Curtain Call

Given the fact that the virus is still spreading and that there will be no concerts for the foreseeable future, this page really has no reason to exist.

We've tried prolonging its lifeline by throwing together playlists, starting an ill-fated message board, posting about exhibits etc. but the whole raison d'être of www.ElectricEyeRock.com was to publish concert photos...

So there will likely be no more updates on the site or the associated social channels until we can return to a normal life. If we can return to a normal life.

There will be one more playlist on New Year's Day, because it's been planned for a while (although still a work in progress) but essentially this is going to remain inactive for the foreseeable future.

I never had any pretension of this ever being viable, it was just a way to get to enjoy concerts from a privileged perspective: the photo pit. And it's been awesome: I've managed to get credentialed for a shitload of great gigs and taken a few cool pictures (my favorite ones are HERE) so it's been pretty great. It would be cool if it happened again.

In the mean time stay safe and don't forget to wash your hands!

Friday's Playlist: Awesome Beatles Cover (pt. 3)

Here's the next installment in our Beatles covers series. Another eclectic bunch of songs, some downright weird interpretations, a few more faithful ones... Enjoy, comment and share.

Friday's Playlist: Variations on the Bo Diddley Beat

 

This Friday's Playlist compiles some notable examples of songs that use the famous "Bo Diddley" beat. Of course, Bo Diddley didn't come up with that chugging rhythm. But he was one of the first ones to use it in the context of electric popular music.

5 years

Five years ago I had no words. Now, a few come to mind. Words of anger, words of hate, words of sadness and pain. These things and these people never stop. Whether they're blowing themselves up in a concert for teenage girls in Manchester or opening fire on schoolchildren in Parkland, Florida. Emboldened, galvanized, brainwashed by their fanatic, bigoted leaders the world over. Enjoy your death cult, just leave the rest of us be. We just want to listen to music.

AC/DC - Power Up

The first thing I noticed as I listened to Power Up, AC/DC's first album in over five years, is how prominent the bass is. Not that Cliff Williams, who was coaxed out of a well-deserved retirement in Florida, has changed his playing style. His lines still have a spartan, essential quality to them. They are the perfect foil to Phil Rudd's playing. Nothing is ornate, and nothing is wasted. The quintessential rock and roll backbone. The bass is just louder than you're used to hearing in AC/DC.

November 13th, 2020: Friday the 13th

Hey, it's Friday the 13th! What do you know? We threw together a little playlist for the occasion. We've tried not to put too many duplicates with our Halloween playlist from last year but inevitably there are some overlaps...

Friday's Playlist: Awesome Beatles Covers (part 2)

 A few weeks ago we shared a playlist of Beatles covers, so here's the follow-up to that. Pop, Blues, Metal, Jazz, Reggae... You can play the Beatles in any style. Enjoy, comment and share!

Introducing Electric Eye Radio

Here's a fun new item. If you're an Apple Music subscriber, you can listen to our very own radio station. Full of classic tracks, but also some more obscure personal favorites in a wide array of genres: rock of course, but also jazz, blues, country, funk, metal, soul, folk and even some classical music.

Check it out here:

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE ELECTRIC EYE RADIO PAGE

Friday's Playlist - Fuck Trump! Go vote.

For a long time I've resisted putting forth any political opinion on here, for two reasons. The first reason is that this is a music site, and music unites us regardless of who we chose to vote for. The second reason is that nobody cares about my opinions. I've been a lot more vocal on the Twitter account associated with the site, and I've shared a playlist or two that might have betrayed my leanings but essentially I've tried to keep this page free of anything overly topical or potentially divisive.

Friday's Monday's Playlist: Bootsy Collins: Sessions & Contributions

Today is Bootsy Collins' 69th birthday (he he, 69) so in his honour we're scrambling our schedule and are presenting Friday's Playlist on (GASP!) a Monday. This is the type of lunacy we're capable of. Watch out, we're funkin' crazy.

This Playlist explores some of Bootsy's sessions and contributions outside of his main gigs in Parliament, Funkadelic, the Rubber Band or his solo output. This is in no way an exhaustive list but rather an overview of the breadth of his talents.

Friday's Playlist: Rap and Hip Hop

Full disclosure: we're very ignorant when it comes to Hip Hop or Rap. It's just not our scene. But it's just a massive, ubiquitous cultural force. And it has infiltrated, informed, permeated, influenced every other musical genre, from Jazz to Blues to Metal. So one can't not be aware of its impact, pardon the double negative.

Musée de la Musique, Paris

The Cité de la Musique in Paris is a huge complex in the north-east section the capital which sits next to the Philharmonic and comprises a beautiful performance hall in which I've seen several acts including Comus, Bill Frisell and P.I.L. and a splendid museum which I visited back when it first opened in the early nineties.

Renaud: Putain d'Expo! @ La Cité de la Musique, Paris

À deux pas de la Philharmonie de Paris, temple de la Grande Musique, sérieuse et imposante, et à quatre pas du Zénith que Renaud a inauguré et rempli des centaines de fois, la prestigieuse Cité de la Musique consacre une belle exposition au chanteur énervant, l'occasion de retrouver son univers alors même que son activité musicale est en berne, hormis la sortie il y a quelque mois d'un single bâclé, le médiocre Corona Song.

Friday's Playlist: Awesome Beatles Covers (part 1)

This Friday's Playlist is a selection of Beatles songs played by other artists. Of course, these songs are given some new guises: soul, hard rock, jazz... Because a good song can be played in any style.

Friday's Playlist: Just Cool Rock Shit

No real theme to this one, just ninety minutes of cool, hard rocking songs, some old, some new, most of which might have been a little overlooked. Play this one extra loud.

Leslie West @ New Morning, Paris - October 8th, 2010

Eddie Van Halen: 1955-2020

For some reason, Van Halen never did anything for me growing up. It should have, in theory it should have ticked all the right boxes. But I never got them. Sure, I did enjoy some of their classics and hits the same way I enjoy Don't Stop Believin' or Too Shy. But I never went beyond that until a few years ago. 

Friday's Playlist: Eponymous Songs

This Friday's Playlist is a non-exhaustive list of bands or artists that have named songs after themselves. Bonus points of course when that song comes from an album that is also also self-titled! There are many, many more but we had to stop somewhere. Which ones would you include?

Friday's Playlist - Mixing Desk Hero: Bob Ezrin

Over a month ago we shared a playlist focusing on then-recently departed producer Martin Birch and it was a big success, so here's the second instalment in our Friday's Playlists Mixing Desk Hero series. This one focuses on the legendary Bob Ezrin.

Friday's Playlist: Children of Jimi

Today marks a pretty sad anniversary: it's been exactly a half century since Jimi Hendrix died. Jimi was arguably the most influential guitarist, well, ever really. His contribution to the musical lexicon is immeasurable and goes way beyond the realm of rock. His appeal also transcends generations, instruments, gender and race. Because Jimi's music didn't just break down musical walls: it broke down racial ones, social ones. Face it, Jimi's music was woke. Cross-breeding music to fight cross-burning mentalities.

R.I.P. Frederick Nathaniel "Toots" Hibbert

Extremely sad news: one of the originators of reggae has died at the age of 77 from complications of COVID-19. This shitty virus has wreaked havoc everywhere on the planet and has already taken some beloved musicians like John Prine, Manu Dibango, Dave Greenfield of the Stranglers, Trini Lopez, Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, and many more.

Friday's Playlist: Southern Rock Epics

This Friday's Playlist is an overview of the most epic songs in the Southern Rock genre. Expect lots of cool guitar solos and even some sweet vocal harmonies here and there.

Friday's Playlist: Make It Funky!

In stark contrast to last week's playlist which showcased aggressive, negative vibes, this collection is a party. Funky grooves designed to make you Get Off Your Ass And Jam.

Friday's Playlist: Thrash, Death and Black Metal Classics

Let's get brutal, shall we?

Thrash Metal was a mostly American school of Metal that fused the violence and velocity of Punk and Hardcore with the epic heaviness of British Metal. Out of that first wave of early eighties Thrash, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax were considered The Big Four. Metallica of course went on to become the Heavy Rock behemoth we know today. In their wake, bands like Exodus, Flotsam and Jetsam, Testament almost made it out of the underground. Overseas, bands like Kreator in Germany or Sepultura in Brazil would also carve a nice career out of frantic riffs, implacable drums.

Friday's Playlist: Great Live Performances (pt. 2)

We miss concerts. Our last one was six months ago (Tenacious D at le Zénith) so this playlist is the next best thing to actually gathering in a concert hall and rock out to your favorite band.

Over seven months ago we shared the first instalment in our Great Live Performances playlist series (it can be found HERE). Today we are back with an epic, gigantic, overblown, mammoth seven-hour  monster playlist. There is no real theme to it, but we've kept it mostly to the Rock idiom. Sure, some is Blues-Rock, some is Pop-Rock, some is Prog-Rock and some is Hard-Rock... But it all rocks.

Friday's Playlist - Awesome Guitar Solos (pt. 3)

Jimi Hendrix' Gibson Flying V - Play It Loud @ the Met

This Friday's Playlist is a new instalment in our ongoing "Awesome Guitar Solos" series. You can find part one HERE and part two HERE.

Friday's Monday's Playlist - Mixing Desk Hero: Martin Birch

With the sad news that legendary producer Martin Birch passed away at the age of 71, we scrambled our usual schedule and  decided to publish this playlist that pays tribute to the man's immense contribution to rock music, as an engineer and as a producer.

Friday's Playlist: Songs About Real People

 

This Friday's Playlist compiles songs about real people. As usual, there are some rules I've adhered to: I've tried to avoid presenting the same artists twice. I've also excluded any diss songs, which means there are no ex-bandmates feud songs like John Lennon's How Do You Sleep? or Guns N' Roses' Sorry. As usual, I've made an exception to that rule by including Pink Floyd's elegy for their former leader Syd Barrett.

Friday's Playlist: Free Jazz

In the mood for something a little challenging? Something wild, exhilarating, mysterious? Good. We got you. Check out this playlist of classic Free Jazz. Spontaneous combustions of sound, free-form expression, bursts of micro-tonal melodies, dissonant waves of pure music, improvised pathways to the subconscious.

Friday's Playlist: Welcome to New Orleans

This playlist gathers a few of New Orleans most famous bands and musicians. Of course, jazz and funk are heavily featured. Didn't everything start with Louis Armstrong? It sure feels like it did. Some of the very best music every recorded is in this playlist. Check out the Wild Tchoupitoulas or the Meters if you haven't already. Brilliant stuff.

Friday's Playlist: Unusual Songs by Classic Artists

These are a few songs by famous artists that sound nothing like the rest of their output. Sometimes it's a good thing: hearing a piano in AC/DC is just brilliant. Sometimes, it's not so good: why Guns N' Roses decided to close their last record of original material for close to two decades with the abysmal techno-turd rap My World is anyone's guess.

Friday's Playlist: Songs with Sequels

It's summertime and if that damn virus hadn't screwed up everyone's plans we'd be on the beach somewhere in California soaking up the sun and a few Margaritas. It would also be blockbuster season and no doubt people would be rushing to the movie theaters to catch Star Wars Episode 31, Avengers: Overcrowded Intergalactic Cosmic Battle or the latest James Bond film Die Like Death.

Friday's Playlist: The Canterbury Scene

This Friday we're zooming on Canterbury, a city in Kent, England and the birthplace of several of the most celebrated progressive rock bands of the late sixties/seventies. Bands like Caravan, Hatfield & the North, Soft Machine...

Friday's Playlist: Welcome to the Apocalypse

Lockdown has ended in our neck of the woods, although life is far from back to normal. Doubtful any significant concerts will take place any time soon, and it does feel like the aftermath of a devastating catastrophe. And of course, it was. So in that spirit, here's a little doomsday playlist for you.

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