The Musics, January 2021

I absolutely love listening to new music, full albums cover-to-cover. I also enjoy tracking shows and reading/listening to books. Below is what I recently checked out and dug. I also enjoy photography so the featured post pictures will be my captures. Art in many forms is very important to me and I hope you enjoy this!

I ran this Musics email as a an email list for the past years but decided to turn it into a blog. So here we go!

I put an email capture at the end if you want me to notify you when I post new blogs. I will only email you when I post a new blog and will not send your email to any other person or entity.

Shows:

These are the shows I’m tracking:
1/11/21: Peter Erskine, Alan Pasqua, Darek Oles live stream at the La Jolla Athanaeum, 7pm.
1/15/21: Joshua White stream through the La Jolla Antanaeum YouTube channel, noon.
9/1/21: Lamb of God; Trivium; Megadeth at FivePoints Amphitheater in Irvine. I’m new to Trivium. The (apparently new) drummer Alex Bent is a monster. I’d love to see him drum alongside Lamb of God’s Chris Adler. 

New tunes:

These are the tunes I’ve been checking out:
Sir Paul’s McCartney III. This album feels to me like I’m sitting with Paul in a studio, listening to him play around. Probably because he did this as a one-person show and played all the parts. His ideas range widely from a more vampy sound (“Long Tailed Winter Bird”) to the more solemn and thoughtful (“The Kiss of Venus”). I also hear a ton of Ringo in Paul’s drumming (“Seize the Day”). Basically to me, this whole album shows the benefit of creating to create. Get a lot of ideas out and see what comes of them. I have yet to check out McCartney and McCartney II, but they’re now on my list.
Trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s Axiom. This is a live-recorded set from NYC’s Blue Note. This sextet explodes right out of the gate as they meld jazz (like Miles-progressive-jazz) with African drumming. It’s a wild ride for sure.
Miki Yamanaka’s Human Dust Suite. Her group is light and playful, and sound very connected with each other. Plus I love the drummer’s (Jochen Ruckert) drum tones. Especially his bass drum, it’s a nice open tone where he gets lots of character.
Rob Mazurek/Exploding Star Orchestra’s Dimensional Stardust is interesting. There’s lots of fun blending with groove and electronica. It has a Beck vibe through much of it which I’m digging.

Melody Gardot’s Sunset in The Blue. I’m new to her but anyone that has Vinnie Colaiuta on the album gets a listen in my book. The album is super pretty. And Gardot’s backstory about using music to recover from a bicycle collision in her teens to then learn to play guitar and compose if amazing. She’s fluent in French and her video below of “From Paris With Love” is a wonderful message for today, tomorrow and always: “Maybe one day I will see you
Maybe one day I will see you soon
With love, my love
A kiss beneath the moon”

Chris Stapleton’s Starting Over. I love the power and story in his voice. And this album has lots of deep emotions about leaving a life behind and starting over. With a mixture of partying in Arkansas, which seems really, really fun right now. And for “Arksansas” I like the play between half-time and regular time. Especially how Chris starts his vox as if the song will kick off in double-time train beat, but then it starts in regular time. It gives a nice leaning forward while the band sits back into a slower groove. One more point on train beats: I could play them all day: I love how they have a New Orleans second-line feel to me.

Here is my Spotify playlist of new music I check out. It changes frequently.

Books:

These are the books I’ve read/listened to recently:

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. I wanted to learn about breath to deepen my yoga practice and also learn better technique for running and biking. This book gave me lots to chew on. Darin Olien also said on a recent podcast that he recommended The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown (a book on breath) more than any other book this year. So I have that on Kindle to read.

I’m rounding 3rd on listening to Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. She’s deeply developed these Mayfair Witch characters over 50 hours of the audiobook, so it’ll be interesting to see what she does with them.

The cover photo:

I took this during a December 2020 sunset run in San Diego.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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    Eric Ganci, Esq.
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    By The Musics