 Michael J now on Facebook! Hey everyone! Check out my page on Facebook HERE and become a fan! Tell all your friends about it too! MJ My music in MTV and E! Networks shows worldwide!  Greetings everyone, Just dropping you all a quick note to tell you that I received a phone call from my friends at Riptide Music in Los Angeles Friday afternoon. Riptide is the company that handles the placement of my songs in films and television shows. It seems that Riptide has inked a deal to place selected music from their roster (which includes me) in MTV and E! Networks programs across the globe starting very soon. There's no absolute guarantee, but it's a pretty good bet that you'll start to hear my music in some television shows all over the world within the next few months. Keep an ear out and please drop me a line here to let me know if you do hear something because I don't get much time to watch TV, and those are two networks I rarely...if ever, tune in to. Musical Influences Hello everyone! There have been a lot of people asking me lately who my major influences are and what kind of music I like to listen to for inspiration, so I thought it might be fun to share some of that information with all of you to give you insight into why I got started in music in the first place. The list of artists who have been influential to me is quite extensive and it's actually an ever growing and changing thing as I continue to find new and exciting artists and bands all the time that inspire me and push me forward. I've decided to focus here on just the immediate people who made me want to sing, pick up a guitar, write songs and perform in front of an audience. Enjoy! MJ Pete Townshend of The Who  Pete's unique electric and acoustic guitar playing and especially his songwriting are what drew me to him and his work both solo and with The Who. Quadrophenia will forever be one of my favorite rock albums of all time. One of my biggest influences in the songwriting arena. The Edge of U2  The Edge is arguably my biggest influence guitar-wise. His innovative, yet very simple playing style and amazing use of effects still inspires and amazes me today. No one sounded like him before he came along...now just about everyone does to some degree. Without Edge and U2, bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, Muse and Snow Patrol wouldn't exist. I would easily put him alongside all the greats like Hendrix and Clapton. A living legend. Alex Lifeson of Rush  Alex Lifeson's rhythm guitar playing is some of the finest ever. He made me realize that you can always find a more interesting guitar part to play than just strumming standard everyday chords... like 99.9% of the players out there today. Another true innovater. Neil Finn of Crowded House  Neil is probably my favorite songwriter of all time. He is a master pop song craftsman. His haunting melodies and lyrics made me want to be a songwriter the minute I first heard "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House. I learned that the most effective songs are usually the simplest from Neil. Bono of U2  My favorite singer hands down. Bono is among the all-time greats in the rock vocal department, along with guys like Mick Jagger. What I love about his singing is the looseness of it. Bono's vocal is never perfect in U2's songs, and in this day and age when most modern pop and rock singers rely on a piece of software called "Auto-Tune" to correct their pitch on recordings, he is absolutely a breath of fresh air. His singing is very "human"...full of beautiful flaws. He has a way of tapping into the raw emotion of a song that not many other people do and he makes it sound effortless. Being a singer myself...I can tell you that it is absolutely the most difficult thing to do. Another living legend. Eric Johnson  I really don't care too much for flashy guitar players or guitar solos in the slightest, but this guy is the exception. I have had the honor of cooresponding with him on several occasions and I will tell you that he is one of the classiest, nicest guys in the world. I realized early on that I would probably never be as technically proficient as Eric (few people are), but his live guitar tone is one of the most awe-inspiring things to behold. What I love about his solos is that you can actually sing most of the melodies. He is a great singer and pianist also...believe it or not. Jim Kerr of Simple Minds  Another of my favorite vocalists of all time. Jim Kerr's effortless delivery still gives me chills today. He is far less known than Bono...but I would put the two of them in the same category vocally any day. Charlie Burchill of Simple Minds  Charlie's atmospheric sound is simply HUGE. He always plays for the songs and doesn't get in the way. Charlie made me want to run out and buy a digital delay pedal early in my life. Johnny Marr of The Smiths and Modest Mouse  Johnny Marr taught me about experimenting with different and unorthodox guitar tunings. His chimy open string voicings were...and still are... a huge influence on my guitar playing. I wondered why I liked the new Modest Mouse record so much, and then instantly knew why when a close friend of mine told me Johnny had recently joined the band. Andy Summers of The Police  Andy Summers is another guy who I learned the importance of simplicity from. His delicate, chimy, beautiful delayed washes of guitar were the perfect compliment to Sting and Stewart Copeland's driving reggae infused rhythms in The Police. Andy laid some of the sonic groundwork for The Edge who took the ball and ran with it. Sting of The Police  Sting is an influence of mine vocally, but moreso as a songwriter. What I love about Sting is the simplicity of his songs and of his bass playing. I learned the importance of "space"...or "breath" in music by listening to The Police. Every note they didn't play was as important... or more so... than the notes they did play. I cover Message In A Bottle in my show each night and it's one of my favorite things to do. Peter Gabriel  The consumate showman. I love his piano playing, his gruff vocal style and his songs. His music has some of the sexiest rhythms while maintaining an ethereal edge which always comes off as bigger than life. A huge inspiration of mine vocally and as a songwriter. A bold step toward the future of music! Hello and Happy 2008 to all of you! I want to say a HUGE thank you to all of my loyal die-hard fans for your continued support. I wouldn't be able to continue to do this without you. The music business is changing more rapidly than ever and we are at last seeing complete control for "independent musicians" like myself. Record labels no longer hold the power in this business of music thanks to companies like Apple I-Tunes and the fact that digital downloads have already replaced the CD as the format of choice. This is evident in the fact that a band like Radiohead (arguably one of the biggest and most influential groups in the world today) released their new album several months ago "INDEPENDENTLY" as a free download on their website, and are only now making it available in stores as a CD. Mark my words...you will begin to see more and more big name artists doing things this way. The control is now with the artists...where it should have been all along. Goodbye record labels and goodbye CDs! In this spirit, I have chosen to abandon the CD format altogether as it is going to be more and more pointless as time wears on. CD's are very costly to manufacture and a real pain to lug around to my gigs. They're also very VERY, un-environmentally friendly, and that's an issue that has never been more important than right now. I will therefore release my new songs as downloads ONLY from this point forward and I urge all forward thinking artists to do the same. You will always be able to find my music on I-Tunes and several dozen other digital download sites and...for those of you who happen to catch one of my shows and want to purchase music "on-the-spot", I have partnered with a company called "Discrevolt"...www.discrevolt.com/michaelj. Thanks to Discrevolt, I will have special "album" cards available for purchase at my gigs very soon at far below what an average CD would cost (around $5 each... or any 3 for $10). These cards have the respective album art for each record you may wish to purchase printed on one side, and a special redemption code on the reverse side that will allow you access to high quality MP3 downloads of my music at www.discrevolt.com. This insures that I also keep almost 100% of the profits from my music, and I can in turn pass that savings on to you...the highly intelligent music fan. All this while simultaneously taking care of the environment. Pretty cool! My new music will begin to make its way to you very shortly in groupings of 3 songs or so at a time as I finish them. Recording, mixing and mastering is still an enormously expensive undertaking for us "independents"...at least for the time being. I'm very excited and proud to be on the cutting edge of this new revolution in music and I will continue to try and find new ways of giving you (my fans and supporters) exciting ways of interacting with me and of being a part of my artistic journey. I'll see you all on the road very soon! Cheers, MJ The talented people playing on my new tracks. I have been hard at work on new music over the past year and a half and I wanted to showcase my talented friends who are helping to elevate the tracks to greatness. I couldn't do it without them. Look for the new songs on I-Tunes very soon!  Steve Schiltz of Longwave - Guitar  Eric Stock of Stroke 9 - Drums  Jens Funke of Stroke 9 - Bass In memory of my friend Tony Cavagnaro I was devastated and shocked to learn that a longtime musician friend of mine, Tony Cavagnaro, from my hometown of Rochester, NY was killed on Friday night, September 7, 2007. I'm posting this news story (below) about his death for any of my friends who knew Tony and didn't know about the accident, and to honor his memory. Local rock band leader killed in car crash — Anthony E. Cavagnaro, leader of the popular Rochester rock band Buddhahood, died Friday in a one-car crash in Yates County. Cavagnaro, 41, was driving from his home in Pulteney, Steuben County, to Rochester to meet bandmates before heading to a gig in Buffalo, said his wife Jan Mater-Cavagnaro. Cavagnaro, who was best known as Tony, was heading north on Middle Road in Potter about 6:30 p.m. when his car went off the west side of the road, crossed the other way and went off the east side of the road. The car hit several trees, according to a news release from the Yates County Sheriff's Office. Cavagnaro was wearing a seat belt and the air bag deployed. He suffered a severe head injury and was pronounced dead at the scene, the sheriff's office said. The crash is under investigation. An autopsy will be done at Soldiers and Sailors Hospital in Penn Yan, Yates County.
New songs! 9-2-07 Working on new songs with "Stroke 9" and "Longwave" members. More to come... |
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