Melancholia - Vol 9 70s Edition

I do have a few other projects in the works but until they are ready the Melancholia fest continues.

There's a certain sound or production style that was popular in the early 70s. I never put my finger on it but I think it had something to do with a certain type of reverb and how it was used. The shimmery strums of acoustic guitar and the liberal use of the Fender Rhodes electric piano seem to be prevalent as well. Either way when I hear that sound I'm transported somewhere else.

This compilation was my attempt to bottle that nostalgia for easy consumption and I think it turned out pretty good. While '67 to '75 seems to be the period of music I gravitate to, I'm always surprised at how many of my favorite songs or albums come from 1973. This comp covers more than just that year but the bulk of the tracks are from right around that time. This is definitely a desert island disc for me. It also contains the most "big hits" than any other Melancholia comps with exception of the K-Tel Generation collection. Enjoy!

01 Neil Young - Heart Of Gold
02 Carly Simon - You're So Vain
03 Paul McCartney - Band on the Run
04 Rod Stewart - Maggie May
05 Lou Reed- Walk on the Wild Side
06 Paul Simon - Still Crazy After All These Years
07 Badfinger - Day After Day
08 America - A Horse With No Name
09 The Kinks - Lola
10 Led Zeppelin - Hey Hey What Can I Do?
11 David Bowie - Heroes
12 T.Rex - Bang A Gong (Get It On)
13 Ringo Starr - Photograph
14 Gary Wright - Love Is Alive
15 Bill Withers - Ain't No Sunshine
16 Joe Cocker - Feelin' Alright
17 Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi
18 Eric Clapton - Let It Rain
19 The Hollies - The Air That I Breathe

Melancholia - Volume 3

This volume of my Melancholia series was again sourced from the best vinyl I had. It also contains more (sort of) current (at the time) songs than the previous volumes.

This is still one of my favorite editions. It has the right blend of new, classic and deep cuts. Many of these songs are still among my top favorites ever. If I were to make a best of Melancholia collection this volume would be well represented.

While not the last comp to be sourced from vinyl it was made when my record collection had reached its peak. Soon after this edition I went into a nomadic stage in my life which necessitated my collection going into storage and eventual reduction to make moving easier. During this time of limbo I purchased cassettes over vinyl and eventually embraced CDs.

Side A
01 Lone Justice - Shelter
02 Tommy James - Kelly Told Anne
03 Paul Simon - Take Me To The Mardi Gras
04 Bob Marley and the Wailers - Redemption Song
05 Lou Reed - I Love You
06 Crosby-Nash - The Wall Song
07 Rickie Lee Jones - On Saturday Afternoons In 1963
08 Led Zeppelin - Going to California
09 Grateful Dead - Black Muddy River
10 Amy Grant - Family
11 The Faces - Ooh La La
12 Dire Straits - Why Worry

Side B
01 Love and Rockets - Waiting For The Flood
02 Leo Kottke - Tiny Island
03 Lloyd Cole - 2cv
04 T'Pau - Heart And Soul
05 Klaatu - I Don't Wanna Go Home
06 Melanie - Holding Out
07 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - The Wild One, Forever
08 Squeeze - Black Coffee In Bed
09 Fleetwood Mac - Storms
10 Randy Stonehill - Christine
11 Yardbirds - Still I'm Sad
12 Billy Bragg - The Man In The Iron Mask

Reality Notes

I'd like to address naming conventions. Like many here, I have a large digital library. Early on I knew I needed a way to go through my files efficiently and I needed a way to organize my collection to make it accessible through my library manager (Media Monkey), my iPods or just browsing through the folders.

My general solution was to create a folder structure and naming convention that made my collection browsable no matter how I looked at it. At the folder structure root is a folder named Music (obviously). Inside there is a folder for each letter of the alphabet plus about a dozen special folders for certain genres that I wanted to keep separate from the mainstream general folders. The are folders for soundtracks, various artists, country, classical, jazz and a few others.

Artist are sorted by last name so folders within the main folders follow the naming convention of  last name first, first name last for solo artists. Band names with a "The" in front have the "The" placed after the name (IE: Beatles, The). Windows does not ignore "The" when sorting folders unlike Apple. If a band member has any solo albums I generally put those in with the main band's folder unless the solo artist has a sizable discography of their own. Examples are Stevie Nicks is separated from Fleetwood Mac but The Soft Boys get put in the Robyn Hitchcock folder. Solo Beatles have their own folders but I like to keep all solo Dead inside the Grateful Dead folder.

If a band has more than four or five albums the album folders include the number of the album (04 Beatles For Sale) or the year the album was released (1968 The Beatles [White Album]). This sorts the albums in chronological order. Live bootlegs, if numerous, are put in a special folder named '[bootlegs]" within the band folder with both the folder and album names matching using the format: "Year [date] venue, city, state/country - boot title(if applicable)", (1968 [08-13] The Catacombs, Boston, MA). Again this puts them in chronological order and easier to search.

Tags within the tracks themselves follow a similar convention. Last name first, first name last for solo artists and in most cases "The" is placed after the band name following a comma. I have since stopped this because most library managers and iPods ignore "The" when sorting by artists.

Various artist albums were a challenge. My library manager recognizes both the Artist and Album Artist tags. General convention says to put the artist in the artist tag and Various in the Album Artist tag. But iPods would generally put tracks where these two tags differ at the end of the device library thus putting some songs/albums out of order. My solution was to put the name of the various artist album in the Album Artist and Artist tags as well as the Album Title. If the album is a part of a series (like Melancholia) I would put the volume name in the Album tag. I would then put the artist name in the Title tag with the tile using the convention of "Artist - Title". File names use the "Track# Artist - Title" convention.

When I share a various artist collection I will retag the files to better comply with the general consensus of tagging styles. I always embed front cover art within the tag as well as as a separate file within the album folder. I realize there are most likely as many ways to organize a collection as there are collectors but this has worked for me and has proven to scale as the collection grows. How do you organize your collection?

Melancholia Vol 13/14

The following Melancholia sets were recorded on 45 minute tapes so I have bundled them into one post and download. They were named after phrases I found in magazine articles and advertisements. I used to cut them out to use as tape cover decorations along with pictures I would use for covers.

Bits Of Reality was compiled on the fly one night after a rough day at work. I was in a bad mood and chose songs to reflect my feelings. As the comp progressed my anger softened. You can almost hear my mood lift through the first four songs.

01 David Bowie - All the Madmen
02 The Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers
03 The Beatles - Baby You're a Rich Man
04 The Kinks - Celluloid Heroes
05 John Mellencamp - Pink Houses
06 Blues Image - Ride Captain Ride
07 Lou Reed - Wild Child
08 U2 - Seconds
09 The Band (ft The Staples) - The Weight
10 The Rascals - Mustang Sally

Tattered Furniture is almost a companion piece to Bits Of Reality. It was a little more planned out and not an emotional outburst. Four songs came from the same source. The songs from The Eagles, Uriah Heep, The Doors and Foghat all were found on another various artist album. It was a Warner Bros. double album called Heavy Metal Vol 1 (never did see a volume two). Despite the name the closest it got to heavy metal was a song each from Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. The rest was from the likes of The J. Giles Band and The Grateful Dead.

01 Eagles - Outlaw Man
02 Humble Pie - Natural Born Boogie
03 Uriah Heep - Stealin'
04 Ten Years After - I'd Love To Change The World
05 Fleetwood Mac - The Green Manalishi
06 The Beatles - Doctor Robert
07 Norman Greenbaum - Spirit in the Sky
08 Tom Petty - American Girl
09 The Doors - Touch me
10 The Guess Who - No Sugar Tonight - New Mother Nature
11 Foghat  - What A Shame
12 The Who - Pinball Wizard
13 Steve Miller Band - Take The Money And Run

Melancholia - Volume 2

Volume two of my Melancholia mixtape series.

For volume two I also wanted to gather some of my favorite songs but I loosened my criteria as far as the condition of the vinyl source. Naturally the reconstruction here mostly comes from CD but there may be one or two that are sourced from vinyl rips. There is also a more acoustic base to the collection.

This volume was a cleanup of sorts and covered what was missed on the first one due to space limitations or vinyl conditions. This volume initially suffered from the "hoping lightening strikes twice" syndrome. In the end the collection had a charm of its own and was enough to push the series onward.

Side A
01 Bob Dylan - Positively 4th Street
02 Derek & the Dominos - Bell Bottom Blues
03 Dr Hook - Sylvia's Mother
04 Mason Proffit - Two Hangmen
05 Dire Straits - Wild West End
06 John Prine - Souvenirs
07 Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
08 Ten Years After - Over The Hill
09 Johnny Rivers - Summer Rain
10 The Firm - Together
11 The Kinks - Tired of Waiting For You

Side B
01 Bad Company - Shooting Star
02 Fleetwood Mac - Gold Dust Woman
03 Dan Fogelberg - Leader Of The Band
04 Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale
05 Jesse Colin Young - The Peace Song
06 Harry Chapin - Taxi
07 Jethro Tull - One Brown Mouse
08 Alpha Band - Love and Romance
09 Don McLean - Vincent (Starry Starry Night)
10 George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
11 The Beatles - Julia

Kenny Parisot - Tell The Wind

Here's something a bit special to me. This is a collection of demos we recorded of a co-worker of my brothers way back in the early 2000s. What makes them special is that these demos served as the foundation of my band's first album.

When we recorded these our intention was not to start a band. My brother Pat met Kenny at work and in passing Kenny mentioned that he sang and played a little guitar and wrote songs. He wanted to record them so he had something to give his kids and friends. Pat offered to record him and Kenny accepted and that was it.

The plan was to make simple guitar and vocal demos but after the initial sessions Pat started to enhance the recordings with other instruments played by him, me and other friends. By the end of the sessions a core group emerged and that became the first incarnation of Pearhead.

01 Brown Guitar
02 Cinnamon Roll
03 Ghetto Song
04 Willow
05 Michelle
06 None and Slim
07 Red White and Blue
08 She's A Dancer
09 Remember Love
10 Tell The Wind
11 Set You Free
12 Mango
13 Soft Mattress
14 Whiskers on a Kitty

Reality Notes

Two songs here have some additional instruments. Ghetto Song has some heavy guitar and slight percussion and the title song, Tell The Wind, has some Mandolin. Both of these songs received further treatment before they were done.

Two other songs, None And Slim and Mango, were held over and rerecorded for the second album and two more songs, Willow and She's A Dancer, were demos from the second album sessions but they fit in nice here. She's A Dancer features Kenny playing the banjo. After the first album was done and the band coalesced he felt there were enough guitar players and he switched to banjo.

Remember Love is how it appears on the finished album but because it is just guitar and vocal I feel it fits in.

Some of these might sound rough guitar wise. Kenny never laid claimed to musical proficiency but his songs are amazing. He has that ability to paint pictures with words. In the course of enhancing and overdubbing we learned to follow his vocals more than his guitar. He was always rhythmically sound when he sang. when we recorded the next album the bulk of the songs were recorded as a band then enhanced so there are fewer solo demos from that album.

The cover art was sketched by our drummer from the time Ryan. He was doodling while listening to the finished album. I added the text.

If you want to hear how these songs developed you can listen to and download both albums at our ReverbNation page or check out my netLabel's website where you can download everything I've been involved with that I can offer for free (it's a bit of a mess at the moment but all the download links are good).. Our new album is nearing completion. We've added a second lead singer/songwriter and I'm very excited about what we've been doing. Still a few months away but I'll share it here when it is done.