Fiercely Me

Rock critics tend to make bold statements like, “The Best Album of the Year”, or “The 100 Best Albums of All Time”. When what they really mean to say is, “This is my favorite album right now but ask me next week and it will probably be something different.” Every single person on this planet has their own specific taste in music. When someone tells you that your taste in music sucks they really should be telling you that your taste in music is nothing like theirs and they feel better than you because of it. Just because I don’t like Katy Perry’s songs does that mean they all suck? I find this topic very interesting but this is not what I want to get into right now. I just want to make my bold statements that prove I have GREAT taste in music and you don’t. The best album ever recorded and released ever, ever, ever is by a guy from Chicago that a lot of people probably have never heard of. His name is Devin Davis and the album is called “Lonely People of the World, Unite!” First of...

As you might have guessed from my first blog ever I am not a big fan of the mainstream pop music that is played on Top 40 radio these days. Yet through circumstances beyond my control I am forced to listen to Top 40 radio almost every day. Because of this I hear a lot of these songs repeated over and over and over again. Some I really don’t have a problem with (Justin Bieber should annoy me but for some reason I don’t hate all his songs). If you said that some songs, and the pop stars who sing them, make me want to shoot every radio for a mile around (and myself in the head) then you win the PRIZE! A look at my list of the 10 Most Annoyingly Overexposed Pop Stars or Songs of 2010…so far. Coming in at #10: Auto-tune effect on vocals. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about auto-tune is an effect that studios use on vocals that give the singer kind of a weird, spacey sound when the pitch is varied. For instance I just heard “Dynomite” by Taio Cruz and auto-tune is a...

One of my first memories of music was putting on my 45 single of “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers and pretending to perform the song with my brother and sister. In fifth grade I signed up to play the string bass in South Milwaukee’s music program. I guess I took to playing an instrument fairly quickly as I would beat out older kids for first chair early on in Junior High and High School. I guess all that lip syncing and fake strumming helped! At that time my musical tastes were all over the board. Since I was a bass player (and just starting to play electric bass guitar) I liked just about any band that had a really good bass player. Some of my early “idols” were John Taylor (Duran Duran), Stanley Clarke, John Entwistle (The Who), Chris Squire (Yes), and last but most important was Geddy Lee (Rush). I was so obsessed with Geddy’s playing that before I was lucky enough to score my first bass guitar I would “pluck” along with his moving bass lines on the wooden frame of my bed fo...