Tea with Hungry Lucy #117 (The L Word)

Well, despite HL’s efforts to stream the podcast live, we had technical difficulties outside of our own control. Thusly, the podcast will not have a live video stream for this episode. Sorry :/ It’s all Leo Laporte‘s fault!

But, the duo still had lots to talk about. Work on the new album is chugging along nicely, finally! With no release date a of yet, CB & W are working away on brand new tunes. One of which, ‘Just Imagine’, was just completed and only needs a good mixing. Who knows how many tracks the new album will have. At this point, it’s best to just keep on doing what they’re doing! OPM’s included for the week were Christa’s pick of Frisbee, thanks to Grant and his Three From Leith podcast, and War-N’s pick was the new album ‘Nine Heavens‘ by Niyaz which is due out next week. All absolutely great stuff!! CB also chatted about the music store located in Louisville, KY called ear-X-tacy. Frisbee sells his cd’s, and vinyl, there directly. If you live near the Louisville area, you should go check it out! Also, you can order from them online here!

Until next time, be nice to others more than you think you should! You don’t always know the other side of things.

Toodloo!

Other fine examples of good “brick-n-mortar” indie record stores are:

• Shake It Records in Cincinnati, OH
• Amoeba Music in San Francisco/Hollywood, CA
• Rasputin Music in multiple locations in the Bay Area, CA

What song should we perform next time?

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Here’s the TWHL theme music, for Jody

Niyaz – “Allahi Allah”

A Day in the Futuristic Space Car

Today (Sunday) was spent working on a new song (called “Just Imagine”) that started life as “Futurist Space Car”. We actually played bit of it on TWHL #102.

I spent today cleaning up the arrangement and we just recorded Christa’s final vocals about 30 minutes ago. The song started life as a little drum loop from Matilda (our affectionately named Alesis Micron) and a somber, yet spacey, synth pad. If memory serves correctly, Christa wrote lyrics on the spot for this one and we recorded scratch vocals right away. The lyrics and whole feel of the song speaks of life(?) after we are all gone for this world. Christa’s melody is really beautiful in contrast to the cold music bed. With this in mind, I decided that Christa’s lone voice should be the only real human element to the song. I added some very mechanically played electric piano… playing only the first and fifth of each chord. I’ve always liked the way fifths leave enough space in a chord progression for the melody to really dictate the tone. Is it major or minor? There is also a certain sterility to this method of harmonizing that lends itself well to this song. For a nice lift (but not too much) on the chorus I added some very stylistic TR-808 and CR-78 cymbals. Nothing screams early electronics like these percussive sounds. There’s a 8 bar break between verse and chorus that needed a little something. So I added a very cold sounding CS-80 synth (well, a virtual version of it). The song ends (quite dramatically I think) with just Christa’s voice and the ambient synth pads, so a nice crescendo is needed to build up to this. The crescendo still needs a bit of work. I’m thinking (and Christa agrees) that some strings might fit the bill here. That will add another human element besides the voice I suppose, but what are rules other than things to break?

Sorry if I’ve been a little too music theory/tech geek in my description here. I just wanted to document what we’ve been up to today… in the only language I know. All-in-all… a good day of creative work. It’s been along time since I’ve had such a productive and rewarding day, musically. So I wanted to share.

Tea with Hungry Lucy #115 (Dedications and Speaking Disorders)

At last, the (triumphant?) return of Tea with Hungry Lucy! In honor of Memorial Day, Christa and War-N kick off the episode with a live performance of the New Order song “Love Vigilantes” (originally recorded for the “True Faith” album). Some explanation of the unplanned Hiatus follows in amongst CB & W’s difficulties with forming simple sentences. War-N talks a bit about the film “A Mighty Heart” and how if affected him and Christa talks about beautiful visual impact of the film “Perfume“. Other People’s Music chatted about was the song “New Soul” by Yael Naim (from her self-titled album) and the album “Dreaming of Revenge” by Kaki King. War-N learned about Kaki on the excellent podcast “World Cafe: Words and Music (Feed)”. The podcast rounds out with “My Beloved” (from the album “To Kill a King”), dedicated this week to our new nephew, Micah.

What Hungry Lucy song would you dedicate to a loved one?

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Yael Naim – “New Soul”

Tea with Hungry Lucy #114 (Aloof, a Loofah and a Chalupa)

This week, the duo explain their most recent “Life with Hungry Lucy” episode about the new song called “Erase Her”. You may view said video at this link. In their travels of the week, vinyl is rediscovered in a glorious way and new OPM’s are found! CB’s new (but old) finding was Demis Roussos. A lovely large fella with a sweet voice, who (we are happy to learn) is still going strong. War-N’s OPM’s this week are Coldplay and their new free release “Violet Hill” and Clara Rockmore. Clara was THE theremin player of all theremin players! See for yourself down below.

Many other fine tidbits are mentioned. You’ll just have to listen for yourself! You can also go see what Christa Belle is thinking and how War-N is twittering.

Until next week, not everyone is Lily Allen!!

Why, or why not?

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Clara Rockmore – “The Swan” (Saint-Saëns) – Theremin performance

Demis Roussos – “Forever and Ever”

Podsafe and abundant

Just a quick note to let fellow podcasters know that you can now get EVERY Hungry Lucy song via the Podsafe Music Network (AKA Podshow/Mevio). We’ve always stated that we’re totally cool with podcasters playing ANY of our songs. After all, you’re helping to tell the world about us! Until now, though, there hasn’t been an easy way to actually acquire these tracks.

So, head on over to the Podsafe Music Network and grab our music for your podcast. We have 65 tracks up there to choose from. Everything from ambient/downtempo to dark-and-gothy to bumpy-bumpy club mixes. If you do play our music on your podcast, please let us know. Then we can tell the world about your fab podcast as well. It’ll also make us feel all special and tingley.

Tea with Hungry Lucy #112 (The Evolution of Pajamas)

In this week’s Tea with Hungry Lucy War-N & Christa share a preview of a new song (working title: Pajamas), likely title “The Best Day of Her Life”. We get to hear the original noisy piano recording, and the newly arranged music. Christa talks about her bad week, that ends with a nice family time on Saturday. Christa also talks about her preference for listening to music she can sing along with. War-N does the opposite, but did enjoy Christa’s effort in singing along with “Golden Boy” by Severed Heads … frightening!

So, tell us…suggestions for the next live podcast performance?

Any Twitter-folk out there? Why not follow War-N’s ramblings? It’s fun. You can point and laugh.

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Severed Heads – “We Have Come to Bless This House” (1985)

Tea with Hungry Lucy #111 (The Chicken and the Walking Stick)

This week’s Tea with Hungry Lucy is high on the insanity meter! A mix of emotions this week as Christa and War-N talk about the therapeutic benefits of making music as well as the confidence struggles it can sometimes bring to the surface. For the OPM segment this week, Christa chats about Michael Jackson‘s “She’s Out of My Life” that she received via lala.com. War-N talks about the film “August Rush” that he found high on the sap factor, but was still in tears by movie’s end. Christa rounded out the episode with some Veggie Ragu talk which made us all hungry and brought the podcast to a hasty end.

So, tell us…anything you’d like to add, edit or delete from the podcast?

Any Twitter-folk out there? Why not follow War-N’s ramblings?

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Michael Jackson – “She’s Out of My Life”

August Rush