Neoton Familia - Hegyirabló, Santa Maria

“Hegyirabló” is a rather fascinating song, with its back-and-forth methodology and the singing of a man with one of the lowest and most resonating voices I've heard pretty much everywhere. The voice sounds like it's at the bottom of a swimming pool filled with delicious molasses and is surfacing to breathe every now and then. The supplemental strings and brass add a pleasant roundness to the song, as do the parts with several people singing in unison. The constant bass drum gives “Hegyirabló” a pleasant constantness, and the way that both the vocals and the other melodic segments of the song arrive in chunks on the beats makes the whole composition sound like the heartbeat of the Earth Mother.

You can listen to “Hegyirabló” here.

You must remove the downloaded file from your computer within 24 hours. It is only a sample of a track which you can purchase on a CD. The author of this site cannot be held responsible for the misuse or copyright violation of this song as enforced by any given country's laws.

“Santa Maria” is another Neoton Familia favorite of mine. It too has back-and-forth singing as well as mulitple people singing in unison, both aspects of vocals that I am particularly fond of in music. The melody is rather simple and somewhat monotonous much of the time, causing it to in some ways take a back seat to the excellent bass line. That bass line is one of the grooviest and addictive bass lines to be found, and when coupled with the simple yet effective drum beat, forms a driving force that propels the song along its fantastic way. The chorus, where the only words are “Santa Maria”, is musically pleasing and fun to listen too. The violin instrumental about halfway through is quite beautiful as well. Overall, “Santa Maria” is an awesome song in the original sense of the word.

You can listen to “Santa Maria” here.

You must remove the downloaded file from your computer within 24 hours. It is only a sample of a track which you can purchase on a CD. The author of this site cannot be held responsible for the misuse or copyright violation of this song as enforced by any given country's laws.

Dylan Live!

Last night, I was able to see the one, the only, Bob Dylan in concert! The concert was held Assembly Hall in Bloomington. While Assembly Hall is a great building, I was disappointed that the concert was not held in the Indiana University Auditorium. If you have ever seen a concert at the IU auditorium, you understand my disappointment. The IU auditorium is an amazing place to experience a concert. I remember the first time I walked into the IU auditorium. By eyes grew large, my mouth dropped open, and I was awestruck. I was hoping for this to happen again when seeing Dylan; but overall, Assembly Hall a decent concert atmosphere.

Due to hectic traffic, I missed the first opening act Amos Lee. However, I did arrive in time to catch Elvis Costello. Costello performed an acoustic act by himself, and simply brought the house down. He came out rocking with the song "(The Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes". There was a good variety of songs, switching between upbeat rockers and slow ballads, such as his hit song "Allison". Costello interacted with the audience quite a bit, by talking between almost every song. He told stories about his children, previous wives, and Governor Arnold Schwarchenegger. Since he was playing at Indiana University, he said at one point, "I hope you all kick some ass tomorrow in your football game against Penn State." After some cheers from the audience, he replied with, "I have no idea what that means, they just told me to say that." Overall, Costello was a great 2nd opener.

Now this was my third time seeing Dylan live. The first time seeing him was a bit of a disappointment, due to the fact that he was on the side of the stage, not even facing the audience, or playing his guitar. This time around, Dylan's performance was much better. He played guitar for his first 4-5 songs, and actually played in the middle of the stage. He has a great backing band, who rocked and jammed on "Ballad of a Thin Man", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Summer Days". Four songs came from his most recent album Modern Times, which were all performed well. An interesting thing to note was that Dylan's most famous songs, "All Along the Watchtower" and "Like A Rolling Stone", which are both regulars in his live performance, were both omitted from this concert. A song that caught be by surprise was "Blowin' in the Wind". It was the second song of the encore, and I didn't even recognize it until almost a minute into the song. The song was sped up, and had a country sort of twang to it.

Overall, the concert was very enjoyable. I look forward to seeing Dylan live again in concert, after seeing him live, the same goes for Elvis Costello. While I'm sure Dylan's live show is not up to the level it used to be, it was still great a music legend and my favorite artist perform live.

Neoton Familia

Another great band from Hungary is Neoton Familia, and one of my favorite bands as well, up there in the top tier where all are so great that a number one cannot be determined. In fact, one of the best CDs I ever owned was Napraforgó, which I bought when I went to Hungary. I conclude that Napraforgó means sunflower in Hungarian, judging by all the sunflowers that show up in Google Images when I search it, as well as the big sunflower on the cover of the CD case. I was quite upset when I lost it a year later, but luckily I always copy all the tracks to my computer as soon as I can when I obtain a new CD. A lot of their music sounds rather yellow or brown, and usually a happy feeling emanates from most of the songs. Neoton Familia is apparently Hungarian for The Newton Family, so I suppose that its many members are all in the same family. It is hard to find information about them, but I can tell you that they are mostly from the 70's. Their musical style is a sort of vaguely disco-like sort of somewhat early 80's rock in a way. In other words, it sounds like nearly every song is about “this is how the world is, isn't it great?”. Sometimes when my friends hear my playing Neoton Familia, they tell me, “Goggin, there is a reason that this type of music went out of style.” Well, I do not see why I should care that the music I like is not “in style”. Any music that is good music is always in style here in Gogginland.

My favorite Neoton Familia songs:

• Don Quijote
• Egy Huszas Eleg
• Egy Kicsit Szemtelen
• Forrófejű Lány
• Ha Szombat Este Táncol
• Hegyirabló
• Nyár Van
• Robinson
• Santa Maria
• Szia! (Helló!)
• Tini Dal
• Visz a Hajó, Fúj a Szél

As you can see by this bountiful list, Neoton Familia really rocks old Goggin's socks. You may look forward to reading more about some specific songs, what are perhaps the best of the best, when you tune in next time.

Groovehouse

Groovehouse is a mystery. What dear old Goggin means by such a statement is that although there are several Groovehouse music videos on YouTube, the small amount of information available on the Internet, mostly from their own website, is all in Hungarian, which I cannot read. What I can tell you, dear reader, is that Groovehouse is from Hungary, is still active, and that the names of the two members may or may not be Miki and Zsolti. There seems to be a fair amount of quality electronica from Hungary, and Groovehouse is the best that I've heard. A lot of their music sounds black and purple, a result of the strong bass and the particular synth sounds they use. I also like the way that the language of the lyrics sounds, perhaps because of the flowing vowels, and because I do not know what any of the words mean, it becomes easier to hear the vocals more as another instrument of the music and less as just words on top of the music. It is important in good music that the vocals contribute to the overall composition as one of the instruments and not as fundamentally unnecessary words that add no true value to the song, no matter what language the lyrics are in.

My favorite Groovehouse songs, although I haven't heard very many:

• Álom
• Vándor
• Olla-Olla
• Szívvel Lélekkel

Vándor is a good example of what Groovehouse sounds like. It has a muscular beat and bass, setting a good foundation for the vocals and the rather subtle instruments. The piano counter-melody adds a very beautiful touch to the song. If I knew what the words of the song meant, the video would probably make more sense, but already I can tell that it has something to do with a bad man in medieval times, a hero man, some sort of creepy wizard man, and an ornate princess lady. The sound of Vándor fits the feel of many hundreds of years ago quite well, despite its modern sound.

Rasputin

“Rasputin” is one of the most famous songs of the 70's group Boney M., the members of which are Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett from Jamaica and Maizie Williams ad Bobby Farrell from the West Indies. Although they have a fairly large number of songs that are traditional songs, especially Christmas songs, Boney M.'s music is mostly disco-like with a few songs containing elements of folk songs. For example, “Rasputin” contains segments of the Turkish folk song “Uskudara Gider Iken”. It is a highly catchy song about the legendary Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin. The pacing and rhythm of the vocals fits stupendously with the steady drum beat, making the song easy to follow and easy to remember. Although the music is mainly gold-colored guitar and light green strings, “Rasputin” has an overall color of off-white. Listening to this song reminds one of a valley filled with dancing cossacks and Rasputin up front singing about himself in the third person. The music video personifies some of this feeling with some nice dancing and cool-as-custard facial expressions by Bobby Farrell. With entertaining lyrics and music that sticks in your head with a death-grip, it's a very cool song. By the way, it gets cut off by the video, but that last line is “Oh, those Russians”.

A few other Boney M. songs that I like:

• Daddy Cool
• Belfast
• Ma Baker

Two Downloads

While searching the vastness of the internet, I have come across a few downloads worth mentioning. The first is the newest from the Flaming Lips, "I Was Zapped by the Lucky Super Rainbow". The song is from the soundtrack to the the movie "Good Luck Chuck". Since the soundtrack included the likes of Olivia-Newton John and Pepper, I decided to avoid the soundtrack at all costs, and just downloaded "...Rainbow" as a single off iTunes for $.99. The song is catchy and upbeat, similar to their single "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" off At War With the Mystics. The lyrics are about a guy talking about how lucky he is to of found the girl he is with. I would assume that this song goes along somewhat with the movie "Good Luck Chuck", however, I can't be sure, since the only thing I know about the movie is it stars Jessica Alba.

For the second download of the week required a bit of digging, and I was able to find the track as a bootleg. On September 19th, Bob Dylan performed at the Ryan Auditorium, in Nashville, Tennesee. The track is a song on which Dylan brought up on stage Jack White of the White Stripes to guest on the song "Meet Me in the Morning" off Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, a personal favorite album of mine. According to a Dylan site that has kept track of Dylan's setlists over the years, this is the first time that "Meet Me in the Morning" has ever been performed. White does more than simply guest on this song by taking the lead vocals, and even taking some of the lead guitar licks. White gives and upbeat kick to the vocals, with the backing band rocking out behind him.

Frontier Psychiatrist

Sometimes you might come across a song where somebody mixed a bunch of samples from one or more sources over a drum beat and called it music. These compositions are typically not so good to listen to in actuality. The Avalanches, an Australian band that does just this for the most part, is on the higher end of the spectrum with songs like these. One song in particular, “ Frontier Psychiatrist”, stands out from the pack as a phenomenal mix, having superb usage of music and samples making up a track that is jolly good fun to listen to as well as somehow being both energizing and calming at the same time. And to further raise “Frontier Psychiatrist” to greatness, it has one of the craziest and well-made music videos ever. Having visuals like this to a song that is made of essentially arbitrary clips of dialog and sound effects really helps one to notice and keep track of all the things going on, many of which might not be really noticed otherwise. Not only that, but a lot of the elements to “ Frontier Psychiatrist” are simply so odd or unconnected to the rest of the track that the viewer will probably think to themselves, “This is quite unusual! Why does that old man have a turtle's body? What is going on here? This is all so strangely delightful! And the monkey! The monkey is rather frightening!” Although the song is nearly four and a half minutes long, which is slightly longer than a standard track, it is so full of new and varied bits and pieces to notice and think about that when the video ends, the viewer will be somewhat disappointed that it has to be over already. Another good song by The Avalanches is “Since I Left You”, the eponymous track to their first album from 2000. It's also their only album, but apparently they are working on another.

Blast from the Past!

"We all have a song that somehow stamped our lives, Takes us to another place and time" this was taken from the song by Kenny Chesney "I go Back".

Now this is another post that will require some feedback because I want to know, not that I am going to take the comments and do an experiment but I am just curious. I know that music is a deep art that some people can relate to and some can't, I love music and I love it so much that there is like a play list to my life. A song is always going through my head, it kind of marks a period in my life. I listen to almost everything but mostly when I listen to 90's rock I remember the good ole days back when I lived in Brook, Indiana. I was carefree and loving every minute of it, I can remember the smell of the air and the way it felt. I remember the way my parents drug me to all those parties and even though I bitched about it I secretly loved it. I loved watching my parents have fun and relax. I loved having drunk people let loose and show a side that most people don't see. I remember being the PIMP of the party at age 5, haha and having the high schoolers pick me up and take me with them to "Get me ahead of the game". It takes me back to a time where just waking up in the morning was good enough and the sound of a few friends was all I needed to make a successful day. I took for granted and regret not enjoying it more. I wish there was a way to go back in time and enjoy more of those times, but instead I listen to the songs of Bush, Nirvana, Third Eyed Blind, Tool, Green Day, Metallica, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, Fuel and many more grunge bands and it seems to satisfy the urge. I want to know what songs take you back to a day where you didn't worry so much and you were just living. I think everyone should take a time out and think about it. I know I do all the time, and it kind of makes me sad but then I think of how great it was and I can't help but laugh. Good Luck in the future but remember to live for the day because soon they will be your past.

Who is the Best?

Alright friends I am gonna take a route that I haven't taken since I have been on this blog. Drum roll please! Who is the Best Rapper? I know you are thinking where did this come from, well I was on the phone the other day with a guy that I had met in AIT. Well long story short we thought back about the fun we had and the argument about who the best rapper was. I said flat out Lil' Wayne! He argued that it was TI who was the best. Well the battle went to a stalemate but I had learned a lot about rap from this guy. He explained to me that TI thought he was the baddest and so he create a alter-ego AKA TIP just to battle him, cause he was that good. Well after we graduated he came to the conclusion that it wasn't TI or Lil' Wayne but the one and only Marshall Mathers AKA Slim Shady AKA Eminem. He said the reason for him being the best is because when TI and Eminem went to the studio to record TI had to go back and write another verse because Shady had went and blown him out. I agreed with the statement that Eminem was if not still the best, because no one will ever dare to battle him. He is feared by mostly everyone in the rap industry, with his no holds bared lyrics not many can hang with this white kid from Detroit. If you want a glimpse of any of his fatal lyrics just look up Eminem on a browser and there it will be. If you want a good "dis" track then look for the Hail Mary dis on JaRule. If you don't like Eminem then look up the Insane Clown Posse Slim Shady dis, but if you look that up then you might as well look up the Shady dis on the Posse. Anyway I want to know what you guys think, Who is the best rapper? Dead or Alive it doesn't matter just voice your opinion and let it be known who you think is the best!

Kid Rock: The Jesus of Rock and Roll!

I am not sure if you have heard yet but Kid Rock has come out with his new CD titled "Rock and Roll Jesus". I have listened to it and I am kinda impressed to say the least! The album takes a different route this time around with a much more slower pace and a more southern rock. All in all it sounds more mature and takes a little bit more from the south and combines it with the always popular Detroit rock. It really reminds me of Lynard Skynyrd just a little more rough. The song titled "Rock and Roll Jesus" really puts the impress of that. Now when you go more into the CD the songs get toned down and deep but still has the old time soul to it. The song "Roll On" is a particular favorite of mine, just because it gives that outlook of life and I think he captures it really well. I also have to say I am a favorite of "Lowlife" it is a bonus track, but it has that dirty gritty feel to it and it is just plain country rock! I love it. The CD in a whole has put a whole different style to Kid, it is something I really didn't expect from him at all. I like it but I remember the Sex, Drugs, and Booze Kid not the Southern Junkie. I think it just goes to show that he can really do it all, whether it be Rap, Rock, or Country he can go with the best. Nice stuff! If you are looking for a taste go to MTV.com and you can search Kid Rock and it should appear.