New album Review: Janey Street’s “Side Of Paradise”

And now the album my previous EP revu teased has dropped!

Janey Street’s “My Side of Paradise” [BER 1020 Blu Elan Records]

If you would talk to Janey Street, you would never know that she is a singer because she is just a natural, typically loquacious chick with a regular speaking voice that has a slight New York City treatment. What I think it allows for is a variety of pitch within this collection which ranges from rock to funk along the blues street in paradise. The concept of this album measures today’s  social mores.

The album begins like I thought it would with the first drummer rim shots.

This is a collection of very well written songs.  I emphasize “well-written” lyrics and performed by Janey Street who has apparently paid enough blues dues to earn a shot to fulfill her dreams, proving that we must keep on keeping on (to borrow a title from the late, great Curtis Mayfield) because it is never too late as long as we have breath in our bodies and a strong pulse. Many of these heartfelt songs will end up rambling through your mind as soothing tune wedgies, long after your first listening to the album.

 

What I love about the first two tracks, which are my favorites, is their Motown-esq funky band feel that even features one of my favorite instruments, the baritone saxophone which made so many hits of the 1960s and 1970s so ballsy and timeless! It kicks in about midway into “Among The Missing” and staples it until the end. They keep that horny horn into “Good Side” and even lead with the baritone which becomes integral from the outset and throughout! I can totally relate to the lyric, “I’m a little moody in the morning/I can change my mind without warning…”

The next tune and ballad, “Bring it On”, brings in the orchestral strings and I think I heard a cello at one point!  It is a bit strident at times as occasional vocal overreach stretches Janey’s vocal range. What I found curious is how she pronounced the word, “stubborn” during this song. It sounded more like “stubbren”. No phonics?

“House Of Mirrors” is a storytelling funhouse rocker that is reminiscent of many 1980s Top 40 hits.  The next tune, “Situation” you already know how I feel about its succinct relevance from my prior writings. Events are oft not as hideous as we worry about them being at the end of the day.

I have another line for song number six, “Tears Taste the Same”, ‘they taste like whatever you been drinking, they taste like Beer…’  Nice, cold ending, by the way.

The advanced EP single, “I’m Not The Girl I Used To Know”, cut number seven, has actually grown on me since I reviewed it in June of this year. Maybe it is because of its context position midway through this album and because I can see how it speaks to some inner truth many people might feel even though I am the boy I used to know – and then some!

“Grand Delusion” takes on the perceived illusion that the internet and social media creates in this, the future that is now, if you do not know how to use it correctly. “Rose-colored glasses made for the masses…” Her treatment makes this global technology dysfunction seem almost pleasing – but as good as it is for song, they are off the mark in-reality, which is a debate for another post.

“Radar” mellows it out like a Joni Mitchell song from the seventies.  “Scat Like Ella” is the best possibility for a “tune wedgie” as it is catchy and will linger in your music mind for all times. It is a really good concept song that Ms. Street performs to the max and conveys the message succinctly.  Again, the lyrics carry part of the day as she mentions so many of the giants of legendary Jazz music.  I left it believing that she really does want to “scat like Ella Fitzgerald after hearing her give us a sample! Now I think I want to scat like Cab Calloway!

At the “End of the Day” is a finale, mostly acapella and well-positioned wrap song for the album, which, maybe, with the exception of “I’m Not The Girl…”, tells a kind of revolutionary story about the times within we reside in toto.  I like Blue`lan’s packaging of the CD, which includes a lyric booklet. My final question is how to get  a ticket onto that train to Janey’s Side of Paradise – or is it an island?  As a songstress/storyteller, Janey Streets consistently paints a beautiful word-picture throughout the effort that defies any one music genre catagorie, in my opinion.  I bless it with Four out of a possible Five Guitars.

Please add your comment and impression of this music after you add it to your music library.  Another version of this revu can be read at https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/

Recurring MOR Dream: “Cathy’s Clown” by The Everly Brothers

“Whoa, Nellie!” Now here is a ‘TUNE WEDGIE’ that you can help me figure out:
Why does this tune play in my “DJ Mind” even while I am in non-REM sleep or while making my breakfast before going to weekday work? Maybe it is because I am a Baby Boomer and product of being raised in New York City with some of the greatest and legendary terrestrial radio stations of all times?…
Whatever…This song by the Everly Brothers is one of the first hits I ever heard when I discovered radio in the early 1960s.
They were country-influenced rock and roll performers, best known for their steel-string guitar playing harmony sound. Their hottest streak of chart success was between 1957 and 1961, but radio stations played them as “recurrents” well into the 1970s! Even today I can hear, in my musical mind, the likes of DJ Dan Ingram back-announcing “Cathy’s Clown” or any number of the Everly Brother hits with a clever double-entendre. Back then, if you had to classify their music, they called it “Middle-Of-The-Road” or “MOR“.
“Cathy’s Clown” was track #14 on the Everly Brothers album with a bullet!
I always liked their kind-of competitive interplay when they sang; unsure whether they really were “brothers” or even if they liked each other (standing so close to each-other like that) when I saw them on shows like “The Ed Sullivan Show” or “Shindig”!
Come on now, and sing along!

Don’t want your love any more
Don’t want your kisses, that’s for sure
I die each time I hear this sound
Here he comes, that’s Cathy’s clown

I’ve got to stand tall, you know a man can’t crawl
For when he knows you’re telling lies
And he lets them pass him by
He’s not a man at all

Don’t want your love any more
Don’t want your kisses, that’s for sure
I die each time I hear this sound
Here he comes, that’s Cathy’s clown

When you see me shed a tear
And you know that it’s sincere
Don’t you think it’s kind of sad, that you’re treating me so bad?
Or don’t you even care?

Don’t want your love any more
Don’t want your kisses , that’s for sure
I die each time I hear this sound
Here he comes, that’s Cathy’s clown
That’s Cathy’s clown, that’s Cathy’s clown

Well, that’s a wrap for this “Wedgie” and please pray with me now that this tune will not intrude on this night’s sleep. Comments welcome and I will reply when I awaken from my “Dream, Dream, Dreams. Bye-Bye, Love!”

“Like A DJ Cowboy” – My Glen Campbell Timeless Tune Wedgies

At first, this post just began because I just wanted to add a new tune to my “Tune Wedgie” page this evening. I cannot fathom nor find out how do do this. Therefore, I guess I am a true “Dumbblogstone Cowboy” because I have not a clue how to manage my blog’s rodeo… Hey, WordPress! Help!! (not) I figured it out and turned this into a positive.
So, somehow within my radio disc jockey mind, songs that I played in the past just come upon me randomly and nowadays I turn them into food for this blog, “Like A Blogstone Cowboy”! , lest I lose my mind! lol

It is just this evening’s tune wedgie du jour as I write this. why? Maybe because Glen Campbell recently came up in conversation by the water cooler at my totally unrelated to music job. A guy wondered was he “still alive?” As a former radio DJ, I assured my co-worker that I had not heard any news of Glen’s demise. It is hard to keep track these days, however.
“Rhinestone Cowboy” is a great song and one which, for whatever reason gins-up into my musical jukebox mind from time-to-time. I was a senior in college radio when this tune was a hit and who knew that I would spend much time in, and come to love Nashville, Tennessee for many reasons that still shine on me.

Now I know what the song inspires in me because it was written for my situation upon the year of my college graduation. It is the aspiration that I always prayed would happen, “Getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know…” In other words, getting discovered for my vocal or DJ talents and hired with a huge money contract. “Like A DJ Cowboy”…I keep believing because indeed, “there has been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon“.

***PICKHIT: After this post first posted, I was reminded by one of my dear college buddies that, indeed, Mr. Campbell is alive, well and suffers from Alzheimer’s. The good news is that, IMO, the MUZIK keeps him “doing fine”, and so I researched and add this video:

**SURESHOTT: August 8, 2017 Charleston, SC: I just found out Mr. Campbell passed. I attach my favorite, full orchestra version of “Lineman” as tribute, with a tear when I hear him say, “And I’m doin’ fine…” I loved his music as a DJ and a Fan. Sleep In Peace, my friend. Never again to be “short-miked”. (((

Country Music Review: Girl Just Wants to Do Music! Kayla Adams – “Sober & Sorry”

Nashville, Tennessee
A beautiful, free-spirited twenty-four-year-old budding Country music star is by another name, Montana’s “big sky” farm girl- deluxe, Kayla Adams!
This is the latest spin on the “Get drunk and act the fool with your boys if you want to, but when you return to reality, your stuff will be packed-up and out on the street” theme – “Even your records and your ole guitar!”

“Sober & Sorry”, Kayla’s catchy debut single [SSM Entertainment] for one thing, is a hybrid of classic Country music ( I call it a funky “square dance”) rhythm of “one-two…three-four…one-two-three…three-three-four and the rockin’ country trend which emerged circa 2007 and was co-penned by her along with Pete Nanney and Billy Atherholt.

Born of a past personal relationship experience, Kayla employs what Authors often do when life hurts, “writer therapy”.
Don’t let “a shot o’ Jack” make you do something stupid that you will be sorry for when the drunk (alcohol) wears off! This could be the first of a stream of hits by this fine, young blond and blue-eyed starlet.
Kayla is an aspiring navigator of the winding-musical artist road and is straight-with-no-chaser on this one!

Her cover art shot for the single!

Her first album is in the works for late Summer/early autumn 2014 release. Kayla identifies LeAnn Rimes as one of her musical role-models and you can hear it!
Check-out her website, http://kaylaadamsmusic.com/

Mean relationship revenge aside (don’t try this at home girls), I can happily bless “Sober & Sorry” with four out of a possible five Country guitars, with a bullet!

At the time of me penning this review, the music world lost a veteran of rhythm and blues, Bobby Womack, one of my all-time favorites who had recently appeared at Bonnaroo in Tennessee. He, like Kayla, was a musical free spirit; maybe an indicator of God’s heavenly balance – as one leaves another arrives.

If I was still a DJ on the radio, I would back-announce it by saying, in my deepest, sexy man-voice, “Oooh, Yeaah!… Don’t mess with Kayla…” lol

Please add your comments. Thank you.

Country Music Review: Jeremy Phifer, “Take The L out of Lover…”

The latest volley to flash across my musical bow comes from Blossom, Texas-born Jeremy Pheifer, who, with that non-Country music-sounding name, brings us “Take the L Out Of Lover”. Not only is his name non-traditional Country, but so is his look. To me, he appears to be enforcing the guitar into the song, rather than playing it. Hunched-over his axe on the dropbox video (which I can only link here as wordpress does not support a viewable upload apparently), I can see why he used to be a bouncer and American football defensive/wide receiver! Sports and music are this hunk’s two major personal passions and his touch on guitar is surprisingly tender at times. https://www.dropbox.com/s/am9toib48bsqcd8/TakeTheLOuttaLoverc.mov

Physical presence notwithstanding, the hook lyric, “If you take the ‘L’ out of lover and its over…” is clever and true. I can think of a couple similes like, “take the ‘M’ out of mother and its “other”, or “take the “N” out of never and its ever…” But I guess I digress as only a wordsmith would. None in love want to remove the “L”! Indeed, it might be over. Can you relate? Tell your story in our comments section, ok?

This latest single is the culmination of Jeremy’s life hurdles and struggles which include losing his baby sister as a child and special educational challenges with reading. Music runs in his blood as his dad, Jerry is a legend in the state of Texas, who has is own studio and is the backbone of his band on pedal steel.
Jeremy Phifer and the Texas Bad Water Band, with a sound he describes as “Lynyrd Skynyrd on cornbread meets Alabama”, has toured all over the Texas/Oklahoma casino circuit and from Paris to Dallas in The Lone Star State itself. Apparently however, it was not until they “put together a team of pros from the New York/Los Angeles music city of the south, Nashville, that the lyrical aspirations began to move forward for this young entertainer.

I give “Take the L out Of Lover” three (3) bold Pajama Bar stars *** out of a possible five, mainly for the creativity of the title and conceptual play on words. What do I know, it’ll probably be a smash!

If I were him, I would just use “Jeremy” as my stage name and polish-up my act not to look so ordinarily “just off of the truck”. Yet again, having spent many-a-day in Nashville, I understand that J.P. surely sounds different when said by a southerner, and his father and nine-year-old son who is pickin’-up in his footsteps would give him grief if he did that, lol. As Jeremy put it after a recent gig where all three shared the Elks Loge stage in Paris, Texas, “To have three generations of Phifers playing together is a memory I’ll cherish forever”. Just remember, if you take the ‘for’ out of forever it is “ever”.

New Country Music Revu: Jay Jolley’s “God Save Us All From Religion”

In my veteran musical experience, I have noticed that very, very often the simplest, most logical themes catch-on when put to music and they become hits. We saw this with the “bubblegum” era, circa The Jackson Five and New Edition, The Bangles or more recently, Carly Rae Jepsen and many other acts and singers. However this new edition to the Country genre, “God Save Us All From Religion” by the up-and-coming Jay Jolley, not only opens the dialogue for cultural discussion and real everlasting change, but is yet another example of something so obvious that needed to be said, that it finally became a song! “Let us pray” that it becomes a terrorist-defusing, calming worldwide anthem! I smiled confidently when I first watched and listened to the video…

Written by the legendary Charlie Daniels, Kim Williams “the hit-maker” and songwriter/producer, Doug Williams, “God Save Us All From Religion” speaks to my choir because I have long said that religion has been and is responsible for most of the political disputes, land-grabbing and eventual wars on earth. Mankind must now step back and get over this anew.

I spent over a decade in my newly-adopted hometown of, Nashville, Tennessee, and I miss the place dearly for many reasons. And while it was not all “gravy” (see my book, “He’s In A Meeting…Adventures In Getting Past Gatekeepers…” [Create Space/Amazon] ), I embraced a newfound appreciation for struggling songwriters with a dream, the plethora of guitar players there, and Country music in-total as I met many of the biggest artists at the annual Nashville music and radio industry convention, “CRS” on-behalf of Michelle Jasko and Nashville Radio Syndication.

The Martha E. Moore’s “so much MOORE media” press release tells us some more about this creative country upstart, “[he is] a pianist with a soulful touch and singer with incredible range and passion, Jay Jolley has risen from the endless ranks of the regionally-successful to an up-and-coming contender on the national Country scene. Jolley has opened shows (with his own band, as lead singer forThe Notorious Johnnys or as frontman and keyboardist for the band2XL) for top-tier acts like The Black Crowes, Sass Jordan, Rick Springfield, Burton Cummings, John Alec Entwistle and UFO. Currently based in Rochester, Michigan, this singer/songwriter enjoyed previous chart success with his previous Country single, “It’s a Friday Thing (A Little More Country).”
Wow, his time is now! The lightheartedness of his approach appeals to me. I really dig and lol with the first lyric, “He was building a beer can castle at the end of the bar
He said ‘Bud we better get wiser … ’cause we’ve gone too far…”

Pickhitt! New Video as of September 30, 2013!

http://dai.ly/x178j8u

The thing about a lot of Country music is that it is culled from true-life, down-home or back woods family drama, but simultaneously you cannot take it too seriously even as if you identify with the song’s scenario. So it is and I advise you to approach Jay Jolley’s appeal here. I just had this conversation with several new associates over beverages during recent days – religion and politics, as well as the 24-hour cable TV news cycle, are the most divisive forces in media these days – and it must stop. That’s what’s UP.
I stopped watching “the news” on TV in 2008! My overall well-being is much the better for having made that decision, thank God.
I give Jay Jolley three-and-a half out of five “bold-one” stars for “God Save Us From Religion”. I admire the writers, theme, message and the music.

Check out Jay’s comments here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPRhYl3cmUk

I agree with Jay when he says, “If we could all put aside our anger and prejudices and just talk then the world would be a much better place.” Preaching to the choir again, Jay!
Can I get an “Amen!?”

Comments?

11 Olympic Life Lessons Learned in 11 Nashville Years

Incongruous, obtuse, annoying, insulting, reneging, baffling, rude, phony, sanctimonious, unemploying for a “Yankee”, nice and folksy are some of the words that come to mind about my eleven years in Nashville (or as one of my college buddies described it back in 2008, “Hootyville”, in a partial-reference to the old TV sitcom, “Petticoat Junction”), Tennessee. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all negative, in fact I hurdled many obstacles, wrote and published two books among them, which satisfied a long-held goal of mine. But I never “medaled” there.

It was the first time that I heard people really talk like the characters on one of the main TV shows that I grew up watching, “The Beverly Hillbillies”!

Until then, I guess nobody ever suggested that this was even close to a real way of life for a segment of the USA population to me. Even the Black people still act subservient, slavery-like to the whites there in talk, word and deeds! For example, if your name is William Jones, they say stuff like, “Hello, Mista William” instead of “Hello, Mr. Jones…” I never liked that.
I learned there some things I wanted to, some things I didn’t want to about human beings and life.
On the positive tip, I found out that I like hot, Slavic chicks and how cool it would be to merge cultures with one like Lenny Kravitz’ parents did in producing him! I Gardened, landscaped, removed trees on the property that I rented and even had a consistent handyman client who brought out the hammer and “DYI” in me; got darker-skinned under the Tennessee sun on the tennis courts (though hard to find a consistent partner) and cycling the rolling hills on my ole ten-speed! Endured toil, strife and was dragged into court room drama due to NO fault of my own and yet enjoyed many peaceful evenings on my front stoop at the end of my street without neighbors who could spy me – even if I came outside buck-naked. Here now is my “Olympic” top eleven:

11 – That a radio General Manager of the radio station that recruited me to Nashville in the first place can suddenly and without any provocation on my part, fire you at gun-point, in front of witnesses during a bogus staff meeting and that upon filing an assault complaint, local, Nashville lawyers will be reluctant to defend you because, “Hey, he didn’t shoot you, so what are you complaining about??” [For more, please read my Memoir book]

10 – That because of number eleven, I’d become well-versed in drawn-out courtroom proceedings in the southern United States – and probably elsewhere in the country too. [Again, see my Memoir book for more] Even have considered becoming an “Advocate” overseas!

9 – The fulfillment of being a Volunteer English Tutor. Even though I did it as “therapy” for numbers eleven and ten, it vicariously reawakened the “English Major and Teacher” that I originally went to the University to become back in the 1970s! It also lead to and dove-tails with the fulfillment of being a Community Volunteer radio Dee Jay on Vanderbilt University’s former over-the-air college radio station which reawakened the kid who was supposed to become an English teacher, but who became sidetracked by the lure of music, money and show business fame on the airwaves.

8 – That I could successfully manage a two-bedroom house on ¾ acre of land by myself. It was like living in a park [I also mention this in a chapter in my Memoir book]. From clearing brush to mowing for hours at-a-time, to seeing snakes initially while I was hacking away at overgrown vines and tree limbs and jumping back in horror! lol I did it all and got the compliments from those who had lived and worked in the neighborhood, because now they could finally see the nice little cottage. Thanks also to the two property management companies who helped me, especially ERA Woodmont, the original guys who put a new, stable roof on the house, circa 2003 and always came to fix stuff for me, the “low-maintenance” tenant. Prior to moving there and being from New York City where my parents bought the house I grew-up in, I didn’t know one could rent a house! By the time I put Hootyville in the rear-view mirror of my moving Budget rent-a-truck, I wished I had known about renting with the option to buy going in!! [See previous posts on this blog for more on that about-face by the landlord].

7 – How to endure obtuse incongruence, defacto racism, people telling me what they thought I wanted to hear instead of what would move the envelope forward progressively in the midst of some genuinely good, folksy people and government workers who actually provided a safety net for me not to totally fall though the cracks into the abyss of poverty or worse because, in large part, of my ability to articulate verbally and communicate in-writing.

6 – My way around a personal computer. One of the best purchases I ever made was back in 2002 when I had a serious monetary windfall come my way and purchased my old Dell 4400 Dimensions desktop computer and workstation (both which I assembled myself). It would prove to be a life saving educational tool for me in the ensuing years and is one of the reasons I am writing this blog right now!

5 – How, through almost two years of unemployment, I could teach myself to be a social media “expert” (not my term, but others who know me before and since)! Humbling experiences like having to go to the local Food Bank, work my way through the maze of social services safety nets that are not obviously for single men in the USA via my ability to research via internet and then interview and apply, taught me that I can help other people similarly once I get funding for what turned into my current entrepreneurial goals that will save/give me a reason to have a life!

4 – I rekindled my photographer juices via a neighbor lending me her brand-new digital camera, which I ended up showing her family how to use it. I vicariously tapped into the person who learned to develop, via chemicals, old film the “Kodak way” back in the day. Now, able to produce and help those who are not so You Tube savvy, I have found yet another possible money-earning channel and like being called a “videographer”!

3 – Found out that my Grand Aunt and Grand Mother were correct when they advised me “You’ll be lucky to have as many true friends as you can count on one hand – and will likely have fingers left-over in life…”
Not that everyone who did not come to visit me during my suffrage in Hootterville is not a true friend, but only four (4) people from “back home” did (including my Mother, and that was upon a ticket I bought for a supposed “girlfriend/fiancee`” who punked-out and never showed-up to fly to me! [Ms Cole])

I like to think that I would have gone more out my way to visit her similarly if I was one of the many acquaintances amassed in all of those beautiful years. Having said that, I understand my fellow native New Yorkers’ bent that “there is New York, and then there is everywhere else” mentality. Geez, SMH

2 – Just because you are an east coast star Dee Jay and bartender, doesn’t mean that will translate into success in the USA southeast. “Is it because I’m BLACK?” lol (a song) It was the first time I ever experienced nightclub owners not wanting to promote me and use my “name-recognition” to attract party-goers. Instead, they wanted me to have a local “following” in a place I was not native to!! Incongruous!! My reputation, previous gold medals and DJ skills had always been enough to pack a joint! However, because I got to DJ early in my stay there at the club NV, which was managed by a guy from The Bronx (which was why I got into the Dee Jay mix), I met and came to admire Slavic women because the manager hired a few of them to dance in the street viewed window of the club and they sure did attract the guys! I’d come there on nights that I was not spinning, just to hang out and listen to them!

I had never seen exotic beauties like these chicks in my life, and I just had to find out about them! When I sat down and talked to Katyia, the first one I met and heard her Russian accent, it just embellished the beauty and style of a class of females and I’d never known previously, that I decided then and there (circa 2006) that had to have one of them for my own!

1 – Finally, and this one is not possible without #2, living in Nashville allowed the circumstances that lead my Ukrainian beauty and love of my world, Inna, to find me. This singular experience has opened-up the world to me where my home family and country never did in almost six decades! I now have a Passport, and am out of debt because of her and my long-time Attorney, Bruce’s help over the past two years. I have a life and for the first time want to have a wife! It IS a “pity”, as she says, that it is taking me so long to raise the money to fly over to her. [Update! I now have my ticket to go to her! [8-10-2012]

Nashville, Tennessee: A Nice place to visit, but do not get stuck there unless you are FROM there! Maybe, given the same “circumcisions” and choices I had when I moved there, I guess I might do it again.

Comments are always strongly encouraged.

“Country Time (Detroit) Lemonade Tyme!”

I had this dream a few nights ago about my late Aunt “Vee”, as we called her. I loved Aunt Vee. She could be “mean” and scold me and my cousins when we were little, owned a lot of 45rpm records that I liked to listen to when I found them in the basement at family gatherings, but had an inner “pussy cat” heart. A frail, loving and to-the-point lady, who loved me to take her shopping (at first at my Mum’s promoting) in her latter years, the other night. She’s been gone since around 1996 or so. One of her favorite things to buy as we traversed the supermarket grocery store was “Country Time Lemonade”. My family also lost another one of her (and my Mum’s) sisters just before Thanksgiving, 2011 and she lived in dying Detroit. Thus the title of this post where I finally post my greatest music video acting “performance” alongside the great Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Rourke!
I’m not sure why I never posted this 2009 video previously, but I think it is a private reason anyway. I still value privacy as one of life’s staple principles. Like the not bailing-out the rich people in America is a principle that our elected officials should always stand by, but are slacking recently no-matter what your political “party” affiliation is, if you have one.
See if you can spot me and you’ll win an autographed 8 x 10 photo if you so desire and email me for one. Agents: I am looking for more modeling and acting/voice-over work here in 2012, please. (He said, never “too shy to plead, Baby, baby…”)

The “Comments Floor” is, as usual, open to you my dear reader.