Re: the rock

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

>on the whodirect.com site, there is a cd called the rock by john...what is 
>this?? a solo album???

It's not quite John solo--it's his work with a band--but he did finance the 
cd, so he works hard at selling it.  Nobody seems to like it as much as his 
other solo albums, as he doesn't sing, and you're left trying to pick out 
the bass.  But Zak Starkey plays drums, and also you get to hear some great 
trumpet playing by John on the song "Suzie."


>and the recent release music from vanpires..what is that exactly?

Here's a repost of what I thought when I got Vanpires:

>This soundtrack has fantasy elements.  That's no surprise, as the
show offered some opportunities.  I'm a little vague on details now,
but I think it went this way:  Powerful creatures who resemble
automobiles land on the earth and need fossil fuels to eat.  The earth
is in danger of being sucked dry of these and needs to be defended by
a group of teens who have accidently gained super powers.  There's an
environmental subtext, but not much more in the way of depth.
However, the soundtrack casts the whole thing in terms of good and
evil--gas guzzling space monsters - bad, defending superkids - good
(we assume, anyhow).

So I got to thinking about the way John writes, and generally his
lyrics are either quirky or else fairly straight-forward and strongly
based on events and/or concrete symbols.  For VANPIRES he uses a teddy
bear, a monster that's really a peacock, eating your greens, shifting
into high gear on the road and so on.  "Heaven and Hell" is a song where 
you'd expect he would talk about good and evil, but really he doesn't.  You 
just get the usual angel wings and pitchforks--cute in such a ferocious 
song, but still very flat images.  My conclusion is, this soundtrack isn't 
something that John would normally write by
himself.  He's too based in reality.

So that leaves everybody else who might have contributed.  I'm sure
they all did, but there is a pure example of Luongo's writing in the
song, "When You See the Light," and I notice he's into visual images
that have psychic resonance.  For that reason, I'm attributing most of
the the depth in the concept to him.

The first song with actual lyrics is "Darker Side of Night" which I
had picked up as excellent even from watching the show.  John's
written that one by himself, and it suggests the theme.  The wonderful
centerpiece of the whole thing is the song "Good and Evil," a
conversation between the forces of darkness and light.  It sounds like
John doing his Boris voice on the darkness part, and real children's
voices on the light.  Whooo.

Besides these things, John gives some idea about what it's like to be
middle-aged and unemployed, and the conclusion to the whole thing is
that you should "sieze the day, sieze the night, face the fear."

Besides the clear message, the music is excellent, bass heavy, dark,
and very suitable to the theme.





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