Available Now! VSQ Performs The Beatles Vol. 2

Available now at iTunes

A Day in John’s Life

December 1980 must’ve felt especially cold with the death of John Lennon fresh in the news. But every year around this time, Lennon is brought back to life with new articles about his life – as well as “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” on repeat at shopping malls across America.

With the Beatles’ music being so big, it is the small, humanizing tidbits on their daily lives that keep fans interested in figuring out who these British boys in tight trousers really were. A lot of clues led fans to conclude that these celebrities were in fact just like us.

In a Rolling Stone interview three days before his death, John spoke about the importance of being human over being a rock star: “Real success is…the success of my personality, the success of my relation with [Yoko] and the child, my relationship with the world…and to be happy when I wake up. It has nothing to do with rock machinery or not rock machinery.”

Yet it is John’s rock star image that makes his personal life intriguing – so intriguing that someone paid $16,696 for his 1980 handwritten to-do list on Gotta Have Rock And Roll. From the famous scrawl, it looks like a day in John’s life wasn’t that different from ours (except for the fact that it was written for a personal assistant to do): Filling up the gas tank, returning that book, fixing that hook on the bathroom door, asking Steve for some herbs (“for the cat”) and waiting for the HBO guy.

Up-and-coming rock stars (and their interns): Start saving those shopping lists. You never know when a rich fan will want to feel closer to their idol and dish out a college-tuition’s worth to frame your daily scribbles over the dinner table. For those of us with smaller paychecks, there is still the best part of Beatles – their music. Check out the Vitamin String Quartet’s second take on some number one hits.

Vitamin String Quartet Performs The Beatles Vol. 2

Available at iTunes

Songwriters in Their Own “Write”

Some lyrics are like poetry. But when songwriters tire of writing songs, they often turn to genuine poetry, novels, plays and other more concrete forms of literature to express what they cannot with a backing band. Stripping away all the fabric of music, audiences are left with simple yet intimate black and white musings on life, death and everything in between. From erotica to children’s books, here are some singers who have put down the mic and picked up the pen.

John Lennon

Lennon was indeed a “Paperback Writer.” He wrote a collection of poems and short stories called In His Own Write. The book is illustrated with Lennon’s original art from the height of Beatlemania in 1964 and contains clever puns and turns of phrases filled with sarcasm and wit expected from the British Beatle, including an “About the Awful” section in place of “About the Author.”

Jim Morrison

The Lizard King’s extreme, erotic and enigmatic persona oozes out of his poetry and prose just as it does in his lyrics. His writings offer a brighter spotlight and deeper exploration of themes merely grazed in The Doors’ popular songs: sex, drugs, fame and the beautiful tragedies that come with them. While the books are more surrealist than Shakespeare, The Lords and the New Creatures, The American Night and Wilderness still explore society’s dark side with sensual yet seething images and ideas. While they might not make very much sense at first, Morrison explains in Wilderness that they don’t need to: “Listen, real poetry doesn’t say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you.”

Billy Corgan

The lead singer and lyricist of Smashing Pumpkins puts the same bold, frantic passion of his songs into his poetry in Blinking with Fists. No stranger to spoken-word performances, Corgan’s intense yet sincere energy comes through in poems like “The Sun of Flowers”: “The way/ You look/ At me/ Makes me/ Lonely/ Grinding tears/ Behind a mask/ Made of/ Abalone.” The absence of music invites the reader to concentrate on the words themselves, bringing the meaning and message of them to the forefront of his work.

Colin Meloy

The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy has joined the list of musicians who have written children’s books (including Jimmy Buffett, Paul McCartney and Madonna, with the latter publishing a coffee table book called Sex). Illustrated by his wife (and Decemberists album artist) Carson Ellis Meloy, Wildwood was released last summer. The same darkly dangerous yet excitingly adventurous spirit in many of Meloy’s songs is reshaped into a child-sized story about a girl who must rescue her brother from a murder of magical crows in the “Impassable Wilderness,” an enchanted park in Portland. Laika Films, the Portland animation studio that produced “Coraline,” will transform the book into a stop-motion feature.

Be sure to check out:

String Quartet Tribute to John Lennon

Available at iTunes and Amazon

String Quartet Tribute to The Doors

Available at iTunes and Amazon

String Quartet Tribute to The Smashing Pumpkins

Available at iTunes and Amazon

Vitamin String Quartet Performs The Decemberists

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Bands Read Books, Too

Music and literature are just two different ways of telling stories. So it makes sense that many musicians have translated books into song, from Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” which retells Abraham’s moral dilemma over killing his son in Genesis, to Death Cab for Cutie’s “Meet Me on the Equinox,” which recounts Bella’s lip-biting dilemma over dating a vampire in Twilight: New Moon.

While most people have heard of the Bible before Bob Dylan, music like The Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” (based on the 1870 novella by Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch) popularizes otherwise obscure book titles. So when musicians reuse phrases like “Venus in Furs,” the line of influences is strung along and preserved in a new medium.

This recycling of material shouldn’t be seen as lack of creativity but rather creative reinvention. After all, Ernest Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, which inspired Metallica’s song of the same name, was based on the 1623 John Donne poem, yet it still exists as separate, valid piece of art. And J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy that is referenced in Led Zeppelin songs like “Misty Mountain Hop,” “Ramble On” and “The Battle of Evermore” is inspired by Norse mythology, containing an ancient mystique echoed through Led Zeppelin’s mandolin and other early instrumentation.

Many songs are as inspired by contemporary life as they are from past literature, as reality and fiction often mirror each other. Thom Yorke explained that Radiohead’s “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” is based on Alice’s dread of opening unknown doors in Alice in Wonderland, reflecting his own feelings at the time. Similarly, Brandon Boyd wrote Incubus’ “Talk Show on Mute” after watching muted talk shows on a plane and wondering whether TVs watched us while we watched them: a “Big Brother Is Watching You” nightmare fitting of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel about complete government control.

The strange yet frighteningly familiar concepts that early 20th century science fiction writers imagined have been reasserted by modern bands in music that is similarly strange yet familiar. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four inspired Radiohead’s “2+2=5,” Muse’s “Resistance” album and David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” record (including “Rebel Rebel”), amongst others. The theme of artificially induced happiness through the perfect pleasure drug in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is the topic of The Strokes’ “Soma:” “Soma is what they would take when / Hard times opened their eyes.”

Bands today also cover modern books, like The Decemberists’ “Song for Myla Goldberg” about the author of 2000’s Bee Season and “Calamity Song” with accompanying video (directed by Michael Schur of Parks and Recreation, The Office and Saturday Night Live fame) influenced by David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

Authors and songwriters share a talent for artistic narration, so it’s only fitting that they should borrow from each other. The Vitamin String Quartet has transposed the music of some of these literate bands a step further into complete musical emersion, narrating the lyrics through notes while keeping the sensations intact.
The String Quartet Tribute to Bob Dylan.

Be sure to check out:
Vitamin String Quartet Tribute to Twilight: New Moon (2009)

Available at iTunes and Amazon

String Quartet Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico

Available at iTunes and Amazon

Say Your Prayers, Little One: The String Quartet Tribute to Metallica

Available at iTunes and Amazon

Baroque Tribute to Led Zeppelin

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Strung Out on OK Computer: The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead

Available at iTunes and Amazon

New Skin: The String Quartet Tribute to Incubus Vol. 2

Available at iTunes and Amazon

String Quartet Tribute to Muse

Available at iTunes and Amazon

String Quartet Tribute to David Bowie

Available at iTunes and Amazon

String Quartet Tribute to The Strokes

Available at iTunes and Amazon

Vitamin String Quartet Performs The Decemberists

Available at iTunes and Amazon

Farewell to Harry Potter

On July 15, 2011, a childhood journey ended. For many who grew up with the books and the films, and many more who lived a second childhood through them, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” marked the end of a literary and cinematic adventure that they hoped would continue forever – and does through the release of related books and media, like pottermore.com and the new Vitamin Strings Quartet tribute album. More than just enchanting entertainment, these movies provided some solid life lessons to audiences young and old:

1. The world is not in black and white. Good guys turn bad. Bad guys turn out to be good. Intentions and actions aren’t always the same (just ask Snape about Dumbledore), so be careful to see the shades of grey in every situation.

2. Don’t give up hope. Even the biggest problems are only challenges to be met with courage and determination. From fighting dragons and mermaids to inanimate objects that were actually parts of the most evil, pale and nose-less villain, Harry’s fear soon turned to valor in times of need. Likewise, never assume a six-year-old isn’t capable of finishing a 600 page book – especially if it involves Butterbeer and Bertie Bott’s Jelly Beans.

3. Quidditch rules. While rather irrelevant to real life, the game gives readers’ imaginations and random memory retention just the kick they need.

4. Team up. Throughout the series, characters have gone off to try and fight the battle alone. But in the end, the biggest victories came with good old team work – from Harry and Ron putting aside their squabbles with Hermione to fight the troll in Hogwarts their first year to all of their friends and family coming together to defend Hogwarts in the final battle with Voldemort’s army in the final book.

5. Love conquers all. This one might be a bit cheesy, but it’s true. It was Harry’s parents’ love that saved him from Voldemort and it was Harry’s love for his family and friends that kept him going when faced with hate and large snakes.

6. Don’t fear death. Since Harry was born, he had to deal with the death of his parents, his uncle, his mentors and his friends. But coping with these losses made him a stronger individual, as the memories of these people kept him fighting for them when things got tough. Similarly, while the movies are over, fans can continue to experience Harry Potter not only in online communities, but also within their own lives as they face related, non-magic challenges.

Be sure to check out:

Vitamin String Quartet’s Tribute to Harry Potter

Available at iTunes and Amazon

Songs for the End of the World

You guys, we did it! We made it to the year 2012, and you know what that means, right? The factual, commonly accepted end of all things. As we’ve all known for a while now, the world is not long for this world, and our last year as human civilization is going to be an exciting one. But when the Earth’s magnetic poles reverse causing widespread spontaneous volcanism, what do you want to be playing on your stereo? Below are my suggestions.

1. R.E.M. - It´s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Let’s just get this out of the way.

2. Daniel Powter – Bad Day
Just imagine it. You’re standing outside, looking up at the night sky and all radio and television signals have cut off into static as they’ve just given their final newscast. You can see the meteor approaching as a bright light in the sky. Suddenly, the song’s piano intro kicks in from inside the house, and just before the atmosphere sets on fire… “’Cause you had a bad day!”

3. Sarah McLachlan – I Will Remember You
A sentimental song about past loves, this will fit just as easily when reminiscing about all life on earth. When she sings, “Don’t let your life pass you by, weep not for the memories,” you’ll be able to enjoy its brand new unintended perspective.

4. Jackson Five – ABC
Okay, things are getting a little dour. Why not take a moment to lighten up the mood a little? The sweet, unfiltered joy of little Michael Jackson just might take your mind away off the dread. You may be waiting out the solar flares in your underground bunker, and in the event that you get to rise out of the ruins into the post-apocalyptic landscape, you’ll be ready to party.

Related: String Quartet Tribute To R.E.M., Strung Out Volume 6: The String Quartet Tribute to Music´s Biggest Hits, VSQ Performs the Hits of Michael Jackson

One-Man Bands

I recently read a quote (from the early 1900s) in which the speaker theorized that the rapid growth of technology would lead to a world in which people would only have to work two or three hours a day.  While it is safe to say that prediction should be filed away in the “wishful thinking” folder (alongside teleportation, flying cars and hoverboards), it did get me thinking about the positive ways technology has impacted our lives.  For a music fan, such as myself, the innovations in music technology over the last twenty years have been nothing short of amazing.  Not only is music more readily available, the ability to create and record music is only one cheap laptop away.  As a result, there has been an explosion of “bedroom” artists (musicians that write, record and produce music in their own bedrooms) that have taken the music scene by storm.  Many of these “one-man bands” are responsible for some from the best albums of the last few years.  Below are a few of my favorite “one-man bands” and what you can expect if you decide to check them out.

1. Bon Iver – Justin Vernon, the man behind the name Bon Iver, is probably the most well-known and critically praised one-man band. While Vernon’s most recent release (the Grammy nominated, self titled album Bon Iver) is a more fleshed out, full band affair, Vernon first came to national attention with the release of his debut album For Emma, Forever Ago.  Recorded alone in a cabin in Wisconsin, Vernon crafted a modern indie folk masterpiece of lost love and regret that is not to be missed.
2. M83 – While most “one-man bands” tend to be more laid back affairs, French producer/songwriter Anthony Gonzalez proves that arena-filling, fist pumping anthems aren’t solely the purview of super bands like U2 and Coldplay.  Gonzalez’ songs pulse and pound with an unbridled energy that leaps through the speakers.  His most recent release, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, is a double album masterpiece that will likely end up on a number of year end lists.
3. Washed Out – On the other end of the spectrum from M83, Ernest Greene (aka Washed Out) is known as one of the originators of the chillwave genre.  Greene’s music is an echoing, reverb-filled nostalgia trip.  Full of a wistful sense of longing, Greene’s music is propelled by electronic beats and loops that pair perfectly with the beautiful, wispy melodies that have become his hallmark.  Washed Out’s debut album Within and Without is the perfect album for a rainy, Sunday morning.
4. Neon Indian – Another artist who is associated with the creation of the chillwave genre, Alan Palomo (aka Neon Indian) takes the same tools used by Washed Out, electronic loops paired with lo-fi vocals, to create a slightly brighter, more up-beat sound.  Palomo’s most recent release, Era Extrana, showcases an artist at his creative peak as he weaves a variety of electronic glitches and bleeping synths in and out of melodies so catchy they will be stuck in your head for days.
5. Youth Lagoon – A newcomer to the scene, 22-year-old Trevor Powers (aka Youth Lagoon) takes the same tropes that tend to define indie bedroom artists (distant vocals, percussive loops, reverb) and uses them to create intimate songs that slowly swell into space-filling, sing-a-longs.  Powers shows a real knack for arranging songs in such a way that even the most jaded of listeners will find themselves getting caught up in the emotional crescendos.  Youth Lagoon’s recently released album, The Year of Hibernation, is an amazingly strong debut that should not be missed by fans of any of the other artists listed above.

Be sure to check out:
Vitamin String Quartet Performs Bon Iver

Available at iTunes

Out Now! Vitamin String Quartet Performs Modern Rock Hits 2011 Vol. 2

Available now! Vitamin String Quartet Performs Modern Rock Hits 2011 Vol. 2. Including masterfully crafted string renditions of The Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy”, Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” and Florence and the Machine’s “Shake It Out” and more.

Get it now at iTunes.

We Hardly Knew Them

I hate to see a good band go. It sucks when they’re big players, like the end of R.E.M. or Rilo Kiley, but it’s even worse when a band break ups on the cusp of breaking out. At best, we get an album, maybe a few EPs, to remind us of the potential and nothing more. These are the bands that will come up when I set my iTunes to shuffle and think, “They really could have had something.”

Big enough to be missed, but too small to warrant a reunion. These are the bands that split before their time.

Harlem Shakes could have been huge. I say this because whenever I play  “Strictly Game” or “Sunlight,” for someone two songs from their only album, the listener wants more almost without fail. It was high energy, emotive substance with lyrics and melodies that begged you to sing along. That’s because they aimed to stuff their songs with wall-to-wall hooks, which isn’t everybody’s idea of perfect music, but it was massively accessible and fun. They toured big on the album, selling out venues, but all that goodness was for naught as they eventually mysteriously broke up. The lack of reported reason usually steers towards internal friction.

The Sound Team song that made waves in music fans was “Movie Monster,” the title track of their album, which sounds a bit like a darker, more textured and downtempo Interpol. A distorted bass synth fills the foreground, overpowering even the vocals, which is a uniqueness that sticks with you. But it’s not representative of their sound as a whole, and if we’re reading into the creative differences that contributed to their break up, maybe the different directions of their album was a sign of their tension. Still, they broke up in an interesting fashion: A couple of guys dropped out to pursue their education, they had a big tussle with their label over pricing, and then released all their songs for free and digitally soon after calling it quits.

Finally, when I think of victims of the music blogosphere, I think of Voxtrot. They had a string of highly buzzed about EPs full of great lyrics laid on top of a traditional guitar-driven sound that was completely satisfying. They got what any indie band wants before the release of their first album – a strong fanbase, blogger hype and comparisons to The Smiths. But when their first full-length arrived, it was as if they suffered from early-onset sophomore slump. They pushed forward on their sound and aimed for an evolution that may not have yet been in their grasp. It’s always tough to be raised up and then unceremoniously dropped. There were hopes of retooling, maybe a more back to basics approach, but the story is the same here as on all the others. Voxtrot lives on in a single self-titled album, a handful of EPs, and the lead singer’s solo project.

Available Now! Vitamin String Quartet Perfroms Bon Iver

Bon Iver’s intimate and beautifully haunting songs have made Justin Vernon a standout among new indie rockers, and Vitamin String Quartet Performs Bon Iver is a nod to both his intricate albums. Ballads such as “Skinny Love” and “Beth/Rest” in rich string arrangements are bound to make Bon Iver fans swoon.

Available now at iTunes