Currently viewing the category:
"Music"
This cost $18, so it stays. Sorry.
I recently got a very rude email about this song from some woman who (a) considered herself somewhat of an expert on the blues and (b) actually believed I might possibly care about her ramblings. She asked me if I had ever listened to Robert Johnson. Actually, I think she asked if I even knew who he was …
She basically said that “If I Was Sober (I’d Go Get Drunk)” was fake blues, because (a) I can’t play blues guitar (b) it is a silly song and (c) … I forget … To all of this I wish to respond … normally, I take criticism with a grain of salt: I have no false modesty about my work; I know what I put into it, even songs like this. But sometimes, no. Make that always, it is the duty of the artist to confront such egregious asininity head-on.
Dear Ms. No-Boundaries:
Of course the song IS silly; there are thousands of silly blues songs. I mean, read the damn title for Christ’s sake.
What do you mean I can’t play blues guitar? You mean like, say, Eric Clapton? Well no, but I play from the heart and this song comes from real-life hurt (I still remember how it felt when I figured out what that girl was up to! Luckily I was still drinking and that helped a lot.) and therefore it is a real blues song, dumb ass.
And lastly, as some old blues guy said if it hasn’t been hocked, it can’t play the blues. Well, if that is the criteria, this guitar is Lucille, Jr. and I am BB King’s bastard son. Word.
Your truly,
K.B.
And for the rest of you:
Click here to download If I Was Sober (I’d Go Get Drunk) and feel free to write me about it! I care!
This was to be included on the cd, Pop Down The Years, but when I listened to playback at the mixing/mastering studio, it became clear that this recording, made in my voice coach’s living room, was way too noisy for commercial release. So we rerecorded the song for the cd one stressful afternoon, using a steel-string acoustic guitar (and I hate the feel of steel strings) … it came out okay. But I like this version better. I used a Godin nylon-string Multiac guitar plugged into a Roland GR-33 guitar synthesizer for the string pads. Recorded live, of course … Enjoy!
Mark Tucker
Fame Magazine
I reviewed Knox Bronson’s Pop Down the Years a little while back (here) and Seasons has followed with gratifying swiftness but also with an almost shockingly rapid maturation. Completely instrumental in a slow languid pace that urges the listener to relax and luxuriate, where Pop was quirky, interesting, and prog-oriented, Seasons is chambery in the Impressionist sense with tantalizing echoes of Eno (Summer of ‘68 uses the intriguing slow hooning of Discreet Music), Peter Baumann (ca Transharmonic Nights), Peter Michael Hamel, a tranked-out Terry Riley, and the more sensual of the electronicists.
The disc contains just four long songs for an hour’s submersion in
intelligent, slow, spare processionals and ambiences. Michael Hoenig
peeks out occasionally from Autumnal Sun, though the estimable German
never wrote like Bronson does, slowly shifting in sound fields,
coloration, and environmental palette. The attention to perfection here
is bracing, resulting in a piece of spacey furniture music, high art
wanting for nothing, content to take its time in seeping through the
speakers and into cerebellums. Mix the hedonism of the Ibiza crowd with
the seriousness of old Brit/Kraut ventures, then add a sprinkling of
the silently uncanny ideas of Vidna Obmana, and you have a starting
point.
Despite the fact that the quartet of songs was composed during a
dark period in the writer’s life, every minute of Seasons sparkles.
Even the moody segments have a shine and glow lifting them above the
melancholy, indicative of the redemption art brings. The entire
enterprise is pensive but never existentialist, remarkably zen in many
ways, unattached to judgementalism, formula, and tradition. A goodly
portion of the entirety is Debussy-esque, borrowing heavily from tone
poem concepts for heady textures and gestures nailing down authenticity
in genteel certainties alongside intriguing ambiguity. Pore over the
progressive, electronica, and ambient catalogues as you will, you’re
not likely to find very many releases to stand with this one.
You will need to visit this page on my site, Sun Pop Blue, to download the original final song for “the seasons,” “isle of islay revisited.” It’s 15 megs or so, for fifteen minutes of music … enjoy, my lovelies! Free of course … a gift from a barnacle to a tugboat … a bean to a stew … wait … i have it … a flower to a garden …
Amber Arbucci graces the cover of "the seasons"
the seasons
Release date: February 14, 2009
Label: Tangerine Sky Interactive
Songlist:
- summer of ’68
- autumnal sun
- winter blue
- the forever spring
Pop Down The Years
Original release date: February 14, 2008
Songlist:
- Hey Little Earthgirl
- Old Man Cold Man
- 3 Seconds Before Maia Smiled
- Take Me Down
- Bordertown
- The Quark And The Jaguar
- Stay
- Celeste (Donovan Leitch)
- Pop Down The Years
Knox is a Pixels Artist
BUY MUSIC
