Category: Music

DJ TrumpsterFire

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I have not been getting much writing done lately because I have been busy with other demands and also I went through a period called: End-of-Year-Burned-Out-Lazy (I should trademark that phrase but then again, I am sort of lazy).

I have not been completely unproductive, however. Here is an object d’art that was spawned by this odd, listless period. It is the sort of non-sense that happens when you give a writer access to After Effects, Ableton Live, an electric bass, AI generated images and free b-roll.

It is just for fun, so please read my disclaimer below before you start sending me hate mail.

DISCLAIMER: This post is intended for entertainment only. This post neither promotes nor condemns the type of music DJs producer and perform. This post neither promotes nor condemns any political party or political figures.

Give Credit Where Credit is Due:

Good Time

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Hola, friends and lovers. Recently I did some research on AI generated music to find out how long it will take before flesh and bone musicians are completely replaced by a neural network. I may not be a big fan of EDM and the like, but I am obsessed with learning the process of how other composers create even if that composer is an algorithm that uses random models to deliver lo-fi beats and lush soundscapes. It was fun to play around on websites like Loudly and Soundful and you should check them out, too. Even if you have no aptitude for music, and I think that is one of the selling points, you will be creating exciting background music for your next tik-tok with a few mouse clicks.

If you are purist, you will be happy to know that this new recording titled “Good Time” is 98% non-AI. In fact, I collaborated with another genuine human guitar player who played his parts on a real guitar through a real amplifier right in front of me.

I cannot say the same for the image above. That was created by typing a string of words into an image generator. It should stand as proof that we are at least a year away from being replaced.

Hello how do you do, let me introduce myself to you
I’m a good time, I’m easy to find

We can burn like a flame, we can chill like ice
We can ignore all that good advice

We can live on credit, we can pay by cash
We can live like kings or just poor white trash

24 7 call me day or night
All you have to do is do what feels right

I can climb on top, you can slide beneath
I can be that gristle stuck in your teeth

We can do a day, we can do a year
We can make a plan or play it by ear

24 7 call me night or day
Everything you want is just one call away

24 7 three hundred sixty-five
All you have to do is be alive

We can stay, we can go 
No one ever has to know

Pensacola Gulf Winds

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truelove_beachI often wish I could enjoy myself like a normal person without having to look for deeper meaning in everything I do or every place I visit. For instance, a cold beer can just be a refreshing cocktail and the seashore can represent nothing more than a day at the beach. 

If you ever get a chance to experience the Gulf shoreline, you won’t be disappointed, it is an overlooked jewel of the U.S. coastline. Go, let it loose, enjoy the simple things in life at face value. But don’t be surprised if it inspires you to create something from nothing.

 

Take the car out riding
A full moon is bright
Drive down to the end of the road
Where the water touches the night

It’s too hot for sleeping 
For toss and turning around
I might not find an angel down here
But I know I will hear the sound

When them Pensacola Gulf winds blow
Don’t them Pensacola Gulf winds blow
Sometimes I think I hear them
Call my name but I just don’t know
Sometimes I think I hear them tell me
It’s easy just to let it go

Moonlight off the water
Them pirate ships can’t hide 
I never got where I wanted to go 
But it sure was one hell of a ride

I never thought of leaving
A note to say where I am
But you’re smart, you’ll figure it out
And like most folks won’t give a damn

More music can be enjoyed or scoffed at here on the music page: John Truelove Music

SOAR

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Amusement park in monotone at Southport
Stock Photo from Openverse – no credits provided.

I have finally gotten my humble, little recording studio setup down here in Houston Land and have recorded some new music just in time for the summer. And apropos of the season, the song is about roller coasters and the carefree days of youth, among other things. Play and sing along with the convenient lyric sheet below. Repeat and share.

Getting high inside the car
In the parking lot of the amusement park
Two days into that sacred month of July
Your neck was bronze, mine was red
I might have believed anything you said
Even if what you told me
Was just another lie

Stoner on a roller coaster
Loop the loop into that summer blue
In a corkscrew ninety-nine miles a minute
Life is a ride anyway you spin it
I wish I'd known you then
The way I still want to

Getting high inside the car
In the parking lot of the amusement park
Two days before they closed down for the season
In those midway lights, red, white and blue
I might have fallen hard for you
If you had not slipped away
For no good reason

DISCLAIMER: The title of this song was inspired by a fellow blogger named Stoner on a Roller Coaster. I have never met nor even spoken with S.O.A.R. so the subject of this tune should not be interpreted as having any association with the S.O.A.R. website, its owner(s) or its author(s). The song on this page is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the songwriter’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

24 Bits of Bartok

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Bartok at his midi workstation

Imagine if Bartok had given up on symphonies, quartets and concertos and focused on composing Please-Hold music for corporations to be performed while their customers waited for the next available Service Technician or loops to set the mood of a podcast, a DIY video on YouTube, a TikTok nothing. Had the maestro owned a copy of Ableton Live or Bitwig, what influence would he have had on producers of dance and trance scores? Ponder a dance in 5/4. Art is a difficult subject and yet it is not avoided at parties like religion or politics. I have never known of fisticuffs and dissolved friendships brought about by a disagreement over Bob Ross versus Picasso or Led Zepplin versus Tupac. If you have a soft spot for 80’s New Wave, no one really minds too much. People usually indulge your passion and nod and smile politely while you go on and on about the sound of an analog Moog synth. Bartok would have enjoyed Moog’s laboratory. He might even have been added to the product development team. That is a lucrative iron in fire for a song-slinger between gigs. Bela was never too flush. Art is a difficult path.

On the subject of music, please be sure and visit my music page. After all, you are already here: https://johntruelove.com/music-sweet-music/

Truelove’s New Music Page

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After a lengthy legal battle, I have won back the rights to all my intellectual property. Just kidding, there was no legal battle but I did add me a brand new page to this here website. The Music, Sweet Music page will feature tunes that I have written and recorded. You can access it in the Menu section (upper right, click on the hamburger) or you click this link. Crank it up!

Heroin

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Jeffrey Lee Pierce

No one wants to have a medical procedure, unless you have a fetish for that sort of thing. I do not. However, even the best models breakdown every so often and have to go in for a tuneup.

The worst part is always the preparation leading up to the big day: endless paperwork, tests, restricted diets, fasting, choking down vile solutions, NO ALCOHOL. Perhaps the greatest torture is having nothing after the witching hour the night before which means no morning joe.

But all of these miseries are worth suffering through when you finally get your hit of Propofol. (is it a coincidence that it rhymes with alcohol?). I understand why the Prince of Pop used it for recreational purposes. I understand why people keep finding something wrong with them and keep going back for more outpatient surgery.

I have to admit, this time was good but not as good as the first time. That is a typical complaint of heroin addicts, incidentally.

And on the subject of heroin, the first time I heard “She’s Like Heroin to Me” by Gun Club I was hooked and, unlike junk, it delivers the same high every time. I am a Jeffrey Lee Pierce devotee. Not only because of his songs and his enigmatic poetry but because of his ability and relentless determination to make music using whatever raw materials he had despite the limitations he faced. Not everybody was born a McCartney or Prince or got to record in Studio A.

I could never match the raucous energy of the original so, in the spirit of JLP, I made it into something of my own. Below is a performance of my version from about 10 years ago before I got hooked on Propofol ;). Stay in school and don’t do drugs.

She’s Like Heroin to Me

Music by the Lost, Words by the Found

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No Guitars were harmed during the recording of this song.

I spent countless hours of my youth poring over the liner notes of every record I could get my hands on. No detail, from studio location to assistant engineer, went unappreciated. Lyrics were always a welcome bonus.

As a young, wannabe musician I was particularly interested in the songwriting credits to learn who did what in the band. It was usually: Music by Guitar Player X, Words by Singer Y. But sometimes there would be a wildcard.

The theme of being lost and found again is a popular one in both secular and non-secular music. It got me to thinking what would happen if Lost and Found wrote a song together. Press play and crank it up! Lyrics are included.

Music by the Lost, Words by the Found – John Truelove copyright 2021

The saved will ring the bell
The damned will beat the drum
As this day is lost
So shall tomorrow come

Join me in a song
There are verses for the weak and the strong
We all know the sound 
Of music by the Lost
And words by the Found

Let the Angels pluck the string
Let the Demons blow the horn
As we die today
So shall we be reborn

Join me in a song
There are verses for the right and for wrong
We all know the sound
Of music by the Lost

Words and Music by John Truelove copyright 2021

T for Texas

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McGovern Centennial Gardens

I have moved to Texas, Houston, to be exact. After over 20 years in NYC I finally threw a dart at a map and headed west. “I loved the crime and the traffic but it just was NOT hot and humid enough,” as that old bon mot goes. The time was right to escape. The events of 2020 destroyed everything I liked about the city, I started feeling less and less safe and I didn’t want to be trapped under the rubble when the metropolis finally collapsed under its own weight.

In other news, I have a car for the first time in over 20 years, a condition that will only add to Houston’s vehicular congestion and another …er..um… imperfect motorist to a population already replete with drivers on the offensive. (At least when they aren’t busy backing into a parking spot – a peculiar Houston idiosyncrasy)

Galveston Beach

Things are refreshingly different here. For instance, the weather is mild. As of this post a good old fashioned nor’easter is dumping two feet of snow on my old home. Snow is only fun once a year, the first fall of the season, and then only if you are inside with no where to be and a drink in your hand. It is isn’t quite mild enough to perform my famous cannonball off the swimming pool high dive, however, although the clear blue of her undulating skin beckons. This amenity is another first. Access to a pool in Gotham required a steep membership fee and 6 a.m. lane reservations. Yawn.

It was not warm enough over the extended weekend in January to go plunging into the Gulf of Mexico but walks on Galveston beach and delicious Pier Beer in the warm sunshine was pleasant, indeed. Having this new car sure is handy for getting away for the weekend. Corpus Christi and San Antonio are next on the road trip list and beloved Lafayette and New Orleans have never been more accessible.

I am going to miss my friends. I am going to miss walking home from my favorite bars. I am going to miss my band Dixie Automatic. Yes, ironically enough I was in a New York band called Dixie Automatic. It was a good group and we always had a lot of fun together playing Country music for Yankee hipsters.

Below is a sample from a live show in NYC before they boarded the place up.

Honeymoon by Dixie Automatic

Two Little Devils

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King Truelove Christmas Album

For several years my wife and I released a Christmas video for family and friends who are scattered all over the globe. I wrote the music for each and recorded the music in my home studio. We also filmed and produced the videos in our tiny apartment or on location in the wild streets of Queens.

“Two Little Devils at Christmas” is an exception. Way back in 2014 we wanted to do something slick so we hired a professional band, went into an actual recording studio and called in a film crew.

A lot of folks were disappointed that we didn’t have puppets but I was happy with the results. For the first time I didn’t have to worry about production, creating a blackout or being arrested for not having a permit.

We will return to the DYI format in 2021 if Christmas doesn’t get canceled but for now please enjoy living in the past with me for Auld Lang Syne. I’m the cute one playing the bass.