New Music Part Deux

So I've decided to share new music I find with whomever decides to read my blog. You may or may not like any of the bands, and you may only like one out of the many I post.  But if you have the time, they are all worth checking out. I have an eclectic taste in music, so most people should be able to find at least one musician they find interesting on here. There will be more postings to come showcasing underground artists, new or old, because good music deserves to be heard and shared around the world.  

 I also want to share with others a website that is very useful in viewing who these bands are, called MusicTonic.com. It is like Pandora, YouTube, and Grooveshark all rolled in to one with added features that makes browsing very convenient and discovering new music and catching videos very easy. So check it out,  Musictonic.com. Jukesy,com is also convenient in viewing videos of artists and catching all of their songs and even discovering new music, but MusicTonic is a better version of that.

NEW MUSIC I FOUND:

I will begin with my favorite discovery of the past month, and that goes to an older gentleman who has spent  the past four decades trying to make it in the music biz, and finally his soul has been heard.  Enjoy!

Charles Bradley: At the age of 63, and battling the music industry for a greater portion of his life, Bradley has finally been able to release his first album. It revives the soul of America, allowing you to genuinely fell his emotions, which emanate through the songs, and many of them you can feel true heartache and struggle.  Bradley's voice is bluesy and gritty yet soulful and funky. And he’s got that scream, oh that scream; a yell which is much like that of James Brown. He is a man that has been through some hard times. He spent his whole life trying to make it and he spills it all out in the track “Why is it So Hard?”. As he sings the chorus “Why is it so hard to make it in America?” his voice wails, as if he is on the verge of breaking down. Every soothing note he sings just warms each beat of your heart. All his trials and tribulations erupt together on the last track “Heartaches and Pain”. Life is hard, and we feel it in his voice, yet the track feels oddly optimistic about it all.

Songs: The World, Why Is It So Hard, How Long, No Time For Dreaming

The Sheepdogs: A new age 60s/70s rock and roll band.  Taking their cues from the Allman  Brothers, Creedence, Humble Pie, Guess Who and the Stones, these prairie boys have a sound that is completely faithful to their 70s rock roots, while remaining thoroughly original and fresh. Powerful vocals, a twin guitar attack, stacked harmonies, moody keys and steady grooves all blend together to form an engaging batch of originals. They bring back true 70's rock here in 2011.    

Songs: I Don't Know, I Don't Get By

Patrick Sweany: On a given night (or on a given album) he'll swing through blues, folk, soul, bluegrass, maybe some classic 50s rock, or a punk speedball. He's a musical omnivore, devouring every popular music sound of the last 70 years, and mixing them all together seamlessly into his own stew. He has a good raspy blues voice, mixed with a grungy rock & roll style of the Black Keys. Guitar influences were Leadbelly and Lightnin' Hopkins where as his vocal influences came from the likes of Ray Charles. Similar Artists are Dan Auerbach, The Raconteurs and The White Stripes.  

Songs: Them Shoes, Rising Tide, Sleeping Bag

The Black Angels: 

The group name is derived from a song by The Velvet Underground who is a major influence for the band. The sound of the band is  wonderfully 

dark, mesmerizing psychedelic rock music, and one of their secrets is vocalist Alex Maas, who sounds a bit like the devil trying to be coy.

Major influences which can be heard in their sound include The Doors, Pink Floyd, Joy Division, Verve, The Raveonettes, and more. Similar Artist that are current include Dan Auerbach, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and The Warlocks

Songs: Young Men Dead, Better Off Alone, Entrance Song, Telephone, Bad Vibrations

The Romany Rye: The band could be categorized as indie folk-rock and draws comparisons to the likes of Neil Young, My Morning Jacket, and Ryan Adams. Kings of Leon guitarist Matthew Followill, whose band has its early roots in country rock, as well as Matt Costa, dubbed them a band to watch in 2010. They have a similar Guitar/Rock style of The Black Keys, accompanied by Lyrical similarities of The Bright Eyes.

Songs: Love Song, Black Hair, Long Way Down 

Grouplove: Grouplove is a Los Angeles quintet who brings out the feeling of the California Sun and just released their first self-titled EP at the end of this past January.  Whether the band’s honey-hearted, sugar-coated indie-bop-pop will work across an album-length release remains to be seen, but this set is a nugget of golden pleasure, petite, but perfectly proportioned.  They are very colorful with their stage designs, outfits, happy beats, and in their voices. They have a very buoyant and gleeful sound. Similar Artists include Foster the People, Phoenix, MGMT, Vampire Weekend, and The Kooks.

Songs: Gold Coast, Naked People, Colours 

Lykke Li: I meant to add this artists to my first post of "Discovering New Music", because her latest album is worth listening to.  The arrangements are driven by syncopated handclaps and off-kilter drums, but now, voice creaking with heartache, she sounds like she's casting dark spells rather than serenading daydreams. Li dips into garage rock and wintry folk, but her guiding spirit seems to be Phil Spector, and she laces the music with booming percussion and girl-group-style romantic melodrama.  I think the syncopated handclaps with her unique  voice is what captured me, but she is also an amazing performer along the likes of Florence + The Machine. Similar Artists: Florence + The Machine, Oh Land, Edward Sharp + The Magnetic Zeros, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Xx

Songs: Youth Knows No Pain, Get Some  

Blockhead: Is a down-tempo hip hop producer with a jazz electronic vibe to him. Mainly instrumental tracks but mixes in a few voices samples here and there. He weaves between horns and acoustic guitars while adding classical vocals over skittish boom-bap drums . He even finds time to throw in a body-winding bassline, the kind that could’ve easily found itself on the soundtrack to a 70s feature film.  Has worked with Atmosphere and Aesop Rock Similar Artists: Boombox, RJD2, Wax Tailor

Songs: The Music Scene, The Art of Walking, Music by Cavelight 

Mod Sun: Stands for Movement On Dreams. Stand Under None. He is a 24yr old rapper who started off by playing the drums at 14. He has created a new genre he refers to as hippy-hop. He's kind of a skater version of Asher Roth who looks like Shaun White but has faster rhymes. He writes all of his own rhymes, and produces all of his own beats. You can download 3 of his early albums for free off his website, and I actually find them to be better than the last two albums that are for purchase. 

Just go to http://modsunmusic.com/category/media/music/free-mixtapes/  

Songs: Thought You Should Know, Paradisity, No Girlfriend, Party In The U.S.A. 

Appalachia Rising: 

Rising Appalachia is a genre-bending force of sound that uses vocal harmony, lyrical prowess and diverse artistic collaborations to defy cultural clichés and ignite a musical revolution.The two 'frontmen' are 2 sisters, Leah & Chloe, who harmonize well with each other and carry a lot of soul in their voices.  They are true musicians that bring energy to the stage.  But I wouldn't consider this solely in the genre of bluegrass because the songs aren't very fast like traditional bluegrass songs and they have a lot of depth to them.  One plays guitar and violin and they both can play banjo and tambourine. The band features a stand up bass, two kick drums accompanied with an array of hand drums, and occasional horns. One of their drummers can beatbox as well but in general the overall feel is very simple and focuses on the harmonized vocals of the two sisters. The lyrics and sound of the song can also be very poetic. 

Songs: Rise, Oh Death, Nobody's Home, Sandanski

Yael Naim: Influenced by Norah Jones and Joni Mitchell, she has a soft voice, and piano is key in most of her songs.  You can feel a heavy Jazz influence, and she in fact does a good jazz rendition of britney spears' 'Toxic'. 'New Soul' his her top hit that has even been featured in an apple commercial, that of course is the most poppy of all her songs.  She has a very soft voice but it can be strong at times with the right lyrics and that is why I thinks she is most similar to Fiona Apple.  Other similar artists include Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Baraeilles and Feist.

Songs: Go to the River, Stupid Goal, Far Far

von Thord: von Thord is a Swedish two man band playing non-genre‐bound string beat. With only cello and bass, von Thord still sounds like a full 5‐man band. Playing beaty music impossible to put into a genre, they always leave their audience breathless and longing for more. If you like bluegrass or jazz, then this is a band for you The music is classical, jazz, rock or world music, but all at the same time in a wild mix  They use their instruments in a way most did not know was possible . The cello and double bass combination cannot be smoother. The boys pluck their strings like slap bassists. They tap their instruments like percussionists. They slide like blues guitarists. They rock it like electric guitarists. The cello has never sounded so unlike a cello! The bass never sounded this good! 

Songs: Wedding Night, Smoke on the Water

Keep an eye out for:
2Cellos: 2Cellos are Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser. With over 5 million hits on YouTube, their passionate, dueling cellos version of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" has taken the world by storm. They will be touring with Elton John this summer, and will be releasing their first EP consisting of hot covers.  They are extremely talented and you should look for their album come the end of June. 
 http://www.myplaydirect.com/2cellos/details/25779402
http://www.2cellos.com/tour

Odd Future: a.k.a ODWGKTA:  This is a bizarre rap group composed of 3 separate rap groups and 11 total different artists.  They are very outspoken with their lyrics, on-stage performance, and videos.  They are on the rise and I suggest you check out their website, it is pretty entertaining.   http://www.oddfuture.com/

New Albums:
Raphael Saadiq- Stone Rollin'
Brett Dennen- Loverboy

ARVD Seminar & Another Surgery

To start things off, I have added a very short summary for those who don't feel like reading this lengthy post.  It seems like a lot of writing, well, because it is, but that is because so much was learned this past weekend.  So if you want a short, one paragraph summary, jump to the bottom, and it will be there waiting for you. Otherwise, sit back, take your time, enjoy, and I hope you learn something!

Friday the 13th was the weekend of the 12th annual ARVD seminar.  The actual seminar was on Saturday, but that Friday I had an appointment with Dr.Tandri, who is Dr.Hugh Calkins partner, the head of cardiology.  Dr.Tandri is the one that performs all of the ablations, more importantly the epicardial ablation. He is also the one who has perfected the art of reading MRI's of the right ventricle.

One of the main reasons for my first visit to Johns Hopkins was to seek a diagnosis, which due to false readings of my MRI, my disease remained a mystery.  But thanks to Dr.Tandri, he successfully read the MRI of my Right Ventricle, saw that it was enlarged and that there was indeed scarring of the tissue, sealing the deal for my diagnosis. So this time, when I went back up to Baltimore, I had a chance to meet with him and discuss the ins and outs of an epicardial ablation and how it is different from the previous two ablations I have had, which are referred to as endocardial ablations.

The ARVD team at Johns Hopkins and I decided not to go through with the ablation for at least another six months if not longer because my medicine was keeping my heart stable, and it is a rather major procedure. But the day after we decided that, I was hanging out with some friends in Columbia,SC when my defibrillator went off and proceeded to shock me four times.  That following Monday, I called Johns Hopkins to explain what happened and that is when we decided to go through with the surgery.

The epicardial ablation has been being performed for only four years, therefore, long term success of the procedure is unknown.  However, short-term success is very promising.  So far recurrence of V-Tach is very limited and usually only starts to show after the third year if at all. Completion of the procedure will allow my medicine to be drastically reduced, which will also contribute to re-energizing my body and feeling healthier.

This ablation is different from the other two because of the area where the cells will be burned.  The previous two ablations just targeted faulty cells inside the heart, where the epicardial ablation will focus mainly on the outside of the heart as well as the inside. The first two ablations, endocardial ablations, just used one catheter, inserted through the groin, which then maneuvered up to the inside of my heart that burned the cells produced from the scarring which caused the V-Tach.  With this fairly new procedure, the epicardial ablation, there are two catheters used.  It is basically an endocardial ablation, along with another catheter inserted right under the sternum which will be used to burn cells on the outside of the heart, which is where most of the fat cells and scarring infiltrates.  The doctors use a GPS device to map the heart piece by piece, using colored dye to find the faulty cells.  This is a very lengthy procedure that takes around six hours.  The doctors will keep burning the cells in the scarred tissue until none are left. If he finds there are still cells causing arrhythmias at the end of the procedure, then he will continue until he feels as though he has rid the heart of all the bad cells.

Another thing I learned is that the cells cannot reproduce once they are burned(killed) because the heart is done growing.  Once they are dead, they are gone.  The reason the other two ablations did not work is because most of the arrhythmias are associated with cells from the scarring on the outside of the heart, which is what this ablation will tackle.  I will be in the hospital from one to three nights depending on the amount of burning that my heart incurs. When the cells are being burned, they are resting on top of the heart right under the lining that surrounds the heart.  If they have many areas to burn they could potentially burn the skin that surrounds the heart, which causes severe pain, known as Pericarditis.  So because of this they drug you up real good and then just wait and see what happens. Some feel the effects intensely and others don't at all, it really all depends how much burning goes on.

But the end goal of this surgery is to resume recreational sports and lower my medication.  Athletics is still the kryptonite to this disease, but this ablation will hopefully be able to get me back to swimming once in awhile, or on top of a mountain a few times a summer, or in a kayak in the middle of the lake, or even on a field tossing a frisbee.  I should be able to exercise enough to stay fit and healthy, but no more than that.  Basically this ablation will allow me to do the bare minimum to get in shape, which now is more than I could ask for.  Right now, I can't walk up a flight of steps without tiring.  So Johns Hopkins is in the midst of scheduling the ablation, and I am very excited for that.  I am not setting any expectations as in my journey so far I have seemed to keep falling in that .1% where everything goes wrong.  I remain hopeful, but I also know that things don't always work out as planned, but I am very excited to be having this done.

Now regarding the seminar, it was an all day event Saturday, very informative and interesting, and I'm glad I made it up there.  Dr. Hugh Calkins did a general overview of ARVD, introduced each speaker, and kept the timeline running smoothly.  Dr. Tandri, who will be performing my epicardial ablation, spoke about the procedure and how they have had much success with it.  Then there was Dr. Jeff Saffitz, a leading pathologist from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachussettes, which is a teaching hospital of Harvard.  He is also the Chairman of the Department of Pathology at the Harvard Medical School.  Most of his presentation was about genes and their mutations and cardiomyopathy.  He went very in depth in to the type of genes involved in heart disease, and the common mutated genes found in ARVD (PKP2), and spoke on current research findings.  Many doctors and labs are now actively researching this disease and making major progress, receiving grants, even winning awards, and now pairing up with researchers from abroad to try and discover what exactly causes this, what makes it worse, and new curative measures for the disease.  The seminar had a lot of information to take in, but it was all very intriguing.

Later was Dr.Samuel Sears, Professor and Director of Health Psychology at East Carolina University.  I enjoyed listening to him the most.  Although he was a physchologist, he also has studied up in the medical field and was well informed regarding any health and heart questions.  He was a well spoken, charismatic guy, who threw in some humor, and just had a lot of good stuff to say in general.   I would have loved to have him as a professor.  He was speaking about how family members, not just the ones with the disease, are affected by the disease and how to cope with it, and then he went into family being the support team for one another largely based on communication. He also showed statistics of partners, the ones without ICD's, being equally anxious and scarred of living with a defibrillator.  His main focus in his practice, is in regards to post traumatic stress syndrome of people who have been shocked by their ICD's and also dealing with their general anxieties of living with such a device, which I found very interesting. I never knew people counseled others just regarding their ICD's, but after being shocked, I can see how someone would have such emotional trauma. I was a little apprehensive, the following day, after leaving the hospital when I was shocked, fearing I would be shocked again.  Then I realized you cannot live in fear of the device, you cannot let it have such control over your mind, but the memory replays in my mind over and over and the thought of recurrance is almost daily. It's a mind game, and I would like to believe I have the mental capabilities to free my mind and find peace.

After the professionals spoke, three people got up to share there stories.  One was the father to a son with the disease who was now in college.  One was a man of the age of 76 who was diagnosed in 1999, when the disease was first discovered. Subsequently, he had been shocked around 84 times since then by his ICD. He was a college professor himself that once fought in the Korean War, and said speaking during this seminar was the hardest speech he has ever given out of the thousands in his life. And the other one was a marathon runner who was just recently diagnosed, holds a record for the 400m hurdle at Purdue, and is trying to figure out what to do with his life now that running is not an option. He is in his 40's and has spent his whole life running, everyday, all day. Last year it was reduced to simple jogs but this past January he was shocked by his ICD while out for a jog, so now his challenge is to find another passion, another love for life.  And that is the hard part for most of us with this disease.  Most of us are avid athletes, who have spent the majority of our lives doing something involving sports and activity, and now it has been taken from us.  Being active and physical is such a natural thing, that it is hard to cope with the idea of not getting to enjoy the lifestyle we were so accustomed to.

But many questions remain, and that is why Hopkins is actively delving deeper into the genetic characteristics and implications of the disease.  Over the last 5 years great strides have been made in understanding the genetic cause of ARVD.  We now understand that in many cases, ARVD is a desease of the cardiac desmosome.  The desmosome is the structure that holds heart muscle cells together.  Much still needs to be done to better understand how, when, and why the desmosomes fail in ARVD and to develop treatment for patients and family members.  Just a week ago they discovered a way to take a cell from your arm, grow it and transform it within a petri dish and eventually change it into a cardiac cell which will then produce a heartbeat.  They showed us a video of one of these transformed cells in a petri dish beating, and it was pretty incredible.

Just an interesting side note of something else I learned in the seminar.  I learned they refer to the person in the family who first seeks medical treatment for a condition the proband. That would be me, I'm the proband.  The proband, in relation to ARVD, has a high percentage rate of sudden cardiac death.  I was very lucky to be spared such a thing, although I came very close when I went into cardiac arrest last October.  But not only was I lucky that one time, as Dr.Calkins told me, I could have easily died any one of the many times I had a syncope episode (passed out).  So in reality, I was spared death many a time.  Also in hearing others' stories during the seminar, there were a few widow(ers) who had stories of their spouses dying from the first or second time they passed out, so I am just thankful to be breathing and walking.  I also met a younger fellow who gave bad advice to another person who was even younger than he was. His words, "THIS SUCKS."  I put that in all Caps because he said it with such emphasis.  But many things in life suck, and this is just one of them, but there are much worse diseases to be had and many worse situations to be in, and I was very taken back and slightly annoyed/angered by his advice to such a young person dealing with this disease.  It is a rare heart disease and I think we should support one another, not the opposite.  Anyways, I learned many things from this seminar and I am looking forward to this ablation and hoping to be physically active, at least just a little, by the end of the summer.  There is always Hope.  I never really thought that, but I certainly do now!  Enjoy your days!

Quick Summary:
I will be having my 3rd ablation, which is different from the previous two and considered major surgery. It is in the works but hopefully will happen sometime within the next two months.  We decided to go through with this since I was shocked four times by my ICD a couple of weeks ago.  Also, I attended the 12th annual ARVD seminar and learned a great deal, and heard from some leading doctors from across the nation, and shared stories with other families afflicted with this disease. Then I flew home and wrote this post for you to read.