Life’s Soundtracks – And She Said Gold from Sweden’s Enbound leads me to a good run!

Well if you told me when I was in the fist half-mile of my run tonight that I would end up running faster and farther than I did on Tuesday night I ay you are nuts!! Obviously I did not feel real spry at the beginning of the run! Part of the reason for that it was a lot colder than i thought it was and I always have trouble breathing when the air is cold. But I had put on an album by what I thought was a progressive rock band Enbound and their 2011 release And She Said Gold and it sounded pretty good, so I tuned in and trudged on!! I clocked in at the first mile point at in 10:16 not bad.So I said let’s just keep moving listening to those guitars. keys and vocals that I could understand!! I asked my self over the course of the next mile, “how was I do” and the answer came back ok!! I really didn’t check my time at any other points. I just kept looking down at my pace and was constantly happily surprised that the pace was for the majority of the time hovering around that 10:30 minute per mile pace!! When I crossed the point where i started and had stopped on Monday night I was almost 2 minutes faster than Monday!! So I kept going and ended up running a full 3 miles compared to 2.8 miles on Monday and the final time was 31:30 for the three miles which coverts to a 10:30 minute per mile pace. I was very pleasantly surprised by both the run and the music! Now like I said the soundtrack for the run was And She Said Gold from Enbound. SAnds she said goldince I knew nothing about the band other than they have a great guitar player and vocalist, I went to their Facebook where I found that they are from Sweden!! I went to ProgArchives and found nothing!! Then I googled the Enbound and found them listed on several metal sites. They label their music on their Facebook page as Hard Rock/Melodic Metal. And when I went to a forum where they discuss what groups they put on the Prog Archives site I read that they liked their music but that tended more to metal than prog. I guess I agree but I thought there were several tempo changes within songs and between songs that they would make it to the Prog Archives!! Anyway the band hails from Boras, Sweden a town of about 66,000 people located in the southwest quadrant of the country. Enbound was formed in 2006 by Mike Cameron Force. His intention was to create something special with Enbound, and Enboundnot just be a normal rock/metal band. The pieces of the band came together over the next several years. bass player Swede was added to the line-up, as well as the extremely talented [then 17, now 20] year old guitar virtuoso Marvin Flowberg. In 2009 the band found their singer in Lee Hunter [Lars Säfsund] who is most famous for his work in the band Work of Art as well as performing in musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, in the TV program “Singing Bee” on Swedish television and performing with Biondo in the Rumanian Eurovision song contest 2008. So in 2011 the albumAnd She Said Gold mastered by Björn Engelmann [Rammstein, Primal Fear, Sonata Arctica] was released. Ok so now my mind has given up on me ans all I’ll say is that in my opinion this is a great album. Full of hard charging metal that will rock you.. with some terrific guitar by Flowberg and then there are some slow ballads and throughout the whole album, Hunter’s vocals are perfect for band!! So as I say check them out!! Here’s the “official” video for the opening track “Combined The Souls” Read More

Lunchtime Music from Two Blues Favorites – Vincent Hayes and Tinsley Ellis

The Grind

So let’s make this a Blues Thursday, we’re almost to the weekend, even though that means that I have to work Friday and Saturday nights, I do have off on Sunday for the NFL Conference finals!!  I don’t have much time to write now so I’ll just give you a taste of what I’m going to listen to this afternoon! First up will be the new release from Vincent Hayes The Grind. Hayes is an award-winning blues man from Michigan. I really liked his earlier release the Reclamation. So I’m looking forward to The Grind. Read More

The Safari Explores the Chromatic Harmonica of Enrico Granafei (He lives in New Jersey!)

 So this evening I was reviewing the JazzWeek Chart for this week, and I saw a name that looked interesting at No 20, Enrico Granafei  His current release Alone (and) Together rose from No 46 last week to that No 2o spot. So I found the album at Spotify, and put it on while I was doing some other stuff on the computer. As I was listening, I was struck by how much the music sounded like the French Gypsy music of Django Reinhardt.What I couldn’t decide was whether or not the instrument Enrico was playing was a harmonica or not. It sure didn’t sound like the ones I know and the album cover which was small really didn’t help Here is the cover of the album…so I thought it was a harmonica, but the shape looked kinda funky!!

After listening to most of the album, I went to Enrico’s website, where I read that he is one of the most respected players of the Chromatic Harmonica in the world today. So off I went to learn more about the Chromatic Harmonica….. at Wikipedia I read: Read More

Archives:The Music Safari explores the Tunisian Prog Rock of Myrath!

Originally posted at Me, Myself,Music and Mysteries -May 2013

In Tunisia, Myrath (means Legacy or Legend), in the progressive rock world it means great prog-rock with a Tunisian flavor! Myrath was founded in 2001, by a then 13-year-old guitarist Malek Ben Arbia. The band changed musicians over the next several years and played mostly cover songs and gravitated towards progressive rock. In 2005 MYRATH released their first self-produced album  Double Face. Read More

Thoughts about Dave Van Ronk “The Mayor of MacDougal Street”

The Mayor of MacDougal StreetSo I want to go and see the Coen Brothers new movie: “Inside Llewyn Davis” and surprisingly my wife does, too. I really don’t think she knows that the story is based on Dave Van Ronk’s memoirs because I don’t think she’s a fan of Van Ronk’s music! Anyway, until we get to go I thought that I’d like to read the book The Mayor of MacDougal Street first.So I used some of the money from a Barnes & Noble gift card that my daughter-in-law;law’s parents gave me for Christmas and bought it the other night. I’m not that far into it yet but I’m loving it already. Van Ronk always has had a flair for telling stories and he puts it to good work in his memoirs!! I’ll tell you more about it as I work my way through it. But tonight though my first thoughts were how about I go look up some videos from some of the musicians that populated MacDougal Street back in the day.One of the first names to pop into my head wasn’t Dylan, but Fred Neil and then I thought, hell, why not Van Ronk. The first music from Dave that came to mind was a piece that I heard every Sunday night back in the 60s and 70s and that would be the “St. Louis Tickle”. I heard it as the Gene Shay Folk Radio Show came in and out of commercial breaks. The song is an old piano rag that Van Ronk transcribed to make it a guitar piece. Here’s a good over of the song. Read More

Progressive Metal from Philly’s Tungsten – The Reservoir

The Safari did not really travel far today folks, just across the Delaware River to the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia, the city that the new progressive metal band Tungsten calls home! Their debut album The Reservoir was released today, Jan 14th. Tungsten is a progressive metal band whose signature sound according to their biography at their website is. Read More

A Good Run and Happy Birthday, Greg Trooper!!

So when I turned on my Runmeter app this afternoon, the first thing I saw was my last run – November 18, 2013 and I cringed! I knew it had been a long time since my last run, but I thought that the last one was closer to the end of the month!! It was about the time that the clocks got set back and it started getting dark at 5 o’clock! And then the weather turned nasty and cold and Christmas came along and before I knew it December was gone!! But then I also admit that I am a fair weather runner, when it gets dark and cold, this old body doesn’t really want to go out and run!! But today was nice the high temperature was in the upper 50s and it was sunny with hardly any wind!! I was also off, due to lack of work, (ugh!) and the gave me the opportunity to run in the sun!! I certainly told myself that all I wanted to do was get a 30 minute run in. I didn’t have to set any world speed records and I did a good job throughout the run of slowing down. I often use that trick that if you can talk comfortably you are running comfortably, and I often ask myself (out load) how I am doing and I respond back! If folks are watching they may think I’m crazy,but then again they probably just think I’m on the phone!! Don’t you love that when you are walking along and people come up from behind you and you here their voice and turn to respond only to find that they are talking on the phone!! Happens to me all the time at Target I hear a voice and turn and oh yeah!! But I digress, back to the subject at hand running, or at this point jogging!! So after many thoughts of cutting the run short and mentally figuring where I should turn around I made it to the second mile at between 21-22 minutes and I knew I could make it to the 3o minute mark!! The final distance for the 30:14 minute run was 2.8 miles for an average pace of 10:44 min/mile and I am satisfied with that now I just have to keep going!! The soundtrack for the run was a Prog Rock Album Clessidra from an Italian Prog Band Laviantica. You can read about it at FreeWheelin’ Music Safari Greg TrooperWhen I signed on to Facebook this morning I saw that it was the birthday of one of my favorite Americana musicians, Greg Trooper! Greg was born on this date in 1956 in was born in Neptune Township, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Little Silver. I first listened to Greg’s music sometime around 1999 when his  release Straight Down Rain,found its way into my library. That album was quickly followed by his prior release Popular Demons which had been released  in 1998, on Koch Records and produced by Buddy Miller. His current release Incident on Willow Street is currently number 2 on the Roots Music Report’s Roots Rock chart! Incident on Willow StreetHere’s Greg performing “All the Way to Amsterdam” one of my favorites from Incident on Willow Street! Happy Birthday, Greg!! Read More

The Safari runs with Italian Progressive Rock from Laviantica’s – Clessidra

Ok so I admit that I am a fair weather runner. When it’s dark and cold out Edward is not in the mood for running! But today it was nice, a decent temperature, bright and sunny and so off I went! I won’t bore you with my times. etc. If you’d like to read about them though you can go to Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries in a bit and check that stuff out. But for here I’ll write about the soundtrack for the run, which was the Italian Progressive Rock band Laviantica. I have started to listen to their latest release Clessidra several times at Progstreaming, but I usually get interrupted, but tonight I was a captive audience for a little over 30 minutes! Once again the biographical information that I came up with is sparse. Read More

Book No 1 for 2014 – Cut to the Bone – Jefferson Bass

cut to the boneSo I finally finished book No. 1 for 2014, Cut to the Bone by Jefferson Bass. Cut to the Bone is the 5th book in Body Farm series, which features the exploits  of forensic anthropologist Bill Btrockton. The character of Bill Brockton is based upon the life of the real life director of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Bill Bass. Bill Bass is half of the writing team that creates these great novels. The other half of the writing duo is journalist, writer and documentary film maker Jon Jefferson. Read More