Here we go again
This entry was posted on 5/13/2007 6:05 AM and is filed under Female Artists, Bands, Music, 70's, Icons, musical artists, top albums, top songs.
Well, I'm back in the saddle again after a bit of a hiatus. My daughter came home this weekend for Mother's day and there was a special on Directv with Heart. They played the album "Dreamboat Annie" live and though there were some rough spots, all in all it was very good. What was even cooler than that was the encore. They did 3 Zep songs and Ann Wilson is probably the only person in the world that can sing Robert Plant's vocals and do them any justice. That just goes to show what kind of range he had. I started thinking about it and sure enough I still had the record (the big black one). Heart was really a trailblazer for female rockers because before they came out, female artists were either pop or disco. I didn't think about it back then because I was distracted by chemicals but their music and lyrics were quite sophisticated for the time (and now for that matter). You can definately hear their influences on this record. Beatles, Zep, Elton John, Bob Dylan.
On to band stuff - Joel was back in town for about a month or so because he got sick with a intestinal parasite and had to skip the rest of the semester. His girlfriend, Jen, is taking drum lessons from me so we got together to play so she could get the feel of playing with a band. We didn't work on any new material, although, he did take the Roland UA-100 back with him and is supposed to be recording some new songs for me to work on. I've rededicated myself to producing the album and it's going slowly. I think that's what drew me away from doing before. It's frustrating to sit down and start working on one song just to realize that there are 10 or 12 more to do the same with. On the other side, I'm learning some pretty valuable lessons about arranging, instrumentation and musicianship by trial and error. It seems that's what works best for me. I do something and if it doesn't work I do something else until I find something that does. I found a free VST plugin called Freeamp that has a guitar synth built into it. I think it's going work well with a song that has a kind of spacey feel to it already.
