I think it is super cool that our live debut for the new Paul McCartney album was done on TV, as we all got to hear it together.
A little over 2 weeks after this performance aired, Paul will be releasing his latest studio album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. While I loved McCartney III, really, this is his first full-scale studio effort since 2018. Andrew Watts is lead producer, and while I have been fine enough with the production of the singles, his work really brought them down for me, just like he did for the last Rolling Stones album and ESPECIALLY on the Elton John / Brandi Carlile record. He is both a producer for modern hits as well as legacy acts, but through the majority of both of those sides of his work, I think he makes songs sound very dead and lifeless. I have my concerns for how this album will sound, but still, I am incredibly excited. I think Paul wrote this album as if it's last ever. We have no way of knowing if it will be, but that mentality seems to be a part of everything so far. If his memory was ALMOST full, now it is.
The album also seems made for vinyl, while everything from the 90s on of his (besides McCartney III) has been intended for a CD release. It is 14 tracks on a single disc, which is a very uncommon package nowadays, but was what The Beatles did. Usually, his modern albums have taken up a little bit more time than one vinyl record, taking full advantage of CD, but not here! I am imagining the vinyl being added to a shelf, that holds people's original copies of Beatles records. I don't fully know why but that feeling of being "made for vinyl" has completely shaped how I see this release. Mediums shape the music that goes onto them.
I made my album just another number because I thought it would be fun to let it become simply part of the stream of works I hope to celebrate here. But, starting that stream back up after it felt a little strange, but I have the perfect thing to start it with.
I have always been a huge fan of all the musicians to come out of Greenwich Village's Cafe Wha?, and I couldn't pass the opportunity to go last month. We went to the random show that we happened to be in town for, which was Lydia Loveless and Will Dailey. We ended up enjoying this concert so much that I checked where they were going next, and I found out Will was coming to Bradley Beach. Which is SUPER weird to hear, because it's such a quiet town, with seemingly no venues. But there is! In a man's driveway two houses from the beach is the Noah's Ark concert series.
It was the cutest small venue I've ever been to. They asked people to bring and eat foods and desserts, and they provided blankets for that beach-town-chill.
As for Will's music, I will let this recording speak for itself. I don't need to explain that his voice is beautiful, or he is a talented guitarist. It's from his latest album Boys Talking, which I picked up and fell in love with the month before.
This kind of concert is the reason I love the local Jersey Shore stuff so much. There is literally a community everywhere, and an audience. There was a friend of his who came up and started to play harmonica with him. There is music everywhere, even if not immediately obvious, and I, and hopefully you, hope to do everything I can to see and support as much of it as possible.
My father and I have been to countless concerts, but this was the first he ever bought merch for. Also, the video itself isn't that great, so really it's just another way to hear it alongside the MP3.
Hi everyone! This album post is HUGE NEWS. Here is my first album, which will release May 16th on Bandcamp. I have been working on it for 5 years (since 7th grade), and my goal was to create a project representing growing up on the Jersey Shore. In this post will be by track-by-track for the album, and if you want to support it, it will be available digitally on Bandcamp.
Ballad For a Mourning Dove
Most simply put this song is about making a first friend, when you are very little. In my mind most writing it was my friend (my day 1) Kaeleigh, but I tried to keep it more universal.
A mourning dove is a bird that would coo in mornings when I was little. I directly associate them with waiting for the school bus. You can hear one here:
You Don't Have to Worry, Babe
The single!! It was a song I wrote the first day of summer vacation in 2024. I wrote it for someone, but I more see it as something I wished someone would write for me. Now, I am in a relationship I feel taken care of in, so I don't directly feel that desire (thankfully)!
I wrote and recorded the whole song over the entire day. Everything you hear is from that day besides the vocals I re-recorded, the Moog-style synth, and the outro, which is my favorite part of the song.
The bee guitar does all the embellishments. I love it's clean, soft sound, and I barely had to mix it.
Manatee Tags
This song is just bee guitar, bass (all bass on this album is a McCartney one), drum machine, and harmonica. It's a breakup song, but not a sad one. Some things are inevitable and it's more about accepting that. "When I saw her the world stood still", but it has to start again at some point.
While the concept of a "rolling stone" has been used in modern media so much, the "moss" of the original Chinese proverb was something I had never seen explored and I wanted to, with the 2nd verse.
Cottage Bees!
The oldest song on the album, and second to last done. I started it in 2022, and worked on it until maybe 2024, and finally recorded vocals I was happy with (on a green bullet mic) in April 2026. While the songwriting might be a little less developed here than on the rest of the album, the instrumentation is my favorite part. Especially under the vocals on the verses, the "main" instrument changes constantly and flows, and I am super proud of my arrangements on this.
Do I Have To?
My current partner wrote me a super cute love letter, and I wrote one back. Except I hated it and threw it in a drawer. I decided to write this song instead. That's why it ends with me NOT writing a letter.
I also tried to continue the theme of growing up through keeping it naive. The narrator sings like he believes he knows everything, and has a closed mind. He has his mind made up, and thinks he is done growing her changing his mind.
While I really like the lyrics on this little love song, I probably wouldn't have cut it for the album because it was a fingerpicking song, and not my strongest compositions. So I decided to just mess with it and see what would happen. I thought about how I usually produced songs through a the mindset of building around the guitar, and so I tried to build it around a toy drum!
Lavender Tea (start of side B of the vinyl)
I used very little synth sounds on this album, and when I did (like on You Don't Have to Worry), they were clearly audible and separable. But here, I used a lot, and tried to combine all the sounds into a single texture. I have always been super interested in how producers were able to combine sounds into textures, like with the Ronettes album and Pet Sounds. If you listen between the lines, where the music isn't you can hear a wind. Not a sfx, a texture in the negative space of the texture the production created.
I can't even explain it well but if you hear it thinking of that I bet you will get it.
Alpine #9
Secret song! It's a part of Lavender Tea but I wanted to separate it. It is the only song written on piano and in 6/8. It continues in the synth-iness of Lavender Tea through it's use of bitcrushing, which I think made it a fun break from the more natural sounds of this side of the record.
The Bees Keep a-Bumblin'
KEEP. There was a song called The Bees ARE a-Bumblin', and this was supposed to be an instrumental reprise. I wrote maybe at least 8 whole versions of the song, all with the same chorus, but never liked any of them. So I just decided to keep the reprise and scrap the song, which is strange but I really like.
My cousin Dante (who just dropped FIRE with his 100 Americans project you should check out) wrote the basis for this song, with the melody and chords. I took that, wrote a new guitar part, and everything here.
Fairweather Woman
I wrote this song on guitar, and was going to record a more professional version with the Autoharp as an overdub, but I was messing with it I recorded a demo I liked so much I decided to keep as the final version. These are some of my favorite lyrics, as they feel extremely personal to the listener, but with people I've shown it to that's a universal experience. Everyone that has heard it pre-release think they connect to it on a special level.
Absent Air
This was the last recording for the project, over a year after I wrote it. Writing the song took a month, as it originally had 16 stanzas, but I cut it down to the first 4 to keep the album short.
The song, when it was complete, was my attempt to explore ego, both in other's, and me. The goal was each verse to represent a different way it is expressed, and to use imagery to represent the consequences of acting like this. Since the album version is just the 2 verses it sounds more like it's written to one person, but it still isn't.
With the Sun over Belmar
Belmar is the town on the Jersey Shore next to my town, which is pretty much just a highway to it. We even share the same zip code, and that has always made it feel like Belmar is both a part of my hometown, and something above it. Being there both feels like home and a vacation.
Earlier in the month, The AP put out this article about the Aadam Jacobs collection, the over 10,000 tape collection he has created, with the most notable being the first Nirvana concert in Chicago. A concert so early in their year that their album Bleach was barely a month old.
Almost every song off this concert is from Bleach, playing 9 of the 11 songs off the original tracklist. Besides those, tracks 7-10 are from other places. Polly was on their second album Nevermind. This heavy full band version is my personal highlight of this concert. Dive and Big Cheese are B-sides, and Spank Thru was from a grunge compilation from 1988, and was the first ever released song of the band.
I decided to not include a regular download link, but instead one to the archive, where you can explore the entire collection. There is so much more worth checking out! I still wanted to post this because of the art I made for it, which is all photos from this concert. 1. Intro
The cover is NOT my work. It is simply a picture posted to his Instagram I added the subtext to. I am getting this one out VERY QUICK, I am also very busy today but I had to make time for this!
Also, I didn't edit or trim the files in any way. In fact, I refuse to even LISTEN to them for more than snippets to hear the quality. I am seeing him on this tour in August, and so I don't want everything spoiled, though if we are being real that will probably happen over social media before then.
Bruno Mars released his first album in 10 years (5 including Silksonic, which I would haha), and this weekend started the tour, which celebrates not only EVERY song on the new album (8 played night one, but only the second night included Why You Wanna Fight), but his whole career. It honestly has felt like he has been running the music world this year, and I am here for it!
The new album itself, The Romantic, is similar to Silksonic, in the way it celebrates and plays with tons of black (and now latin) genres and, in doing this, brings them to modern audiences. Silksonic took it's influences mostly from funk, soul, and hip-hop, while The Romantic seems to have a lot of influence from the music of Motown, latin music, and funk.
This is a collection of recordings done by Kitzeekat on Youtube, who took TONS of videos. They are all from April 10th, and 11th. I am writing this on the 12th.
Tomorrow of Last Year is a band made up of (left to right) Riley (vocals), Penny (lead guitar), Zach (drums), and John (drums, from Monmouth County, NJ. This is a very special post because it is the first recording I taped myself! I saw them play multiple times before that. In this tape they reference two shows, I have missed all their Stone Pony shows, but I was there for the Battle of the Bands. That was won by another really talented local group Fit For a Funeral, which got everyone's attention when the all-female band had their drummer/singing perform the first song with an eyemask on!
The band was the fifth and final set of a 3-hour long show at Jüs Organic in Atlantic Highlands. Zach also played bass for the first band The Daizies. Before I talk about Tomorrow of Last Year, I really want to highlight The Pulse as well, I hope to see them again!
Before their set, I spoke to Zach the Drummer. I always liked their original Parasite, so I asked if they were gonna do it. He said no, but they had some cool new songs in store. He was right, and 5 of the 9 songs they played were originals. I added an asterisk next to each for reference.
This includes everything they played, but is missing some banter, which is a shame, because Riley always is very talkative and super fun! She wants the audience engaged and isn't afraid to make that clear. In one performance, she ended it telling the crowd how amazing of a job a friend, Allie Kowalski, did earlier in the show, and how we all should have sang along. She also does on this cover of When I Come Around, but luckily everyone joined in the chorus afterwards.
I also included their demo of Parasite, which is available on their Bandcamp, because I like the song and it brings it to a nice (kinda almost) album length. GO SUPPORT THEM ON BANDCAMP
I also bought a T-Shirt. I have an outfit in mind it will go great with.
Yes, Arlo takes after his father. His country music has a strong rooting in counter-culture, with a heavy emphasis on distancing morality from the law. Woody sung Pretty Boy Floyd about a man who does good and charitable work despite being an outlaw, and Arlo uses the plot point of getting arrested to satirize injustice in Alice's Resturaunt Massacre. While I have heard people say Arlo did not play what his father did, I think his style was actually extremely reminiscent of Woody's humourous talkin' blues. Their morality and politics are similar, and they use songs that are almost like stand-up comedy to get out these points. But what makes Arlo unique is their sprawling length, which gives him the freedom to tell any story however he wishes, which sometime is also just a regular country song. You hear a lot less talking in this concert than his usual sets, but it still is an important part of it. Long talking songs are style that is not for everyone, but I love it. What's a better way to write a counter-culture song than to decide when you want to sing or not sing your words?
I've been wanting to call it a day on Bob Dylan recordings. I have so many, and it's a lot to keep up with / listen to! But every time I think that, I find a crazy cool new album, so I think that collection will just keep on growing no matter what I do. I might invest in a hard drive.
Bobby played here both on the 16th and 17th, but this is only recordings from the 16th, despite all four concerts (he did a late and early show for each) being soundboard quality. I have not been able to find and listen to the tapes from the 17th.
People compare these concerts to the Unplugged album from two years after, and they both have that "acoustic-y" sound, but don't share any songs. It is a very fun sound, and it works really well with this setlist, which includes many tracks off his 90s covers albums. I love what he did with those songs on this album.
Heres a great oddity for Beach Boys fans! In the early 80s, Carl Wilson, the youngest Wilson brother, lead guitarist, and very active member after SMiLE, started a small solo career! He had 2 albums, and this concert was recorded the year of the debut self-titled album. There is another recording floating around of The Carl Wilson Band from this year at the bottom line, and one or two more, and while this one is shorter, they all seem to have similar sound quality.
The venue My Father's Place was in Roslyn in Long Island, New York. Richie Havens opened it's first ever concert, and it held performances by Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Madonna, Black Flag, and more! It closed in 1987 but in 2018 they opened up a new version close by.
Almost every song is from his debut record, besides a few notable exceptions. The opening Too Early To Tell ended up on the second record, and Long Promised Road is off the Beach Boy's album Surf's Up. He would close all his solo sets with a cover of the soul song I Thank You by Sam & Dave. Of the 8 songs off his debut record, he plays every track besides Seems So Long Ago, the closer.
The top photo on the cover has Carl on the left, and him in the middle of the entire band, next to his "backup" vocalist Myrna Smith. She duets him, so I think she deserves more credit than backup! She also cowrote the entire debut record, while working as a teacher in New Jersey. Before Carl, she backed up singers like Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin as part of The Sweet Inspirations.
If you haven't heard his solo career I think this is as good as an intro to it as his studio work.
Memoirs are usually very formulaic, or at least can be criticized as so. I personally love reading them of artists I am interested in, but I get they sometimes aren't the most emotionally strong format to tell a story. Despite that, I almost cried multiple times reading Ronnie Spector's Be My Baby. Her story is so beautiful, and sad, yet so full of hope, that no matter how factually it is told, there is an overwhelming amount of emotion. I recommend you give it a casual read, and I won't retell her story, but I will highlight how much I loved learning about her life after leaving Phil Spector. It's full of hope. It was when I was reading that book in around November 2024 that I made this record. In the photo I used for the cover, she is far away from her sister and cousin bandmates, but I decided to keep that. Phil Spector always wanted to highlight her, not only to show appreciation, but isolate her.
This is an album compiling stray tracks of The Ronettes. In Ronnie's book, she stated how she believed Phil's lyrics were his attempt to put words into Ronnie's mouth, and to control how she should feel about their relationship. For example, Be My Baby was from when they just started to date, and the song reflects that. On the darker side of this, Phil asserted his control with a song like You Came, You Saw, You Conquered. Phil has songwriting credit on every song except the title track. I attempted to put these songs into an order that shows the start, highs, lows, and end of the Spector couple.
Out of every album I have compiled, this might have been the one I've listened to the most. I find it a perfect companion to their masterpiece of an album.
1. Why Don't They Let us Fall in Love
2. Born To Be Together
3. Is This What I Get For Loving You?
4. Keep on Dancing
5. Paradise
6. Everything Under the Sun
7. I Can Hear Music
8. Woman in Love (With You)
9. Here I Sit
10. You Came, You Saw, You Conquered
11. Try Some, Buy Some
12. I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine
I decided not to have a download code, since every song here is easily available.
The morning of this tape, Charlie Mingus and his band were arrested and accused of shoplifting. In the concert, Mingus states how he was roughed up, affecting his ability to play some songs. Pianist Jaki Byard was missing for the first song, but returns to play a solo and join the band, being late because he was still dealing with the police.
This features the complete early set of the day, and all the tracks in capitals are in between talks, where you here the mess Mingus and his musicians were in after their hectic day. Despite this, they still put on what I think is a beautiful concert.
The person behind bars in the cover is a heavily edited Mingus, and I was planning on calling the album Free Byard!! until i realized how similar that looked to Free Bird.
Besides Byard on piano and Mingus on bass, the band featured Eric Dolphy on alto sax, bass clarinet, and flute, Clifford Jordan on tenor sax, Johnny Coles on trumpet, and Dannie Richmond on drums.
1. FREE BYARD!!
2. so long, eric
3. BYARD FREED!!
4. at fw u.s.a.
5. FREE MINGUS!!
6. orange was the color of her dress, then blue silk
The Woodstock covers might be the two I am proudest of so far. For John Sebastian, I thought his represented his fun and goofier side. For this, I had the idea in my head to use artwork from the Book of Kells, a REALLY old and really beautiful Irish religious text from the 9th century. The Wiki's history section can tell more about the book than I can, but I was in Ireland last summer and got to see it in Dublin. What a great time! The border and big letters are from the book, and the background is a photo of the crowd at Woodstock.
I love how this recording starts, he introduced as "one of the most beautiful men in the world". While I never knew him, but this statement is reaffirmed with every recording of him, both in the studio, and especially in concert.
Richie Havens was not scheduled to be, but was made the opening act of Woodstock after some delays and issues. The stage wasn't even ready for full bands! His set, to kill time so everything could work out, was longer than he had planned, which meant he had to come up with what to play, leading to the song Freedom, an improvised jam written on the spot. Because of it being such an important performance, this became Haven's introduction to the larger music world, and Freedom became his most iconic song.
Alongside Freedom, Richie played From the Prison off his 1968 record Something Else: Again. This is one of my FAVORITE records, of not just 1968, but of all popular music. I've heard his cover of With a Little Help From My Friends was one of the songs he played to extend his set, and the only reason he ended up humming it was because he didn't remember enough lyrics, which I think is a very fun way to keep the song going. Instead of struggling through the words, he just did the melody, which he excelled at.
1. intro
2. From the Prison / Get Together / From the Prison
