Forthcoming Single: 'The Loneliest Saturday Night' 

Even though I launched the first single back in March, the single has not appeared! The first time it was due to 'user error' (mea culpa) but the second time it just got lost in the corridors of cyberspace, like Spinal Tap looking for the stage door, roaming around in the echoes of the space time continuum. BUT! I have been assured that that the song will appear on May 26th! Yes, my friends, progress is being made! The song is called 'The Loneliest Saturday Night' - Loneliness is one of the great themes of our times, especially for young adults and teens.
This song looks at loneliness from a Zen perspective. It’s about getting through the night and making it to the dawn:
‘It’s the dark side of light but you know you’ll be alright, it’s just the loneliest Saturday night.’
I'm inviting you to the Video Premiere on May 29th! 
I'll put the link in the first comment. Thanks for listening!
xo
 

Artificial Intelligence, Emphasis on 'Artificial' 

It's not the blog, it's the human behind the blog that interests me. It's not the camera (iphone or whichever) - it's the human behind the camera that matters. It's not how they created the image but the person who created the image that I care about. It's not the Pro Tools or Logic or whatever, it's the person who uses the recording tool to create something because they are inspired to do it. 
 
The AI is a form of copycat - much like many of the writers on Music Row. The AI copies what has gone before by copying from what all the humans have written in their blogs or designed in their images. All those heartfelt posts, people spilling their hearts, intelligence, brilliance etc. onto the cyber page which is munched up, chewed up, blended and pureed and spat out into this homogenous, soul-less, pirated 'blog' or 'painting' or 'song.' Meanwhile, the people who helped create AI may still be living with their parents playing video games in their basement. They developed a way to be a copycat.
 
The human artist imagines, dreams and is divinely inspired. Then AI - Google, Facebook etc. - steals their work. It is like a giant shadow vacuum that sucks up everything, churns it up and then re-presents it as the 'intellectual property' of the [Google, Meta etc] corporation.
 
I like to think there will always be a group of us out there, a bunch of outsiders, making art that is inspired, that comes from reviling the mainstream junk, who struggle through the depths so that they may emerge, one day, with an art form begotten through blood, sweat, tears, dreams, hopes, pain, joy - i.e. humanity.

Anne McCue & The Cubists play Nashville! (Nashville Scene) 

Anne McCue & The Cubists - Nashville Scene Picks of the Week. Dee's Lounge 7 pm Saturday March 25th:

“The rhythm guitar parts Australian-born ax master Anne McCue plays on Robyn Hitchcock’s self-titled 2017 album help make it a landmark of Nashville-meets-British Invasion rock. McCue moved to town in 2006 after stints in the Australian bands Girl Monstar and Eden A.K.A. led to her solo career, which got its start with 1999’s Amazing Ordinary Things. Along the way, McCue has toured with Americana singer Lucinda Williams, and you can hear the influence of North American music — and of Americana itself — on her 2002 Live: Ballad of an Outlaw Woman, which sports a nice take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile.” I also like something titled “Don’t Go to Texas (Without Me),” a track from 2010’s Broken Promise Land that ZZ Top should cover. McCue has a feel for Fairport Convention-style folk-rock, and the acoustic-guitar stylings she favors on Amazing Ordinary Things sound great today. Still, I relish her electric playing — McCue brings both subtlety and bite to her explorations of blues, rock and power pop. Saturday at Dee’s, McCue marks the release of a new single, “The Loneliest Saturday Night,” which hits ahead of her full-length Wholly Roller Coaster. Set for release in October, the album promises to be a take on circa-1967 rock as practiced by The Kinks, Fairport Convention and Pink Floyd. McCue remains a musician’s musician, which means she’s underrated. That’s an injustice — check out yet another world-class Nashville picker and singer.” 7 p.m. at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, 102 E. Palestine Ave., Madison EDD HURT 

Anne McCue Joins Palm Ghosts on Haunting Cover of Song To The Siren 

     Nashville's Palm Ghosts & Anne McCue have teamed up once again, this time on Tim Buckley's sublime 'Song To The Siren,' released this week on all the streaming services.
 
     Joseph Lekkas takes the part of the sailor while Anne McCue provides the reverberating voice of the siren.
In the original version, says Anne, 'Tim Buckley sings from the sailor’s point of view. Then when This Mortal Coil recorded the song, Elizabeth Fraser echoed the sailor's song back to him - his own words - but in her Siren voice. Perhaps this was the way the enchantment worked. Both versions are otherworldly and what I call ‘divinely inspired.’ In this new version, we have combined the voices of the Siren and the Sailor in the one rendition.'
 
 
Listen to the song:
 
 
 

Manchester’s Analogue Trash describes Palm Ghosts as “Achingly beautiful, fragile and majestic music. An intoxicating mix of Shoegaze and Dream pop, taking from the 80’s but not in debt to it.”

South Africa’s Jangle Pop Hub has said the band has “An inimitable 80’s style dream pop that mixes the avaricious swirl of The Cocteau Twins, the atmospherics of The Cure and the grandiosity of Echo and The Bunnymen.”

Happy Accidents 

 

      I once had an old beat up red car. It was a little red station wagon. If you travelled over a certain speed the speedometer would spin around madly as if it was possessed like in a Stephen King novel and it would make a hell of a racket, too, with the needle banging against the glass. In those days, we listened to cassette tapes in our cars and I remember I was listening to a Beatles record, Rubber Soul or Revolver? - when one of the speakers stopped working. All of a sudden all I could hear was George’s guitar and the drums. That was an epiphany! Previous to that I had taken the music as a sum, listening to it all at once (as it’s meant to be heard), experiencing it emotionally. But now I could hear the different parts and how they would come in and then disappear for a while, then come back in again. The drums could be panned to one side and the vocals on the other. Mind expanded.

Fripp and Eno 

This is quite probably my favourite guitar solo - Robert Fripp playing on Brian Eno's song St. Elmo's Fire. It starts at the words "rested in the desert" and never fails to give me goosebumps. When I first heard it I asked, 'what is that sound?' and somebody said it was a guitar and I was hooked. I'd already been playing acoustic for a few years but it was a bit depressing because of all those horrible hair bands from L.A. that were dominating the scene. Then I heard this and I felt okay about playing guitar again and dived into electric. :-)