mysterious forces: Jan 14, 2009

From concsious brother and snake charmer Graham Wood Drout:

click on image above for "the ten commandments of successful daily living"...amen!

Music soothes the savage breast...

In the coming weeks and months, I will be talking about records. Records that I collect. Records that I would like to collect. And definitely records that I LOVE to listen to. Mostly vinyl records, 45s and LPs, but if I dig it, it can be recorded on an old cassette tape and I'll write about it.

WARNING: This is NOT an invitation to submit demo tapes. Hey, I'm a musician, I understand. But the whole self -promotion thing...well, let me put it this way - it has a time and a place, and Mysterious Forces is simply not that time and place.

In Austin, where everyone is a musician and everyone has a CD, and every restaurant, coffee shop, bookstore and laundromat has live music, there is a popular bumper sticker that reads: "NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT YOUR BAND".

Hee hee...well, uh..of course...not YOUR band, dear reader.

But this is precisely why my thousands of old vinyl records give me so much pleasure. They don't sound like anything I can go out and hear at my neighborhood tavern or find on modern television. They come from a different era (mostly 1930s thru 1970s in my case, and especially the '60s and early '70s). The scratchiness seems to enhance my listening pleasure, as I drift back to a time when all I had to worry about was where my next record was coming from. I love lifting the needle on to the groove. I love holding the sleeve in my two hands, staring at the artwork, re-reading the liner notes and singing along in my head to the lyric sheet. I love making mixtapes ( or mix CDs...I swear, even CDs sound superior when they are burned from a vinyl record!)

Heard any good records lately?

mysterious forces

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

This just in...

PAPA MALI PLAYS AUSTIN

Papa Mali interviewed in Offbeat.

Meet the editors! Welcome to 'mysterious forces', a blog with a difference!

If traditionally conservative middle America can turn out in numbers like this, hope is alive!!!

"My Man!"

VOODOO FUNK

ALOHA !!!

Papa Goes Hawaiian

Papa Mali and Bill Kreutzmann

My peoples in Maui...

MAHALO !!!

Johnny Cash - "Christmas As I Knew It"

HOPE

Papa Mali and Bill Kreutzmann listed in Rolling Stone's Best Bets for NYE

Soul Santa

Big Chief of the nation, the whole wild creation...

Friendly Forces

Previously, on 'Mysterious Forces'...

let's listen to some old, scratchy records!

Music soothes the savage breast...

Nobody gives a fuck about your band, Pt. I

take a good long look.