Raine Maida, not quite a God, but better than me…maybe even you.
I am officially approximately 60 hours away from witnessing my hero in action, Raine Maida. While I have many influences in my life, both living and deceased, Raine Maida is the one that I have followed since the early days. Sadly, I am not old enough to have gotten in on the ground floor of earth shattering artists like The Beatles, Zep, The Who, etc. I have been lucky enough to have gotten in early on OLP. Dating all the way back to Naveed I have been with the band, following their careers for a small US following, gaining some momentum with Clumsy and Happiness…, and finally their pinnacle, Gravity and their singles “Somewhere Out There” and “Innocent”. Being there from Naveed
has allowed me to watch a few guys from Canada grow and evolve into a hard working, dedicated, passionate group of men who will put everything they have and then some into each new album. Their work has to speak to them before they will allow it to have a conversation with the public. They are a breath of fresh air from these power pop, mop-haired, melodic groups, rappers who don’t actually rap but just repeat two words and a grunt or two and handing a pretty blond a guitar and vocal lessons, putting her on some crappy MTV show and forcing her down the public’s resisting throats until we just give up and digest it just to get her fifteen minutes out of the way and we can all move on to the next one. Not that those bands are bad, because not all of them are. OLP has just been a band that I could relate to, with songs that I have always dug, and understood. Then Raine decides to get into this Spoken Word, poetry slam type of music and releases a solo album The Hunter’s Lullaby which is a FANTASTIC album. I cannot wait to see him Saturday, especially at a small venue like St. Andrews Hall. This will be a momentous occasion for me, and can’t wait to see how this changes my life, or at least effects my music.
Making 8:25 am count,
J
You went so far…
As to create the World Baseball Classic, in an effort to bring a global feel to the game when the Olympics dumped baseball, yet you still have yet to create International Major League Baseball teams other than Toronto. America’s Pastime has become a global game, yet the League has not. Start small; maybe absorb the Japanese League and its players. I understand that the league is really watered down, pitching is a concern for most teams, and the talent pool for good, young arms has nearly dried up. Much of this can be attributed to kids injuring their elbows by throwing curveballs in Little Leagues (for all my readers who have young children, especially boys, don’t let them throw a curve before they can shave), along with the whole ESPN “Chicks Dig The Longball” campaign. No one wants to pitch anymore. In Japan, they play the game with such passion and reverence for the way the game should be played. It could very well infuse a crop of players that could reinvigorate the game. MLB has stressed that they want to get away from the whole steroid issue, the best way to do that is to have new stars come in and change the way Americans think about the game. Think about it, how can you have a World Series between teams based in Boston, Mass and Denver, Colorado, when teams in Tokyo, Mexico City, London, Berlin and the like didn’t even have representation? Skeptics will say that realigning the league would be torturous, travel arrangements a pain, etc, etc. As I write this blog, the Boston Red Sox are playing against the Oakland A’s in the Tokyo Dome, Japan, and most of the NPB teams are in Tokyo or the relative vicinity; this blows the travel issues. As for realigning the league; you keep the Divisional format, since NPB has divisions as well. You simply add one of the NPB divisions to the American League, and one to the National League. If they truly wanted to make it a global game, they would easily find a way to get it done.
Making 8:10am count,
J
I’m goin’ back to 505
So, a few of you know that I’ve been really, really
in to the BritRock scene lately; Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles, Oasis, etc etc. I had this really dope idea: The Band, our families, and I would all travel to London, life in flats downtown for a year and do nothing but just hit the pubs everynight and check out the local music scene, check out the bands we may never hear of on this side of the pond. Of course we would have to have a TON of money saved to afford all this, plus we could supplement by playing shows of our own. That is, if the Brits accepted us Yankees coming over and rocking in their venues. This could make for an unbelievable opportunity for us to really expand our already enormous influence base, and evolve our sound. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the band, our sound, and who we are currently, but it never hurts to add a little flavor and stash it in your back pocket and unleash on people when you start to feel that you are getting a little stale. An Emeril “BAM” to the soup that is your rock music, so to speak.
So, if you had the dough, and the year to kill, where would you go? What would you do? Now I know some really eclectic people with some very big imaginations, so lets have it kids!
Making 8:57am count,
J
Well, Here I am…now what?
Since Blogger has decided that in the 6 months since I have posted a blog, somehow my profile has become spam (I always wondered how they made spam, now I know what’s in those little cans…unused blogs lol), my new home is here at WordPress. I will really really try to keep up, not that there’s a TON of things in my world that most of you don’t already know about via the blog-crazed being that is my wife. Anyways, thanks for checking in. More to come.
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