Music In Is Broken

Well, processing the current Music In has been problematic.

Amazon used to send me weekly music recommendations. That is now monthly, oops! That & word-of-mouth were my main sources of new music.

Trying to get more coming in, I started getting a bandcamp weekly newsletter. This normally has 5 new albums or EPs featured.

I got several of these - alternative rock, indie, with nice melodies and good female lead singers - stuff I am a sucker for.

They are all good, but, the problem is, after 5-10 listens, I can't particularly tell most of them apart. So in this emptying of the pending music in tunes, lots & lots of 3 stars, and very few 4 stars.

Is this a function of my aging brain struggling to assimilate too much new content? Or maybe the music on bandcamp is just a touch below being catchy, to where it would stick better?

Inquiring minds want to know. Here we go.

• Van Morrison, "Moondance Expanded - Sessions, Alternates & Outtakes (All Previously Unissued)", 1969, 11 tracks, and "A Night in San Francisco (Live)", 1994, 14 tracks. These were both recommended by my friend and blues harpist Steve Konopka (fuzzy). I enjoyed them more than I expected. The "San Francisco" 1 features other band members singing lead. 1 thing I definitely got out of these is both have versions of "Moondance" with the vocals done in 3-part harmony. That song gets performed fairly often, I'm kind of tired of it, but next time it gets called I may try and sing some harmony with it. 3 stars.
• The Jayhawks, "Mockingbird Time", 2011, 12 tracks. Starting to work backward through their catalog. Not a bad album, but no standout songs. Somewhat disappointing, should I keep going back? 3 stars.
• Ra Ra Riot, "Beta Love", 2013, 11 tracks. This is the 4th of their albums I have, probably my least favorite. Nothing particularly catchy. They just put a 5th album out in August, I think I will check it out. 3 stars.
• Hop Along, "Bark Your Head Off Dog", 2018, 9 tracks. Bandcamp. A Philly indie band that's been around since 2004. Good tunes, good female singer, no standouts. 3 stars.
• Maria Taylor, "In the Next Life", 2016, 10 tracks. Bandcamp. Taylor has been around for 20 years. Good tunes, a variety of instrumental backing, no standouts. 3 stars.
• Petal, "Magic Gone", 2018, 10 tracks. Bandcamp. More rockish than the rest. Chanteuse & guitarist Kiley Lotz plus studio musicians. Nice tunes, no standouts. 3 stars.
• Barrie, "Happy To Be Here", 2019, 10 tracks. Bandcamp. More indie rock, a little better engineered and more dancable. Debut album of what appears to be 5-piece indie band from the Northwest with an alto lead & harmony singers. Finally, 4 stars! Here's "Dark Tropical".

• Britt, "Kill the Man", 2019, 6 tracks. Bandcamp. A bit more ethereal and conceptual than some of the others. Soprano lead singer. 3 stars.
• Great Lake Swimmers, "New Wild Everywhere", 2012, 13 tracks. I have enjoyed their tunes when they come up on shuffle play, so I decided to get more. No standouts on this album, 3 stars.
• David Bowie, "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)", 1980, 10 tracks. The song "Ashes to Ashes" came up somewhere and I discovered it was not in my collection. So I bought this album to get it - and of course, it is the only good song on the album. So 4 stars for "Ashes to Ashes", 3 stars for the rest.

• Tal Wilkenfeld, "Love Remains", 2019, 10 tracks. I of course greatly enjoyed Wilkenfeld's work as the 15 YO Australian immigrant playing bass for Jeff Beck. When I found she had an album singing & playing guitar, I had to check it out. Somewhat interesting blues/rock, but nothing really standout. 3 stars.
• Mavis Staples, "We Get By", 2019, 11 tracks. Mavis keeps on keepin' on. This album was written and produced by Ben Harper, and it is excellent. I gave it to Steve to pick the tracks he liked best for us to perform. He picked "Brothers and Sisters", and "Change". 4 stars.

• The National, "I am Easy to Find", 2019, 16 tracks. I think their 1st in a while. I like the baritone lead singer, who is joined by an alto on several songs. 3 stars.
• Children of Zeus, "Excess Baggage", 2019, 7 tracks. Bandcamp. Some nice electronica/dance for something different. 4 stars. Here's "Vibrations (Short Edit)"

• Christelle Bofale, "Swim Team", 2019, 5 tracks. Bandcamp. Austin TX based singer-songwriter. Nice arrangements. No standouts, 3 stars.
• Rick Howard, "Lil' Noir", 2019, 10 tracks. Rick is the most excellent guitarist of the most excellent SW Florida band Mudbone, live album blogged here. He is the nephew of Moe Howard of the 3 Stooges (?!?!?), and I take guitar lessons from him, so far working mostly on 1930's standards. Plus, neat new chords! I love that I have been playing guitar for over 50 years and still learn new chords. This album is 10 original jazz tunes, played with a 4 or 5 piece combo. Mudbone blues harp player Jerry Fierro plays on a couple of the tracks and acquits himself well. A very professional effort, 3 stars.
• Santana, "Africa Speaks", 2019, 11 tracks. Some world music from Carlos, assisted by various African artists. Some great grooves and rhythms. 3 stars.
• The Appleseed Cast, "The Fleeting Light of Impermance", 2019, 8 tracks. Bandcamp. A bit more abstract than some of the others. Out of Lawrence KS, apparently these guys have been around for 20 years. 3 stars.
• Market, eponymous, 2019, 4 tracks. Bandcamp. Australians, yay! Just over the catchiness threshold, 4 stars. Here's "Circles"

• Black Pumas, eponymous, 2019, 10 tracks. Bandcamp. Yay, some good modern R&B! Why isn't there more of this? This is 2 guys out of Austin. 4 stars. Here's "Black Moon Rising".

• Kate Bollinger, "I Don't Wanna Lose", 2019, 5 tracks. Bandcamp. This indie rock somehow managed to hit my sweet spot. Interesting instrumentals & alto vocals. 4 stars. Here's the oxymoronically titled "Untitled".

• Morley & Friends, "Borderless Lullabies", 2019, 21 tracks. I'm not sure where this came from. It is a collection of lullabies, by many different artists, in different languages and different styles. I burned a copy for my grandsons, maybe they'll like it to go to sleep by. 3 stars.
• The Soft Cavalry, eponymous, 2019, 12 tracks. Bandcamp. The debut album of a husband/wife duo. Very well done. Somewhat reminiscent of early Coldplay. 4 stars. Here's the 1st track, "Dive".

Phew, 24 albums! But things have gotten a bit sparse again, the Unrated smart playlist has only 64 songs in it. Guess I need some new acquisitions.

Reality - Who Needs It?

Continuing with all sci-fi and fantasy, all the time.

1st up, "The Reefs of Time", Jeffrey A. Carver, 2019, 539 pages, #5 of "The Chaos Chronicle". After a hiatus of 11 years, Carver returns to this series. The 1st 4 books are blogged here. This book is billed as Part 1 of 2 in the "Out of Time sequence", with the 2nd part coming in October. We merge a couple of plot threads, plus the universe of Carver's 2 Starstream novels. The team gets split into 3 groups, 2 rejoin, the big reunion presumably coming in book #6. They continue fighting the hostile AIs bent on wiping out organic life so it will quit wasting resources. This is 1 of those transition books that mostly just sets the table for the grand finale.

Next, "The Expert System's Brother" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2018, 139 pages. I liked the title. An interesting little novella, a tale of bioengineering humans so they can survive a foreign ecosystem. One of the plot elements I found somewhat unbelievable.

Next a fantasy, "Travel Light", by Naomi Mitchison, 1952, 136 pages. I think this was recommended by Tina Eisenberg (@swissmiss) or Maria Popova (@brainpicker). I figured that any fairy tale with Odin All-Father as a character deserved a look. I bought a paperback copy for my 8 YO granddaughter figured I'd read it before sending it on to her. I read about 1/3 of it and then went on and bought the eBook as well - it was what my old eyes wanted. Mitchinson definitely knows how to write a fairy tale - the prose has that numinous quality that makes you feel like an old, old story is being recounted to you. I was a little disappointed when christians were part of the plot as well as norse pagans, but they weren't portrayed very sympathetically. The heroine's adventures make for an interesting story. I have purchased the eBook of what appears to be Mitchinson's most popular work, "The Corn King and the Spring Queen".

Back to sci-fi and another short read, "Phoresis", by old favorite Greg Egan, 2018, 143 pages. Egan again builds an interesting world - and this time without particularly altering the laws of physics! The story moves along well. In what appears to be a definite trend, the characters are all women. The male role in this book is pretty creepy: women all have 1-3 horny little 6" guys in their womb, who fight to get to emerge and impregnate other females?!?!?

Last Tuesday my wife and I both came down with colds, apparently from 2 different sources. So time for rest and fluids. My sophomore year of college I remember getting sick and then spending 4 days in bed rereading "The Lord of the Rings" cover to cover. At the end of that, I couldn't walk through the woods without expecting to see elves, ents, orcs.

So in a similar vein, I decided to reread the Philip Jose Farmer "World of Tiers" series as I recuperated. I had picked up "World of Tiers Volume 1" - "The Maker of Universes" (1965), "The Gates of Creation" (1966), and "A Private Cosmos" (1968) - 820 pages, I think from BookBub for $1.99. I went on and bought "Volume 2" - "Behind the Walls of Terra" (1970), "The Lavalite World" (1977), "Red Orc's Rage" (1991), and "More Than Fire" (1993), 1200 pages.

The 1st 5 I had read before and were as I remembered - rollicking adventures on unusual worlds. Farmer wrote forewords, in a few of which he complains that title changes and edits were made with his being consulted - oops. There were some funny moments in the 1970 novel - Farmer reacted to the counterculture of the time about as you would expect a 52 YO white male to react.

1 thing that surprised me: I really liked the concept of "temporal fugue", I thought introduced by Roger Zelazny in "Creatures of Light and Darkness" (1969). Basically time-travelers getting ready to go mano-a-mano send multiple (1000s) of copies of themselves back through time to the time & place of the big battle. Then it's 1000s vs 1000s. I thought Zelazny had invented this, but there are time-traveling creatures who basically do this in the 2nd Tiers book, which came out in 1966. So Farmer was 3 years ahead of Zelazny.

The 6th book "Red Orc's Rage" is kind of weird. Apparently some psychiatrist came up with a therapy based on having the patient read the 5 World of Tiers books and then becoming 1 of the characters?!?!? Apparently this is a form of projective psychotherapy. The 6th book is about a teenager undergoing this therapy - but it fills in a lot of Red Orc's back story that gets used in the 7th book.

By the time I got to the 7th book, I was definitely ready for it to be over. Also somewhat annoyingly, the main character of the 1st 2 novels, the lord Jadawin / Robert Wolff, and his girlfriend Chryseis (of The Iliad) are left in limbo - missing for the last several books, still missing at the end.

On to the magazine stack. Then probably more of the same. I don't know if I'll be ready for reality until Agent Orange leaves office.