Last week I visited my friend, Joe. He has a lovely back yard, with scenery perfect for simple songs. Today I made two music videos for songs from the album, Up. The first one, "Winner" stars the sweet and beautiful Lola:
Then there's "Sorry Buddy", which is actually a coda (epilogue) to the previous song on the album, "The Egret":
These videos both have Closed Captions, BTW.
Billy D reviews another Star Wars book, Queen's Shadow. This is one of a few stories of Padmé Amidala and her handmaidens. This one takes place just a little before Episode II.
UP is out. You can find it on most major music streaming sites. Please listen a lot and share with your friends.
As always, the CD sounds better than any streaming service. Those who helped with the Kickstarter campaign have theirs coming to them. My plan was to hand them out to all who re-ordered at my CD Release Concert. Thanks to the delta variant, I'm not sure exactly when that show will be, so I'll send everyone their CDs in the mail. When that show finally happens, those early supporters would get in free, should there be a cover at the door.
Here are some useful links to the new album:
Here's a song. Warning: It's one of the two songs on the album with a lot of F-word:
Billy D swats mosquitos as he enthusiastically reviews Andy Weir's sci-fi book, Project Hail Mary. Andy Weir is best known for his book that was made into a major motion picture, The Martian.
So, they finally did it: they remixed All Things Must Pass. It took 50 years, but I'm still glad it happened. That album is notorious for having been extra muddy/reverby, thanks to Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound". Yes, the new mix sounds good. Quite contemporary, in places, probably because it was supervised by his son, Dhani Harrison, a solid GenX-er with taste.
He actually re-wrote that song, with a much happier vibe about ten years later. Same message. Rain comes, rain goes; so does suffering. In 1979, he released the very happy "Blow Away":
One could argue that I wrote another song with that same message again, with a song called "Every Day Is Today". Rain comes, rain goes; we forget pain when happy and we forget happiness when in pain.
Sometimes I review something other than a Star Wars book. This is one of those times. Today we explore the original Stephen King novel, The Shining. As you might expect, it's different from the Kubrick movie.