What's In A Picture?
And What's Free?
Last Week’s Bonus Round: “Crash Years” is a song by the band The New Pornographers from their 2010 album “Together”, Neko Case (link to Substack) is the vocalist on the song.
“The New Pornographers are a Canadian indie rock band, formed in 1997 in Vancouver. Presented as a musical collective and supergroup[1] of singer-songwriters and musicians from multiple projects, the band has released nine studio albums to date. The band have received critical acclaim for their use of multiple vocalists and songwriters, as well as for the elements of power pop incorporated into their music.[2] Pitchfork has described the band's sound as "peppy, gleeful, headstrong guitar pop",[3] while Stereogum has retrospectively praised the band's debut album Mass Romantic as "one of the greatest and most immediate power pop albums ever rendered".[1]ogether is the fifth studio album by Canadian indie rock band the New Pornographers. It was released on May 4, 2010[1] and debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200.
The album was recorded in seven studios in British Columbia and New York City[2] and features guest appearances by Zach Condon of Beirut, Annie Clark (also known as St. Vincent), Will Sheff of Okkervil River, and the horn players from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.[1]
Together is dedicated to the memory of Lynn Calder, the mother of keyboardist Kathryn Calder, and the half-sister of Carl Newman.[2] "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk" was featured in an early 2011 ad campaign for the Amazon Kindle, while "Moves" was used in a commercial for the Hyundai 2012 Accent and a commercial for T-Mobile.
The album covers features a detail from "The Cliff" (2006) by Martin & Muñoz.
Videos from the album include "Your Hands (Together)", "Crash Years", "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk", and "Moves".”
Credit Wikipedia Link: The New Pornographers
Written in 4/4 common time with a pretty quick 125 BPM, and most likely in in the Key of FMajor, with one nondiatonic chord, the Ab. For the cowboy chords, capo on the 5th fret and play the corresponding C Major shapes - that Ab will become an Eb shape, which is a bit of a stretch!
Disclaimer: This Substack is free, always will be, and I receive no compensation or other benefit (except the unsolicited, occasional, and much appreciated shoutout from readers and other Substackers!) from any of the people or companies or products I link to or write about. Note some images and other material may be copyrighted by the original author or composer and appear here under the “Fair Use” doctrine. Link: Fair Use
Michael Acoustic
Thanks new subscribers! Mika, the cat, welcomes you!!
Mika: “You did not mow your lawn this week! Were you aware of this, human?”
Me: “Yes. Stop nagging.”
A busy week for sure! The grass is just gonna have to wait for a bit. Yesterday’s post covered my starry eyed hopes for having my new song “Long Road Back” out for distribution and how to avoid making the same mistakes I did if you’re contemplating or getting close to releasing a song of your own. Since the song isn’t out on the streaming services yet (one to two weeks after it’s released by my distributor, CD Baby, is probably soonest) let’s talk about some of the nuts and bolts of the process. I’ll be writing about how I wrote the song and such after it’s out and can be heard in it’s entirety, but there’s some technical stuff about getting it there that may be useful.
As I detailed yesterday, I used the CD Baby subsidiary, “Hearnow.com” to get the cover art and a 30 second clip out at least. The cover art looks like this:
Link: Long Road Back
Cover art that’s eye catching is an important part of attracting listeners to a song. I’m by no means a graphic artist, but I’m happy with the design, which I did myself using an image I took and some public domain images and then editing it all on my iPhone. The base image is a Washington state DOT picture from the 50s or 60s on their website. It looks like this:
This road led up a hill from a small town named (Old) Vantage in central Washington state. It’s Old Vantage because it’s now underwater after the reservoir behind Wanapum Dam on the Columbia river flooded it (a bit of the river is in the background center right of the photo). My dad worked on the dam and we had to move to what we called New Vantage (now just Vantage, on I-90 between Moses Lake and Ellensburg) when the dam came online. I used to ride a school bus up that hill to where the school for first and second grades was located in (New) Vantage. There’s a Gingko Petrified Forest National Natural Landmark attraction and not a whole lot else, but you can gas up the truck and get a burger there. Also, The Gorge Amphitheatre is not far away and there are lots of acts that perform there. Caught the Beach Boys…..and America (apparently they opened - I’d forgotten all about that!) there many years ago…Setlist
After editing (a lot) I ended up with this early version:
I liked the photo, but it was a little lighter than I felt fit the mood and I thought the font wasn’t quite right.
I had taken this photo from my back deck (kinda where Mika is in the photos above) several years ago when I purchased an inexpensive telephoto lens attachment for the iPhone:
The moon is facing the wrong way for the Michael Acoustic logo thing I wanted, so more editing.
I found an old generic star field photo on some website (NASA? Hubble? - can’t remember) and blended together the edited DOT pic, the moon pic, and the star field in a couple of apps: “Photo Studio” and one called called “Camera+” on my phone. Then I made the whole thing much darker and played around with different fonts until I ended up with a graphic I thought fit the mood and vibe I wanted, as above.
The image on my phone was much too small for the graphic requirements on CD Baby, so I scaled it up on my laptop using a free software app called GIMP, and pretty easily got it to fit.
I think the only thing that’s a little weird and that bugs me (and once you see it you can’t unsee it) are the “stars” that ended up in “front” of the moon. Meh - I like the graphic, so I’m not gonna worry about it.
I’m near the email length limit (probably too many graphics), so no playlist today, and we’ll close with a Bonus Round clue for next week:
Bonus Round: … Everything!
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic