David Peach

Blog

  • Chrysta Bell At Oslo Hackney

    On Friday 11th April my Girlfriend and I drove down to London for the weekend. It was a great weekend, with the nucleus of this trip was to see Chrysta Bell on her tour.

    Who is Chrysta Bell?

    Chrysta Bell is an artist in the truest sense of the word. Her voice is one of those that can both charm and haunt you. She commands the performance with such force that it is difficult to explain in mere words. You really need to experience it first hand.

    She was touring on the back of an album produced and co-written by David Lynch. David Lynch is definitely present in both the album and on the night itself, but this isn’t just a case of “David Lynch produced it, therefore it’s awesome”. The album is awesome, believe me, but it is due to the equal talents of both David and Chrysta combined. Each on their own are unique and hugely talented, but together they produce something even more special.

    I first heard Chrysta Bell in a song from David Lynch’s film Inland Empire. The song Polish Poem was used in the film to such a haunting effect. As soon as I found out about the Album they did together This Train, which Polish Poemfeatures on, I was immediately hooked on the music they were making together.

    The Gig Itself

    The gig itself was out of this world. Anyone who has seen Twin Peaks would be hard-pressed not to imagine themselves stood in the Road House, watching Chrysta in front of that red curtain. At least that’s how it was for me.

    Her vocals were both soothing and haunting, with the melodies weaving throughout the crowd. Her band were great also. Chrysta, of course, was centre stage, but the band weren’t just a faceless few who played the music. The four of them as a whole played the songs with a firm understanding of each other’s rhythms and timing.

    The performances that stood out for me were Swing with Me and a new song they played, the name of which I can’t remember. The only song that wasn’t performed that I would have loved to have heard live was Polish Poem. I can only imagine what that would have felt like. The venue did have a 10pm curfew, so maybe Polish Poem would have been performed without the time restriction.

    After The Show

    When the show was finished I was both happy and sad. Sad because a great show had come to an end, but happy because my Girlfriend and I got to meet Chrysta face to face. I had previously spoken to Chrysta over twitter and I arranged to buy her earlier album, Bitter Pills and Delicacies, directly from her. after the show.

    From my own conversations with Chrysta, it is obvious that she cares deeply for her fans. I wasn’t surprised to see her mingling with the fans both before and after the show.

    Thanks, Chrysta.

  • Cherlene’s New Album

    Any fans of the TV series Archer will know that — while the rest of the ex-ISIS agents are figuring out what to do with a literal tonne of cocaine — Cheryl/Carol has renamed herself to Cherlene and is on her way to becoming the star of outlaw country music.

    Archer is one of my favourite shows on TV at the moment. As well as this I have been getting into listening to more country music thanks to this post by Andrew Clarke. So imagine my surprise when I found out that a full album of both original and cover songs sung by Cherlene herself had been recently released for digital purchase. Woooohoooo!

    But this isn’t just a novelty TV series album filled with parody songs. This is actually a genuinely good country album. The songs are actually sang by country artist Jessy Lynn Martens, who is also classically trained on violin, mandolin and guitar.

    The album also features a duet with none other than Kenny Loggins on a country version of Danger Zone — yes, it’s that good.

    Cherlene Track Listing

    1. Danger Zone feat. Kenny Loggins
    2. Swing Shift
    3. Midnight Blues
    4. 40 Miles of Mountain Road
    5. Baby Please Don’t Go
    6. Cherlene’s Broken Hearts and Auto Parts
    7. I’ll Burn It Down
    8. It’s All About Me
    9. Eastbound and Down
    10. Chattahoochee Coochie Man
    11. Gypsy Woman
    12. Straight To Hell

    If you only listen to one song from this album, listen to Danger Zone. But I promise if you do, you’ll probably end up listening to the whole album.

  • The Dvorak Keyboard

    When I took a trip to Paris a few years back, I had to pop into an internet cafe to find the location of a place I was after. Because – it seemed – I was hopelessly ill-prepared.

    So I paid my money to the nice man in the corner; sat down; quickly typed my search and hit enter, only to find I had been presented with an empty results page. It seems Google didn’t recognise ‘me wenith’ as a Parisian Live Music Venue. This is how I was introduced to the French keyboard layout.

    In telling this story today to a friend, he introduced me to another layout that I had never heard of –  The Dvorak Keyboard (also know as the Simplified Keyboard).

    The Dvorak Keyboard was originally patented by Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey. It was developed to be an improvement over the well-adopted ‘qwerty’ layout that we still use today. The design of the Dvorak layout was based on much research into how people typed as well as percentages of the time spent typing in varying areas of the keyboard. It was stated that the Dvorak Layout would make it easier to type common words with the minimal of movement and finger strain.

    Despite the research and slight adoption of this layout, it never really made it into popular use and so the ‘qwerty’ layout is still the primary keyboard used on western computers / devices to this day.

  • Jumping the Shark

    The term jumping the shark, I discovered today, is an idiom that is a way of describing when a television show’s quality begins to decline. It originated from the television show Happy Days in its season five premiere, where The Fonz literally jumped over a contained shark on a beach front.

    This was quite a step away from its usual family and adolescent related story lines set against the nostalgia of the 1950s.

    The usage of “jump the shark” has subsequently broadened beyond television, indicating the moment when a brand, design, or creative effort’s evolution declines.

    Wikipedia, Jumping the shark