Long Hair and Mid-Air

I haven't written many blog entries in the past year, and I'm finding it odd that the reason is that I haven't been doing much business travel.

Well maybe this year will bring more. I'm once again writing from 37,000 feet in the air, over central Greenland.

This is my first flight to Europe since late 2011. And I have been growing my hair since the last time I was there. I've gone from a short-haired computer geek to a rock star wanna-be in that short time.

After watching two movies it seems time to settle down during the dark of the winter night. Sadly, I started the trip with a discharged laptop battery and the Lufthansa A340 I'm in has no seat power (at least not in economy). So although I had hoped to put in a few hours of office work, I'm out of luck. And I'm thus writing another blog entry on my iPhone.

The soundtrack to this blog is Peter Frampton's incredible Grammy-winning Fingerprints album. It's now been a top pick for me for a few years. Not yet at the level of Miles' Kinda Blue, but getting there.

In the past few weeks I had arrived at the point of feeling like I needed new music, and have been a bit disappointed in the process.

First off, I had been waiting quite awhile for the North American release of an album I'd seen buzz about on Twitter. Sweet Billy Pilgrim (@sweetbillyp) is an indie band from the UK, and I found myself oddly compelled by their latest album Crown and Treaty. In the end, they did not release it on iTunes in Canada, and I waited while their website finally got able to sell direct.

Now, I can understand the view that you'll make more money per sale when selling direct. But honestly, my opinion is that this is creating a barrier to entry that will not maximize total sales. The same reason that iPods took over the digital music player industry holds for music sales as well. On a whim, anywhere I happen to be, I can buy a track in the iTunes store for a good price and have it immediately available to listen to. I have a few examples from past business trips where I bought music on the plane before we left the gate.

In the case of the Crown and Treaty album, when I finally got access to their store, there wasn't even a simple way to buy the whole album. You had to select each track separately, at a total well above a typical album purchase for me. So in the end, instead of buying the album, I bought only the one song from it that had been haunting me: Archaeology. If the album had been available on iTunes, they would have made $7 or so from me. Instead they got probably $2. And frankly I'm sorry, but that's business. The album's tracks can be streamed from sweetbillypilgrim.com. Check it out.

So, the other "new" music I bought was intended to re-inspire me, but has been less than totally awesome.

Beth Hart released a new album recently called Bang Bang Boom Boom. It's very good, but a bit further from my favorite tastes than the previous one with Joe Bonamassa. I think the new one feels a bit more "country", but my wife disagrees. And she is quite keen on this new one. Beth's voice is fantastic.

I truly loved the last Dream Theater album A Dramatic Turn of Events. That was my first Dream Theater, so knowing they're again recording a new album, I thought I'd buy something from the back catalog. In the end, I bought the previous one, Octavarium. It's quite good, but I found it "less" interesting than the Dramatic Turn one. It didn't floor me on initial listen, and although it's grown on me, I'm still not enjoying it as much.

I got in the mood for some ragtime and bought The Very Best of Scott Joplin, which was very cheap on iTunes and includes dozens of tunes. Very solid, though a bit much to listen to all the way through in one sitting.

Then Joe Bonamassa has teamed up with a different sort of outfit and released a Funk album with a group called Rock Candy Funk Party. The album is We Want Groove, and it's actually pretty good. I'm a bit of a funk fan, and feel so vindicated that Joe has validated this love. Maybe I'm not the only one who thinks of his influences as Blues-Rock/Jazz/Funk. I still find it disturbing that Funk isn't a category on iTunes, actually. I'd probably find lots on speculation if I could search for it by category. Anyway this album reminds me of early 70s funk in many places. Feels like low-ceiling rooms, dark lighting and cigarette smoke. There are a few real grooving tracks, though. Overall, probably the best find of the lot here.

Then I bought the brand new Steve Lukather Transition album. I really liked his last one All's Well That Ends Well. This one is decent, but feels a bit less inspired. I think I'll queue it up for another listen next, hoping that it keeps improving for me. The singing, in particular, seems weaker than his last album, which is too bad. There are really some very excellent guitar parts, which isn't a surprise from this guitar legend, much-demanded session guitarist, and member of Toto.

Well, from the north coast of Iceland, I'll call it a night. Rock on...