BEAT CONCRETE playing music for change

24May/090

Spiritual Underground

Except for the fact that my vocal chords were messed up we laid down some pretty good grooves last week. Here's our song Spiritual Underground for your listening and downloading pleasure. SU was originally a more afro-beat track inspired by the late, great Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who's always been a hero of mine.

If you've never listened to Fela, here's a good place to start.

If I had 17 musicians that I could jam with (and afford to pay) that is exactly how we would roll.

Anyway, we just re-worked the bass line to be more soul-oriented so that we could groove more smoothly in our trio format live and this is what it sounds like.

>> Spiritual Underground (live)

Normal caveats apply; Firefox users need to right-click and Save-As to save to their hard drive to listen properly. Listen, share, and promote the track as you will for your own non-commercial use.

The best way to stream Beat Concrete tracks is at our MySpace page (www.myspace.com/beatconcreteband) where we have a selection of tracks including Spiritual Underground.

Peace out.



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5May/090

New Live Tracks Plus Links

Putting up two live tracks recorded at rehearsal on Sunday: Stereo and Love Bomber. I sing the first one, Beki the second. Because we have songs scattered across the site, we thought it might be useful to put all the songs together to make it easier to grab the MP3s.

To save any of these files to your computer, right-click on the filename and choose Save Target As. Then save 'em to your MP3 folders and play them and share them at will.

These have the same old lo-fi feel as our other tracks. Need to get back to the studio and record these for reals, but if a song is decent it should come through anyway.

PS: I update 'Stereo' with a new live version record 17 May because the original version sucked (I was slightly out of tune and I can't frickin' stand to be out of tune!).



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2May/090

The Girl in Number Six

Today we're heading into the Beat Concrete vaults thanks to a little computer serendipity. I was listening to some live tracks and when Windows Media Player was through with them it moved to the next track, which turned out to be a demo of The Girl in Number Six. I'd forgotten about it, but listening to it fresh I decided it wasn't half bad. The guitar arrangement was definitely influenced by XTC and to reflect their Northern English roots I played the secondary guitar parts through an AC-30 emulation on my trusty little Pandora headphone amp.

If you google the girl in number six you get this--awesome!

If you google 'the girl in number six' you get this--awesome!

The demo started with a mono rough mix of rhythm tracks we recorded in a North Coast studio a few years ago, and then I threw that on my little portable 8-track recorder and dubbed a few guitar tracks using my Pandora to try out the guitar arrangement I'd planned in my head. The mono track had a scratch vocal I'd recorded in the studio live to guide the other band members, and I doubled it with Beki singing alongside me into my 8-track's build in mic. Voila! Instant demo.

Good demo or POS? You be the judge.

>> The Girl in Number Six (demo)



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29Apr/090

Dark Love

Just realized it has been a while since we posted a new song. Went back to the well of rehearsal tracks and pulled up a bucket of Dark Love. This is a song I wrote a long time ago and we've been playing it for years. But we updated the middle section to add a slow blues groove in Cm and Ken recently started singing on the song. So this version is 'new'.

>> Dark Love (live rehearsal)

This one clocks in at about five and a half minutes. Some nights it's shorter, others it's loooonger.

Not what I envisioned when I wrote Dark Love, but who am I to argue with Google?

Not what I envisioned when I wrote Dark Love, but who am I to argue with Google?



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23Mar/090

Nijinsky and Mr. Reed

Here's another live rehearsal, this time of song that Rebecca wrote that we've been playing forever. I re-arranged my guitar part a few years ago and this is the way we play it now. Ken sings backup vocals on the middle section--one of his first recorded vocals in a Beat Concrete context.

>> Nijinsky and Mr. Reed (live rehearsal)

As with the other rehearsal tracks, the audio quality is as you'd expect from the built-in microphones on our lil' Portastudio.



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19Mar/090

One Quarter Full

I wrote this song before the economic downturn was fully in effect, but somehow it seems right for the times. This is our first good runthrough of the song, captured at rehearsal on 15 March.

We've started bringing a little portastudio to wherever we play so we can record the performance using its el cheapo built-in mics. Have a listen; hope to be playing it live for you soon.

Live the vocals would be mixed louder, but otherwise this is what we sound like live:

>> One Quarter Full (live rehearsal)

Fun Fact: Originally, I called this song '75% Melancholy' since that lyric is repeated a lot in the song. But 'One Quarter Full' captures the "optimism" of the song. I figure if you're having one good day out of every four you're actually doing pretty good.

Fun Fact II: I forgot a line during the runthrough. Here are the last four lines of the second verse so you can spot the flubbed line:

Less every year
The harder I try the deeper I delve
No one owns me
I can't even afford myself



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Beat Concrete

Beat Concrete is a Northern California trio that plays original independent music.

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