Lord, I'm Discouraged - The Hold Steady

I have fallen horribly in love with this song - it happens - the last time was with Handlebars by Flobots and yes I can ride my bike without them – thank you Ms. Balchen! There’s so much to love about this track – the presence of the initial guitar tone, the arrival of the keys but I guess most of all – it’s the Lyric.

[flickr]http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaynekaye/3201389499/[/flickr] From Shayne Kaye on Flickr.

Kelli and I used to comment that a good song needs great music but a great song needs great lyric too. It was a roundabout way of saying that not everybody is a musician – not everybody thinks in melody or can manipulate sound to create a platform - but pretty much everyone can speak, can write, and can string words together. Everyone’s a songwriter and if you ain't got something to say - then best not say anything at all.

It is typically the music of a song that grabs my attention, but it is the lyric that allows me to fall in love. And it’s not necessarily the semantic – the meaning of the lyric – it’s how the whole thing fits together. Listen to Rihanna’s Dream written Umbrella – it won’t win a Nobel for literature but that whole “Ella, Ella” lick just feels so damn good in the track.

Finally there is the guitar solo – and it’s perfect - I suspect that God always had the electric guitar in mind when he was developing anguish.

You can:

Listen to Lord I'm Discouraged on youtube

Visit The Hold Steady's Website

Buy The Album - Stay Positive Other recommended cuts: Magazines and One For The Cutters – good stories all!

Jason Solowsky on MySpace

I have a friend who says that he hardly even notices the background music in a film; he just concentrates on what is happening on the screen. That is hard for me to understand since I find the music to be so important in setting the tone of the movie and interpretive of what the actors are doing.

To once again bring to your attention a MySpace friend of music2work2 and an artist who composes some music that has similarities, I suggest you check out the work of Jason Solowsky, a film composer. To be a film composer, it seems to me that one would have to be very versatile, having skills in lots of areas. Jason certainly fits that bill; he is a heavy metal guitarist, classical pianist, sings on occasion, and is even a certified bartender. Something about the way he expresses himself in the written word immediately made me think of Andrew, composer/performer of music2work2. The same sort of humor comes through in their writing.

The music you find on Jason’s MySpace page, covers a wide range of music types, as they are from some of the many independent films for which he composed the music. There are the slower tempo, melodic, piano driven pieces such as “The First Kiss” (13 Months of Sunshine) and “Until Your Dying Day” (Instant Dads;) and there are the fast tempo, thunderous sounds of “Blood Red Sky,” (Willoughby) and the squalling strings in guitar driven “Exposed” and “Driller” (Driller)

There are 20 tracks to listen to on Jason’s MySpace page; a real listening experience. For more information on Jason you can check out his webiste at http://www.jasonsolowsky.com.

music2work2 on Iwearyourshirt.com

Big thanks to Jason over at http://iwearyourshirt.com for yesterday's promotion of music2work2.  It was a lot of fun to watch the live ustream - check out Jason's killer moves on the clip below - you know - if this whole social media marketing thing doesn't work out - there's a career in dancing just waiting for you....;-)