“Excuses” – The Morning Benders Yours Truly session

We’ve been quiet for a week or so – projects, family, sickness – in no particular order. With some of these still ongoing – here’s a wonderful piece of music and video that I can’t stop listening to. A live version of their song Excuses by The Morning Benders.

Thank you to my brother Richard for hipping me to this ;-)

I’d heard a few spins of their other track “Promises” that is now featured over on Pitchfork – it’s got a killer guitar hook that you won’t forget - but I was blown away by this version of Excuses. What I love is the sheer musicality and joy that is present in the room.

In a time where production and story is everything

– where the brand is more important than the band –

watching a bunch of musicians create something so pleasing to listen to and watch – well – that’s why I’m in this game.

Excuses and promises are both on their latest release Big Echo which I bought through eMusic – but you can also find on iTunes and all the usual suspects. Strangely enough they’re using topspin widgets but not TopSpin’s ecommerce – which seems pretty odd to me – but then – what do I know!

The Morning Benders website

Christopher Chu (Vox) on Twitter

The Morning Benders on Facebook

Music & Forgiveness

I'm always on time - it's one of those things that defines me. I hate being late for a meeting with someone - I think it's one of the rudest things you can do and yet it happens all the time. In the real world there are so many variables - particularly when you're interacting with human beings that it's a miracle we actually get anywhere. Regardless of human efficiency - shit just happens - buses break down - washing machines break and dogs do actually eat the homework. One bump in the chain gets magnified so that one person's spilled coffee becomes another's late arrival to an interview. This as you can imagine could lead to much stress for those of us who like to control our world a little more than others. My solution?

Music and Forgiveness

Let's deal with Forgiveness first.

If it has actually happened, i.e. you or someone you are waiting to interact with is late - accept that there is nothing you can do about it and forgive the cause. This relieves you of any necessity to a) get angry with anybody - never a good strategy and b) Get mad at yourself - also not terribly smart if you're looking to give a good impression.

(Quick caveat here: If you're a lazy bastard who thinks the world should provide for you - if you are a wanker not a worker - then none of this applies. Get as mad with yourself as possible - you suck!)

Next - once you realize that you are somewhere, waiting and there's nothing you can do and it's no longer anybody's fault - you can choose to do anything you want. You see, this is stolen time, this is time that was unplanned, unforeseen and therefore doesn't need to be accounted for.

If you're lucky enough to have a music player with you - now is a great time to plug in and listen to all that great stuff you've been downloading but yet to hear - hell if you've got a smart phone then maybe plug in the headphones, fire up the music2work2 writer's play list and write a blog post.

That's what I've just done ;-)

Sound Health - Advanced Brain Technologies

I recently ran across the web site Sound Health - Advanced Brain Technologies. Advanced Brain Technologies is a foundation created by Alex Doman and Brad Boyajian, for the purpose of advancing research, education, and development and access to neurotechnologies that will help people to realize their fullest potential. It is their belief that incorporating Sound Health into your life nourishes mind, body and soul. (Note from Andrew: No Shit!)

They have compiled a series of CDs designed to complement specific activities, such as Concentration, Productivity, Thinking. The music on the CDs are classical pieces, some from the Great Masters and some that were created just for this. Their research gave them the knowledge as to what types of music were effective with the individual activities.(Another note from Andrew: Talking of specific activities check out Sexercise) In addition to the Sound Health section of their work, they have other similar programs such as The Listening Program, BrainBuilder, Music for Babies, and Shelly’s My First Computer Game.

I like the fact that this web site seems to be very thorough; it discusses the research they did prior to forming the foundation, how the musical pieces are chosen for the various activities, and who the participating musicians would be. This is all particularly interesting to me since music2work2 was built on the same premise, that music is good for you and can be helpful in many ways. We spent many hours researching this idea before music2work2 got off the ground.

There are many similarities between Sound Health and music2work2. We both believe that instrumental music is more beneficial than music with lyrics and that the Classical genre is most fittingl. Looking at the notes that accompany each piece of music in the music2work2 catalog, you can see that music2work2 also recognizes the benefit of certain musical pieces with specific activities. In fact, I have been listening to 1218 while writing this post.