It is difficult to name only ten, as I have many faves. Also, for the purpose of this list, I only considered riffs that drive songs, that is, I did not consider riffs from guitar solos. Here are some of my faves that did not make the top 10:
All Day and All of the Night (The Kinks)
Pleasant Valley Sunday (The Monkees)
My Sharona (The Knack)
What Is Life (George Harrison)
You Really Got Me (The Kinks)
Curse of the Frontierland (Game Theory)
Are any of these your favorites? Feel free to comment on the list or share YOUR top 10 riffs!
The Jerrys are featured in a new novel, Pixels of Young Mueller, now available at Amazon. Pixels of Young Mueller is the story of the development of an artist.
Klaus Mueller dreams of leaving tiny Southland someday to be a rock star. When he chooses stardom over college, however, he learns that his education is just beginning. He endures a series of god-awful jobs while his music is repeatedly rejected, and he wonders how he will ever achieve success. After moving to the city, where he finds a career and becomes a father, he is torn between the great happiness he has found and the success he still craves. Klaus must reconcile his dreams with reality or spend the rest of his life lamenting what might have been.
Pixels of Young Mueller is the story of an artist's growth to maturity and of his revolt against his family's values. The tale of Klaus Mueller, as told in this modern coming-of-age novel, provides new perspectives on classic themes when Klaus confronts the forces that threaten his existence.
The book is available in both paperback and Kindle versions.
Yesterday, I created and posted a book trailer for my novel, Pixels of Young Mueller, to be published this summer by All Things That Matter Press. The trailer contains unreleased music from The Jerrys' as-yet-untitled album scheduled for release in early 2011, and you can check it out here. The music is from "Love Thang (Instrumental version)." I am currently working on the vocals version of that tune.
As of this writing, everything is on schedule for the new album. After recording this Saturday at Rumble House, eight songs will have been completely recorded--four of which have already been mixed and mastered.
Incidentally, The Jerrys are not only featured in the book trailer for Pixels of Young Mueller--they actually appear in the novel itself! More details as those become available.
Happy New Year! If the first three weeks of 2010 are any indication of things to come, this is going to be a very productive year. I have been working hard at planning, writing, and recording a new full-length album by The Jerrys (I have recorded two dozen tracks in the past five days alone), and I anticipate making the as-yet-untitled album available early next year.
As for this year, you can expect new mp3 downloads, new videos, improvements to The Jerrys official site (including a place to sign up for The Jerrys' mailing list), and a few surprises along the way. Until then, here are a few links that I hope you will find useful:
Despite a toothache that plagued me over the weekend, I managed to get some work done on the new album, including totally finishing two songs. Here's how it went:
Friday, October 16
Mixed and mastered "Love Thang (Instrumental version)"
Saturday, October 17
Double-tracked rhythm guitar for "Let's Groove"
Recorded three additional guitar tracks for "Let's Groove"
Completed postproduction work on "Love Thang (Instrumental version)" (2:21)
For those of you keeping score at home, that's four minutes and 37 seconds of music for the new album so far, with more music nearing completion soon. I'll keep you posted.
Download "My Love in Her Attire," (mp3) from The Jerrys' debut album, Pop Go The Jerrys (2000), or listen to it here:
The song is based on a poem I came across while reading The Top 500 Poems. "My Love in Her Attire" was penned by an anonymous poet sometime between 1400 and 1600, and while it is an awesome poem as is, it needed a little work before it could be a Jerrys tune. Below is the original poem as it appears in the anthology, followed by the words to the song by The Jerrys.
My Love in Her Attire
My love in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer,
No beauty she doth miss,
When all her robes are on;
But Beauty's self she is,
When all her robes are gone.
My Love in Her Attire
My love in her attire does show her wit;
It does so become her, this is true.
For every season she has dressings fit.
For winter, spring, and summer too.
No beauty does she miss
When all her clothes are on,
But Beauty's self she is
When all her clothes are gone.
My love in her black dress is such a hit;
It does so become her, what a view!
In every color she has dressings fit.
In red and green and purple too.
No beauty does she miss
When all her clothes are on,
But Beauty's self she is
When all her clothes are gone.
Trivia alert! This song marks the first time someone besides yours truly played on a Jerrys recording--in this case, Robert Porche (drums).
I recently added a second guitar to my arsenal, a black Epiphone Dot. Unlike my primary instrument, the Dot is a hollow-body guitar that produces a rich warm sound similar to a Gibson 335--a nice complement to the twangy treble my Fender provides. While I almost always opt for trebly sounds, I want to incorporate more tonal qualities into the songs I am recording for the new album, and this guitar fits the bill.
This guitar has undergone several modifications since I bought it new. First, I had the truss rod and the intonation adjusted, as shipping without a case seemed to have mucked things up a bit. I removed the pickguard next (the guitar looks way cooler without it), after which I tackled the problem of ugly orange control knobs with a can of glossy black spray paint. End result? A great new second guitar for The Jerrys. Listen for it on the new album, coming in 2011.
When I realized that I had not posted an entry since June (actually, I had help with that realization, as seen in a previous comment on this blog), it occurred to me to check Twitter to see what I had been up to. Usually the first thing I would do is check the notebook that I use to track progress in various matters, so the thought of turning first to Twitter seemed funny to me.
It seems Twitter is as good or better than this blog at keeping up with The Jerrys, and why shouldn't it be? Like millions of other people, I have a busy lifestyle, and microblogging allows me to post updates more easily and more quickly. While blogs will always have their place in some form or another, it is a luxury to be able to deliver timely bits of information without even having to compose a complete sentence. That said, here are the updates I found that I think are worth mentioning here:
Jul 8
Digging my new Epiphone Dot guitar--played three hours last night (tonight I will actually plug it into my amp)!
Jul 12
The Jerrys will consider any and all new song ideas through December for new album. Be creative!
Aug 1
Earlier today, recorded 15 tracks (12 vocal, 3 tambourine) in 5 hours for new album from The Jerrys--whew!
Aug 6
Just finished mixing and mastering "Emily," first song completed for a new album by The Jerrys. On to postproduction. And more music!
Aug 10
After recording a guitar track yesterday for (as-yet-untitled) tune for new CD, I'm off to the beach!
The vocal tracks included lead vocals for "Love in Action" (a Utopia tune) and lead and backing vocals for "Emily." As soon as time allows, I will try to make sense of some ideas that I recorded on my mp3 player, as well as the lyrics on sticky notes in my desk. Hopefully I will have more on that next time--until then, look for The Jerrys on Twitter.
Eight years ago, I received my first ukulele as a gift, and I have been crazy about ukuleles ever since. That uke was a Washburn, and I used it to write "All My Afternoons," "Happy Anniversary," and "Polly Urethane." Eventually, however, one of the holes on the electronics plate became stripped, so I put it on eBay and replaced it with the one shown above.
The Lanikai LU-21CE concert acoustic/electric ukulele, made by Hohner, is made of Nato wood (Eastern Mahogany) with white binding and has an 18-fret rosewood fingerboard. My favorite feature is the Shadow P3 pickup system, which allows the ukulele to be plugged into an amplifier (here's what that sounds like).
Whether or not you are a musician, you may want to consider buying a ukulele, as they are easy to learn to play. You can get an inexpensive but playable ukulele for about $30 at Musician's Friend, and that is a LOT of fun for the price. In the words of the late George Harrison, "Everybody should have and play a 'uke' it's so simple to carry with you...I love them--the more the merrier--everyone I know who is into the ukulele is 'crackers' so get yourself a few and enjoy yourselves."
The new CD is reviewed in the June 2009 issue of the Illinois Entertainer, and here is what reviewer Jeff Berkwits has to say about it:
Despite a name implying the presence of a full-blown band, The Jerrys is just one guy, Jerry Schwartz, playing quaint melodies with a retro flair. His new EP, What The World Could Use A Lot More Of, features five songs of self-proclaimed “treblepop,” including the humorous “Polly Urethane” and a straightforward cover of “Nowhere Man.” With a total running time of just under 15 minutes, the effort is concise and captivating.
The CD is available on iTunes and at Amazon and CD Baby. You can also listen to the CD here.
Stay tuned. More reviews and more music are on the way.
Having just completed more work on a new Jerrys album the weekend before (as those who follow The Jerrys on Twitter already know), I joined up with relatives on Memorial Day weekend to play a family reunion show. As admission was free and we needed a band name, we played as The Freebies.
The band romped through 22 songs, including "I Saw Her Standing There," "Just What I Needed," "No Matter What," "We Can Work It Out," "All Right Now," "What I Like About You," and "Twist and Shout." The band lineup was as follows:
Todd Schwartz (guitar)
Jerry Schwartz (guitar and vocals)
Troy Schwartz (drums)
Mike Phillips (bass and vocals)
Kasha Phillips (keyboard and vocals)
Holly Schwartz (vocals)
If you would like a taste of the show, head over to YouTube, where I have posted a video of "Secret Agent Man." (There's more about the song on Wikipedia.)
New video, "Uneasy," now on YouTube. The song is from The Jerrys' first album, Pop Go The Jerrys. Robert Porche is on drums, with yours truly on guitar, vocal, and bass overdub.
After recording four tracks of rhythm guitar and two tracks of bass guitar for the Jerrys' new cover tune over the weekend, I spent tonight editing and bouncing tracks. The song is Utopia's "Love in Action," and it is only the second song to be recorded for an as-yet untitled upcoming Jerrys release. On May 16, I will be joined by Robert Porche at Rumble House Rehearsal Studio, where, among other things, we will be recording drums and backing vocals for the song (that's us pictured above at Rumble House back in September).
I recently completed all of the instrument tracking for "Emily," the first song slated for a new full-length Jerrys album expected to be released in early 2011. After recording eight tracks of drums, guitars, bass, and percussion, I mixed them down to stereo, and it is to these tracks that I will add lead and backing vocals (of course, I will need to write lyrics before I can do that). In the meantime, however, I have begun writing a second song for the album.
On another note, I put a cool new widget on The Jerrys Music page so that you can listen to full-length versions of any of 19 Jerrys tunes, so check it out now.
Having recently canceled my satellite radio subscription, I began rediscovering all the great sounds on the Internet that I had listened to before my three-year stint with Sirius--including my favorite audio stream of them all: Beyond the Beat Generation is a veritable museum containing "long forgotten 'wild' musical gems out of the great years of the sixties (1965-1969)." Ninety-five percent of the music on the site was recorded right from the original discs, and the sheer amount of musical gems alone is astonishing.
I could go on all day about the site (there's even a SHOUTcast song history so you can see what is playing or what you just heard), but I won't. If you are into great music, you owe it to yourself to give it a listen.
