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Jonny Lang has an incredible success story.

  At the tender age of 14, Lang released his first solo record with the band he had joined after starting guitar lessons only months before stepping on stage.  A year later Lang released Lie to Me which became his mega-hit debut solo album.  The album went multi-platinum and Lang became known instantly as a blues guitar legend.  I remember seeing Lang and his signature setup including a 1972 Fender Telecaster Thinline always paired with a classic Fender amp.  You couldn’t open a guitar (or music) magazine that didn’t have a shot of Lang in it.

Nearly a decade later Lang has released a new gospel, yes I said gospel, album: Turn Around.  I was instantly interested in this album.  How has time changed Lang?  What does a Lang gospel album sound like?  Why gospel!?!?

I had to adjust my listening senses for a minute - traditionally I would not be listening to an album with this style.  The choir background vocals, smooth falsettos, rocking organs, all were a bit out of place in my music library.  In fact, the first go around I can sum up my expression: “what!?”  I listened again.  I found that the melodies quickly became stuck in my head.  His bluesy guitar and musky voice (you would mistake this guy for someone many, many years older) is not disappointing.  Tracks such as “The Other Side of the Fence” and “Turn Around” are rocking gospel-blues tracks that define Lang’s progressive style for the record.  I never really appreciated Lang’s perfectly smooth falsetto until this album.  “My Love Remains” and “Only a Man” are darn-near flawless.  They are an envious performance by any artist’s standards; enough so that Lang took a 2007 Grammy for the Rock Gospel Album of the Year (a no-brainer in my opinion, although Red would have been an excellent choice as well).  Lang cites his own personal sprituality as his reason for the gospel album.  His lyrics are pure and heart-felt. 

Lang sings, “The grass always looks greener, on the other side of the fence, but the dog over there might be meaner, on the other side of the fence… Stay in your own yard, play in your own yard.”

Now that I’ve seen Mute Math three times at the same place playing basically the same set of songs, I think it’s time I sit down and write a concert review for the band.  In case you don’t know, Mute Math is the product of the defunct Earthsuit from many years ago.  It’s hard to compare the two, I know, and many die hard fans may even get mad at me for bringing them up.  I think it’s important, however, for several reasons.  First, it should be said that only one member of Earthsuit - they keyboard player and sometimes singer/rapper - is in Mute Math.  Second, Earthsuit’s demise came with problems from their record label, something Mute Math has also had to deal with.

Their music isn’t by any means easily classified.  Many of their songs have drum sequences and electronic interludes that dazzle fans while confusing the heck of of labels.  The first time I saw Mute Math, it wasn’t long after their EP release (Control) came out.  They basically played all of the songs on their self-titled CD.  I was completely blown away along with the small crowd gathered at Ziggy’s in Winston-Salem, NC.  I knew at that moment that they were going to be huge.  A year or so later they returned with an actual CD in hand fresh off the production line.  One problem - their label Warner Bros. didn’t know how to market it.  They were forced to distribute the CD at concerts to the fans that were now beginning to flock their way.  Their stumped label still waited months (I think it is possibly as long as a year) to release their album, meanwhile CD sales at concerts were going through the roof as the band played to sell-out shows.  It is this persistence that Mute Math gained from Earthsuit.  Many bands quit trying when this happens to them; many GOOD bands.  They believed their ideas were worth pursuing without bowing to the industry’s constant nag to be like “everyone else.”

Back to the concert review.

Mute Math still finds ways to change their songs and their sound each time I see them.  They have also benefited from recent stardom by getting an awesome road manager and a dedicated lightshow complete with a travelling engineer.  These factors increased the show’s wow-factor.  They also have stage props and lights that make the show more complete than ever before.  Darren rips up the drums (literally) leaving nothing more that could possibly be desired.  He is one of my heroes.  I spoke with him a few hours before the show at their DVD release party.  Apparently, Sabien wanted to give him a bunch of cymbals, but he only uses hats and a rock ride (not Sabien either - Zildjian).  Don’t let his lack of cymbals fool you.  The man knows how to use what he’s got.  The last time I saw their show he broke right through his one and only cymbal and gushed blood out his right hand.  Ouch!  No, he didn’t miss a beat either.  On second thought, maybe a cymbal sponsor would be good Darren.

I never get tired of going to the Mute Math show.  My heaven has Mute Math playing every night of the week.  I am either on my death bed or six feet under if you don’t see me next time.  If it’s the later - I’ll ask God for permission to leave heaven for a few hours.

www.mutemath.com
www.myspace.com/mutemath

This past week I reconnected with an old floppy disk game Space Quest 1 (VGA edition) by Sierra.  Luckily I have backups of my floppies now, because the disks no longer work.  If you’re holding on to old floppies, you may be  surprised to discover that the data is no longer there!  Anyways, I played the game through in about 3 hours the other night and really enjoyed it.  Space Quest 1 is an old Sierra RPG in which you are a janitor given the job of saving the universe.  The game is a ton of fun and was one of my favorite computer games when I was younger.  What’s funny is this game has to run on DosBOX, an emulator of DOS.  It’s hard to imagine we already need emulators for those games in a Windows environment.

Have you recently reconnected with an old video game? 

CSPAN is one of those channels you hate having in the lineup.  It just gets in the way causing yet another flick of the thumb as you pass it by.  I would never, even on my death bed, recommend watching CSPAN for extended periods of time - that is until I discovered something worth watching.  Last Wednesday I was flipping through the channels waiting for American Idol to come on when I saw an image of British Prime Minister Tony Blair half laughing, half screaming, at an opposing member of the House of Commons.  Being that I’ve never seen such a high authority figure do such a thing, I stopped.  The antagonist stepped back up and assaulted Blair in a causal, joking manner, but with words that would send even good ol’ Hillary into a fit of rage.  Blair took to the microphone laughing slightly and responded with harsh, jovial words with a smile on his face and giggles from a nearby party member.

I must have had a dumbfounded look on my face, because I was seriously confused.  OK, I thought, maybe this is just a joke or something.  The conversation continued.  As more and more members stood and insulted Blair and others, I became aware that this was not a game, nor was it unduly harsh.  It’s just the way they do it.  In fact, I found my gaping mouth began to laugh as Blair would send a zinger one way then catch another.  Fifteen minutes later I realized I was watching CSPAN - AND ENJOYING IT.

I can’t say I’ll be hosting a CSPAN party anytime soon, nor will I set the TiVo to record Prime Minister’s Questions.  I can’t say that you’ll find grumpy old men arguing in English accents amusing either.  Simply put, I was surprised by how entertaining this show turned out to be.  If you ever happen to catch a glimpse of this comic show as you’re flipping from Spike to ESPN, allow your thumb to rest and take in a bit of British politics.

By now you are well aware that daylight savings time (DST) was adjusted by the 2005 energy bill put forth by the US Congress.    If you’re not aware, you may need to check your clocks.  This act mandated a change in the usual DST dates in 2007 in order to “save energy” by utilizing daylight.  This came about from a study that showed DST reduced American consumption of oil by about 100,000 barrels daily.  Congress decided that (in 3 paragraphs worth of explanation) they would help the world become a better place to live by capitalizing on these “savings.”

Let me just say, congressmen and women - DUMB MOVE.

I applaud the thought that doing something this simple could save oil and help the environment.  Yes, indeed, this all looked good on paper.  Apparently, no one remembered that this would also make the morning darker, requiring people to simply replace the amount of time spent with the lights on at night with more lights on in the morning.  Forget the fact that it is estimated this change cost American industry $2 billion to fix nearly every computer system out there.  It seems our friends in congress forgot about our old friend Y2K.

So thank you, thank you for handing a 2 billion dollar expense to our high-tech industry which will in turn be handed down to consumers like me.  Thank you for creating a myriad of headaches among the IT workforce which probably consumed more than 100,000 barrels of fuel per day just keeping the lights/computers on to think about this problem.  Thank you for forcing me read countless emails about how this or that upgrade needs to be done to fix the DST change issue.  Thank you for forcing me to check all of my devices, computers, and calendar appointments for proper rollovers.  Most of all, thank you for giving these two PhD. students in economics something to write a thesis on which proves that all you did was tick a lot of people off:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=2938715