Q. “How many lead guitarists does it take to screw in a light-bulb?”
A. “One, he just holds the bulb in the socket and stands still while the whole world revolves around him”
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That’s pretty funny. It’s broad brush and a bit unfair of course, but funny. 
That’s an old joke, but there’s quite a bit of truth to it.
That said, you can tell a player’s talent level by how they describe their own ability. If they state they’re great, they probably suck. If they say they suck, they’re probably pretty good. Goes back to the saying "if you think you know everything already, how are you going to learn anything?
Not my favorite album by them, but still a good record. This ones a little too poppy for my taste.
There are good artists out there; they just get only a fraction of the attention that the more crappy artists have. I personally have found Christina Perri to be a pretty good musician, along with Imagine Dragons, Woodkid, The Fat Rat, Wolf Larsen, Ellie Goulding, Adelle, Laura Brehm, and some others. (okay, let me fix that: Adelle, Ellie Goulding, and imagine Dragons get a good amount of fame, but the rest are flying under the radar). I can only remember two songs of Christina Perri’s getting on the local pop music station.
What I’ve noticed is, the majority of popular artists sing about the same things over and over again, and those things are usually “simple stuff.” They can’t seem to find meaningful topics to base their songs from. It’s all about breakups, drugs, sex, alcohol. Rarely are they about the complexities in life, or about expressing the artists’ genuine emotions. And thus, it becomes repetitive. No one puts effort into their music or artwork, or to explore or express. And it saddens me.
I typically like oldies (especially those from the 60’s), some pop, classical, techno, dubstep, chillstep, bluegrass, and folk.
A lot of what I listen to is instrumental music, because then I can paint my own picture and fantasize what the song may be alluding to, which I like.
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I enjoy alt rock…specifically The Killers
At what venue will you be seeing Within Temptation? They’re playing near where I used to live, but nowhere close now.
I last saw Ghost in Austin in November. They played at the University of Texas concert hall. Sound was spot on. It was just them, no opening act. Played two sets for a total of three hours. Well worth the drive.
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The Complex in Salt Lake City. Never been to a concert there before but from what I’ve seen online its basically a big open room with a stage.
Watched a live stream of one of their concerts a week or two ago so it should be pretty good. A mix of stuff of their new album with a bunch of older hits (European hits that is).
Was pretty shocked to see Sharon able to pull off a live version of the outro to Raise Your Banner. I’ve read that as she gets older (she’s 44 now) its getting harder for her to hit the high notes, which is why she doesn’t do it as often as on the early albums, yet she manages to do it here for a couple of verses. Part I’m talking about starts at the 4:45 mark of this song:
Always liked this song. Its what got me into the TV show Prison Break. Had never watched the show but I liked this song first time I heard. Only video I could find online at the time was the one below which is clips from Prison Break set to the song. Got me interested in the show.
They’re playing in Baltimore @ Rams Head, where I’ve seen several shows (In This Moment, Hell Yeah, etc) but moved about six months ago. No shows in south Texas, sadly. Looks like a nice venue.
They used to make a holiday song every year…here is one of my favorites
Joel the Lump of Coal
For those interested in new rock music your not going to hear on local radio, try out a radio show called passport approved at passportapproved.com. They do a weekly show with 2 hrs of new rock music, most would fit in the alt rock category, from mostly unsigned and starting out bands. I’ve discovered so many new bands and songs I love on this show and I’ve been listening every week for a couple of years. Bands and songs I’d never have heard of otherwise. Case in point, two of my favorite songs of the last few years I heard on this show and nowhere else:
Bright Light Switch - Darling. I know nothing else about this band but I love this song.
Then this song by Wolf Alice. This is a group I really like and I’ve bought two albums by them after hearing their song Don’t Delete the Kisses on Passport Approved. Their music is all over map genre wise but mostly alt rock though what decade of alt rock varies as some is very grungish while others is more modern day. This song is a bit odd as it takes about a minute and a half to actually get to the verses so don’t judge til you have the whole thing in mind.
One more from Passport Approved. Lunatic by Slow Readers Club. Another foreign group, like both above, that have made little to no headway stateside but are putting out great music.
And one more song from a group called Slowdive. Not from Passport but a group I got into in a long round about way via the show from liking one group and following recommends to this group eventually. They actually existed back in the 90’s and were part of the British shoegaze sound which basically means heavily distorted guitars and barely discernible vocals (similar groups of the era are My Bloody Valentine, Catherine Wheel, and Lush.) They put out two albums and then broke up for over 20 years to raise families. They got back together a few years ago and put out a new album last year. Its easily my favorite album this century. Shoegaze is a hit or miss genre as I find it soothing but it makes my wifes nerves stand on end. This song isn’t the best representation of it as the vocals are fairly clean and guitar distortion is fairly minimal but the song is awesome IMO.
I won’t link many more songs for now but as I’ve said, there is TONS of great music being made nowadays that is equally as good as yesteryear if not better. You just have to search for it and with the internet that is so easy. Go to shows like Passport Approved which I linked above. Or go to Iheartradio where you can pick a band you like and it will then create a radio station for you of similar sounding music. I created a station based off Slowdive and discovered a group called Trespasser’s William from it. The song below is a remake of a 90’s song called Vapour Trail by Ride and is incredibly beautiful though it always makes me sad because the first day I heard it is also the day one of my cats was not long after hit by a car and died so I can’t help but link the two in my head now.
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One last song tonight. Can’t really remember how I first heard of St Vincent but I initially didn’t really like her music that well. Since then I’ve heard more music and like some of her songs. I saw her live earlier this year when she opened for Florence and the Machine. People were talking about earlier girls on guitars. She likes to really shred when playing live, it was actually really cool to see a female singer going to town on the lead guitar instead of dancing to lip sync videos. This video isn’t a great rep of her guitar shredding, as the guitar isn’t prominent in it, but its one of her singles in case there is a chance anyone heard it.
@altair1013 sure it has no lead guitar and it isn’t top 40 rock, but tell me this sucks. Like @TriggerWarning advises, dig a little and you can find some gems.
