It’s not often a song impacts me the way ‘Raise it up’ from the August Rush soundtrack does. This performance is from the Academy Awards (this was one of the nominated songs). Several students from the Thomas Dale High School Orchestra mentioned the song to me yesterday and we’re going to perform it during the Rock 4 Life benefit concert that the Orchestra and Offering are putting on in May.
It’s one of my guilty pleasures: I watch American Idol – especially once they get to the top 24 (I am not much for the “Oh look how BAD/WEIRD these people are!” dynamic). I am loving this year particularly because the contestants are allowed to play instruments, and it has added a dimension I decidedly like. Especially with people like Brooke White, Jason, Castro, and David Cook. David Cook, by the way, together with Brooke, and little David Archuleta, makes up my personal prediction for the top 3. We’ll see whether I am right May 21! In any case, I can relate more to these singers because they play instruments and seem to be more ‘themselves’ than some of the contestants in previous years.
This article describes one of the interesting side-phenomena of American Idol – songs that are covered on the show and then get an enormous boost in sales – in many cases more than they ever had in their first run.The song in question is Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and particularly, Jeff Buckley’s version. Jason Castro covered it last week on American Idol. Browsing through YouTube I found another amazing version.
Any of you watch American Idol? I have to admit I do (and I even twitter it). A few weeks ago it seems like a flu bug was making its rounds in the girls’ living quarters, and no less than four apparently were battling some bug. Of course there is no postponing-performances-because-of-illness in the AI world, and I had to feel for the singers that were affected. If you don’t sing, you may not have any idea how frustrating and potentially impossible of a situation this can be.Case in point: last Friday I got sick. Either the flu or a bad cold – fever, sore throat, chills, headache, nasal congestion: the works. On Sunday morning we were playing in a large area church. So all day Friday and Saturday my biggest fear was: the next time I wake up (from a night of restless sleep, or a nap, or just dozing off), will my voice still be there? I can get up and sing when I feel really, really sick. In fact, Sunday morning I could barely stand on my feet. So I used a stool to sit on/lean against. But if my voice is gone – there is not much I, or my band, can do. I am the lead vocalist in the band. And my voice is not the gravely/bluesy/oh-that-sounds-cool type. It’s the very clear type. Beautiful? If I don’t have the flu, yes. But it is also the first thing to be affected when my upper respiratory system is not doing well.I ended up being able to sing on Sunday. I usually can. The stress leading up to it, though, comes from the time, two years ago, when I got a bad cold. And Laryngitis. And lost my voice completely (I could not even croak out words) for three weeks. I really did not think it was coming back. And since then, I am even more paranoid. So maybe I should have titled this post the paranoid singer 
.
In the news: Apple Inc’s iTunes digital media store edged out Best Buy and Target to become the second largest U.S. music retailer, behind Wal Mart. The iTunes store now had more than 50 million customers and has sold more than 4 billion songs. Here is the complete article. Of course, physical CD sales are still going down. Which always makes me sort of laugh, I know we are very small potatoes in the Indie music world, but for us physical CD sales, and especially at shows, are almost all we sell. Guess we’re just behind .
So we’re playing at Fort Lee Army Base this past weekend – we play for the soldiers there once every three months or so, and it’s always a great experience. Last week was interesting though – to say the least. Our guitarist/singer lost her wallet the day of the show. And you need a driver’s license, or at least a picture ID, to get on a military base. She brought her passport, but mistakenly grabbed the expired one. So at five till seven (concert starts at seven) I get a frantic phone call: she cannot get on base. Our keyboard player is not going to be there that night, and I do NOT play guitar well enough to carry a concert (worship I can handle, concert: not so much). So I beg a sergeant who knows us to intercede on our part, while Greg, our drummer, and myself get going (the soldiers have a limited time they can be at the coffee house, so we cannot wait too long). We scrape through the first two songs, and halfway through song #2 get the thumbs-up sign from the back: Kim and Dan (our bass player) are on their way in. I have seldom been so happy to see band members show up! By the time we took our first break my heartrate is finally down to normal again. All a part of life on the road.
My hubby and I are pretty big Apple fans. We both switched to Mac laptops a few years ago (I inherited one from a group I used to work with, and he got one via his work) and absolutely love them. Both of us have been drooling over Apple’s iPhone since it was announced in January 2007, and we have been saving money since it was released last June – we skipped giving each other Christmas gifts and birthday gifts, among other things. Our current cell phone contract ran out last week, and today…… our iPhones are arriving! Yay!
I take about 30 minutes each morning to read blogs I try to keep up with. In that process I often discover new blogs to read – which is what just happened. This blog is not music-related, but I decided to post it anyway – written by a Saudi blogger, I was struck by how radical the act of blogging is for him. For me, it is fun, simple, a tool to express myself, perhaps get some more exposure for our band, keep a record of my days. For this blogger, the stakes are much higher.
Over the course of the past few months I have started to delve more and more into social networking, social bookmarking, social media in general. Sometimes it ends up being a huge black hole for my time (wow. I just spend two hours on Facebook? Doing….. what exactly?) but fortunately that is balanced by helpful, productive, unexpected results as well (finding out a friend’s daughter’s surgery went well through Twitter, being found by friends from my Denver-days on MySpace).
The cool and frustrating thing all at once: there is just so much of it. So many sites. So many profiles to create, keep up with, be creative with. So I am setting some boundaries – limits as to how much time I spent on it each day. We’ll see how successful I am in a few weeks .
