The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album would easily be considered a landmark work but not from a sales perspective, but the influence others obtained from the Beach Boys efforts.

Eric Clapton and Elton John credit the record for the creation of such rich and full sound, while the Beatles producer George Martin stated that “Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn’t have happened… Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.”

If you look ground the next you can find a number of song from the album song with no backing (acappaella) . Doing my snooping I happened to find “God Only Knows” and, chances are, you have never heard the song like this… it still brings a tear to my eye.

Beach Boys – God Only Knows (acappella)

“Once the understanding of self is realized it cannot be denied.”

-Van Santos, 10/27/08

//NOTE
//The original post included broken links to the songs.  
//This error has been fixed.  
//END NOTE

This was the original that set everything off for me, my first E.P. ”All the things that could have been…” This has a lot of meaning to me… more and more each day.

Sonicstate – Track 1 – 1221

Sonicstate – Track 2 – Dreamstate

Sonicstate – Track 3 – Morningstar

Sonicstate – Track 4 – Release

Enoy!

I have a habit in life, I tend to get on “kicks”. You know… where you listen to / eat / do the same thing over and over until, one day, you wake up and that desire is no longer with you. After getting off a “kick” I may go months, if not years, before revisiting the activity again.

Last November I started with what I thought was a music kick – listening to the entire back catalog of Alabama 3. Turns out that it’s not really a kick – I simply really like their stuff.

While surfing around I happened to find an effort by Matt Darey, Tall Paul and Alabama 3. Darey and Paul are remixers / producers who have been around for a good 12 years in the trance world. Since Alabama 3 isn’t exactly what one could call “dance” music I was really surprised to hear they worked together…. and the track is nothing short of a masterpiece (for me).

It’s nothing groundbreaking, yes, but Larry Love’s vocals sound amazing…

You can take a listen here.

This is John McCain at this best: John McCain at the Al Smith Dinner (part one / part two).  

Make sure you watch both.

What I want to know is where was this man during the rest of the election?  This is who the public needs to see….

With the studio almost finished and before I jump head long into a new set of tracks, I wanted to post one more track from the past:

Sonicstate – Thinspace

Pix of the finished studio and gear list will be up this weekend. So, until then, enjoy!

Southwest airlines, one of the few profitable airlines left out there, swung to a loss for the first time in 17 years the company report on Thursday.  Guess what? The loss is due to rising energy costs.  Guess what? it’s because LUV overpaid for their fuel and is now a victim to “mark-to-market” accounting.

Years back Southwest Airlines started to hedge their fuel costs – paying a pre-determined price for a commodity in order to avoid large and often unpredictable shifts in pricing.  This is based on the belief that prices will continue to rise at a predictable rate which allows a service provider the ability to complete energy purchases before the price increases.  Problem is if the price of fuel on the open market falls below your cost paid the company needs to show a loss based on current account rules.

Hello Southwest, welcome to an accounting rule that doesn’t seem to be based in reality.

NOTE: This isn’t about my job but my personal happiness with life. END NOTE

Everyday it seems I have one consistent choice to make – is this the day or not.
Is today the day I decide I no longer have the ability to function in my world? If it is said day, a huge life change is knocking on the door. Or is it like any other day where I wake up so sick and tired of feeling so tired yet I suck it up again and make may way through a rough day.
Either way, my troubled mind cannot find comfort in sleep as the question repeats day after day after day…

“When you’ve had your best you can’t help but compare”

Roughly a month ago someone cracked into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! email. At that time there seemed to be very little outrage from the press and there appeared to be little to no reaction from law enforcement. Well, turns out the FBI didn’t forget about this case…

David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn., the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge C. Clifford Shirley, according to a statement from the Justice Department…Kernell, an economics major at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release.”

As David’s father is a Democrat and the chairman of Tennessee’s House Government Operations Committee, you can bet he’s worried about his job right about now.