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Month: May 2013

All Your Heroes Become Villains by Ed Hale & The Transcendence Promo Video

May 18, 2013

All Your Heroes Become Villains by Ed Hale and The Transcendence Promo Video

Available on Dying Van Gogh Records.

Feature tracks on this video are “Blind Eye,” “Solaris,” “Waiting For Godot,” “Here It Comes,” “Indian Princess” and “After Tomorrow.”
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The album from Ed Hale and the Transcendence, All Your Heroes Become Villains is certainly titled appropriately for the times we live in. And from the moment “the needle hits the record” it sounds like a forgotten classic, something beautiful lost and now remembered. Ed Hale and the band worked for over a year trying to bring the mammoth project under their control, bringing in other musicians when needed as varied as a gospel singer, a second drummer, a Los Angeles DJ, and various horn players. In the process, Transcendence became more of “a musical collective” rather than a traditional five-man indie-rock band.

The result is a mash of sounds but an album still recognizable as having “that Transcendence sound.” Haunting melodies, bold sonic experimentation and Hale’s richly layered and impassioned vocals all come together to create a highly memorable and moving listening experience. It’s also easily the band’s most mature and cohesive album to date. It is a stylistically and lyrically unified and thematic work of musical art that critics are calling their most ambitious to date. Like a shadow of the chaotic world we live in today, All Your Heroes Become Villains is dark, moody, heavy and yet, every now and then, it glimmers with hope.

The band’s new label Dying Van Gogh Records announced that Hale and the Transcendence would release their full length new album to the public in 2011. Sounding more like a rock musical or a concept album, the songs both musically and lyrically tie into one another seamlessly in one cohesively bold brash and powerful listen more akin to Pink Floyd or David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs. All Your Heroes Become Villains greets fans with a new path charted into new territories, only this time more dark, more heavy and more mysterious.

Ed Hale and the Transcendence first caught national attention in 2002 with their debut album, Rise and Shine by combining world music themes with an eclectic modern rock approach. Hale’s consciousness raising lyrics and the fact that he sang them in five different languages added to the group’s unique appeal. The album was a potpourri of musical styles that fans and critics found difficult to pigeon hole. Their second album, Sleep With You offered the world exposure to the band’s music through songs being featured in films and TV like MTV, VH1, and the three major television networks. Their third album, Nothing Is Cohesive jumped onto the CMJ Top 100 and the Alt-Rock Specialty Show Charts reaching number 24. They performed at numerous music festivals, such as the CMJ Music Marathon, SXSW and the Florida Music Festival.

Transcendence had changed internally; founding bassist Stro Stroman was replaced by 18-year-old Roger Houdaille and founding drummer Ricardo Mazzi was replaced by 21-year-old Bill Sommer. Each member released a solo album. Hale recorded the aforementioned Ballad On Third Avenue featuring the single, “New Orleans Dreams” which hit the top 40 on the AC charts. Perdomo formed the prog-pop group Dreaming In Stereo and Houdaille released an album by a side group he formed called Ex Norwegian. All three albums made the Top Ten Best Albums of the Year list by New Times magazine.

During the nine years since their debut, they have released four albums and toured the United States, Europe and South America, gaining a reputation as “musical shape-shifters” for their inventiveness and willingness to assume whatever form and go in whatever direction their music demands of them.

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Music Videos ed hale and the transcendence, All Your Heroes Become Villains, blind eye, ed hale, indian princess, last stand at the walls of zion, music videos, new albums, solaris, waiting for godot

Gays at the Table

May 14, 2013

It just recently came to my attention that a retired and rather infamous, more than well respected at the least, reverend and ethicist in the Methodist Church — the Reverend Dr. Ogletree — has been castigated and may face trial for officiating at a same sex wedding between two men in New York late last year. Coincidentally the exact date of this particular wedding happened to fall on my birthday. The New York Times wrote an article about the details, which can be had by clicking here

Not being gay myself I admit I can make no claim to understand the full ramifications of either the positive or negative aspects of the controversy of same sex marriage. For people like me life in the realm of love and marriage is pretty cut and dried. Meet someone you want to start a family and spend the rest of your life with and get to it. The world will celebrate with and praise you to the point that you’ll feel like a king or a celebrity for a few months. All because you’ve announced you’re getting married. It’s an odd phenomenon really. I’ve always postulated that this has a lot more to do with thousands of years of cultural indoctrination than anything else. Civil societies need women to be married. At least they believe they do. As well they prefer children to have fathers. Thus the brouhaha over someone’s announcement of a planned marriage. You’d think they announced they found oil or struck gold.

Truth be told I was never a big fan of the marriage myth for most of my life. I understood its creation and origin from the anthropological viewpoint and never saw it as truly necessary in the modern world. Especially because so many muggles and mainstreamers had it so inextricably tied to religion in their minds and religion was another one of those “not for me” things as well. My first twenty-five years were all about truth; hence running fast and far away from anything that reeked of manmade indoctrination. Of course that mission statement and how it showed up in the real world changed as I got older and wiser.

As already established I eventually found a surprising joy and comfort through the practice of organized religion in addition to being “spiritual but not religious”. There is something mysteriously satisfying and fulfilling about throwing in 110% with a church community to not only worship the great mystery of the beyond but also as a means to serve others and make the world a better place. Now don’t let my overly optimistic take on it cloud your predisposed view of traditional Christianity as its currently practiced in America and the rest of the world.

I’ll be the first to admit that for the most part the majority of Christians are bat-shit crazy and the last reason they think they’re Christians is to “help make the world a better place.” Most will tell you they’re Christian because they “don’t want to burn in hell” or some other nonsense about saving their soul in the afterlife. But I can safely assure any reader that there is sanity to be found within certain circles in the Christian community. Especially within the Methodist denomination. This is coming from a very committed former agnostic.

But before we jump too far into the Koolaid pitcher, I must admit that I find myself quite stymied and even angered by this recent so-called controversy over the good Dr. Ogletree presiding over his son’s wedding. (Yes it was his son’s wedding… Imagine that.)

See, the thing for me, for people like me, is that the ONLY way you’re ever going to get me to even dip a toe in the water of any kind of organized religion is if its members and leaders are honest, rational, filled with integrity and a desire to make the world a better place AND super-badasses intellectually. Character traits that admittedly we do not normally associate with organized religion of any ilk, especially not the Big Four. I thought I had found such an oasis in Methodism. I truly did. In so far as the way it is practiced and preached at my particular church in Manhattan, a church I am proud to be a card carrying member of no less, by all accounts reason, kindness, rational thinking, tolerance and open mindedness are not only present, they are encouraged. I feel safe there. There’s no obligation to leave one’s brain at the door so to speak.

I felt honored and proud when the church’s head pastor, Reverend Stephen Bauman, wrote an open letter to the entire Conference back in 2006 defending the view that homosexual people should be allowed to become ordained ministers and as well should be permitted to get married if they so desire. It’s a logical, rational and loving viewpoint for the modern times we live and love in. Why not? Fear of “degradation of the traditional vows of matrimony between a man and woman…”? As any intelligent person would suggest, if two same sexers getting married can scare you into believing your own marriage is at risk you’ve got problems that no amount of “defense of marriage” bitching is going to fix. Truly the only thing that’s ever going to challenge or degrade traditional marriage between man and woman is a sick heart or a weak marriage in the first place.

One of the things I’ve loved about being a Methodist over the last ten years is just how open minded, loving and inclusive the official doctrine of the denomination is. We are taught that “all are invited to God’s table” and that “God loves us all”. Some of us take these ideas seriously. And literally. We’ve read the Gospels and other stories of Jesus of Nazareth and we believe his heart was pure and true when he encouraged us to serve God with all our heart and love our neighbors as ourself. We find it a helpful discipline. Challenging. But beneficial to the spirit.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard so-called Christian ministers recount the lessons of the bible stories of Jesus at the well with the Samarian woman, or with the woman accused of adultery where he forgave her, said “go now and sin no more” and “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”; or Jesus supping with the deceitful tax collectors of his day. On and on the stories go, brainwashed ad nauseum into the minds of planet earth’s youngest people as powerful lessons about how open minded and loving and forgiving this Jesus was.

It is needless to state here that as Christians we take the lessons of these stories seriously, as sacred, into our own lives as good examples to follow ourselves. We are either practicing the ways and means of Jesus or we’re not. We follow him and his example because it makes sense to us intuitively. Not because of anything a church or a religion or any so-called leader says. Peons and cretins perhaps do what they’re told because they are told to. But thinking people do only what they feel in their heart is right, the world be damned. There is more to the Ancient Greek movement of Solipsism than mere selfishness. It’s a mentality that makes rational sense. Let no man tell another what truth is. Each unto ourselves belong our beliefs about what is good true right or righteous.

For that reason I cannot in good conscience blame my fellow Christian or Methodist brothers and sisters for their anti-gay views just because they don’t agree with my own views. I don’t expect them to believe as I do just because I say so. But I do hope to help show them a different way of viewing things, influence them towards a certain direction. One that is more kind, more loving, more inclusive; more like the one Jesus himself took. After all that’s the tie that binds us all if nothing else does.

After everything else is tried and tested and shown to be mere window dressing, the hymns, the false hierarchy, the costumes, the stories myths and legends, all we really have left is the real heart of the matter: just what was Jesus trying to teach us? I believe it was and is to be as kind and loving, tolerant and inclusive in our feelings and actions towards each other as possible. And then do it even more.

Judging others to be “wrong or bad” because they don’t sexually desire or love the same kind of people we do just doesn’t match up with that mandate. Plenty of people already tried that in order to defend slavery years ago. It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now in regards to homosexuality. It’s time we faced this reality and lovingly welcomed all of our kind to the table, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes us.

There’s real growth potential there for those who are willing to take it on. The Disciples did. Paul did. Jesus did. Are we willing to follow in their footsteps? Or are we just talking a good talk? That’s the question each person who claims to be a Christian needs to ask themselves.

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone


Strength in Challenges


Music Streaming is NOT Sales


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Music Streaming is NOT Sales

May 6, 2013

ATTN ALL MUSIC ARTISTS: IODA & The ORCHARD have been attempting to secretly collect YOUR streaming royalties along WITH your digital sales royalties. No matter WHAT label you are on you need to contact SOUND EXCHANGE directly and fill out a bunch of forms telling them “We wish to collect our OWN digital streaming royalties DIRECTLY.” It’s a pain in the rear and it takes a few days of solid work to complete (and a lot of calls), but its worth it. Don’t let the digital sales aggregators take your streaming $. It’s YOURS. Not theirs.

Fight for this. Digital Streaming — Pandora, Spotify, YouTube etc. is one of our last revenue streams and is quickly surpassing digital sales (iTunes, amazonMP3, bandcamp, etc.) as our main source of income. Now that The Orchard has bought IODA there is only ONE main digital aggregator (the mechanism to get digital music online for consumers to purchase) in the world today. All the other systems actually run your songs THROUGH THEM. This monopoly is not necessarily a “bad” thing. But this should ONLY apply to SALES. Not streaming. Streaming should be paid directly to YOU or the label you are on.

Call Sound Exchange AND your label and let them know you’d like to be paid directly for ALL digital streaming of ALL your songs through all formats — audio and video. You’ll have to write a legal letter. In addition demand that ALL BACK MONEY paid to someone besides yourself also be paid back to you.
More later.

– Posted by The Ambassador using BlogPress on an iPhone



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“Baby Bop” music video by Ed Hale and the Transcendence

May 2, 2013

Music video for the song “Baby Bop” by Ed Hale and the Transcendence from the album THE GREAT MISTAKE

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Music Videos baby bop, ed hale, music videos, songs, the great mistake

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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