St. Augustine Beach rainbow
(photo by Mike Marcellino, copyright 2011
Chasing a musical rainbow
I doubt there's anything a person can do that has more ups and downs than making music, that is, creating, recording and performing music. In our case, it's lyrical poetry music, avant-garde stuff that very few people are doing. Our listeners often say our music is "unique." Our music is a fusion of poetry, or lyrical songs and stories, set to music, both played by musicians and composed using computer software. Depending on the subject or story of the lyrics, the accompanying music may have elements of folk, jazz, punk, hip hop, blues, country or even surf, as in "Bondi beach". I suppose you could say "Flatbush" is even psychedelic.
In November, we recorded and released our 8th song, "Taipei subway."
On New Year's Day we popped up to #42 among the Hot Folk Artists in the world on ReverbNation's charts. ReverbNation, a leading website for musical artists, has more than 1.5 million artists. Monday we peaked at #26. We reached our all-time high of #17 in April. The next two days we were nearly off the chart, only to reach #95 today. We're #30 on the Top Folk Artists' New York City chart, after peaking at #22 in August after releasing our 7th song, "West of the Pecos".
I often wonder why I continue to make music, though I do enjoy it. We haven't tried to sell any tracks yet, other than a self-produced sample CD, "Notebook Writer" for show we did in New York City in the fall of 2010. We expect to start selling digital tracks and album this month.
But, then, we receive comments like this one from Agata Zak, an actor from New York City -
"Keep up the beautiful work. You are an inspiration to many."
Or, one from Mas Las, a journalist from Algeria -
"'West of the Pecos' is a masterpiece, the voice, poetry, rhythm and the music."
And, going back to December 2009 when we first began making lyrical poetry music, from Paul Donohoe, a writer in Australia -
"This (The Walls of Fire) lovely and haunting piece of poetry should be a world wide sensation."
Then I wonder, gee, are they kidding, is this for real? While people are listening from all over the United States and the world the numbers aren't large - in the thousands, but not yet tens of thousands.
For the record here are our recorded songs so far:
Amelia Earhart, soft silver wings 9-23-2009
been down ta Las Cruces 10-22-2009
Flatbush 11-3-2009
The Walls of Fire 11-11-2009
Bondi beach 11-20-2009
Alphabet cofeehouse 3-13-2010
West of the Pecos 6-7-2011
Taipei subway 11-6-2011
Tomas Texino composed the music on all songs except Flatbush, composed by Randall Leddy who also played bass. David Dowling played bass on Amelia. All songs were recorded in St. Augustine, Florida, except for Flatbush, recorded in Brooklyn, NY.
In any event, thanks to our listeners for joining us on a wild, poetic music ride.
Listen and share our music with your friends (free to stream online). Like our Facebook Musician/Band. page. Help us introduce our music to more people our band to grow.
Here's the link to our ReverbNation music page. It's free to register and listen and there's a lot of great music on the site. You can be a fan of our band if you like, and even join the street team, which will be getting some stuff to do this year!
Take care, and we love to hear from you, so drop us a note!
Mike and the band
