Life Journal and 8/12/2022 Music Releases

                Last week was surprisingly sparse on Spotify in terms of new releases, with the Alter Bridge live album not being released there and there not being many other new releases beyond what I discussed last week.  There were so few I breezed through them in less than an hour, but some did stand out.  The Dead Daisies released a new single, their album “Radiance” is due out September 30^th and the combination of Glenn Hughes, Doug Aldrich, David Lowy and Brian Tichy is working well for them.  The Brothers Osborne cover ended up being the Willie Dixon blues classic “You Can’t Judge a Book Looking at the Cover,” which I’ve previously heard from Peter Frampton.  Both versions are good and now I want to dig out the original.  Roger Adams had a nice little country song that I felt would be appropriate for Dad and his wife called “My Old Hat,” and Slash delivered his amazing guitar work on Road Recovery and Type II’s “Crimson Chaos.”  Pat Travers did a heartfelt tribute to Ronnie Montrose and Olivia O’Brien and FLETCHER released a sexy “bedroom mood” single.

 

               I feel it is important to mention that we lost a great singer this week.  I didn’t know much of her discography, but Olivia Newton-John always stood out to me for her humanitarian work and her song in “Grease,” “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”  She also did a cover of The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road” and one of Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain,” as well as collaborating with fellow Aussie Barry Gibb for a new version of “Rest Your Love On Me” on an album that also featured Dolly Parton and Brandi Carlile, released early 2021.  Rest In Peace.

 

               I also beat Demon Slayer’s story mode this week and have unlocked most of the characters for vs. mode, now hoping to get an alternate Nezuko through DLC in September.  I have also found that my three favorite anime women (at least in video games based on the anime I’ve played) are Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, Temari from Naruto and Nezuko from Demon Slayer, which makes sense since Temari and Nezuko are played by the women who voice Edelgard and Annette in Fire Emblem; Three Houses, and those are my favorites in that game, to the point I bought autographed prints from the actresses of those characters through Streamily.  They are sitting with my favorite scorecards and my baseball autographed by Dan Wilson my brother gave me when I was in the hospital.  I am also interested in Splatoon 3, mostly in the story mode and seeing Callie and Marie again, and I like Shiver the most of the new hosts.  I hope I read the silhouette right and Pearl and Marina are coming in DLC later, my favorite previous hosts are Callie and Marina.

 

               This week, we’ve got quite a few releases.  Generation Radio is releasing their first studio album, hopefully they can live up to their singles, and The Yardbirds are releasing a compilation album, though there’s no indication that will have a digital release.  An expanded George Michael album is also getting released, and the project Restless Spirits is releasing an album, some tracks featuring woman singer Chez Kane.  The single they released with her was good, I’m hoping the rest will be, too.  Alicia Keys is releasing a deluxe version of her Keys album and there’s a compilation called “Synthesizer Classics” that will feature Derek Shirinian and Rick Wakeman.  All in all, a hopefully exciting week.

Journal 8/5/2022 for Music

                Well, it’s Thursday once again and the start of August.  I beat Fire Emblem Warriors; Three Hopes on the first, so I can sum up my thoughts.  It wasn’t as good an experience as Three Houses, to be honest, but it did have more than a few good parts.  It was incredibly satisfying to play as Edelgard in a Dynasty Warriors-styled game, and Tara Platt was, as usual, at the top of her game bringing the Adrestian Empress to life.  Faye Mata returned as Petra, and seemed more aggressive than she was in Three Houses, while Hubert, played once again by Robbie Daymond, seemed to be more relatable than in the first game, making it clear he was trying to avoid disaster and even saying things like “We’d best get all our waterfowl in a row.”  This was also Billy Kametz’s swan song, him dying a couple of weeks before release and his character, Ferdinand, getting quite a meaty role.  Monica was brought in for Three Hopes, Colleen O’Shaughnessey reprising her role from Three Houses, this time we learn Monica is not just a disguise for Kronya, but the daughter of a Baron with an open, lesbian crush on Edelgard.  Platt and O’Shaughnessey have worked together before, playing the blonde lady ninjas Temari and Ino, respectively, in Naruto.  The game almost automatically gives you several characters as recruits at the end of multiple chapters, notably the entire Ashen Wolves house, all the Golden Deer save Claude and Hilda (and if you kill Jeralt as I did, Leonie), Ashe and Mercedes from the Blue Lions and Shamir from the Knights of Seiros.  My favorite recruit was Marianne from the Golden Deer, a quiet, kind mage who can speak with animals and has full support ranks with both the protagonist and Bernadetta in this game, played by Xantha Huynh.  She was a kind sweetheart (I think her actress probably is, too) and you really wanted everything to go well for her.  My second-favorite was Mercedes, she was also a sweetheart with a motherly quality (baking sweets and healing wounds) who had support ranks with Lysithea and the protagonist.  I believe her actress’ name is Melissa Fahn, I haven’t contacted her on Twitter, nor do I know if she’s even on it.  Dawn M. Bennett did well as the woman version of the protagonist, who I named Yuri after Yuri Lowenthal in the event I married Edelgard again.  However, Edelgard and Monica were too cute a couple, so the protagonist gave her special item to Petra (it also fits the protagonist’s nature better, she prefers fighting to politics and legislation and she’d find the former with Petra and the latter with Edelgard).  However, there was only a letter from Petra as a “pairing epilogue” in this game, as opposed to the whole team as it was in Three Houses.  The game’s narration also gave this route a downer ending, and I suspect it would do the same for the others considering we witnessed the deaths of the most miserable people in Edelgard’s life and a choice out of our control meant the war would resume perpetually every few years, apparently.  Aside from that, the only major complaints are you could spare (but not recruit) Annette, keep Jeralt alive and possibly recruit Byleth, and I didn’t know how to do any of these and the protagonist talked about being a mercenary about as much as Torres on NCIS talked about being undercover, as in, it became one of their only major character/personality traits.  Also, these didn’t really detract from the game’s overall experience, the thing that did the most was that the ending was lackluster compared to the emotional release getting there by the sudden downer statement.  One last thing of note is Caspar’s father was played by Richard Epcar, who you may know as several Power Rangers monsters, Etemon and Myotismon from Digimon and the title character of Bobobo-bo-bobobo, a robot who uses the technique “fist of the nose hair!”  I was a little giddy when I saw his name in the credits.

 

               Last week’s favorite music releases were mostly debut singles for future albums.  There was “Crazy Times” by Sammy Hagar and The Circle, for an album of the same name due out September 30^th.  The band is Sammy Hagar (my 5^th favorite singer), guitarist Vic Johnson (my 10^th favorite guitarist), bassist Michael Anthony (2^nd favorite bassist) and drummer Jason Bonham (4^th favorite drummer, son of John Bonham, 2^nd favorite drummer).  Ringo Starr (Most favorite drummer) released a single for an EP scheduled for September 16^th, as did Smith/Kotzen, their EP a live EP scheduled for the same day.  Their bassist, Julia Lage, is my 10^th favorite due to her enthusiasm playing, check out a YouTube video of them performing Iron Maiden’s “Wasted Years” to see her jumping and rocking from side-to-side.  Last in Line also released a cover of “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles (Last in Line’s drummer Vinny Appice is my 9^th favorite), their EP is due out on Veteran’s Day.  Orianthi released her first single from her next album, Rock Candy, due out October 14^th, and Bishop Briggs released a single co-written with K.Flay called “Revolution,” no album announced.

 

               This week has already seen singles from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pat Travers and Alter Bridge, there will also be a new live album from Alter Bridge tonight.  Tesla, the 80s metal band, also has a single coming out, and Brothers Osborne, a country duo of brothers with lead singer a gay man, will take part on a Tribute album to John Anderson.

 

               For my last bit of news, I’ve said “I’m going to quit video games after Three Hopes,” through this Spring and Summer.  The lackluster ending has made me decide that was a foolish idea.  It was honestly created because when I was a kid, I told my brother I was going to collect every Godzilla movie ever.  He replied I couldn’t collect the ones made after I die.  This created a mindset that I needed to establish cutoff dates for entertainment to ensure I’d die satisfied.  With the microSD card almost full, me feeling guilty asking my family to pay $65 for games and there no likely way I’d afford a Switch successor, it seemed like now was the time, I’d just play fighting games and their story modes to unlock characters when I felt like it.  It no longer seems like now is the time to make such a change, but I’m going to take a break from gaming aside from that mentioned above since I’ve played so many games since the pandemic started almost 2 ½ years ago.  I know I want to play Splatoon 3, aside from that, all my brain can think of right now is “a fighting game that has Tara Platt and Abby Trott in its cast,” which may already exist, I may even already have it, I don’t know everyone they’ve played.  But I definitely feel like I need to relax more with games and stop the mentality that they are life-or-death.  After all, they’re games, and as Tom Selleck said in Mr. Baseball 30 years ago, “games are supposed to be fun.”

 

               Lastly, here’s my revised top 10 bassists:

 

1.)    Geezer Butler (NIB (Live 2013)-Black Sabbath)

2.)    Michael Anthony (Mikey Bass Solo (Live 2014)-Sammy Hagar and the Circle)

3.)    Rudy Sarzo (Crazy Train (Live 1981)-Ozzy Osbourne)

4.)    Duff McKagan (Eat Me-Ozzy Osbourne)

5.)    John Paul Jones (The Crunge-Led Zeppelin)

6.)    Jeff Ament (Breath-Pearl Jam)

7.)    Glenn Hughes (The Crow-Black Country Communion)

8.)    Mike Inez (Hollow-Alice in Chains)

9.)    John Deacon (Another One Bites The Dust-Queen)

10.) Julia Lage (Hate and Love (Live 2022)-Smith/Kotzen)