"They traded in the Plaid shirts for Leather Jackets"
Gloryhound's second album entitled "Leave It Alone" was released on November 2o, 2009. I picked it up at HMV last week and have been listening to it ever since. Unlike their debut album "Gloryhound and the Skyhawks", this is a full-charged, fast paced heavy rock record. What used to be a band heavily influenced by Tom Petty & the Hearbreakers, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and The Band, has been redirected to Iggy Pop and The Ramones. It is clear that Gloryhound has respectfully changed their genre, shying away from the "East Coast" label, and it looks like they finally found their groove. Just like their accelerated, high voltage live shows, "Leave It Alone" is the definition of "Rock n' Roll", and meant to be played loud. Produced by Robbie Crowell, the record was recorded in the Halifax, Nova Scotia and was tracked in the Sonic Temple and the Echo Chamber. The band sent their record to New York where it was mastered by Fred Kevorkian (White Stripes, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson).
As much as I miss the old sound, it's nice to see this hometown band's sound grow and mature.

Beware the hound,
-Brendan

Seriously

Hello one and all!
I started a new semester at school which means new classes! I have Film and Video Production 12, Math 12, and Drama 12. In film and video we get to do a film review every week so I thought I'd share this review I did of the newest Coen brothers film A Serious Man So enjoy!

A Serious Man is the newest film by the Coen brothers. The main character, Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a small university. Larry doesn't have much going for him at this point in his life. His wife is leaving him, his son has disipline issues, his daughter sneaks money from him to save for a “nose job” and his brother who consistantly becomes more and more of a burden is living at his house. On top of all that there is anonymous letter writter attempting to sabotage his chances of getting tenure at his university, and did I mention there is a student attempting to bribe him for a passing mark? Larry throught the movie goes to three differant rabbis to seek an answer as too why it is all happening to him and how he can become a rightous person.

I thought that this movie was yet another masterpeice in a long line of Coen brothers classics. The story was very well written and you were immediately engulfed by it as soon as you heard Jefferson Airplane playing at the beginning.

The movie is a very dark comedy so to an average viewer they may just watch this movie and see a sad story about a man who appears to have absolutley nothing going for him. Although I also saw the sad in this movie there was a number of scenes which I laughed out loud at, like the scene where the father of the son who tried to bribe Larry shows up at his house bumping his fists together reapeating the phrase “culture clash” in a heavy east asian accent. Or when Larry's son calls to complain about F-Troop not having good reception on the TV which leads to a scene where Larry learns there is an anonymous letter writer threatening his chances at tenure at which point he recieves another call from his son which Larry answers with “Is it F-troop again!?” in an extremely distressed voice. It's moments of dark, dry humour like this (which I could never possibly do justice by explaining in print) that makes this move so genious.

It was a movie of subtleties, whether it was subtleties in facial expressions or tone of voice the actors in the film did an phenominal job in potraying these little things which made the very real, very raw human emotion in the film. Another aspect of the film I enjoyed was the simplicity of the shots. There were very few shots where the camera moved. The colours in the film were also very pale and dull. Those two aspects gave the movie a very minimalistic feel which I think mirrored the plot.

The only negative points in this movie are mere matters of opinion. For example if you are the kind of person who enjoys moives that make perfect sence when taken at face value you would not like this movie. It is very dry, subtle, slow, and dark upfront but when you start to scratch at the surface you see the humour, life and reality that can make this movie such a peice of art for viewers like me.

Personally I found Larry to be very identifiable with. Although I have never been through the struggles he went through in the film I feel like his reactions to his situations were very real and were reactions that I think I would share if put in his situation.

I think that the Coen brothers were doing what they do best in this movie which was showing raw human behavior. Although the plot was somewhat far fetched (as it is in many Coen brother films) it was a great representation of human emotion and human reactions to such extreme emotional situations. I think they did a great job of showing it in this film and I hope to see it again in their up coming film due to be out in 2011

Overall I give this movie two huge thumbs up and recommend it for film buffs and anyone who likes movies that take a little bit of thinking.

Seriously yours,
Grant M. Hawkins

Halifax Music Scene (everybody knows this isn't nowhere)

The other day I was reading The Coast and came across an article called "Decade in review; music scene not a machine". It caught my eye because it talks all about Halifax's music scene. As you may know, I am an avid music fan, especially when it comes to local talent. The article begins talking about the "post 90's" era, when Halifax was being called "the next Seattle". While many good bands came out of this city in the 90's, (Sloan, Thrush Hermit, The Guthries...) and although Halifax did not quite live up to the hype, it still developed to become the happening spot for music goers it is today, opening doors for many other genres such as blues, R&b, jazz and hip-hop. The article gives very good reasons to why Halifax has what it takes to develop such a name for itself in Canadian music. First of all, Halifax is home to many universities, giving it a very high population of students, and students seem to give the city a very 'arts appreciative vibe'. Second, Halifax has a lack of bands stop here on their tours compared to other big cities, and so this only adds to our propensity to entertain ourselves. Halifax has many music festivals including Halifax Pop Explosion and In The Dead Of Winter, and very supportive radio stations like the CBC and CDKU. The Halifax music scene wouldn't be complete without talking about the venues, The Marquee has been the home to many bands such as Matt Mays & El Torpedo , and Joel Plaskett Emergency for years until it's closure in January of '09, and of course the legendary Seahorse tavern has been around since 1948 and is still rocking today.

I don't really know where i'm going with this post, but I'd just like to say that in an age of auto-tune, and where "good music" is a dieing breed, it's nice knowing that my home town is still going strong.

keep on rocking in the free world.

Brendan