Singing on the interweb

Some stories from the interweb:



Singers Lobby Navada legislature to ban musical impostors

Acts must have at least one genuine member to use the name or they must label themselves a tribute band



Q Magazine's Worst Singers of All Time

Linda McCartney's not on it but I totally agree with Mariah and Celine being included.





Singer's Remedies for Laryngitis

A comprehensive list of sensible remedies. if anyone has more, feel free to comment.



Ms. Sam

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Myspace.com/calliopemusic

I've started a page on MySpace to prompt some discussion about singing and to host my forthcoming demos when I record them. For the moment, here's links to two very interesting interviews with Diamanda Galas. This one is an Index Magazine interview between Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) and Diamanda and this one is from the delightfully named Goblin Magazine.



Ms. S

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Lyrics: Our Old Oblivion

He’s standing there in his ragged Sunday best
Smiling like an undertaker in the wicked old west
He is a maelstrom in my distant heart
But I cannot bear to be leaving though I know he’ll just hurt me more if I stay, just encourage his ways
He kills me a little everyday

He’s my capital, my king, my everything
We have not spoken to my family since early last spring
And what I have chosen feels hollow now
But there is some power in his strength and his pleading, his leaning on the door and I’m captured
In this room in this cold, distant town

There is no place in this state I could go
He’s got a lot of friends who’d tell him so
And I’ve never made love that’s so overwhelming
What am I afraid of? Each way that I choose, I feel like I’m losing everything
This adventure is all over now

This pill I’ve hidden inside my cheek
Will be my last kiss for him if it doesn’t put me to sleep
He says, “My girl, all could be forgiven.”
So come here my darling and kiss me by this neon light
I know we are both longing for a taste of our old oblivion

by Ms. Sam Wareing

It's the song, not the singer

From my new Tuvan throat singing CD to my new fascinations with Fado and Rembetika to the Tex, Don and Charlie show I saw on Saturday night at Melbourne's beautiful Athenaeum Theatre, I have been blessed with good sounds this year and particularly good singing. See Diamanda Galas post.

I am filling with new and interesting sounds but I need to get them out of my body with as little interference as possible. Seeing Ms. Galas, in particular, really brought home the terrible ambiguity I sometimes feel onstage, where there's too much mental interference going on to really, purely express.

I'm talking about moving beyond vocal technique. I want to communicate the emotions of the words and melody, being completely in the moment of the song. I do get there, especially in the songs with my band and my own songs, but not consistently.

Sometimes I do a dodgy show (too much smoke in the room, underprepared, out of sorts, unwell etc etc) and people will still like it. I read today about the ambiguity or contempt some comedians get running the same routine past lots of people and having it all become predictable. I have felt something similar over the last 18 months, like I'm out of my groove. I'm gracious, but if people complement me and it's unwarranted, I wonder how discerning they can really be when I am actually inside the song and... flying.

I can perform the illusion of deep emotion and intensity when it's not there, which disturbs me because I'm not sure how many people are fooled. I want to move beyond performance into, I don't know... transcendence. Where I am pure copper wire between the song and the audience, where my voice tells the story fresh every time it's sung, where it's all genuine.

I'd love this blog to be a forum to discuss this stuff. I'd like to hear your experiences.
Sam

The Lady Diamanda

Diamanda Galás

I saw Diamanda Galás' Defixiones, Will and Testament on Friday night. I think it was one of the most extraordinary performance pieces I've ever seen. I am still processing the intensity. I am going to see Diamanda's Songs of Exile tonight. I really felt like she was leading us through a ritual to raise the dead of the Armenian genocides, allowing them to voice the horror, the fear, the desperation, the vengeance, the bewilderment and anger.
She appears to physically or psychically take in and embody the horror she reveals and we acted as the ritual witnesses, legitimising the victims' hidden histories and committing their death to our memories. It's an incredible personal way to approach political material and incredibly effective. Three days later I'm still moved.
It provoked an incredible range of audience reaction from hysterical laughter to walk-outs to howling/screaming to some moments of psychotic behaviour. I don't know that it was neccessarily a malignant energy in the room, despite the subject matter, but there was certainly an intensity that possessed crowd and performer alike, and I really enjoyed the carthartic and provocative aspects of performance and audience alike.
I'll write more when I have more perspective on the show and tonight's, too.

It was a big weekend all up for huge emotional outpourings as I did a two-part show for Melbourne Fringe Festival last night (Sunday) with my band, the mime set, and poet Sean M Whelan. The crowd was with us and it was an amazing experience. I feel the show just came together on stage in a focused and natural way. I felt like I'd dropped an E about halfway through because I got a very real MDMA rush onstage. So that was interesting. More later. I need to process.

http://www.diamandagalas.com/

Ladies I Love

Jodi Phillis (Clouds/Dearhunters and solo records) and Trish Young (Clouds), PJ Harvey, Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins), Bjork, Etta James, Brenda Lee, Peggy Lee, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Debbie Harry, Annie Lennox, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Harriet Wheeler (the Sundays), Pasty Cline, Chrissie Hynde (Tattoed Love Boys!), Jen Hval (solo, ex-Folding For Air/I Panic), Deborah Conway and Chrissie Amphlett.

Check out www.allmusic.com for most of these artists, and www.amo.org.au for the rest. These are great music reference websites if you're not familiar with them. AMO is for Australian artists.

All the World is Backward

All The World Is Backward

I saw it in your face tonight
We could’ve been hypnotised
You saw through my shattered love
How surrender makes you stronger
Something came out my mouth
This power terrifies me
Now that it’s in my hands
Using me, using it

CH
All the world is backward
Through my bleary eyes
But I’m so happy to see you
I used to be somebody's girl

Passed you, my broken-bodied girl
Blooded, bleeding, battered, empty
You were always striving for grace
Out there, somewhere, someone’s got plenty
My head remembers, but my hands are heading into
the heavy traffic of unhappy endings
A full-blooded road can’t be victimless
A full-hearted love feels like this

Just let it out
Ain’t so much to laugh about
We’ll have to figure it out

CH

lyrics by Ms. Sam Wareing
music by the mime set

lyrical flow

Music is my life. As a singer and songwriter, I'm fascinated by performers and lyricists, people who have put passion and thought into how they do what they do and what kind of stories they tell. Whether you're Bonnie Prince Billy with his anti-schtick or embracing your primal self Patti Smith style, as long as it's original and indigenous to you, I'm interested.

And it's not just your rock 'n' roll spectacle performers either (although Steven Tyler is the consumate rock god in word and deed!) but performers and lyricists the gamut of Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), Bjork, Sigur Ros, Chris Whitley, Grand Salvo, Devendra Banhart, Moloko, Joey from Calexico, Radiohead, The Darkness, Dave Graney, The Drones, Mclusky, Tom Waits, Eurythmics, Matt Walker, Deborah Conway, Paul Kelly, Don Walker, Neko Case and many, many more.

I'll use this as a forum to publicly workshop my lyrics and discuss writing and stagecraft. I'd love to hear stories about your favourite performers, your modus operandi as a performer, samples of lyrics you're proud of, samples of other people's lyrics that move you and why.

I'm hoping for broad-ranging discussion and lots of new favourite music!

Ms. Sam
www.themimeset.com