Life During The Pandemic 2 · 1:08am Apr 7th, 2020
Hello any and all. I hope everyone is happy and healthy. If you're not happy, or if you're like me and prone to bouts of depression, then I hope you're distracted at the very least. Now, I want to try and establish the comments sections on these blog as a safe place where you can talk about what you've been doing, while not having to talk about the current situation. I prefer to talk as little as possible about it, to think about other things and keep myself happy/distracted. I want the comments section here to be a place where you can share things or talk to other commenters without having to think about that stuff.
Before I get into what I've been up to, I just want to bring up two things. It's a sad bit of news so if you don't want to hear sad things, just skip over this paragraph. Anyway, I'm very sad to say that the legendary singer/songwriter Bill Withers has died. The 81-year-old Withers had a heart attack on Monday, March 30th. He was an amazing soul artist who gave us amazing songs like "The Same Love That Made Me Laugh", "Lean On Me", and "Ain't No Sunshine". He was truly one of the greats of soul, and of music in general. Also lost to us is another singer/songwriter, Fountains Of Wayne frontman Adam Schlesinger. He died of complication brought about by you-know-what (I refuse to say it, that way I don't think about it as much). He was 52 years old. In addition to Fountains OF Wayne he has written songs for many artists, and even recorded stuff with some of them. He has written stuff for Bowling For Soup, Stereo Skyline, The Monkees, America, and even the songs and music for Stephen Colbert's TV special "A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of Al, which included performances by John Legend, Willie Nelson, Toby Keith, and Elvis Costello. Both Withers and Schlesinger will be dearly missed.
Anyway, on to more happy things. The Monkees released a new live album on April 4th. It's pretty good; Micky and Mike still sound great, and Micky killed it on "Daydream Believer". If you like good ol' rock n roll go ahead and check it out. Country/folk music fans can also rejoice. Gordon Lightfoot also released a new album. It's called solo, and features just him and his guitar. It's been released as a physical copy and on streaming services, as well as on Youtube. It's funny, I finally go to listen to new stuff, and it ends up being new material by guys who've been around since the '50s and '60s.
I recently started watching stuff on Shudder (a horror streaming service) and I found this great Italian movie called "Wax Mask". I won't give too much away in case you guys want to try and watch it. It's a remake of the classic Vincent Price feature "House of Wax", but with a few very unique twists. IT was co-written by Italian horror masters Lucio Fulci ("City of the Living Dead", "The New York Ripper") and Dario Argento ("Deep Red", "Suspiria") and was supposed to be directed by Fulci, but as he died before shooting began, it was instead directed by special effects expert Sergio Stivaletti ("Cemetery Man", "The Three Faces of Terror"). I also started watching a show on the Travel channel. Usually I don't watch the paranormal shows on there because I think the people in them ham it up and fake it half the time. However, this show recreates actual newspaper stories from the 19th century and early 20th century, with nothing being added for dramatic effect. It's hosted by Robert Englund (yes, that Robert Englund, the guy who played Freddy Krueger), who suavely, yet creepily, introduces and occasionally narrates the stories, acting somewhat like a cross between Rod Serling and Vincent Price. It's actually a pretty good show. I highly recommend it.
Well, it's the end of the blog post, and if you've been reading each of these then you what that means. Time for a music recommendation! This one was an easy pick, but a good one none the less. This is a song that's going to be on Bon Jovi's upcoming album "Bon Jovi: 2020". It's called "Unbroken" and there's two versions of it, so two links. Enjoy!
