Matthew Good, Medicine Hat College Theatre - November 9, 2007

It's been nearly ten years since the Matthew Good Band achieved national success with mega-hits such as Apparitions and Everything is Automatic. Though his career spans back to 1995, the success of his independently released debut album Last of the Ghetto Astronauts, were limited to fan bases established in large Canadian centers and for the most part, limited to the west coast. In Matthew Good's thirteen-year tenure, while he has enjoyed Gold status of all his releases, only the albums Underdogs and Beautiful Midnight achieved sales of Platinum or greater.

That being said, thirteen years is an awful long time for fans in Medicine Hat to wait to see Matthew Good in concert.

I was one of a very, very fortunate few Medicine Hat natives who had the opportunity to see the original lineup of the Matthew Good Band in a University Pub in Lethbridge. That was January 1998, before the single Apparitions propelled Matt and his bandmates into Canadian super-stardom. Myself and a close friend parked ourselves front and center for the Matthew Good Band; a show which was as breathtaking as it was unforgettable. The rest of the sell-out crowd, oblivious
to the stage, unaware that Canada's next superstar was playing his heart out, felt their time would be better spent guzzling down jugs of cheap beer, while waiting for the main attraction, Wide Mouth Mason.

Even so, since that very day, I have been a rabid fan of Matthew Good's music, and I have waited very patiently for him to come my way. Ten years is a very long time.

But not as long as many of the fans in attendance at the Medicine Hat College Theatre had to wait. Matthew Good finally made his first public appearance in Medicine Hat to a near sell-out crowd last night. Myself and a half-dozen of my closest friends parked ourselves in the "best mix position" which was directly in front of the Front-of-House Engineer. Given the acoustic nature of the College Theatre, and the fact that there are slightly less than five-hundred seats, it can be argued that there isn't such a thing as a bad seat in the College Theater, we were nonetheless very happy with the sightlines.

The excitement should have been evident to Mr. Good, as the crowd was visibly restless and agitated. It took a good four or five songs for the crowd to settle down and fully appreciate the intimate nature of Matt's acoustic performance. There were times that Matt appeared visibly confused, as a number of his fans were trying to speak to him at once.

Matthew Good delivered passionate acoustic renditions of many of his hits throughout his career, though the focus of his performance centered around his latest album, Hospital Music, penned while Matt tried to cope with a bout of mental illness. Absent from his performance, was not one song from Last of the Ghetto Astronauts was performed. Having recorded over one hundred songs in his his career, it is understandable that an artist can't play everything.

In between songs, Matt took time to banter with the crowd, singing impromptu songs, and cracking jokes, while sipping red wine, much to the amusement of those in attendance.

Below is a (nearly) comprehensive list of songs Matt performed last night, though, not in any particular order:

Girl Wedged Under The Front of A Firebird / Champions of Nothing - Opening number
Avalanche
A Long Way Down
Metal Airplanes
99% of Us is Failure
Born Losers
Black Helicopter
I Am Not Safer Than A Bank
I'm A Window
She's In It For The Money
Empty Road
Sort of A Protest Song
Strange Days
Load Me Up
Surburbia
Apparitions
Bright End of Nowhere - Encore
Pledge of Allegiance - Encore

Opening for Matt Good was "NLX" a.k.a. Natasha Alexandra, a native of Hamilton, Ontario, now residing in New York. Adhering to the acoustic nature of the concert, she performed on a digital piano, singing her brand of "songs about vengeance". The most memorable moment of her performance, and most appreciated by the crowd, was her haunting rendition of Depeche Mode's Walking in My Shoes.

On behalf of everyone in the crowd last night, I want to personally thank Matt for finally coming to Medicine Hat. We sincerely hope you come back again on your next tour.

File Sharing and The Current State of The Recording Industry

Two days ago, the Liberals introduced Bill C-60 to Parliament, which will amend the current copyright law, thus making it illegal to share copyrighted material over the internet.

Currently in Canada, the law is fuzzy about file-sharing copyrighted material, as it is (currently) not exactly illegal to download pirated media, or software. That will change soon enough.

If you abide by the law, then you have little to worry about. If you have a shared music folder that has hundreds, or thousands of files that you are sharing, whether you know it or not, you could be charged under the new bill. In the US, 12-year old kids and 80 year-old grandmothers are being sued (in the amounts of hundreds of thousands of dollars) for sharing music files over the internet. Many of these victims do not even know they are breaking the law, or even sharing files for that matter.

If you are someone who shares copyrighted files over the web, it would be in your best interest to browse your shared directory, and give the folder a good purge. The fewer files you share, the less the chance you will get caught. Better yet, turn off your file-sharing preferences, which happens to be on by default. Check the "Read Me" files that came with your file-sharing program on how to turn these features off. Many of the file-sharing programs run in the background by default, so check your system tray (especially if you are on a broadband connection) and turn it off when you are away from the computer.

Better yet, don't do file-sharing. There are lots of economical solutions for obtaining music and video without having to pay full-price for a brand new CD or DVD. Frequent pawn shops, as they usually have large selections of music and video that is considerably cheaper than buying new.

Being an artist myself, I have to respect the copyright laws. Prior to Napster, the recording industry was making record profits, and many artists were featured on major record labels. Now that file-sharing had reached epidemic proportions, the struggling artist has felt the pinch. The mega-bucks artists are still managing to earn a decent living, by touring relentlessly, and selling overpriced merchandise. The smaller artists, who used to manage to earn a living on a record deal, have lost everything. In fact, most of them have been dropped by their supporting record labels, forced to fend for themselves. It could be my music that is being shared over the internet, and I could be starving because of it.

Fewer new artists are being signed to major record labels. It is too much of a gamble for the recording industry to do so. In fact, an artist is not signed unless it is a very safe bet that the artist can make the record label millions. That means more Britney Spears -- as if we haven't had enough of her already.

Even now, talent scouts are a thing of the past. A few years ago, record labels would send representatives to clubs and gigs, with the intent to recruit new, exciting artists. These people are no longer necessary, as the recording industry is not interested in investing their monies into promoting new talent. In fact, they have a new machine that does all their talent-scouting for them -- and it doesn't cost them a penny.

It is called American Idol.

Even if a contestant does not win the competition, they will have had international exposure, experience on stage and on television; also they likely have talent and good looks. The scouts for American Idol remove the no-talents and the uglies before they even make the screen. Although, I must admit, for the "mockery factor" they usually throw in some of the worst of the worst, and sometimes get surprising results, not unlike William Hung.

Consider what this has done to the music entertainment industry. File-sharing and American Idol have effectively killed it. With the record labels dropping the struggling artists, and sending pink-slips to their talent scouts, they have effectively done a corporate restructure, keeping their profit margin, but giving themselves a lobotomy in the process. American Idol and it's spin-offs have removed all the legwork the labels needed to recruit and sign new artists.

What's left over is a music industry that is so homogenized, so mainstream, that it could not offend the Pope. I have abandoned music radio for spoken word radio. When I navigate to an AM or FM music station, I am usually so repulsed that I have to turn it off within seconds, to keep myself from retching.

If you can sing, if you are young, dead sexy, and stoopid (deliberate misspelling), then you will have a shot at the American Idol competition. Better get used to performing pop songs, as that's what makes the big bucks in the recording industry. If you are into jazz, blues, rock, metal, electronica, industrial, opera, goth, retro, easy-listening, classical, world beat, rap, or anything else for that matter, better give up your dreams and go to school. You have a better chance of getting hit by a Soviet satellite than getting signed. There isn't a music industry left for you to make your mark in -- at least an industry I would consider worthwhile.

I pity those poor souls who get a kick at the big spotlight on American Idol, and get offered a record deal. They get raped. Their labels, agents, and managers make a killing off them. The situation has gotten so bad, that I can hardly call it a "Record Deal" -- its a legal way of sucking every last dollar and cent out of an artist, and removing every inkling of an artist's right of artistic expression. This has been going on for ages. Even the Beatles had to take it up the ass when their manager screwed them out of everything they had. Ever heard of The Bay City Rollers? "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y... NIGHT!" Their label and managers made millions, and they made nothing -- literally. And there was not a damn thing they could do about it, since they signed the contract.

Give someone and inch, and they will take you for everything you have ever fought to earn, fucking you up the ass in the process. That is the sole reason why I never want a record deal in my lifetime. I want to retain my dignity and creativity. I want to play whatever I want to; it's my reason to make music and my reason to live. If someone takes that away from me, they may as well take my life in the process.

A Psychology Lesson Interspersed With Music

I cannot recall if I have ever discussed left-brained versus right-brained drumming on this weblog before. It is a rather complicated topic, with its' roots buried in Psychology rather than music.

Understanding the complexities of the brain is a huge academic undertaking, and even leading professors of Psychology will tell you that we still understand only very little of the workings of the brain. So, please accept this as my disclaimer that I know very little about the brain itself, but I know enough that I can make a few generalizations to further facilitate this entry.

The frontal lobe of the brain is divided into two halves: the left side, and the right. Both sides operate differently, and both sides are responsible for different aspects of thought, and reasoning. The left side of the brain is the logical side. It is highly mathematical, and rational, among other things, controls the actions on the right side of your body. The right side, is the more creative side of the brain, and controls actions on the left side of your body.

There have been many studies that have shown that artists are generally left-handed. This would make some sense since as just explained, the right side of the brain controls creativity. I am not going to develop this argument further, as I really don't have much knowledge of these statistics, but I would like to take this a step further as it pertains to music and drumming.

When a student takes lessons from an instructor (such as myself), they are provided with a number of exercises that helps develop the student's coordination and reading abilities. Exercises are little more than that - read, and execute in ad infinitum until proficiency develops. Exercises such as the above are logical, and thus only develop the left side of the brain.

Many of my students have developed a proficiency in exercises not unlike those described above, but when I ask them to just "play the drums", they fail miserably. What they play is tortured, rigid, and unmusical. The answer to why they cannot "play the drums" is simply because playing the drums without written material requires development of the right side of the brain.

Developing the creative side of the brain is much more difficult than assigning exercises that develop coordination. I am attempting to address this issue with some of my more advanced students to see how they take to this new approach. It will take a number of weeks, but I am going to see if they can eventually make music without the aid of written material.

Creative drumming is a lot like singing a song, or even speaking a sentence. Music is a language, thus it has conventions that are similar to written and spoken language. There are nouns, verbs, adjectives, grammar, and punctuation of sorts in music. Trying to get my students to speak in such a language is going to be a difficult task. The only way I think I can facilitate this is by starting very simply. Get the student to play some simple figures on the snare drum, and try to get them to develop on that idea. The ideas should be further developed by adding more complex rhythms, and colors such as toms and cymbals.

Applying the rudiments to this exercise is key to the success of this program. So far, I am going to spend a few weeks on the single-stroke roll, as this is the most often used rudiment, and likely, the most diverse.

I will also have to find a way that I can teach them how to listen to other players in order for the experiment to be a success. I have yet to determine the best approach to this idea. If my memory remains intact, I will update this weblog to indicate the degree of success of this experiment.

Not Another Top Five List

The latest addition to this website is the inclusion of "MC Fro's Top Five Tunes" on the sidebar. I had to resort to doing things the old-fashioned way, that is writing a bunch of code, though I was hoping I could find a computer application that would insert the images and data, and update the webpage automatically. I was not so lucky. A number of programs do exist that could accomplish what I wanted, but there were a few problems. First of all, sometimes these programs would not display images, others created their own formatting that would have not have worked well with this site, and lastly, nearly all of them required that I have access to some FTP server, and that is something I do not have at this time.

So it looks like I am going to have to update my top five list manually for the time being.

My "top five tunes" are simply the five most played songs in my iTunes library. Once I looked at the playlist, I was a little surprised at the results. First of all, the playlist has only been active since I purchased my computer, which was sometime in October. Other playlists that I have had on other machines would have registered completely different results.

I am also in the process of a massive purge of unwanted music on my computer. Out of a playlist of some 2500 songs, nearly half of them have not been listened to. I might end up finding a real gem that I cannot stop listening to. When this happens, it tends to skew the validity of my "top five tunes" playlist. In addition, I have only managed to encode about half of my CD collection, and I know that there are some really cool songs that aren't in my iTunes Library yet. It is going to take a number of months, but I foresee the top five tunes playlist making some interesting changes in the future.

I thought I might make a few comments about the songs that made the top five, which might provide some insight as to why they made this weeks' list.

1. I Can't Tell You Why - The Eagles. I love this tune. My parents used to play The Long Run album incessantly while I was a little kid. Though this song is a little depressing, there is some wonderful performances on this track. Don Henley's voice is slick jumping to and from falsetto, which is not an easy task for any singer, and I can't seem to get enough of that THC-influenced guitar solo at the end of the song. I listened to this song a number of times while I was learning to sing it -- so I wouldn't have to ruin the song if (and when) I decided to sing it at karaoke. That would probably explain why this song made it to number one.
   
2. It's My Life - No Doubt. I'm surprised this song made the list, as I like the Talk Talk version better. Actually, I'm not that big of a No Doubt fan in the first place. This song resides in a few playlists, including one I made specifically for parties. It's a playlist that contains only top-forty singles, thus almost anybody could enjoy the music, and would (ultimately) prevent me from incessantly skipping songs.
   
3. What Do You Need? - Goo Goo Dolls. I discovered this song by chance, and when I first heard it, I knew I found a keeper. I have a few albums by the Goo Goo Dolls, though I find their music is hit-and-miss. They have written some wonderful songs that have unique hooks to them (Naked comes to mind), although I find a lot of their b-sides boring to listen to.
   
4. You're Still The One - Headpins. If you are from Western Canada, and you have never heard of the Headpins, then you might have been living under a rock. This is the only Canadian rock band that I can think of that had a Gold record before being given a record deal. The Headpins managed to sell 50,000 copies of their debut album Turn It Loud from the back of their tour van. Originally began as a side-project for Chilliwack band members Brian "Too Loud" McLeod and Ab Bryant, the Headpins quickly rose to the top of the Vancouver music scene. In fact, these guys were so loud, they were louder than The Who!
   I have shared the stage with the Headpins on at least half a dozen occasions. They are one of the hardest-working Canadian bands out there. Next time they come your way, be sure to check them out. They are well-worth the price of admission.
   
5. If I Had a Rocket Launcher - Bruce Cockburn. Every time I drive, I am singing this song. I never expected a beatnik like Bruce to have such a dark side to him, which is probably why I love this song so much. I can't help but smile when I hear him sing the final line with such vengeance: "If I had a rocket launcher / some son of a bitch would die!"

I think updating my Top Five Tunes weekly is a little ambitious. I will monitor and see if the list changes by next week. If not, I may have to resort to updating the list monthly.