Music

Dexter Britain

I’m working on a promo video for In Saturn’s Rings and I needed to find music for the piece. Unfortunately, I can’t use what I like to listen to because it’s not going to be for personal use and just put on Vimeo. I needed music that I could easily get a license for.

Anyone that has to find the right music for a piece knows how difficult it is when you can’t use your own library of favorites. It’s such a drag to search hours and hours through creative commons licensed music because so much of it is pure crap. Then when you find a great song, you plop it in your edit and it just doesn’t fit properly and you have to go back to the drawing board. It becomes a dreaded chore.

So I spent the better part of a day looking through volumes of titles on Vimeo’s music store, The Music Bed, Audiojungle, Jamendo and even Moby’s gratis music (thanks Moby!). Ugh, so many bad cheesy songs out there.

Then I came across Dexter Britain. Wow. I was blown away. It’s without a doubt the best creative commons music I’ve come across. It has a classical contemporary feel to it that is timeless. If I was making a feature film, I wouldn’t hesitate to put this in.

Anyways, just trying to help fellow filmmakers out there with more options.

Give it a listen:

For more, click this soundcloud link for his page.

Favorites from 2012

I told myself I wouldn’t do the movie/music reviews anymore (I used to on an old blog), because there are so many people out there doing that already (I recommend James Berardinelli), but I get asked a lot because I’m in the industry. So I thought I would just post a list of the best movies/music I saw/listened to this year. And these titles aren’t limited to release date, but what I actually discovered this year.

Favorite Movies/TV (in no order):

The Best:

Silver Linings Playbook
Looper
Wake in Fright
Headhunters
The Man From Nowhere
Battlestar Galactica
Fullmetal Alchemist

Very Good:

Haywire
21 Jump Street
The Cabin in the Woods
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Avengers
Lockout
Premium Rush
Lawless
Django Unchained
Bernie

Favorite Performances:

Jack Black in Bernie
Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike
Bérénice Marlohe in Skyfall

Favorite Albums:

Silversun Pickups: Neck of the Woods
Lana Del Rey: Born to Die
The Lumineers: The Lumineers
fun.: Some Nights
Ellie Goulding: Halcyon
Beach House: Bloom
Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra: Theatre is Evil
Youth Lagoon: The Year of Hibernation

Favorite Songs*:

Diamonds by Rihanna
Angels by The xx
Heartbreak on the 101 by Band Of Horses
Too Close by Alex Clare
Paper Moon #5 by Jeremy Messersmith
Same Love by Ryan Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

If you think I’ve missed something this year, please comment. If I’m flat wrong, please tell me why. Remember, art is subjective.

*I left off songs from my favorite albums. There’s so many great songs on those, this list would have went on forever.

An evening with Messersmith.

Last Monday, Jeremy Messersmith stopped by our house to perform for his Supper Club Tour. We had some great food, great wine, made some new friends and had a great time. Oh yeah, and he played some music.

The first thing he did was give us a nice gift for us offering our home for the tour.

Apparently, he’s a mushroom hunter. I verified that he knew what he was doing (I’d hate to die from eating a poisonous mushroom. I’d rather die from spontaneous combustion). He assured me that he did, but I’m still waiting to hear news from a killing spree by mushroom toting musician. If I don’t hear anything soon, I’ll take a nibble.

He was also gracious enough to sign my albums and take a few photos.

My girlfriend* took this photo, hence the soft focus..

I’m happy that I got some new photos for the portfolio:

And finally, I recorded him playing a little:

And here he is showing a sense of humor:

*note to self, only let pros handle my gear

Jeremy Messersmith supper club tour.

I love music. I love concerts. But I’m not particularly fond of large concerts. I don’t like being a half mile away from the act and barely being able to see them. And most large venues have horrible acoustics. So I like to discover great bands/artists early, see them when they’re in small intimate venues and not bother when they get too big to play the small clubs anymore. So when one of my new favorite artists announced a house party tour, I jumped right in.

Recently, Jeremy Messersmith announced he was going to do a supper club tour. It’s going to be a house party where guests have to make a dish and pass it around like a potluck, but with Jeremy performing in the house. How freaking cool is that!? So when I saw he was coming to North Carolina, I got excited and offered my home for the supper club tour. After a few e-mails with his manager, it’s been finalized and he’ll be playing in my home on November 19th. If you’re in the Winston-Salem area, you should get some tickets and swing by. It’s going to kick ass.

If you have some time, check out his music on his website and check out this song on soundcloud. Below is one of my favorite music videos.

Jeremy Messersmith – Tatooine from Eric Power on Vimeo.

The dotMatrix scene in Greensboro, North Carolina

Last night, I got the pleasure to film another dotMatrix show, the fourth one I’ve done so far. It’s amazing the talent DMP creator Sean Coon has found in such a small area. With all kinds of musical acts ranging from rock (Sorry about Dresden), rockabilly (The Tremors), alternative (Citified), hip hop (Mr. Rozzi), spoken word (Universal Mathematics), bluegrass (Old Stone Revue), folk (Bruce Piephoff), local legends (Jim Avett), and just plain weird, but awesome, (Janik) you never know what kind of great music you’re bound to hear at a dotMatrix concert. It kind of reminds me of the music scene I left in Detroit, renowned for its music with featured acts that would become national ones like Eminem, the White Stripes, Obie Trice, Kid Rock, Taproot, etc., etc., and is twice the size of the Greensboro area. I wouldn’t be surprised to see several dmp acts go national.

Not only is Sean able to get great musicians to play for free, he’s able to get great sound engineers, photographers and filmmakers to document the event. Every show Sean has produced comes with a live album, tons of press photos and a video for the musicians to use however they’d like. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved, especially the fans that don’t even have to pay to see them. Did I forget to mention it’s free? So if you haven’t taken the opportunity to get involved by either performing, capturing or just being there, make sure you do. Otherwise, you’ll be missing the scene going on right beneath your feet.

Here are some photos from last nights “Get the Folk Out!” show: