Bonus Room – Blessed Be
Most of the truly great, wholly famous pop songs ever composed only contain three, four, maybe five chords. The vast majority of these songs can be picked up by an experienced musician within minutes. And, indeed, these musicians will be playing them tonight, as in any other night, in restaurants and concert halls across the world.
Still, thankfully, the people who thought of putting those few chords together with the right words managed to become either extremely wealthy or, at the very least, very respected.
All of that for just a few chords? Is this some kind of scam, and why doesn’t everybody try to do the same? Well, you try it! Learn a few chords so that you can put together a song just like Bonus Room’s dark, mysterious, and catchy numbers. Ain’t as easy as it seems, is it?
Concept and proficient playing aside, the fact is that Bonus Room’s ability to arrange songs in just the right way and perform them with great intensity makes this one of the most interesting pop-rock groups active today. “Blessed Be,” a song about religious fundamentalism, is designed to convince you of the band’s worth by the time that it hits the first chorus. That’s no mean trick, and something, certainly, that means you ought to keep an eye out for this band.
Dusty Joy – I don’t wanna be a ghost without you
Regular folks often feel that it’s their duty to bully artists into excellence. This has all started because of the assumption that artists, of the type that you read about in books, or the ones who just carry around guitars through public transport, are meant to be smarter, stronger and wiser than everybody else. But a quick inventory of all the art that’s worth keeping will reveal that this is rarely the case.
Dusty Joy makes music that is sad, funny, and, essentially, tells you how their month has been going. On the other hand, there’s a recent interview of Mr Steve Vai making the rounds of the internet where he claims that he would practice guitar (code for running up and down scales) for nine hours a day. Oh, how sad Mr Vai’s parents must be at what they allowed their child to become.
The great songs are in the simple, often harrowing stories. The Ramones-inspired “I don’t wanna be a ghost without you,” by Dusty Joy, is a song about a terrible event, which most people can relate to, namely, the death of a pet. But rather than using fancy metaphors, trying to sadden you to tears, or, worse, expressing his pain through the use of exotic scales played at 200 bpm, Dusty Joy uses charm and humour to break your heart. This one’s a keeper, mostly because of how natural it sounds.
