New James Read Hunter Song: "Faces Of Death"

James Read Hunter – Faces Of Death

I'm still sick, so the voice is kind of limited, but I think it's a cool little song.  The guitar solo utilizes my new Big Muff Pi distortion pedal, and the percussion is foot stomps, finger snaps, and hand claps, as well as tambourine.  Enjoy!

Screw getting sick.

I wanted to record a few songs this week.  But I got sick, and my voice is totally shot.

Right now, I'm on two Mucinexes, sudaffed, and two tylenol.  It's not as bad as the one I had last semester during finals.  That one was horrible.

It's a mild cold, but it's annoying.

I went to the Student Health Center.  I told her everything I was doing, and she just said, "yeah, you have a cold.  Just keep doing what your doing."

LSU baseball is playing mediocre.  Ol' Skip Bertman can't seem to hire a good baseball coach, even though baseball is his own sport.  (Bertman is considered one of the top two or three college baseball coaches of all time.  He won five College World Series in a decade's span (1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000.))

Our men's basketball team sucked too.

Well, at least we have our football team and our beautiful crystal football.  Nice.

Lady Tigers basketball is in the Sweet Sixteen.  Sylvia Fowles is a weast (woman beast= weast).

Random Kickass Song Of The Moment: "Ooh La La" by Faces.

(Written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood for the album Ooh La La, released by Warner Bros. Records in 1973.)

This is the best homemade music video I could find with the original recording of this song by the Faces.  The singer is not Rod Stewart, who would later cover the song as a solo artist but at the time felt it was below him.  Rather, it is guitarist and future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood.  His unpolished warble fits the vibe of the song perfectly.  It's about love and growing older, but it's catchy, and the use of mandolin is perfect.

I was thinking about this song the other day, and I just remembered the line that goes "I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger."  I searched that line in Google and thankfully came up with this one.  As it turns out, it was actually the Rod Stewart version I listened to originally, but I fell in love with the tumbling original recording, with the mic-shy vocal and its raw, simplistic country beauty.

Eating, Running and Singing

I just got back from playing soccer with some friends and nice strangers out on the parade grounds.  I played goalie, because I have decent reflexes and I'm not that fast, but I did do a good bit of running, mostly when retrieving stray shots.  It felt good to get a bit of exercise.

Most of you who know me know that I am fat. Though none of you want to say it to my face.  Like when I make fat jokes about myself and people are like, "Hey don't say that about yourself." I'm not compliment fishing, bitch. I'm making a joke, and I'm trying to make you laugh.  I'm not that sensitive or self-conscious.

I know I'm fat.  I eat unconsciously.  It's not like I think "I am going to gluttonously eat this big bag of chips."  No, I think "I'll have a few chips, and then save them for tomorrow" and before I know it, the bag is empty.  I throw it away, and I completely forget I ate that big fucking bag of chips.

I don't tell people I eat a lot, because three quarters of the food I eat, I don't remember eating.  It just happens that way.  I bet a lot of the really obese people, like the 600 pound dudes, have the same sort of unconscious problem, just a lot worse.

Sometimes I go on long stretches of time where I don't eat that much at all.  It seems that when I'm feeling hungry (not when I just want to eat, but when I actually feel hunger from not eating), I don't want to eat that much.  I tend to lose a lot of weight during these stretches.  It's an unhealthy way to lose weight, but since when do I do things the healthy way?

"I'm a pretty crappy athlete."  That's the beginning of my song "Three Minute Mile", and it's true.  I'm just not.  I did run with St. Paul's Lutheran School in the 4x400 track relay, and we really did win fifth place.  I hated running around that fucking track, so I pretty much jogged instead.

That song's actually about death.  If I ran a three minute mile, I'd probably die.

When I get back to Peachtree City for the summer, I'm getting a bunch of guys to form a backup band.  It will be James Read Hunter and the James Read Hunters, and all the other guys will wear masks of my face, and I'll wear a mask myself, and then I'll whip it off, and it will be my actual face!  Sweet.

Ryan Perrilloux, we love you, and we want to fucking strangle you.

Ryan, you might want to thank the good Lord for making your dad's sperm and your mom's egg meiose that meiosis to make you a superstar athlete-by-genetics, because if you sucked at sports, you'd suck at everything.  It's not shameful to be stupid.  A lot of great athletes are stupid.  A lot of the greatest people in the world are stupid.  You just have to make sure you don't trip over your own stupid decisions.

Like getting into a brawl up in front of Northgate at 2 AM on a school night DURING FOOTBALL SEASON.  Okay, so you got out of it and you might have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.  But in front of a bar at 2 AM on a school night has a tendency not to be the right place or the right time.

Okay, so missing a few classes isn't a big deal, but team meetings definitely are.  You're going to be the starting quarterback.  You're the guy.  Be the guy.

Please, Ryan.  Please stay the fuck out of trouble.  It's not that hard and the payoff will be BIG!  Look at your old teammate JaMarcus Russell.  He got drafted first overall by the Oakland Raiders, and now he has millions of dollars.  JaMarcus Russell also never got into trouble.  See a connection?

I know you can do it, Ryan.

Modern Music And Retarded Baby Animals

Last Semester, I had to write a piece for unaccompanied clarinet.  I named it Retarded Baby Animals because that's what I thought atonal chamber music sounds like.  It will be premiered April 17th in the School of Music Recital Hall.

Movements:

I: Victor The Mutant Penguin From The Nigerian Tundra

(named after my friend Victor, who actually is from Nigeria)

II: Timothy The Turtle Zombie

(named after my friend Tim, and contains elements from the Turtles' "Happy Together" and the Zombies' "Time Of The Season)

III: Christopher The Almost Flying Squirrel

(named after my friend Miggles)

IV: Jordan The Afro'd Platypus

(named after my friend Jordan, though I don't chill with him as much as I used to.)

It will be premiered by Melissa Morales, and I'm actually meeting up with her today to tell her it's fine no matter what she plays.

That's the thing with modern music- it's all about the titles.

With my new piece, like most pieces of modern music, the title is everything, and the music is nothing.

Here's the titles of different pieces of music, and the points of the title for each.

The Beatles- "She Loves You"- See now you remember the song's hook, which goes "She loves you yeah yeah yeah."

Beethoven- "Symphony #5 In C minor"- It's the fifth symphony he wrote.  And it happens to be in the key of C Minor.  Fancy that.

Dead Kennedys- "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now"- The song was an updated version of "California Uber Alles", but the Dead Kennedys believed that President Ronald Reagan was a bigger problem than Governor Jerry Brown, the subject of the original "California Uber Alles", was.

James Hunter- "Retarded Baby Animals"- to make people laugh and forget how shitty the piece is.

Why I Quit Music Composition

Fuck you, Arnold Schoenberg.  Your music sounds like ass, and your pretentious use of dissonance has given hundreds of shitty composers an excuse to continue making shitty music.

Anyways, here are reasons I am switching majors away from Music Composition.

1.  I hate the other composers and their music, except for Giselle Eastman.  She's cool.

2.  I hate Finale and music scoring in general.

3.  I hate being instructed.  I'd rather learn to make music by recording it myself, and learning through trial and error (the only way I really learn).  There's a good reason none of my favorite pop songwriters ever had training.

4.  It was sucking the passion out of me.  My instruction was Monday morning.  I was making music Sunday night.

5.  I've been getting into music journalism.  You know why?  Because you can criticize.  

Art, according to pretentious pieces of shit, is perfect because it is what the artist intended, so if you don't like it, then there's obviously something wrong with you.

Screw art.  I like rock and roll.

This of course does not mean I will stop making music, which you can listen to here.  I'll continue making music, but I'll be making it for me and for you, and not for Alejandro, my instructor.