Tag: hard rock

Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Best Films: #8: Heavy Metal (1981)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

There won’t be many animated films on my list—I don’t think!—but this week’s selection is the major exception.  If you like sword and sorcery, low fantasy carnage, outrageous science fiction, and classic hard rock, you’ll love 1981’s animated anthology Heavy Metal.

Heavy Metal is one of those flicks that won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s one that I find myself returning to routinely for repeat viewings.  I’ve always been a sucker for anthologies, and while some of the stories are a bit uneven, the effect of the whole is a colorful, musical ride through a fantastical, dark, humorous worlds.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Yngwie Malmsteen Concert

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Last week I rode up to Silverado’s in Black Mountain, North Carolina, with my younger brother and his wife to hear Swedish neoclassical metal guitar god Yngwie Malmsteen.

Boy, it was an amazing concert.  He even played some Mozart!  Yngwie also played one of my personal favorites, “Albinoni’s Adagio“:

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a full-fledged rock ‘n’ roll concert, and Yngwie delivered for a solid ninety minutes of neoclassical decadence.

This post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Open Mic Adventures IV: KISS’s “I Still Love You”

The Portly Politico7 Comments

Last Tuesday I forewent my usual trip to F.E. Pop’s to take an end-of-summer trip to Benjamin’s Bakery in Surfside Beach, South Carolina to play their new open mic night.  My girl lives down that way, and she’d never seen me play live before (although I send her videos of my pianistic noodling on a regular basis), so we decided to take advantage of this opportunity for her to hear me play a few tunes.  It was a fun evening, and a great opportunity to meet some new musicians in a different town.

Unfortunately, my girl was so enraptured watching me perform (and a little girl grabbed her attention for about half of my mini-set), she didn’t take any video of my powerful coffee shop crooning.  That performance is now lost to the mists of time (although I will always remember it; I hope she does, too!).

As such, I’m going back to the night of Tuesday, 26 July 2022, featuring a duet with my buddy John Pickett.

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My Latest Earworm: “Johnny Get Angry”

The Portly Politico14 Comments

I love many kinds of music, but I’m primarily a rocker—I like swaggering, almost comically masculine hard rock.  I want to bang my head, shake my fists, and rock out to thundering power chords and hypnotic bass lines.  When I listen to rock, I feel like a panther taking flight on the wings of a phoenix.

But I also have a softness—a weakness, really—for late Fifties/early Sixties doo-wop and rock ‘n’ roll.  Sometimes—perhaps, embarrassingly often—that love extends to female torch singers (I promise, I’m an allegedly heterosexual man).

Lately, I’ve had the 1962 tune “Johnny Get Angry” stuck in my head—constantly.  Songwriters Hal David and Sherman Edwards wrote this bit of bubblegum pop for Joanie Sommers, and it was a modest hit for the songstress.

That 1962 version is pretty catchy, and the instrumentation is interesting—especially the kazoo chorus when the key changes from D major to E major—but the version that really got me into this song is from the 1990 film Nightbreed, specifically the Clive Barker-approved director’s cut.  Other versions of the film apparently were missing the song—performed by actress Anne Bobby in the role of heroine/love interest Lori Winston—which is a travesty, as it’s really key to highlighting the struggle inherent in Lori and Boone’s relationship in the flick.

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Lazy Sunday CLIII: MAGAWeek2022

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Last week I celebrated MAGAWeek2022, my annual observance honoring the people, places, things, events, concepts, etc., that have, in their own ways, made America great (again).

For this extremely lazy edition of Lazy Sunday, here are the four entries from this year’s illustrious list of greats:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Worst Films: #9: Rocktober Blood (1984)

The Portly Politico33 Comments

Here’s hoping everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend.  I’m pretty sure my foot is broken, but I’m hoping to see an orthopedist this week.  I’m also borrowing an orthopedic boot from my mom, who had foot surgery back in January.  The boot works pretty well, and makes me feel like a cyborg—a low-rent, non-threatening RoboCop (1987).  I’ll keep y’all updated, but I think I am going to be fine.

Speaking of mild tragedies, my #9 pick for my list of my Top Ten Worst Films is 1984’s Rocktober Blood, a visually low-quality, goofy film with great songs.

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The Inexorable Forward March of Bandcamp Friday

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yes, poor readers, here it is again: another Bandcamp Friday.  Other than one of the earliest times I posted about this glorious monthly holiday—during which Bandcamp waives its usual commission on sales through its site—I don’t know that I’ve ever made a sale hawking my musical wares via the blog.

Well, if at first you do not succeed, pester, pester again (alternatively, doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, but all musicians are a bit crazy… right?).  Also, with my lovely new readers from the British Isles, it’s never been a better time to bilk them out of their hard-earned pounds sterling.

Fortunately for them—and you, my fellow countrymen!—my entire discography (seven albums!) is just $19.98, a whopping 35% discount (just £14.50 as of 1 September 2021, according to Bing).  That’s $2.85 (£2.07) per release, the kind of deal you only get on cassette tapes at the gas station (or from yours portly!).

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The Return of Bandcamp Friday

The Portly Politico3 Comments

After taking off during the long summer months, Bandcamp is bringing back Bandcamp Friday today, and continuing it the first Friday of every month through the end of 2021.

For those that have forgotten—or steadfastly ignored my many, many, many, many, many posts about it—Bandcamp Friday is when Bandcamp waives the 15% commission they usually take on sales through the site.  So, if you buy, say, Electrock EP: The Four Unicorns of the Apocalypse for $4, I get almost the full $4 (PayPal takes a small cut still), instead of $4 minus $0.60 to Bandcamp.

Another, more dramatic example:  if you buy my full discography at $19.98, Bandcamp doesn’t take their $3 cut, so most of that goes directly to me (again, minus the transaction fee PayPal assesses).

Bandcamp began doing Bandcamp Fridays during The Age of The Virus, when most musicians (myself included) witnessed a catastrophic drop in their revenue.  Venues closed or stopped live music; parents withdrew students from one-on-one lessons; and private parties were cancelled, meaning fewer of those lucrative gigs.  Also, fewer live performances meant fewer royalties for songwriters.

Fortunately, that situation is improving, and people are eager to get out and hear live music again.  Still, pitching in a few bucks helps immensely—and you get some good music in the process, too!

So, on with the sales pitch!  Here are my seven releases, in chronological order:

  • Electrock Music (2006, $5) – Twelve tracks from my senior year of college, all instrumental MIDI tunes.  I gave physical copies to my Fiction Writing Workshop class; I wonder if they still have those little homemade copies.
  • Electrock II: Space Rock (2007, $7) – I’m obsessed with the idea of the sci-fi rock opera (I actually tried to write one for piano and vocals back in 2012-2013, but never finished it)—it’s the most decadent, self-indulgent form of musical expression.  That was the driving spirit behind this rockin’ collection of out-of-this-world jams.
  • Electrock EP: The Four Unicorns of the Apocalypse (2012, $4) – My younger brother introduced me to a song call “Biomachinery” by some melodic death metal band, and the rhythm of that word inspired the lead-off track of this four-song cycle, “Cyborg Unicorn.”  Of course, the instrumental chorus of that track is basically Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” so it’s true what they say:  composers swipe from each other all the time.
  • Electrock Retrospective, Volume I: Dance Party (2013, $3.60) – I had a number of tracks stored up for a never-completed Electrock III, so I thought I would begin dribbling them out as part of repackaged “retrospectives.”  This first one, Dance Party, features “Robobop,” which is also a perk for $5 subscribers to my SubscribeStar page.
  • Electrock Retrospective, Volume II: Technological Romance (2013, $2.14) – Technological Romance features “Pwrblld (Ballad II)“—with apologies to Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration.”
  • Contest Winner EP (2015, $5) – This album is my tour de force.  I recorded it in a real-life studio, overdubbing my vocals with my piano part.  It was an amazing experience, and these tunes are staples of my live shows (especially fan favorites “Hipster Girl Next Door” and “Greek Fair“).
  • The Lo-Fi Hymnal (2020, $4) – I started playing piano at my little Free Will Baptist Church a couple of years ago, and I began taking little recordings of offertory, invitational, etc.  I compiled the four very lo-fi recordings into a short compilation.  I’m hoping to record a second volume at some point.

An easy (and free) way to support me is to “follow” my Bandcamp page and my Amazon author page.  I post updates about new merchandise, new music, and other interesting offers about once a month to the Bandcamp page, and new books will pop up on my Amazon page as they’re published.  It’s a good way to keep up with the latest news on my musical adventures.

Another free way to support me is to turn off your ad-blocker.  The site delivers several thousand ad impressions monthly, but most of those are blocked, which means they don’t pay out.  You can usually find the ad-blocker as a little widget or icon in the upper-right-hand side of your browser; click on it and it will usually give you the option to “pause” or stop the blocker from running on this site.  I know ads are annoying, but seeing a few DuckDuckGo ads helps out in an incremental way.

Even if none of that entices you, no worries!  I’m just glad to have you here, reading my self-indulgent garbage and my lengthy advertisement posts.

Happy Friday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp Review

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

This past week I hosted the first of two summer camps I’m putting on in June.  Next week is the ubiquitous, ever-popular Minecraft Camp, but this week saw the first inaugural Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp at my little school.

I’m not sure why I didn’t conceive of this idea sooner.  It’s not an original one, as rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camps have been around for awhile.  I’m not Ted Nugent teaching middle-aged yuppies how to play “Stranglehold” in the woods, but porting that concept to rockin’ out with kids is not difficult to do.

But last summer my headmaster kept forwarding me e-mails from a local country club, which was itself hosting a summer rock camp.  He did not include any commentary or suggestions along the lines of “you should do this camp,” but I got the message.  So when it came time to put together our summer camp catalogue, I tossed Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp into the mix.

My headmaster’s implied suggestion was a good one:  the camp was really wonderful.  Indeed, it exceeded my expectations, in large part because of the small but talented group of campers who attended.  We only had three kids sign up this year, but I’ve had semester-long ensemble classes with that few students, so I knew we could make some musical magic even with a small group.  Indeed, we had the perfect number for a classic garage rock band:  four (including myself).

Here’s some of the details about the camp—how long it lasted, a breakdown of our days, and the songs we played.  Hopefully it will provide a useful blueprint for other music educators looking to host their own camps.

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