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Great albums in your life
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The eponymously named 2005 album from The Village Green is great. I can’t believe that was 16 years ago, but it’s still quite a sound. Take a listen —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p28OjfFcSk
It’s an electric rhythm guitar-focused tune. We’ve got to convince Mona to play it and Lisa to take an electric lead guitar break, but hearing both their voices singing it and it having this big sound would be fabulous.
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Mike, oh yeah I can just imagine Mona and Lisa doing this one great justice with Mona’s rocker vocals and Lisa tearing it up on her Gretsch!!!
M O N A L I S A m a n i a
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Let’s collaborate. It’s the perfect next-in-line MLT cover tune — you can hear the sound of energy just pouring out from it. Mona and Lisa applying their matchless vocal duets to it with the MLT touch is well worth going to the trouble to ask. I’d pay good money to hear a restricted MLT Club take of this song and take a vote.
That picture is probably how they’ll look when they hear about 10 seconds of this song.
One or both of us would have to approach Mona and convince her to try. After she heard this, it probably wouldn’t take much convincing. It’s a rhythm guitar based tune. There’s a little lead guitar part if you listen for it, but not much. If Lisa wanted, she could pull together several versions of her own killer electric lead guitar track for this, and just drop the best one of them into the mix.
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I thought the last Led Zeppelin album was great. The recording had a distinctive studio sound to it, and great songwriting on every track. You were always going to get a bargain, but Zeppelin’s mastery of the instruments was second to none, with loads of fabulous lead guitar notes. It was a big sound.
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Mike, wow that is an unexpected Zeppelin sound for me, but nice. Did I hear a piano at one point? Has a bit of a folk rock country feel to it. Since we are on a dog theme, here is one of my favourites. As they use to say on the radio stations before a Led Zeppelin tune comes on, “get the lead out”. The hypnotic guitar sounds of AC/DC really captivated me, but I always admired Led Zeppelin.
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Los Angeles session electric lead guitarist Tim Pierce is strong at bringing out Jimmy Page’s cut-above lead work.
Here is some heavy studio guitar work on faithfully rendering the electric lead guitar for Led Zeppelin’s tune, Black Dog.
The neat thing about Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog song is, as you know, the bass line follows the driving electric lead guitar line, note-for-note. The effect is the sound of pure energy set to a melody line.
As you can see early into the recording session, Tim Pierce is plugged-in and hits the driving electric lead guitar line to start the process. The studio engineer gives Tim some feedback on the first take, but another lead guitarist (the producer) eventually comes in to try and reconcile Page’s legato effect to Tim Pierce in the middle of the driving melody/lead line to that song. Apparently, Pierce learned the driving lead guitar line with a mix of push and pull guitar pick against the strings, but gets the sharpness to sound off better on a push of one if the lead guitar notes. It’s super interesting to study how the instrumentalists find their proper textures. Pierce brushes off the ego and allows a push pick attack on the strings for that note and it’s a match.
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Hi Michael. It’s always really interesting for me to see musicians carefully fine tuning their approach in a piece, the little nuances make such a difference it seems in the effect they are after. Would love to see Mona and Lisa when they work on a piece as they work out the effects on their guitar to get it just right the way they want it. That would make a great video.
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Yes, I’d prefer watching MLT behind the scenes over Pierce because they are better looking and both of the girls are better mannered than Pierce in their speech. That’s a big reason I really liked Nesmith or The Monkees over time. Pierce is no doubt a good guitarist.
Mona and Lisa EARNED my respect. It makes all the difference in the world.
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Kitaro (喜多郎) with real name Takahashi Masanori (高橋 正則) is a Japanese artist who fuses the traditional influences of his homeland with Western music.
An album that now accompanies me for about 30 years and that I like to listen to again and again.
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Kitaro is beautiful and soothing. The second video especially. With the flute parts, it reminds me of Zamfir music with flutes. I have the Zamfir album with 13 flute tracks, and this one always leaves me with goosebumps. This is also the melody for one of my fave Christmas carols.
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Thank you, very beautiful music, Jung. Suitable for this here’s another CD that has been spinning in my player for about 35 years ( and it never thinks of giving up) 🙂
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Since were stepping outside of Rock-n-Roll… how about Loreena MckennittI might mention Tubular Bells from the early 70’s.
There are several live versions.
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Jurgen, very beautiful and calming music. I like the album cover, looks like a Japanese countryside. I visited Japan in 1995 and remember the countryside being very beautiful like that. Took the bullet train from Tokyo out to a small town my mom grew up in, and took a regular train through the countryside. Would love to go back.
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Hi Jung, I haven’t been to Japan yet, but I imagine the landscape is very beautiful and I would also be very interested in the culture. In which place or region did your mom grew up?
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A gem from the MLT Duo Sessions album. My favourite Kinks song wonderfully transformed into my favourite version.
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Harmony and Ukelele magic, this one is just captivating.
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This one is easy…it was 1979 and I was at the record store ready to purchase “The Grand Illusion” by Styx. I had already bought “Pieces of Eight” and wanted to purchase their previous album. “Cornerstone” was yet to be released.
Well, I saw “The Beatles 1962-1966”. Purchased the double-album, and the rest was history. After that I purchased “The Beatles 1967-1970”, “The White Album”, and “Sgt. Pepper”. After that, even more Beatles albums were purchased.
Eventually, I received, as a Christmas gift from my parents, the entire Beatles songbook. Spent the next few years strumming and howling!
Funny thing I have to note: I never ended up buying “The Grand Illusion” although I have been to Styx concerts. Still a Shaw/Blades fan and have been a huge Lawrence Gowan fan since the beginning.
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Christopher, The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970 (the red and blue albums) were my first intro to the Beatles. Great compilation albums. What was your impression when you first heard Sargent Peppers? A friend of mine was in his teens when he got Sargent Peppers when it was first released in 1967, invited a bunch of friends over for a first listen, and he didn’t know how to take it, actually disappointed because it was nothing he expected of the Beatles, but soon became one of his all time favourite albums. Pet Sounds was like that for me and the Beach Boys. I guess it must have been like a strong coffee or beer, an acquired taste, but once you acquire it, there is nothing else that compares. Seems like great art is like that, starts with a change phase that can take some getting use to, and then you grow into it. When I first heard rock and roll as a kid, I didn’t like it, with all that screaming and unpleasant electric guitar noise, but then I acquired the taste for it and loved it.
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Jung, you always come up with great topics and questions!
My first reaction to Sgt. Pepper: I first heard it after the Bee Gees musical/movie premiered (meh) since I was a toddler when the work came out. My impression was that Sgt. Pepper was a well-orchestrated album with a circus/carnival theme. Nothing like their early work and nothing that would be played in a concert (at least in 1967). Music ahead of its time. A concept album. From the opening song, to introducing Billy Sheers who needed a little help from his friends to Harrison’s “Within You Without You” (kind of the beginning of the second act when people are still returning to their seats) to “A Day in the Life” (What an ending), the show begins, rises, teases us with something different, and leads us to dramatic conclusion. Interesting, but showy in a non-Beatles way.
That leads to the White Album: I loved the White Album. Why? It is a mix. It is raw. It includes songs that would not be present if it was only a single album. In my world, these “fill-in” songs are gems. “I’m So Tired” is one of them. Love to hear Lisa singing the lead to it. Another is “Sexy Sadie”. Mona would be outstanding singing the lead to this. Those two stick out, along with the standards such as “I Will” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. It is just a back catalog of songs put together with no rhyme nor reason and it works!
Finally how about “Abbey Road”: Side Two is their greatest grouping of songs ever. The album has a great mix of songs. “Oh Darling” would be a perfect Lisa song and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” would be great for Mona. And yes, “Her Majesty” is a pretty nice girl. Long live the Queen!
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Christopher, thanks for your take on those Beatles albums. Sargent Peppers was indeed ground breaking and ahead of it’s time. Nothing on that album sounds dated, in fact “A Day In The Life” sounds as modern today as I am sure it did in 1967, the album is timeless. MLT have so far done the WOTTs for Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Pet Sounds, 3 of the top 5 albums of all time according to Rolling Stone Magazine, and can’t wait for when they do #1 Sargent Peppers, to hear their take on it!
I should build up my vinyl collection and get The White Album, and Abbey Road, and the songs you mentioned for Mona and Lisa to cover one day sounds like a great idea. I would love to also hear one day Mona and Lisa’s version of “And Your Bird Can Sing” from Revolver.
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