Thursday, June 27, 2013

A Guided Tour of No Code: Who You Are


Who You Are is messy, uncertain, sloppy, playful, but committed, and in that respect is a pretty strong first single for No Code, a record about those first messy, uncertain, sloppy, playful, and committed attempts to not just pose questions but find answers. It is also a song that embraces its flaws and imperfections, and so closes out that early run of songs approaching the same theme from different angles (which I think is probably the most interesting part of the record, if not necessarily my favorite collection of songs).

Musically this is a song that seems to struggle to find itself, has some success, and then loses itself again without every actually slowing down. This used to annoy me when I was looking for Pearl Jam to offer something tighter and more definitive (which I suppose I still am), but this song, more than anything on No Code, has grown on me over the years as I’ve come to place less of an emphasis in my own life on answers and more on the process of finding them and the messy context in which that happens.

Regardless, Who You Are is closer to Sometimes than Hail Hail in that the music echoes the journey of the song rather than standing in contrast to it. We start with the sound of a song mid swing, but all its component parts coming from different places, looking to see where and how they fit in with each other. They finally come together in a vaguely eastern, vaguely spiritual backdrop, but disrupted by the slightly jarring main riff--sort of like someone has some unformed idea of what enlightenment looks like, but is too full of nervous energy to sit still and give it structure. Although it is subtle it is Jeff’s heartbeat bass and the handclaps that form the heart of the music for me, which create the feel of a journey people are taking together even though this, like sometimes, is a song for the self. The multi tracked vocals sound like a proliferation of voices coalescing into one. And during the climax and outro the song disintegrates back into its component parts without ever losing the memory of what it briefly was.

So what about the message behind that music? Who You Are, like Sometimes and Hail Hail, is a song about accepting limitations, but Who You Are is the most inward looking of the three. Sometimes asks you to come to grips with a world you can’t change--your own powerlessness. Hail Hail is about finding meaning in ties that bind us to other people. Who You Are is simply about loving yourself for yourself. There are times the sentiment is a bit awkward. This is not Eddie’s finest lyrical hour, and is one of the more clumsy songs on the record. But it is also important to judge a song by its context, and since Who You Are celebrates our flaws, this hardly needs a Leonard Cohen level of profundity in order to work. It just needs a self-aware sincerity that can laugh at itself. 

I won’t dwell too long on the stuff that doesn’t work. I can’t decide if the hamfisted opening lyrics are intentionally crafted that way or not. But there is some nice stuff in here once you get past that. Most of the lyrics are about travel and movement (take me for a ride, driving winds, off the track in the mud, stop lights, etc) and while I like the distant soaring urgency in the ‘take me for a ride/just a little time before we leave’ lines the most the trampled moss image works best--calling to mind a solitary journey dark quiet places along paths well traveled, which is in part the point. When you are following where others have been it is not a journey you need to take alone, and the song tries to pull the subject out of itself--as if halfway through the journey a guide shows up to take you the rest of the way. The ‘can’t defend fucked up man’ lyric is nothing special, but the idea is important. You can’t defend them, but the point of the song is that you don’t have to. You just have to accept them. 

There is a lightness and humor to this song that I would have liked to see them run with a bit more, as No Code occasionally starts to stumble under its own weight (I think Backspacer will strike a better balance, although many will obviously think it tips too far in the other direction), in particular the ‘that’s the moss in the aforementioned verse’ bit of stage direction narration towards the end of the second verse. I probably hated that 15 years ago when i was still committed to the idea that serious ideas could only be addressed in all caps. 

In the end Who You Are reminds us that we’re making it all up as we go along, but we’re not making it up alone, and if you accept that you may not always know your lines, or execute them well, or that they may not even be appropriate for the story you’re telling--if you understand all that you’ll enjoy the ride a whole lot more.



OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Sometimes
Who You Are
In My Tree
Smile
Off He Goes
Habit
Red Mosquito
Lukin
Present Tense
Mankind
I'm Open
Around the Bend

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 
Ten 
Vs. 
Vitalogy 
No Code 
Yield 
Binaural 
Riot Act 
Pearl Jam 
Backspacer

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Moonlander CD, Vinyl, and Posters Now Available


Happy Moonlander Day!  The Ten Club now has Stone Gossard's Moonlander available for purchase as a CD ($10.99) and LP ($24.99), domestic shipping and handling is $8.01.  At the time of this writing, the digital download has disappeared, but I'm assuming that will return soon.

You can also purchase posters of several of the prints by Stone and his daughter for $50.  Each includes an MP3 download of the album.

If you missed Beyond Measure this weekend on Pandora, you can check it out below.
"I liked the idea of a modern gospel song about the unknowability of divinity. Like punk gospel? The form of a gospel song holds the spiritually so the words could be less traditional." - Stone

Monday, June 24, 2013

McCready: A Score in Hollywood / A Score in Baseball


Two pieces of McCready news dropped by GuerrillaCandy today:

1. He'll be scoring a documentary directed by Mark Evans, chronicling the life of Seattle DJ, Marco Collins, The Glamour and The Squalor, which features interviews from every Seattle artist you've ever heard of.



2. He'll be playing the national anthem at Friday's Mariner's game.  If you buy your ticket here, part of the proceeds of your ticket go to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America and you can get a Mike McCready bobblehead.  I won't steal Travis' thunder.  Go to GuerrillaCandy to see the bobblehead.

Evil Little Goats Episode 3: The Stone Gossard Interview

Stone Gossard performing with Green River in 2008. Photo by Travis Hay
From Travis Hay:
For the third episode of Evil Little Goats we broke out the big guns and had our first guest on the show (sort of). 
Stone Gossard’s sophomore solo album, Moonlander, will be released tomorrow (June 25) and not only has the third episode of Evil Little Goats has been dedicated to Stone in order to mark the occasion, we’ve got an interview with the man himself. 
Regular Guerrilla Candy readers will remember that I interviewed Stone back in April when he was doing promotion to advance the album. And while Evil Little Goats is still very much in its infancy, we decided to go big for episode 3 which is simply titled The Stone Gossard Interview.  
Yes, that’s right, you can hear my interview with Stone during this episode. Not only does he talk about the status of the new Pearl Jam album and whether the band plans to perform a concert in Seattle any time soon, he also talks plenty about Moonlander, his songwriting process and whether he plans to play any solo shows to promote the album. 
Give the episode a listen below. It’s the first, and possibly only, time we’ve (sort of) had a member of Pearl Jam on the podcast. And as always feel free to reach out to us at Evil Little Goats via email or by commenting below. And if you missed the first two episodes of Evil Little Goats you can give them a listen over here.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Moonlander, Track 11: Beyond Measure


A couple of days ahead of Tuesday's official release, Stone tweeted a link for streaming Moonlander via Pandora.  It includes the final track that we've been waiting for, Beyond Measure.  Don't wait for Tuesday, enjoy the whole album right now!

A Guided Tour of No Code: Hail Hail


And so, having created this quiet, peaceful, safe space with Sometimes, they immediately blow it all to hell with the explosive transition into Hail Hail, which actually isn’t that loud of a song when it isn’t following Sometimes.  So why did they do it?  I don’t have a great theory. We had a really good discussion about this a few months ago in some random thread. I wish I took notes. In either case, it is a brash beginning to what is otherwise a very mature song about how successful relationships are built on the mutual surrender of power.  

For  a song that wants to be about feeling it is more cerebral than passionate, more reflective than instinctive.   It is trying to understand, rationalize, and justify love rather than experience it.  And while it quite a penetrating song in terms of its insights, in the end it finds itself recognizing that some things just have to be surrendered to, regardless of whether or not there is a reason. Love is a because without a why. In some ways the song is the inverse of Sometimes. Whereas the former finds the subject rejecting the power of others over them in the pursuit of a meaningful relationship with the self, here we have someone having to accept the power of others over them  in the pursuit of a meaningful relationship with another.  Two songs about well being, two very different paths to get there. 

The main riff, dirty and tenacious, offsets the muted vocals--almost like it needs to remind the singer what is at stake. It has to remind the head of the heart.   That’s why the music sounds frustrated and stubborn--like it’s been at this for a long time and time is running out.    Maybe that’s why the transition is so loud.   Perhaps we needed the slap in the face.

The bridge and outro remind me a bit of Sometimes.  A prayer to the self to find the strength or courage or insight to really see (and accept) what is in front of you before it is too late.  Both songs are about seeing through our illusions, after all, whether they are illusions about our own power, our expectations, or about how independence is found in interdependence.

Eddie plays this one pretty straight.  A few albums prior Sometimes would have been Indifference, and the prayer would have turned into the ‘I will scream my lungs out until I fill this room’ moment.  Hail Hail would have been the pleading outros of Betterman or Black.  Instead the vocals are an exercise in restraint, which allows the greater contrast with the music and is appropriate for the head/heart debate in the song itself.

Hail Hail is not one of my favorite pearl jam songs, although I think it is quite good. But what I really respect about it is that it understands that love is about negotiating power and submission, ruling and being ruled--willingly giving someone power over and accepting responsibility for the power you have over them. Hail Hail comes at this obliquely in places, but it gets there.

These are some of my all time favorite Eddie lyrics.  I am a particularly big fan of ‘are we bound out of obligation/is that all we got’ and ‘I sometimes realize I can only be as good as you’ll let me’. But for the most part they are all pretty good, and we get the  story of a  relationship in crisis, a couple bound together out of habit, hamstrung by baggage they can’t let go of, finding salvation by  realizing that love requires acceptance of imperfection, surrender, and risk.  Love means giving someone power over you.

The dominant imagery in the song are shackles or restraint, the singer chafing under the loss of control.  ‘are we bound out of obligation’ ‘are we going to the same place’ (note that he has to ask permission to come’, ‘egg rolling thick and heavy’,’ bandaged hand in hand’ ‘on the run in a race that can’t be won.’.    But the ties that bind the people together, by the end of the song, are finally recognized as a source of strength, rather than weakness.   Nor do they require any justification. And with that realization there is the possibility that this all could work in the end.  That idea of strength through acceptance will be reprised once again in Who You Are.


OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Sometimes
Hail, Hail
Who You Are
In My Tree
Smile
Off He Goes
Habit
Red Mosquito
Lukin
Present Tense
Mankind
I'm Open
Around the Bend

OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 
Ten 
Vs. 
Vitalogy 
No Code 
Yield 
Binaural 
Riot Act 
Pearl Jam 
Backspacer

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Out of the Furnace Soundtrack


What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  OK, well the bad news is that the Pearl Jam single, Mind Your Manners, that we've been expecting to release next month, may not be a Pearl Jam single.  The good news is, it might be an Eddie Vedder single, and it might be part of a full list of songs by Eddie Vedder on the Out of the Furnace Soundtrack!

OK. OK. Calm down.  There is no confirmation of ANYTHING right now, but the Internet Movie Database has listed 15 songs written and performed by Eddie Vedder that will be part of the soundtrack.  If that's correct, we may be dealing with another Into The Wild situation.  No word yet on a release date, but the movie releases December 6, 2013.

Here's the list.  There are notes if we've heard a song before.  If we've missed something, let us know in the comments.

  1. Mind Your Manners
  2. Dead Man (Lost Dogs/Dead Man Walking Soundtrack)
  3. Ride
  4. Speed of Sound (Backspacer)
  5. Lukin II
  6. The Crow
  7. Tattoo
  8. First Night
  9. Dark Skies
  10. Living With Mercy
  11. Clouds
  12. The Long Road (Merkinball)
  13. Rise (Into The Wild)
  14. Hitchin' A Ride
  15. End

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Moonlander, Track 10: Witch Doctor

The tenth track, Witch Doctor, from Stone's album, Moonlander, has just hit SoundCloud.
"It’s an explanation of how I live my life, or how I ended up in the position that I am in. When a positive outcome occurs for me, I often can't point to a specific set of skills to account for it. Which is how I think of witch doctors. There's no specific book or formal education process that qualifies someone to be a witch doctor. There's some magic to the process, something intangible. I'm celebrating whatever that is in myself and others who might not feel like they can't easily identify their strengths or place them into one particular category." - Stone
Check it out below.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Podcast: Evil Little Goats


If you're like me, you still haven't gotten over the loss of All That's Sacred or the All Encompassing Trip call in show, but now we have some good news.  Travis Hay, the Pearl Jam aficionado at Guerrilla Candy, has recently started recording a regular Pearl Jam podcast called Evil Little Goats.
It’s no secret that I’m a Pearl Jam fan. It’s something I try not to hide on Guerrilla Candy. I report on Pearl Jam news, write about Pearl Jam side projects, interview band members, post photos from Pearl Jam-related events and sometimes I even share some critical thoughts about the band (gasp!). In fact, a few years back I almost created a specific Pearl Jam hub page for Guerrilla Candy, but instead I opted to create Pearl Jamblr, a Tumblr dedicated to Pearl Jam that I have neglected quite a bit.

Having all that knowledge, it should come to no surprise that I recently got together with my friend Jeremy from The Sibling Rivalry to create what we’re calling Evil Little Goats, an unofficial Pearl Jam fan podcast (named after this song). Evil Little Goats is a podcast by Pearl Jam fans for Pearl Jam fans and our purpose is to share our passion for Pearl Jam with other fans, discuss our opinions about the band and openly talk about the good, bad and ugly aspects of Pearl Jam fandom.
You can check it out here or below.  There are currently two episodes in the can, and it appears as though it'll be a weekly thing.  Nothing on iTunes yet, but that may be on the way.


Episode One: Podcast Ledbetter


Episode Two: Mind Your Manners

Steve Gleason Leaks Some of Album #10's Publicity Plan


In what is surely a sign that we're getting very close to Pearl Jam's tenth album, friend of the band, Steve Gleason told Sports Illustrated that he is one of four people who will be interviewing Pearl Jam about their upcoming album and the creative process for the creation of what sounds like an electronic press kit (EPK).
I will be interviewing Pearl Jam to discuss their forthcoming album, which is their 10th. The band chose four people they were excited about talking to -- and being interviewed by -- for a series of recorded and filmed discussions focused on the creative process. Somehow I ended up being one of them. Which meant I got to hear some music off the new album. It's sweet, by the way.
Who will be interviewers 2-4?  Remember that Vine video by Joseph Arthur that teased some of Vedder's voice?  How about the tweet by Damon Stewart hinting that he'd heard something? In truth, no one knows yet, but stay tuned.

With a single rumored for July, we're still holding out hope for a late summer/early fall release followed by a tour ending in New Orleans the first weekend of November.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

A Guided Tour of No Code: Introduction and Sometimes

Before I get started I would refer everyone to Frank’s tremendous No Code thread.  DirtyFrank0705 was a great friend of our forum who was lost to suicide in 2008 before he could finish his Tour.  What he did finish is well worth the read.

As always with these threads, the goal is to foster discussion about the album as a piece of art--the themes that run through the words and music, the mood it creates create, the way the individual component parts add or subtract from that effort. These aren't song of the moment threads.  Hopefully we can do better than “I really like In My Tree”.   And obviously what follows is just my interpretation. I look forward to reading yours.

[A Guided Tour of No Code]
NO CODE'S PLACE IN THE CATALOG

Before we get started it is worth saying a bit about where No Code fits within the larger Pearl Jam catalog.  No Code is the first real serious change of direction within their music, at least in terms of themes.  Ten and Vs. are angry, youthful albums. They are animated by a sense of loss and betrayal.  They rage against the meaning and security, the sense of place and purpose, that was stolen.  But they are also albums that are strongly grounded, and loss is mitigated by a feeling of certainty  that is not necessarily present on No Code. The songs on these early records may not know the way forward, but they are extremely confident that they know who is to blame, and are optimistic that if we keep pushing for answers, for a way forward, we’ll find it.  There is not wisdom here , but there is conviction that we’ll get there eventually (Leash captures this particularly well, but it runs through most of the early records).    These albums knew where they were even when they were lost. I am here. Where is everybody else?

We see some doubt setting in, in some pretty dramatic ways, on Vitalogy--there is a sense of being overwhelmed whether or not the confidence and certainty of Ten and Vs. was justified, but it is never abandoned--just replaced with a Sisyphean commitment to seeing the journey through.  There is a lot less hope and so the album doubles down on defiance.

No Code marks a break from these early records since it is the first time the band starts writing from a place of wisdom, as people who have finished the journey and found the answers.  It is hesitant, incomplete, preliminary, but a definite shift in focus.   The title is misleading in that respect. Amidst all the confusion, uncertainty, doubt, ambiguity, and insecurity there is in fact, a code. There are insights and answers.  We have guideposts.  We may even have a guide. Although you have a seemingly random collection of pictures on the cover of the album, when you unfold it and step away--when you approach it from a distance--order starts to reveal itself.

After No Code every album will attempt to build upon the idea that the music should offer answers, not just questions and companionship.  Yield does so in obvious ways. Binaural, the album that  in many ways feels the most lost, is still in some sense wiser than the early records in that it is no longer looking to populate a world with black and white, heroes and villains. It doesn’t know how to come to grips with ambiguity, but it can at least identify it  Riot Act, in many respects the most defeatist of all the albums, still aspires to be a guide.  S/T recaptures the fighting spirit of the early albums while offering a way forward, and then Backspacer is, in many ways, the first album that confidently addresses how to survive in and make peace with an imperfect world.


All of that growth, that perspective, begins with No Code, where every song either offers an answer or clears the space to find it.  No Code is in many ways the first Pearl Jam record that is not about a journey, but about a destination--every song rooted in some concrete way in a particular place.   But I don’t want to overstate this, because these are also the first stabs at something new, and so the answers here are shaded in with a palpable sense of longing and questing. There is a hushed quality to the record, like it is stalking something elusive,  that may not even exist, and, if we hope to find it, cannot be disturbed.  So Eddie howls less, and the music creates distance (and with it, reflection).  It detaches, but it does not retreat. Instead it looks to create safe spaces where, for the first time, we can be given music and songs that come from a different place--the insights of someone who HAS experienced the world rather than someone who IS experiencing it. I don’t want to push this too far, though.  Maybe No Code is equal parts question and answer.  

In the end what I want to argue throughout this thread is that No Code is a record about arriving, the moment where a journey and a destination  come together.

And with that, we begin ...

[A Guided Tour of No Code]
SOMETIMES

In his No Code tour, Frank described Sometimes as an anti-prayer, culminating, rather than beginning, with the reference to God.  I’ve always liked that idea, and think is pretty spot on. It is a prayer, as Sometimes  reproduces the vulnerable surrender to something greater than yourself, the acceptance of your own insignificance, the child like hope that something you don’t understand will make it all okay, that is at the heart of a prayer, but it looks inward to the self, rather than outwards to God, to find the answer.

Sometime starts with some of the more scenic music Pearl Jam had produced up to this point. It could soft  rain or gliding waves but the music feels  wet and clean, like it is washing something away.  The bass is warm and envelopes the listener. The music isn’t religious, but feels spiritual--sacred, private, even playful in a wry way, like you are finally letting yourself in on a joke you’ve been keeping from yourself.

So what’s the joke, then?  The joke is the expectation that we can look outside ourselves for answers or for help.  The world is a vast and impersonal place. It is very big and we are very small.   We need to accept that, and figure out how to move forward from that in whatever small way we can.  The big dramatic gestures and outsized expectations of the first records, the millennial feeling that they captured,  they lead us nowhere.   

Instead Sometimes emphasizes our smallness, and our imperfections.  After the one brief verse the song moves immediately into its anti-climax, where the singer asserts their agency by accepting their imperfection and, as a result, their humanity.  We get a litany of opposites, the good and the bad, the rise and the fall, the knowledge and the ignorance, and if we can learn to love all of this in its entirety, then we don’t need God. We don’t need answers. We don’t need mastery. We have ourselves, and it’ll be enough

Eddie’s vocals capture the feel of the song, especially during the anti-prayer’s anti-climax, where the rage is swallowed and disarmed, sliding alongside him instead of propelling him forward.  There are moments where it starts to come forward, and you can hear him restraining himself (especially starting from ‘sometimes I cringe...’).  That’s not a surprise.  Sometimes comes from a calm and peaceful place where you feel safe enough to look inside yourself.  There shouldn’t be screaming here.

OTHER SONGS IN THIS SERIES: 
Sometimes
Hail, Hail
Who You Are
In My Tree
Smile
Off He Goes
Habit
Red Mosquito
Lukin
Present Tense
Mankind
I'm Open
Around the Bend
OTHER GUIDED TOUR SERIES: 

Ten 
Vs. 
Vitalogy 
No Code 
Yield 
Binaural 
Riot Act 
Pearl Jam 
Backspacer

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Moonlander, Track 9: Bombs Away


Stone has just release the 9th song from his Moonlander project, Bombs Away.
"I was thinking of "bombs" as a metaphor for "secrets" when I wrote this song. Secrets are dangerous things that almost always become known. And when they do, explosions and damage follow." - Stone
With the release also comes our first look at the album cover (which looks very much like you may have expected) and the news that you can pre-order the full album at iTunes for $9.99.  Those of us hoping to purchase a physical album or pull down lossless digital tracks will continue to wait for more news.

Monday, June 10, 2013

One More Round of News ...


What else did Pearl Jam announce in their newsletter today?

Alive & Well

 
Alive & Well Trailer from joshtaft on Vimeo.

In today's newsletter, Pearl Jam spotlighted
Alive & Well
, a documentary directed by former Pearl Jam video director, Josh Taft (Evenflow and Alive), and produced [at least in part] by Stone Gossard about the global effort to find a cure for Huntington's Disease.  Stone says:

This film is so moving, so beautifully constructed, shot, paced, heartfelt, and in the end, uplifting. Still reeling from the feelings it stirred in me. My deepest and loving congratulations all those involved in the making of this film.
The film features music from Pearl Jam, as well as Fleet Foxes and Sigur Rós, and "subjects in the film range from a young woman hoping to start a family, to a mother taking care of her symptomatic 6 year-old son and ailing husband; the drummer of a major country music band, a former NBC News journalist turned HD-advocate, as well as a renowned scientist relentlessly searching for a cure. Far from giving us a hopeless glimpse into life with terminal illness, Alive & Well reminds us all of our ability to persevere with strength, despite life's most difficult challenges."

Vault #3: DC's Constitution Hall 1998


Pearl Jam has cracked the vault door just a little more to let us get our hands on their September 19th, 1998 show at Washington DC's Constitution Hall.  The chance to own that show on a collectible CD set or a digital download may excite you, but what will certainly excite you more is that they are also releasing it as a made-to-order three record vinyl boxed set ($50.00 + $8.01 domestic S&H).
For the first time, the Ten Club is making a vault show available on vinyl.
Pre-order this limited edition, 180 gram 3-LP set now.
Pre-orders available to 10C members only begins immediately and ends at 5 PM Pacific on June 24th.
LP sets will be made to order and will ship around September 1.
A 256 kps MP3 version of the show will be available to you when you place the order.
Tune your SiriusXM Radio into the Pearl Jam station to hear the bootleg. The show starts in about 5 minutes.  The setlist from TwoFeetThick follows:

Set: Long Road, Act of Love, Hail Hail, Dissident, Given to Fly, Corduroy, Wishlist, Not for You, All Those Yesterdays, Daughter/(Roc kin’ in the Free World)/(WMA), Whipping, Immortality, Push Me Pull Me, Faithfull, Present Tense, Rearviewmirror, Black, Do the Evolution
Encore 1: I Got Shit, Better Man, Alive, Soldier of Love
Encore 2: Yellow Ledbetter

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Drumgasm!


Jackpot Records has announced that Matt Cameron is joining drummers, Zach Hill (Death Grips/Hella) and Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney/Wild Flag), to form the all-drummer supergroup, Drumgasm.  Their full-length LP is currently available for pre-purchase as a hand-numbered vinyl with a digital download for $14.99 (+$4 S&H).

Armitage Shanks provides a review (available here):
I’m in a unique position to comment on this music, as I actually scammed my way into the session, on the pretext of video taping the whole thing. Did I actually shoot some footage? I don’t even remember, because, sitting there in the room as it all went down, I was just transported by the spirit, the energy, the fire, which was being generated in large doses. Three people, three drum kits, some microphones and a reel of tape – that’s it: pure spontaneity. There’s nothing out there that’s very comparable to this - maybe the Voodoo drum ritual music of the Drummers of the Societe Absolument Guinin, is all I can think of, though admittedly even that is a pretty far cry.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Ramble On with McCready


Mike and The Rockfords drummer, Chris Friel, joined some friends at The Triple Door in Seattle for Bonzo's Celebration Day lasts week.  The Ramble On rehearsal video just popped up on YouTube.  I think you'll agree that McCready captures Page's solo well.

Here's the description from the video.
Zach Davidson-Vocals
Mike McCready- Guitar
Darren Loucas-Guitar
Ryan Burns-Keys
Andy Stoller-Bass
Chris Friel- Drums
Mike Musburger- Shakers & Producing

May 31st 2013 at The Triple Door in Seattle.... NW drummers pay homage to John Henry Bonham, English musician and songwriter best known as the drummer of Led Zeppelin, who was esteemed for his speed, power, fast right foot, distinctive sound, and "feel" for the groove. Calling Bonham one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock could be an understatement...

Moonlander, Track #8: Remain


Stone released the eighth song from his Moonlander project, Remain.  Today also marks the official release of Moonlander's second digital EP, Luna, now available on iTunes.  Three more songs/weeks and the full LP will release on June 25th.

Check out the song here.

"Remain is a song that was written about an important friendship in my life, one that provided me with a lot of spiritual fulfillment. The state of that friendship has changed since the song was written, but in some ways, it makes even more sense now." - Stone