With new AC/DC studio album Black Ice street date of October 20 inching closer I peeked into Wal-Mart over lunch time today to complete our collection of AC/DC albums by buying Let There Be Rock, Fly On The Wall and Blow Up Your Video all for the stunningly low price of — get this — $7.
If you’re nodding at this price thinking, yeah, yeah, but Let There Be Rock aside, these aren’t among the strongest AC/DC studio albums out there, Wal-Mart also had Back In Black, Highway To Hell and Dirty Deeds selling for $7 each. Yowsa! As I wrote yesterday, I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but it’s hard to argue with these bargain prices.
If you need to round out your AC/DC collection, might want to check this deal out. I noticed that the Walmart website had some of their studio albums for $9, but I saw them all priced locally for $7. If you’re new to the rock steady world of AC/DC this means you could pick up their entire back studio album library of 15 CDs (15 x 7 = $98) for a little over 100 bucks [AC/DC studio albums: ‘74 Jailbreak, High Voltage, Dirty Deeds, Let There Be Rock, Powerage, Highway To Hell, Back In Black, For Those About To Rock We Salute You, Flick of the Switch, Fly On The Wall, Who Made Who, Blow Up Your Video, The Razor’s Edge, Ballbreaker, Stiff Upper Lip].
Have you seen new AC/DC studio albums available for less than $7 each? Can’t say I have. Hells Bells for competition, it’s a dog eat dog!
Wal-Mart is getting an exclusive deal on possibly the last AC/DC album Black Ice due out later this month. It doesn’t stop there as the New York Times is reporting another AC/DC exclusive: an AC/DC Rock Band game.
This is hot, we got teased by the Rock Band 2 AC/DC track "Let There Be Rock" and now there will be more:
Both Columbia and the band will make money on the game, which contains the songs from the popular DVD “AC/DC Live at Donnington.” The game, which will be available for all consoles in early November, will cost less than most new games, about $40 instead of about $60. That makes it an attractive product to Wal-Mart, which believes that lower prices drive demand.
Ahh, but what they don’t tell you in this snippet. Keep reading.
1. Thunderstruck 2. Shoot To Thrill 3. Back in Black 4. Fire Your Guns 5. Jailbreak 6. The Jack 7. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap 8. Money Talks 9. Hells Bells 10. High Voltage 11. Whole Lotta Rosie 12. You Shook Me All Night Long 13. T.N.T 14. Let There Be Rock 15. Highway To Hell 16. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
Note: I’m pretty sure Wal-Mart sells another Live at Donnington (exclusive too?) so this might not be the exact track list of the game (it is NOT, stay with me). There is also an AC/DC Live at Donnington [Blu-ray] version of this concert — oh yea.
Even though it’s AC/DC there needs to be more than 16 songs for $40. I would expect 25 or more songs with some special Rock Band goodies exclusive to this game.
I checked the official Rock Band forums to see if they had any detailed information yet. Indeed, they did, providing the full press release with the actual AC/DC track list, which adds two more songs to the list above ("Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be" and "Heetseeker"):
AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack will feature the master recordings from the best of the band’s live performances. The live recording was specially remixed for Rock Band by Mike Fraser. The game features 18 tracks, with more than 99 minutes of game play for each instrument:
"Thunderstruck" "Shoot to Thrill" "Back in Black" "Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be" "Heatseeker" "Fire Your Guns" "Jailbreak" "The Jack" "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" "Moneytalks" "Hells Bells" "High Voltage" "Whole Lotta Rosie" "You Shook Me All Night Long" "T.N.T." "Let There Be Rock” "Highway To Hell” "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”
Guitar Hero Aerosmith which sold well enough to spark a possible music trend: band-themed play our music games. There have been band video games before (I’m thinking about the Iron Maiden PC game quite some time ago) but they didn’t interact directly with the music like these crop of game. In the Aerosmith game players could rise through the club ranks playing Aerosmith songs along the way. It came with an Aerosmith-themed guitar. The problem with the GH: Aerosmith game was that it was a pretty short experience for experienced players and didn’t add anything that unique or new. My son got through the whole game in a few hours at the expert difficulty.
A Guitar Hero: Metallica game is in the works, presumably following the GH: Aerosmith formula. If GH and Metallica are smart, they’ll include some other goodies to sweeten the deal.
I’m guessing at $40 there will be no AC/DC guitar or other accessories. In fact, they are billing this as "The AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack" - which sounds like it’s going to be among the more expensive RB track packs released to date. Rock Band and Guitar Hero players are already paying a premium to play downloadable content songs. Would like to see an AC/DC themed Rock Band game for $20 more perhaps with an exclusive Angus axe.
"Go Beyond the Disc! - The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions ship with a code on the back of the game manual that lets you import all of the songs into the Rock Band or Rock Band 2 game environment (Internet connection required)."
So that $40 will include an export code. And these are remixed tracks by Mike Fraser specially for Rock Band. Zing!
I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but a huge AC/DC fan, so they’ll earn my business for both the Black Ice CD on October 20 (you can buy the CD from AC/DC website if you want) and AC/DC LIVE Rock Band Track Pack on November 2nd. Hat tip to great big geek, who was the first to turn me onto this New York Times article.
BTW, AC/DC is running a YouTube Give It All You Got contest at their website trying to find the best video cover of their song, "Rock and Roll Train" where you can win a Gibson guitar signed by the Young brothers.
Update 10/2/08 4:00pm PST: Harmonix employee Henry writes: “There will be unique achievements and trophies for this track pack, as well as several song specific achievements. They will rule.”
Yesterday I spent too much time getting my music organized in iTunes on the Mac so that the new iTunes ‘Genius’ would not suggest to me music I already own. Probably won’t bother trying iTunes for Windows, “bloated” or with unintentional or intentional problems as some folks are suggesting, as I’ve been happily using Zune on Windows for almost 2 years now, but what other compelling choice for music management is there on the Mac (suggestions, please)? It’s sort of a shotgun gadget wedding on the Mac.
Genius creates playlists based on a song you listen to from what you already own and I’ll get to that fun in a minute, but finding/exploring music I don’t own is something I enjoy. A true musical genius would be able to mine the world’s database of music and return me exactly the type of music I enjoy but don’t already own. AmazonMP3 does a decent job recommending me DRM-free MP3 albums I might want to buy based on what I’ve already purchased from them, can the iTunes Genius do better?
First, you have to activate Genius, which burped for me the first time:
But worked fine the second try:
This process took several minutes mining our family’s ever growing music collection of 272 artists and 50.35 GB of music. After running, I noticed iTunes 8 changed my default view to Cover Flow.
Cover Flow looks pretty when you have album art for every artist and ugly when you don’t.
A couple years back I hunted missing album art for every album but through time and circumstance I’m missing a lot these days, since iTunes on the Mac isn’t my regular music player any more. Good thing you are just a view click away from going back to the boring text view and can have iTunes automatically fetch missing album art.
Recommending to buy songs you already own = not Genius
Even after a couple hours making sure the music library was updated — and Genius was updated too — the Genius was still recommending songs I already owned on best of albums instead of the studio albums. Bummer. I would think a song with the same name by the same band that’s not marked ‘live, unplugged, acoustic, demo’ etc., would not be returned as a result.
Not all the results were bad, I noticed a couple songs of possible future interest. This part of Genius shows promise, but sorry, it’s a long way from being genius.
Play a song and press the Genius button to generate a similar playlist of songs you already own = almost Genius
My first Genius playlist test started with the song "Born Again" by Black Sabbath, here’s the playlist Genius generated:
Cool results! I like many of these songs. They aren’t just popular tracks I’ve listened to with songs like "I’m Insane" by Ratt live and "The Eyes" from Dio’s Master of the Moon. And I totally dig "Keep It Warm" off the same Born Again album, "Heaven and Hell" Live by the renamed Sabbath. This Genius generated list of 25 similar songs is excellent.
I tried playing other less popular songs that I five star rated in iTunes to see what Genius returned. Next: "All Mixed Up" by The Cars:
Doh! Even after an update, no luck with this song. Next song: "Time and Time Again" by Counting Crows:
Another good list with some songs I recognize and like along with some lesser known titles. Thumbs up. Next song: "Comin’ Under Fire" by Def Leppard:
Another solid playlist, saved. I found while testing more songs with Genius, I wished there was some sort of way to quickly output the results of these Genius playlists as text files to share with others online. Wait, this could be where a service like Nutsie comes in. Remember me writing about Nutsie a year ago? Bet the Nutsie folks are ecstatic over Genius. I see where you can make an iMix out of these playlists but Nutsie seems like a better idea if it works with Genius playlists.
Overall, I like what Genius does. I don’t think the name quite fits because as you can see from a small sampling above that there are some holes. I suppose even Einstein wasn’t perfect, so maybe I’m being too harsh, but the Genius algorithm appears very, very good. This feature will encourage me to start using iTunes again. Mission accomplished, Apple.
New iPod announcements
Before exiting this post, I see Matt is curious what I think about the new iPod announcements. From an Apple shareholder standpoint (I’ve owned AAPL stock for a couple years now), I love these Apple events. Steve Jobs out on stage evangelizing like only he can. And what’s not to like about taking $100 off the iPod Touch?
Being excited about touch screen enabled devices like tablet PC, I really like the idea behind the iPhone and iPod Touch but here’s my problem: not enough practical storage space for the price.
Realistically I’m only going to carry one music device. I’ve already got my Pocket PC which the iPod Touch could someday replace, but I don’t see it having enough space for me at the right price now. We have over 50GB worth of music and my current 30GB Zune isn’t enough. Why would I spend $299 for the iPod Touch 16GB and have 14GB less for music not counting cool iPod Touch applications? Even though the Nano’s price is right the storage is the issue there too. Always have liked the Nike+ tie-in.
Right now the 32GB iPod Touch is selling for $399. The money conscious side of me says: wait it out until the price comes down and storage amount increases. Inevitably it will. The cool gadget side of me is saying to stop thinking about it and drop down the bones now.
The iPhone remains out for me as long as it has anything to do with AT&T. If Sprint had the iPhone, the current cell phone carrier my wife and sons are using (I haven’t had a cell phone of my own for awhile), I might pull the trigger. Been checking out that Samsung Instinct and thought maybe, just maybe that would look good in my hands but then I think about having a phone contract for two more years and that keeps me at bay.
So it looks like I’ll be getting either a Zune 120GB or iPod 120GB classic. In the iPod corner is knowledge that my wife’s 80GB iPod has worked very well and I like the interaction with iTunes on the Mac. Also, I’m hoping this holiday season to upgrade my Mac. Last and my first ever Mac purchase was in October 2004. It’s time for me to get one of those shiny Intel-based iMacs. Santa, are you listening? Having the 120GB iPod would fit this scenario well.
In the Zune corner, bonus points for how the Zune has treated me as a customer by continuing to give me firmware updates on my Zune 30GB with features that are in their next generation devices. I’m intrigued by comparing the channels function to the ‘Genius’ and must admit not being one of the 50% using the FM tuner to date, so that FM to tune capability won’t play much of a factor. I spend 75% of my time in the Windows world and prefer Zune software to iTunes on Windows. Seems like jumping into the 120GB is going to fit my growing music needs well whether it be Zune or iPod.
If I let desire rule my wallet, I’d buy a new iMac, the Zune 120GB and the iPod Touch 32GB tomorrow. Oh temptation, you cruel beast!
Remember me writing last week about my negative customer experience with CD Baby? This morning Don Dokken made it so I could only buy his second solo album Solitary ($9.99, been available online since Feb 2008) through the service Snocap via dokkenstore.com.
Didn’t go through as many screenshot motions as I did with CD Baby, but Snocap wouldn’t let me add my credit card in Firefox so I could finish the order. I kept hitting the ’submit’ button and nothing happened. Grrrr.
When I fired up Internet Explorer things seemed to work correctly, but minor gripe, why as a first time customer do I have to do the following:
1. check box next to the song to order 2. confirm order 3. be taken to another browser window — hey I’m already in one — to visit Snocap to register for the site and add payment information on file. Why not open in a tab? And why not wait for the other browser window until we actually add payment information and can verify we are on a secure page? 4. In IE I saw an option to use PayPal. After authorizing, did the system take me back to finish the order? Of course not. So back to the other browser tab to try the order again. 5. This time it went through and asked me if I wanted to download the Snocap download manager or download the songs direct. By all means to anybody reading, choose to download the songs direct.
From experience I should have done that, but didn’t. Next, the order screen turned into a message saying there was an error returned from the software. Meanwhile, the Snocap download manager was still installing. Huh? When it fully installed and ran it didn’t show any music for me to download.
[sigh] Here we go again. Didn’t we just do this a week ago with CD Baby?
6. I went directly to the Snocap site and checked this out:
The ultimate website NON-confidence builder: big, broken image. The screenshot might be a bit small but there is only a ‘profile’ link and ’sign out’ — nothing about account or transaction history. They lose points for not making this more clear. When you click on ‘profile’ you can then navigate to your transaction history.
7. And there, finally, I can download the songs one at a time without having to use the download manager. I didn’t see any way to add the songs to the snocap download manager. Fortunately all the songs from Solitary downloaded.
Why is buying music from some of these online music sites a hassle? I’ve had very good experiences with AmazonMP3, iTunes and Zune but my last two experiences with services I haven’t used before has not been good. I was pleased to see the artist, Heavy Jack, reply this morning to my experience last week and say they are looking into it.
I’m starting to understand, but still don’t think it’s cool, people who go the bittorent route to get the hard to find music. Enough of this, what about the Don Dokken solo acoustic album, Solitary. Is it any good?
It’s mellow, I’ll say that. Have to listen to it more to judge but I’ve always liked Don Dokken’s mellow stuff. On his first solo album the song "1,000 miles Away" is one of my favorites. With Dokken who doesn’t like "Alone Again?" And pretty much the entire Under Lock and Key album (ok, not every song is mellow on there, but that one seemed like one of the most mellow Dokken albums) with tracks like "It’s Not Love" and "Jaded Heart." Then there are some more rare and less commercially appreciated albums like Dysfunctional with excellent songs like "The Maze" and "From The Beginning."
In the official Dokken podcast #2 and elsewhere Don Dokken keeps saying that this year’s good selling Lightning Strikes Again (my favorite track off that one is "Oasis") is probably the last Dokken studio album. He wants to do something outside what he feels are the musical confines of Dokken. Something "harder." Rhino, the company who published Lightning would like another Dokken album but it doesn’t sound like Don Dokken is interested at the present time.
One request, whatever you do, Don: please make it easy and hassle-free to buy whatever album you make going forward. This is something for musicians to keep in mind with how they choose to distribute their music. If you make it too much of a pain in the ass, some (many?) fans will take the path of least resistance. A quick search engine query reveals tons of illegal avenues to acquire Solitary.
Solitary Track List
1. "In The Meadow" 2. "I’ll Never Forget" - the ID tags in this MP3 were not set correctly and I had to manually fix. Good thing it’s easy to do these days in a wide variety of software. 3. "Where The Grass Is Green" 4. "Ship Of Fools" 5. "You Are Everything" 6. "Venice" 7. "Sarah" - Don Dokken says this song is about a "first love" he had in the 80s. One of the better tracks. 8. "The Tragedy" 9. Someday
If you like the harder Dokken songs like "Breaking The Chains" then Lightning Strikes Again will be more satisfying. If, like me, you enjoy the mellow side of Dokken, roll the dice with Snocap or attend one of the Don Dokken solo shows when he starts doing them again (he’s out touring with Dokken in support of Lightning now). He is selling Solitary at his shows. I wish he’d consider using a service like Tunecore.com which will get his music out on iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Napster, EMusic and more.
2008 is a great year to be a rocker. A new Metallica album available next week and the next — and possibly last (hope not) — AC/DC studio album Black Ice will be available October 20. Oh yeah.
You can grab the AC DC what happened in history widget for your blog or favorite social service here or using the ‘get & share’ link in the embed above (RSS Readers: visit the page to see widget embed).
Black Ice Track Listing
1. Rock ’n Roll Train - you can listen to this track on the widget page
2. Skies On Fire
3. Big Jack
4. Anything Goes
5. War Machine
6. Smash N Grab
7. Spoilin’ For A Fight
8. Wheels
9. Decibel
10. Stormy May Day
11. She Likes Rock N Roll
12. Money Made
13. Rock N Roll Dream
14. Rocking All The Way
15. Black Ice
When I buy digital music downloads from places like iTunes and AmazonMP3 the music is available, as expected, for download right away. This morning I bought an album in MP3 format from an indie rock artist, Heavy Jack, from CD Baby. Believe that this was my first ever CD Baby purchase.
One of the things I like about CD Baby is they take a very small percentage of the money from the sale. Via their artist signup site:
For digital sales, we keep only a 9% cut, paying 91% of all income directly to the artist. For physical CDs, we keep $4 per CD sold.
Good deal for artists/bands, I’m there. So yesterday I checked out this music discovery service and came across Heavy Jack. Loved their song Fly Away (Black Crow), particularly the Hendrix-like vibe, embed is below for readers from the blog (won’t show in RSS feed):
Good stuff, I wanted to show them some material ($) fan love and thus went to their website this morning and saw I could purchase their album in CD or MP3 format. I went for the MP3 format which cost $9.99. I used PayPal and received confirmation that CD Baby was paid right away at 7:02am PST.
What I didn’t receive as expected was a download link from CD Baby or explanation of when the download link would be coming. I waited. And waited. Waited. Started to wonder around 10 minutes if the order didn’t go through on CD Baby’s end. Hey, sometimes things happen.
30 minutes later I decided to write an email to CD Baby with a copy of the transaction number and ask them how long it took to get the download link? I didn’t expect to receive a response to this email right away. If I got a response by the end of the business day, I’d be happy. Through experience have learned to set expectations lower when emailing customer service of any site online. It’s a pleasant surprise when somebody responds right away, but a business day is reasonable.
49 minutes after the sale, I received an email with the subject line: "CD Baby loves Tdavid" and order # confirmation:
Nevermind being anal about their script failing to capitalize the ‘D’ in my name, that’s just nitpicky, what does matter is that the download link they provided in their email didn’t work. The page just errored out. Waited a few more minutes, figuring maybe there was another delay before the download link was activated. As silly as that seems, have seen that situation before. Nope, didn’t matter, still didn’t work.
In their ‘love me’ email they added the message:
If you’re not able to use that link from this email or just not ready to download yet, you can always log in to your account at http://cdbaby.com/account and find all of your MP3s in the "Your Downloads" section.
Hello, I was able and ready 55 minutes ago. If you love me, just give me a download link that works already. Where is the music I paid for? WTF is up with this place? I don’t walk into a music store and pay them for a CD and then come back and hour later and still can’t get the CD to take home. This isn’t ordering a pizza on a Friday night when the parlor is getting slammed and they are understaffed, it’s an automated web order system for a digital download.
1 hour 25 minutes (8:27am PST) after the sale and all I see when I click the download link in CD Baby is this:
At this point I thought maybe, maybe the download link would work on another computer. Tried it on my laptop. No work in Firefox or Internet Explorer.
1 hour 42 minutes here I sit still unable to download music from the link. If I was into BDSM I’d try buying another MP3 download from CD Baby for a different artist just to see if this negative customer experience was an isolated case. Instead, I’m making this blog post for others to tell me their CD Baby MP3 purchase customer experiences. Did you get your MP3 download right away? Did it take more than a couple hours? Did the download link not work at first and work later?
1 hour 53 minutes. Still no working download. I’m getting ready to hit publish on this post. Some say you should never blog mad, I say when your wallet is impacted: screw that! This is a bad experience.
2 hours. Wow. The download link finally worked! I’m going to publish this as written anyway to see if this is the norm for CD Baby MP3 purchases. If this is the normal customer experience, CD Baby is one torturing lover. If you run a music delivery service, don’t make your customers wait two hours for digital downloads. Two minutes, fine. Two hours and it’s time to hire new programmers.
Update 10:02am PST: Received an email response from “pony” at CD Baby apologizing for their servers being down this morning while they did some work.
Music and gaming are enjoying a strong synergy in 2008 that could be witnessed nearly everywhere at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle 2008 this past weekend. We spent three days there collecting video, pictures, playing games and rocking out to video game music, most of which I’ll be sharing at VTOReality.com. Here I’ll try to give a brief overview of what we experienced.
I’ve attended dozens of concerts but experienced a first at PAX 2008 being able to see a couple bands perform video game songs live. The OneUps opened the Friday Night concert at PAX and were impressive. No singing but plenty of six-string bass, violin, drums and guitars.
The OneUps were so impressive that we went to see the bassist, Mustin, the next day and bought both their CDs (Volume 1 and Volume 2).
Also signed up for their MySpace page (warning: sound onload). The only other videogame-related music I remember buying has been Buckner & Garcia’s Pac Man Fever.
Our sons entered the Guitar Hero tournament on Saturday and the youngest was eliminated in the first round. Our 17 year old son made it to the final 8 in the tournament. They also did the Soul Calibur IV tournament earlier in the day and were both eliminated in the first round.
We performed as a Rock Band both on the show floor and in the after hours Rock Band event Friday Night. Didn’t wait in line to play Guitar Hero World, but that booth was very active throughout PAX.
Also got to check out the Wii Music drums where you play with the balance board and drumming into thin air with the Wiimote and nunchuk. On the way to lunch away from PAX we stopped by Gameworks (conveniently located a block away) which had the first guitar game by Konami called GuitarFreaks and DrumFreaks (although this one was out of service).
Back to the show floor and one of the 10 spotlighted PAX games for the Xbox 360 live arcade was called AudioSurf. This games looked a little bit like the old Atari puzzler Klax and sounded like a full-on music game.
AudioSurf’s description from the PAX guide:
"Ride your music. Audiosurf is a music-adapting puzzle racer where you use your own music to create your own experience. The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose."
It seemed like at almost every turn at PAX there was some kind of music videogame being demoed or played. Did I mention the Sony booth where Singstar contests were happening? Or how about the Intel Booth where you could play against a ringer to win a PC version of Guitar Hero?
Music games are everywhere and I love it. Forget the RIAA missteps and DRM issues, there continues to be a huge opportunity for bands to have their music heard and purchased in the videogames area.
Among the list of bands I’d like to see get completely back together, Dennis DeYoung with Styx is near the top. He might be 61 but there is no reason — other than personality conflicts — I can tell anyway that he couldn’t and shouldn’t still be singing with Styx. I saw DeYoung perform for the first time at the Rockin’ The Rivers concert in Montana earlier this month and they rocked the place. His voice is in great shape.
Rockin’ The Rivers is billed as the biggest rock concert event in Montana of the year and this was the 10th time they’ve had the concert. It’s three days of bands that play from noon until 2am. People camp overnight, drink (lots) of beer and have a great time. At $120 for three days or $50 for one day this is among the best value concerts out there. Here’s what the official concert guide looks like:
The Van Halen cover band Hot For Teacher was impressive as well as Fran Cosmo singing Boston Songs. Wasn’t as impressed with Manny Charlton with Nazareth. We didn’t attend day 1 or day 3. That’s the only bummer I can think of regarding this concert: it’s like 650 miles from here. We’re planning on going again next year and maybe doing the camp out thing. Lots of fun.
Dennis DeYoung Rockin’ The Rivers 8/9/2008 Setlist The Grand Illusion Lady Loralei Don’t Let It End Castle Walls Light Up Mr Roboto Desert Moon 100 Years From Now Rocking The Paradise Sweet Madam Blue Babe Best Of Times (encore) Come Sail Away
When I saw Matt Wardlaw post the House of Blues 8/24/2008 setlist from the band Styx including members Tommy Shaw, James “J.Y.” Young and Chuck Panozzo I was reminded to get this post out of the draft bin. Check out the same songs played by both bands, marked with asterisk, as well as the order:
House of Blues 8/24/2008 Setlist Blue Collar Man * The Grand Illusion * Loralei One With Everything * Lady Too Much Time On My Hands Snowblind I Am The Walrus Boat On The River Man In The Wilderness (Shaw acoustic) Crystal Ball (beginning acoustic w/ Shaw only) * Suite Madame Blue Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man) (Chuck Panozzo on bass) Miss America * Come Sail Away (Panozzo on bass)
Interesting to note that both bands closed with Come Sail Away and The Grand Illusion was Dennis DeYoung’s opener and the second song Styx played. Must admit I missed Tommy Shaw singing "Snowblind" and "Crystal Ball" and would have liked hearing Blue Collar Man in the Dennis DeYoung line-up. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the extended guitar solo version of Desert Moon and wouldn’t have wanted that axed in favor of Styx doing a Beatles cover.
I realize Styx sans DeYoung had a bit of success with their covers album but I don’t go to a concert with a band the calibur of Styx and want to hear songs they covered by The Beatles when that is in place of other, better songs like "Castle Walls" which DeYoung said Styx never played when he was with them.
What a haunting, beautiful song from the same album as "Come Sail Away."
The YouTube video of Desert Moon shown above (taken from the Arlington Heights show on July 6, 2008) and the one of Castle Walls (Chicago Ridge, Illinois on July 25, 2008) don’t do the live performances justice but are included here to give you a sampling of what it was like.
DeYoung played the title song from his new album 100 Years From Now that’s out in Canada and available via his website. He said it will be coming out in the states in January 2008. My wife didn’t care for the song, but I liked it. I’ll be buying this one when it comes out in the states, if not sooner.
A sweet moment in the DeYoung concert was when he dedicated "Babe" to his wife of 38 years Suzanne and she came out on stage and danced with him. Come on Dennis and Styx, mend those ties and get back together already!
Yesterday, we were teased with the release of track 4 "The Day That Never Comes" (Windows Media) which sounds like it might be the ballad (the only one?) on the album. Enquiring music minds like Matt Wardlaw want to know what people think of the song. I read through a hundred or so of the Blabbermouth comments and it seems like a mixed bag. Matt says "The good news is, it’s pretty good." I sensed more reservation from other fans than delight.
My favorite Metallica album to date has been Ride the Lightning and this track almost feels like if had started with 12 and 6 string acoustic guitars it could have come from around that era (but not on that great album), but instead it’s all electric. I’m a little puzzled why they didn’t go more classical? The song in predictable Metallica fashion gets harder a la "Fade To Black", "Welcome Home Sanitarium" and "One" but it isn’t as stylistic as any of those three songs.
What we’re left with in "The Day That Never Comes" is an appetizer of what makes Metallica mellow metal ballads unique. Not very original for them but better than most of what is on their last album St. Anger. An album which didn’t have any ballad-like tracks. With that said, I’d still take "Frantic" though over this track, even with the tinny sounding drums because it’s more exploratory. Just listening to music that sounds like it came from something on an older album isn’t what I look for from a new album. I also am expecting some level of exploration and trying new things. I’m not sure "The Day That Never Comes" quite fits that description.
Metallica played track 6 "Cyanide" live (for the first time?) at Ozzfest in Dallas, TX on August 9, 2008. This song showcases former Ozzy and new Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and of course it’s on YouTube already (no idea if or when the boys will order it taken down, but I would encourage them not to):
This track jams. I’m looking forward to hearing the studio version. Would like to hear "The Day That Never Comes" played live for that matter.
There’s also a subpar quality compilation of "fly on the wall" clips on YouTube but I wouldn’t recommend that. It’s not a song, it’s simply a bunch of raw clips Metallica shared through MM that some fan cobbled together.
For now we can only judge Death Magnetic by two songs. I’m waiting for the other 8 tracks. People who are declaring these two tracks as indicative of the album as a whole are being way too premature. Wait for it. I know it’s easy to draw early opinions, but I want to hear the whole album through a dozen or more times at least before making any final judgment on where Death Magnetic ranks in Metallica’s overall studio album discography.
I will say this much for Matt and others curious: These first two tracks are promising. I am not expecting this to be another Kill ‘Em All or Ride The Lightning, but will be disappointed if the rest of the album is as devoid of soul as most of St. Anger. I’d be totally stoked if Death Magnetic turned out to be anything close to their early to mid era album releases.
My son has been asking about guitar solos lately. In past posts I’ve talked about how I think it’s a mistake when first learning to play guitar worrying too much about scales and theory, but as you progress in skill level and want to start improvising and soloing, scales are no longer optional. He has already learned some basic chords as well as how to read tablature and play a few parts of songs. He hasn’t learned any scales yet.
This brings up questions like: what is the best first scale to learn on the guitar? What’s a good way to memorize this scale? My recommendation is practice, repetition and keeping the information in front of you:
The blues scale shown as a desktop background above is a common scale used in a lot of music. Not only blues, but good old rock and roll. Staring at it as a desktop background might help to burn the pattern into your brain.
The blues scale can be played in any key with the root note (circled in red) indicating the key you are playing. For example, if you are playing on the fifth fret, E string, you’d be playing the blues scale in the key of A. Drop down to the third fret E string and you’re playing in the key of G.
The pattern on strings is as follows (shown playing in key of F), note for beginning guitarists that the 6th string is the top most string from top to bottom and is the lowest sounding, while the 1st string is the high E and often denoted in tab as a lowercase e:
One of the first things I learned about the guitar was that a note 12 frets above is the same note an octave higher. So if you do an open E string and move up to the 12th fret and play on the same string, that is the E key again, on the 13th fret that would be F and so on. Here is a list of the notes from fret 0 - 12 on the 6th string:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
E F F# G A♭ A B♭ B C C# D E♭ E
These notes repeat themselves on frets 12-24 like this:
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 E F F# G A♭ A B♭ B C C# D E♭ E
Tip for beginning guitarists: if you want to make it easier to solo high pitched notes, be sure to buy/play a guitar with 24 frets. I believe most, if not all Ibanez electric guitars, have 24 frets. That’s the guitar I bought for my son to practice on. The Gibson Les Paul guitar I bought has only 22 frets. You can reach 24 fret notes on a 22 fret guitar, you just have to bend the strings. This can significantly increase the difficulty of soloing these higher notes.
You can see from the blues scale chart on my desktop that if you played the root note (circled in red on the screenshot) starting on the 7th fret 6th string, using the following pattern you’d be playing in the key of B:
Got it? This is the very first scale and pattern I’m showing my son. I’ve recommended he start each practice session by playing the blues scale front and back several times saying aloud the key he is playing in, working his way up the fretboard. At the same time working on his speed and alternate picking (back/forth/back). Through repetition one can become quite fast at playing these notes.
Once he’s practiced the pattern, I recommended to him to play the notes out of order, adjusting the speed and bending, hammer-ons and pull-offs. This is the stuff that guitar soloing is made of and a lot more fun than just repeating the scales over and over again. You have to start somewhere.
This basic knowledge coupled with memorizing the scale pattern above comes in very handy when riffing, improvising and soloing on the guitar. You could also make music in any key by sticking with this scale. So if you were playing a chord and needed a little riff to go along, the blues scale could help.
taken from 1992 DVD via Amazon: 
