https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-z9g5x-1528270
Home for the holidays would be nice this year on Chiron Beta Prime.
Category: Uncategorized
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-c4dd8-151d6e0
It’s a holiday quandary we all face at some point.
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-7y9ta-1512ea5
This is very…interesting Christmas music, Marty.
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-f5yg2-1508b8f
What better subject for a beloved Christmas song than a bus accident killing everyone onboard?
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-z2d7t-14ff2ca
Who are we? What will happen in the podcast? We explain it all here!
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-7fejz-14eb276
We’re getting closer. Here’s a teaser for the first music episode.
By Eric Paul Johnson
Editor-in-chief, The Loon News
A 46 year-old transgendered woman, and a man who looks kind of like Sweetums from the Muppets wearing a Derby walk into a recording studio, and come out with an album of pure Alt/Pop pleasure.
For roughly 30 years the music of Cait Brennan had been circulated through bootleg cassettes of guitar-and-vocal homemade recordings, then later (much, MUCH later) demo MP3s recorded with GarageBand on a Mac. But finally, FINALLY, an official, professionally recorded album of her music, produced by Fernando Perdomo, has been released. And not just through digital download, but also on CD, LP, and, no lie, 8-Track tape.
Brennan’s debut album is called, well, Debutante. Has it been worth the 30 year wait?
The album wastes no time, and gets right to it with a crash of drums, cymbals, bass, and electric guitar on “Good Morning and Goodnight.” The song puts a ton of Brennan’s musical influence on display right in the front window. Bowie, solo McCartney, with a touch of Jeff Lynne Electric Light Orchestra all whirled together with a driving beat and catchy melody. Brennan’s ability to create vivid pictures with few words, combined with the music bring to mind images of the fluff filled morning news shows the song is about. The bridge cuts into the song like breaking news, dropping all music with the exception of a plinking piano, and Brennan’s singing voice both compressed to sound like tinny AM radio. That, along with the words: “We’ve got some breaking news just in/The bad guys won this round again” hits like video of September 11, 2001 that it brings to mind.
The album takes a turn into the folksy Rock style of The Byrds, or early to mid ’80s R.E.M. “Underworld” tells the tale of a longtime friendship between an outgoing Ferris Bueller type rabble rouser and her timid friend struggling to worm his way out from under the oppression of his parents, and school authority figures. Brennan sums up the relationship with the line “I do all those things you fear, while you just watch and wait.” But matching the song’s upbeat, jangley guitar ’80s college Rock feel, the story has a happy ending when Brennan sings with all the joyful feeling of seeing her friend break free, “Finally you’re learning what they don’t want you to know/Finally you’re going where they don’t want you to go.” In the final verse, Brennan reinforces the bond the friends have when she sings, “I’ll always be around.”
“Dear Arthur” has an undefinable early ’70s Prog Rock mixed with Soft Rock sound. The song, inadvertently about her dead father, has a feel of Gordon Lightfoot, quieter Led Zeppelin, with weepy, otherworldly lead guitar work reminiscent of George Harrison. Brennan’s music gently brings you along for the melancholy trip through her world regarding the missed opportunities and lost possibilities of a father who spent decades away as a traveling musician, and all too brief rocky time together when the two did find each other, while Perdomo’s drum work brings a great power to the music.
In the middle of all the big sound production of the previous songs, “Once Upon a Nevermind” takes a simple turn. Acoustic guitar, knee slapping not unlike on Buddy Holly’s “Everyday,” and if I’m not mistaken, an autoharp come together with Brennan’s voice in the beautiful song about the painful happy memories of a perfect romantic relationship that didn’t work out.
Perdomo’s relentless drumming dominates “I Want You Back.” In the song Brennan sings about being in a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship. Yet, despite the memories of craptastic treatment from the ex-partner, she sings with all the force of determination she can muster, “I want you back!”
This whirlwind of drums, organ, and full throated singing on “I Want You Back,” is followed by the somber “Showman.” The music echoes the darker songs from Pink Floyd’s album The Wall.
One of the album’s stand-out tracks is “Harmony Lies.” A bouncy song that grabs you, and dances you around the room. At first, in my opinion, I liked the original Garageband demo of the song, but once the double-tracked guitar solo, like something from Pilot’s 1975 one-hit “Magic,” rips into action, the ride the song gives you triples. Like hitting the quadruple loops and double hills of a roller coaster. Despite the fun party the song instills, it’s about society dictating what is pretty, and the internal struggles Brennan went through to get to her own inner acceptance. “Harmony lies inside of your mind” she sings in the chorus. The lyrics also include a lesson learned, bit of wisdom when you’re at your lowest, desperately clawing for anything to get you out of your funk: “False hope is still hope, I suppose.”
The opening guitar strum of “All In Love Is Fair” washes over you like a gentle wave on the beach. From there, the song about divorce and the shattered hopes of neverending romance, takes you on an amiable journey through wedded doom. Almost as if your being pulled down a pleasant whirlpool of nitrous oxide into a pit to the brutal end.
Brennan was born a brilliant writer. Not just of songs, but she won crates of awards for her high school journalism, won screenwriter competitions in the ’00s, and cowrote the feature film Love…Or Whatever. This talent for writing helps her tell concise, tight stories in impossible to resist 3-5 minute songs.
Every one of the 13 tracks, and even some of the weaker ones (“Lines,” “Black Diamond,” “Meet Your Remaker” ) are enjoyable. Brennan’s genetics from her dad, mixed with her lifelong voracious consumption of all kinds of music creates a fantastic full-studio debut album. There is nothing about it that makes you think, “I wish I hadn’t spent irretrievable time listening to that.”
A segment from my recent show. January 25, 2013 – Good Times Tonight!.
The Best of the Eric Paul Johnson Radiotrola Program
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http://capsuper.podomatic.com/entry/2012-02-10T20_00_47-08_00
Eric Paul Johnson 