After an off-week last week (especially because I figured no one knew who Trapt is), I'm ready to give this another go. Last night, I heard a couple good singles from the last two weeks, too, Eric Church's "Stick That In Your Country Song," a commentary about how commercialized music can get and how it tends to turn the misery of the masses into profit for people who often aren't voting for the right party to cause the necessary change. It's the boldest Country Song not by Billy Ray Cyrus I've heard in a while, ranking up there with BRC's 1994 song "Enough is Enough," which I've played quite a bit in the last month and a half.
David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame also released a nice single that reminds me of his days with the band and it's always nice to hear classic rockers still contribute to today's music.
Here are some releases I've had my eye on for this week:
Cristina Vee-Songs I Sing (When I'm Alone In My Car): A cover album of Broadway songs and a few movie songs, such as "Show Yourself" from Frozen II. It was actually released last night, so I'm listening to it right now on Spotify and Cristina Vee has a good voice. Her big experience has been a Voice Actress, she dubbed the female lead in the first two films of the Godzilla anime trilogy (I actually didn't like those films, the first was so boring and full of anime clichés I almost shut it off before it was over and after reading the second didn't improve things, I decided not to even give the next two a chance) but she also was the dub voice of Sailor Mars in the DVD re-releases of the Sailor Moon series. This also featured Stephanie Sheh (Hinata from Naruto and Tharja from Fire Emblem; Awakening) as Sailor Moon, which I felt was good casting (however, I've just watched it subtitled because that's how I found the show on YouTube in 2005-2006).
Enuff Z'nuff-Brainwashed Generation: I've seen this hair metal band reminiscent of Cheap Trick twice in my life, and they had two hits the year I was born, "Fly High Michelle" and "The New Thing." The first time I saw them, the mixing wasn't good enough to identify the music, but they did announce it was the guitarist's 60th birthday (6/12/2015, for reference sake), between shows, he had been replaced by two other guitarists. The second time, in February 2017, Chip Z'nuff (bassist and now lead singer) declared Seattle "home of the greatest coffee and marijuana in North America" and the band played those two songs, plus a cover of "The Jean Genie" in memory of David Bowie, who died the previous year. Chip also got back on stage during Ace Frehley's encore to contribute backing vocals to "Detroit Rock City," which was nice to see.
Billy Preston-The Classic Collection: A compilation of songs by the African-American keyboardist who collaborated with The Beatles and John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in their solo careers. Included is a cover of "Eight Days A Week," and there are a few other covers, like "My Girl," "Slippin' and Slidin'" and "Stop in the Name of Love." I covered Billy Preston in a mini-bio during my Pride Month celebration last month, he's in the second post, if you need more details about his life, but I suppose I can just say, he has one of the happiest smiles I've ever seen.
The HU-The Gereg (Deluxe Edition): The HU is a Mongolian Heavy Metal-type band that performs using what look like traditional Mongolian Folk Instruments. Their guttural voices, heavy percussion and well-placed instrumentation make them a heck of a live act, I should know, they opened for BabyMetal last October. Around this time, they started teasing collaborations with American Heavy Metal artists, with singers like Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach singing English translations of their lyrics. In Late Winter/Early Spring or so, they released one with Lzzy Hale of Halestorm, which revealed these were add-ons for a Deluxe Edition of their debut album. I highly recommend "Shoog Shoog," "Yuve Yuve Yu" and "The Great Chinggis Khan" from the basic version of the album.
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