Another Brick in the Wall #2

If you haven't read the first post, click here to read it!

A baby cries: the official beginning of the flashback that is The Wall and Pink Floyd's story. "Thin Ice" is the start of a cautionary tale for Pink, told by his mother. Though it starts with a soothing mother cooing to her baby that she loves him and "Daddy loves [him] too," it warns that "the sea may look warm,...the sky may look blue," but "don't be surprised if a crack in the ice appears under your feet."

Eric Fletchers Waters, a victim of war.

This song also has reference to the toll that war can take not only on the populace, but the children left behind from it. When Waters performs this song, he displays a picture of his father who died in World War II. This photo is replaced with others that have been submitted by fans for those who were also victims of war, terrorism, or intolerance.

"Thin Ice" leads into "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 1" in which Pink learns of his father's death in the war and starts to begin building The Wall. At the end, we hear wailing, screaming, shouting kids in the background and we crossfade into "Happiest Days of Our Lives."

The Schoolteacher

With the sounds of the helicopter, we hear the school teacher yelling at a student to "stand still." Pink's school life was strict and often abusive. In video versions of this song, Pink is hit by a belt by the schoolteacher in order to cover up his own humiliation at home.

We then segue with a classic Waters scream into "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2." After Pink is humiliated by his teacher, he dreams that the other school children are revolting against the schoolteacher. He sees education as "thought control" and forcing children to learn to conform, "just another brick in the wall" of life.With his abuse from the schoolteacher, Pink continues to build his wall.

We'll continue on again with Pink's story soon! Stay tuned for #3

The Allman Brothers Band

In honour of the 37th Anniversary of Cher and Gregg Allman's unlikely marriage, I'll be talking about The Allman Brothers Band. But before that, a quick bit about Cher and Gregg Allman. Apparently, after 9 or 10 days of marriage, Cher realized that Gregg's drinking problem was too much for her, so she filed for divorce against him. He sobered up, then ended up filing for divorce in December of 1975, an act which didn't come to fruition. They had Elijah Blue Allman in 1976 and divorced in 1979, but not before recording an album together called Two the Hard Way under the name of Allman and Woman. And now, on to The Allman Brothers Band...

Gregg Allman and Cher - they had a son, Elijah Blue Allman

In 2008, my then-boyfriend dragged me to his high school's end-of-year music concert. The band ended up playing a lot of classic tunes and "Jessica" was among them. I made a note of it on the program and looked it up when I got home. Needless to say, it led me to the world of The Allman Brothers Band and "Jessica" is a staple on my finals playlists.

The Allman Brothers Band was composed of Duane and Gregg Allman, supported by Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Jia Johnson, and Butch Trucks, and formed in Jacksonville, FL in 1969. They're a bluesy-jazz band that is considered one of the architects of Southern Rock and incorporate a jam band style, much like the Grateful Dead. "Ramblin' Man" is one of their most famous hits and parts of "Jessica" are currently used in BBC Top Gear's intro (Both are from Brothers and Sisters).

Duane Allman, live at the Fillmore East in 1971

Unfortunately, shortly after their live album Fillmore East went gold, Duane died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, but the band decided to move on without him. In February of 1972, the band released Eat A Peach. It was a lot softer, as seen in the songs "Blue Sky" and "Little Martha," and finished with the dreamy 34-minute "Mountain Jam" from the Fillmore East concert. "Mountain Jam" is a sweet jam song - it's not repetitive and is a great to tune to just chill out to.

The band dissolved in 1976, got back together in 1978, broke up again in 1982, and has been on again since 1989. In 2009, the band celebrated their 40th anniversary by performing at the Beacon Theater in NY for 15 days. It included guest appearances such as Eric Clapton, Phish, and the Grateful Dead. On the last two nights, the band played their first two albums in full. The entire run was dedicated to Duane. In 2012, The Allman Brothers Band was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award.

To keep up with Gregg Allman, visit his website: http://www.greggallman.com/

To keep up with Allman Brothers Band news and tour dates, visit the website: http://www.allmanbrothersband.com/

Today in Music History: June 29

On this day in 1968, Pink Floyd released their sophomore album A Saucerful of Secrets. They also performed in the first free concert in Hyde Park with Tyrannosaurus Rex. Oddly enough, this concert was set to coincide with the release of the album. The concert also set the stage for many more free concerts in Hyde Park in the future.

The first free Hyde Park concert line up

Saucerful of Secrets is the last studio featuring Syd Barrett and the only album in which all five members contributed (Gilmour was brought in during January of '68 due to Barrett's increasingly unstable condition).  As the band's second album, it marked the transition from clear and concise songs to more dreamy and psychedelic songs that the band is now known for. This transition could have been caused by Barrett's condition/departure and/or a push from Waters to move into the more psychedelic genre.

A Saucerful of Secrets cover - only the second time that EMI allowed a band to hire an outside designer for an album jacket

If you haven't heard Saucerful before, "Let There Be More Light" is a great tune to get you started, and "Jugband Blues" is an awesome Barrett tune. And if you're looking for a jam that's closer to the Pink Floyd we all know and love, check out the song "A Saucerful of Secrets." It's way out there, but clearly a Pink Floyd original.


If you want to listen to the whole album, click here for a HQ recording.  It's definitely one of those albums that you can start and listen through the whole way and enjoy every moment of it. It might not be my most favourite album, but it's still a good one.

Happy Birthday Tim Nordwind!

Happy 36th Birthday to Tim Nordwind, vocalist of the infamous OK Go. You know, the Treadmill guys!

OK Go performs their hit "Here It Goes Again"...on TREADMILLS! It's still cool.

So what is OK Go up to these days? In 2010 they put out Of the Blue Color of the Sky which had some hits on it like "Needing/Getting," "End Love," and "Skyscrapers." Those are quintessential examples of OK Go tunes. But overall, the album musically enticing and diverse - just what you expect from these guys. Right now, there's no announcements of new albums coming out, but to keep up on tours and news, go to their site: http://okgo.net/

Or follow them on twitter: @okgo

"Layla" Should Not Be Cut Short

Eric Clapton's (well technically Derek and the Dominos') "Layla" is considered to be one of rock's most definitive love songs. And, dammit, I hate it when the radio cuts out when the tune moves from the guitar to the piano coda at the end. The two movements, though composed separately, are still beautiful together. It's an absolute TRAVESTY that "Layla" gets cut short, especially considering its interesting history.

Derek and the Dominos Layla and Other Love Songs Cover, 1970

"Layla" was Clapton's love song to George Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd. It was inspired by the Arabian tale Layla and Majnun. The tale goes that the princess Layla was married off to another man by her father, an act which drove her true lover Majnun crazy (fun fact: the name roughly translates to mad man). Clapton was told this story by a friend who was converting to Islam and related well to the story. And from this story-telling, the love song "Layla" was born.

A scene from Layla and Majnun in the wilderness together.

Eventually, Clapton played "Layla" for Pattie Boyd at a party and later confessed to George Harrison that Clapton was in love with his wife. Somehow, Clapton and Harrison maintained their friendship, but Boyd and Harrison divorced in 1974. In 1979, Boyd married Clapton at a concert stop in Arizona and Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr were all in attendance at the wedding. Clapton also wrote "Beautiful Tonight" in 1977 for Boyd before they divorced in 1989.

Now that you know all this history, you can see why it's imperative that "Layla" is played right through the piano coda. If you are a DJ or happen to know a DJ, please make them play "Layla" through. We're gonna make it a movement! Maybe I'll call it Play-la...

To keep up with Clapton news and tours, visit his site http://www.ericclapton.com/
Twitter: @EricPClapton

"One of These Days"

It never takes too long for me to go back to Pink.

My introduction to "One of These Days," off the Meddle album, was during my junior year. My mum had gone away for the weekend and it was just me and my Dad. We were driving to go see a Caps game and he had the iPod plugged into the car and said, "Ah, here's something just the two of us can listen to." Then he turned up the bass and the volume.

Meddle (1971) - Anyone know what it actually is? I've always thought a dragon...*

The bass line comes up and sticks with you - pretty hard not to since it's double-tracked. The song slowly adds instruments and builds to this echoing bass line part...and then the kick drum gets banged a few times. It's Mason's cue to say his one and only line - the only one in the whole song: "One of these days, I'm gonna to tear you up into little pieces." It's an eerie, large voice created apparently by a high pitched voice and a slowed down tape.

It's rumored the threat is a response to a music reviewer's poor review of one of their previous albums. Or it's a reference to the clips that they used to play at concerts in the 1970's of BBC's Sir Jimmy Young - apparently the boys didn't like his tendency to babble on.

However you cut it, "One of These Days" is one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs. Partly because of its ability to be a really mesmerizing instrumental song and partly because, as a drummer myself, I love that Nick Mason got to be vocalist.

*FUN FACT (11/5/12): The shot is actually a close-up of an ear underwater, not a dragon as I have previously surmised. I'm curious as to what others have thought it was...

There Isn't Enough Skynyrd on the Radio

One of the horrible radio stations in my area recently got changed over to a classic rock station. And it's not the usual Top-100-Classic-Rock-Hits-That-Everyone-Knows kind of station. It's a We-Seriously-Play-Any-And-All-Classic-Rock-Tunes-Especially-The-Random-Ones-Your-Dad-Played-On-Repeat-In-His-Car kind of Classic Rock station. It's got everything from the staples of Def Leppard and Led Zep all the way to Judas Priest and Lynyrd Skynyrd. And it's not just "Free Bird". I got to sing along with "Gimme Three Steps" and "What's Your Name" on the way home some days.

The Original Members of Lynyrd Skynyrd

My history with Skynyrd begins at about age 11 when I heard "Sweet Home Alabama" for the first time. I really enjoyed the tune and my Dad decided that it was high time for me to start listening to the band. I then fell in love with tunes like "Workin' for MCA," "Tuesday's Gone," and "Saturday Night Special." There's a ton of great Skynyrd songs, just go look them up. Pretty much anything produced between 1973 and 1977 (pre-plane crash) was pretty awesome and rockable.

Unfortunately, after the plane crash where three band members, the head roadie, and the pilot and the co-pilot died, Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded with the remaining band members reuniting only in January of 1979 to play "Free Bird."

The Original Street Survivors Cover. The flames were removed following the 1977 Plane Crash.

Luckily for us, the band got back together in 1987 and is still rocking today. It was during this time that "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Saturday Night Special" were produced, both off the Endangered Species album. In 2009, they released God & Guns and in May they announced the production of their next studio album, Last of a Dying Breed. Musically, the band has really changed their sound even during the post-reformation. "Still Unbroken" from God & Guns shows this dissonance.


To recap: these guys have done and continue to do a lot of rocking. It's only the duty of the Classic Rock stations to continue playing anything but "Free Bird" and to keep my generation informed of their great rock plight which has spanned over many decades. Big nod to 94.1 WSOS in Jax for playing a variety of Skynyrd. But then again, that might just be because Jax is where the band hails from.


For those of you who wish to keep up with the news of their upcoming album and tours, you can do so by going to their site: www.lynyrdskynyrd.com 

"The Reckless and The Brave"

I went to high school in Maryland, right on the border of Washington, DC and Virginia. About an hour north is Baltimore, MD. From this city hails one of my favourite bands from high school, All Time Low, an alternative punk band. I think I started getting into them around Grade 9, right around when they graduated high school and put out Put Up or Shut Up. My favourite song off this album is "Jasey Rae" in case you were curious.

My sophomore year of high school was filled with tracks from So Wrong, It's Right. One of the sweetest love songs I've heard is "Remembering Sunday," from this album. It's an unorthodox love song, but it's one I play when I became infatuated with someone, identifying the plight of searching for that person that made you happy. It all culminates for me in the line "who can deny these butterflies?/They're filling his gut" because we all know the feeling. But enough of that ramble.

The members of All Time Low (from L to R): Jack Barakat, Alex Gaskarth, Rian Dawson, Zack Merrick

My junior year was graced with Nothing Personal. I was so happy these guys could pump out music as fast as I wanted them to. Later that year I turned to the song "Weightless" during a break up and the line "maybe it's not my weekend/but it's gonna be my year" helped me feel a lot better. All Time Low's music was great for hard times and just as fun to blare in the car with all the windows down.

Also, when "Jennifer's Body," that crazy vampire movie came out, they did a single for it called "Toxic Valentine." It's still catchy to this day.

Unfortunately, I didn't hear any new All Time Low until I graduated high school and moved even farther away from their hometown. Luckily, when I came back from my first year of university, Dirty Work had come out. This became my favourite album to listen to back and forth to work, with "Get Down On Your Knees and Tell Me You Love Me" at the top of the list.

And just the other day, I found that they put out a song for the Tim Burton re-make of Alice in Wonderland called "Painting Flowers." It's artful and sweet and I find myself keeping it on repeat.

Lyrics from "The Reckless and the Brave"

And now, All Time Low has released their first single for the newest yet unnamed album called "The Reckless and The Brave," a song all about rebelling against the conformity of suburbia. You can download a free copy of it at www.alltimelow.com. This song is getting me so excited for when the full album will be released! No official release date yet, but I hope it's soon!
Twitter: @AllTimeLow

The Weeknd

On a more current note, my housemates and I have been obsessed with The Weeknd for quite a long time (thanks to my musically hip housemate Mel). He's from Montreal, QC, and came to our little university town for a show (I unfortunately missed it thanks to a huge midterm the next morning). When he was playing at Coachella, we all sat around a laptop streaming his performance and we fan-girled the entire performance. Studying for exams was happily forgotten.

For those who have not been exposed to The Weeknd (which is getting pretty hard these days since he's becoming so popular), go to his website and download his music. http://the-weeknd.com/


It's ALL FREE! The Weeknd is a true artist - he wants to share his music to anyone and everyone. He's absolutely amazing. He's got a beautiful voice, thoughtful lyrics, and his music is absolutely mesmerizing.

House of Balloons - My favourite The Weeknd album

My favourite song is "High For This." The beginning is beautiful and the drop is beyond words. Make sure you turn up your sub-woofer for this tune. "The Knowing" is an absolutely incredible song and will make you cry. So much of The Weeknd's music is about how he's done wrong in his life, but this song is all about how he knows he's been done wrong. 


Here's to The Weeknd showing up at more concerts, coming back to my university town for a show, and coming up with some new music soon!
Twitter: @theweekndxo

Another Brick in the Wall #1

It starts with "...we came in?" Then we go to the real show. My favourite, and possibly the greatest, rock opera of all time, The Wall in which we follow the story of Mr. Pink Floyd.

I had the recent privilege to see Roger Waters perform The Wall live. It is officially the best concert I've ever been to. At 68, Mr. Waters still knows how to throw a good show. If I had the opportunity, I would totally go again.

Roger Waters performing "The Show Must Go On"

For those who are unfamiliar with the general story line of The Wall, it follows thusly:
Our main character is Mr. Pink Floyd, overprotected by his mother, abused by his school teacher, and cheated on by his cold wife. We follow his story growing up, becoming a rock star, his own infidelity to his wife, his violent tendencies, and his struggles with the wall. The wall, in this case, is an emotional wall built by the emotional stunting of his life. In the end, he goes on trial to figure out if he should tear down the wall or not.

"In the Flesh?" sets the tone and the scene of the world we are about to be immersed in.  A world where feelings are hard to come by, where conformity is the only way, and where "riff-raff" is put into a shooting line.

We find out that the band performing is actually a "surrogate band" to tell us Pink's story, and not Pink himself, since he "isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel." Should we take this to mean he's strung out on drugs? Or that he's recuperating from recently bringing down his (emotional) wall? Most likely, it's as the song says, "to find out where [we] stand" when it comes to Pink's story. This is probably because (as we find out later) he had a hallucination in which he was a fascist Neo-Nazi-esque dictator and started setting soldiers on fans at one of his concerts. But maybe this is just the world Pink lives in, since the surrogate band wishes to have everyone shot.

"Trust Us" - The Symbol of the world in which Pink Floyd lives

We'll continue to follow Mr. Pink Floyd's story in another post. This is just one of many considering how much there is to talk about this two-sided, inspired album.

"Is There Anybody Out There?"

Apparently, I lack whimsy in my life. So to bring whimsy into my life, I decided to start a music blog. It's the perfect mix of my two loves: music and computer programming.

Music has always been a part of my life. My parents brought me up on classic artists like the Stones, AC/DC, Billy Idol, Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, Jethro Tull, Grateful Dead, and Pink Floyd, one of my most favourite bands and one of the greatest bands ever. This blog takes its name from PF's "Have a Cigar" off their Wish You Were Here Album (1975).

As far as computer programming goes, I'm a Computer Engineering undergrad going into my 3rd year of study. I've been programming since Grade 10 and loved every day of it.

This blog will look at great artists and songs from the past as well as introduce new songs coming to today's music society.

I hope someone out there will read this. But if not, I've created whimsy in my life, so I'm happy.