retroBlog

Frontiers Records recently sent out their press release concerning the upcoming album by legendary rock group Journey. Frontiers Records will be releasing the new album Revelation in Europe on June 6th. As mentioned previously, the U.S. release date will be June 3rd via Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. here’s the official tracklist for the upcoming album:
Never Walk Away
Like A Sunshower
Change For The Better
Wildest Dream
Faith In The Heartland
After All These Years
Where Did I Lose Your Love
What I Needed
What It Takes To Win
Turn Down The World Tonight
The Journey (Revelation)

hhmmm, I’m not so sure about the song title - Like a Sunshower. since I haven’t heard the album, I won’t totally dismiss the track just yet. but still… Sunshower? on a rock album? also, isn’t Faith in th Heartland a song off their previous album, Generations? well.. even so, I can’t wait to hear the new album.

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sometimes you just HAVE to get away. to get away from the daily grind. you know, the hustle and bustle of your hectic, stress-filled life. it’s time to take the plunge and head for some place exotic. we’re not getting any younger and it’s about time to do something we’ve always wanted to do. personally, I’ve always wanted to visit South Africa. I’ve heard so much about the vast landscapes and their diverse mixtures of cultures and languages. I know the one place I’d love to visit is the Kruger National Park which is in the north-east region of South Africa. It’s a popular destination among tourists there and it’s an amazing opportunity to observe some African wildlife up close and personal. the park is known for their guided tours where you can view lions, rhinos, elephants, hyenas and leopards in their natural habitat. that would be so amazing to see. OK, that’s it. I’m determined to get on DialaFlight.com and search for their best deals on flights to South Africa. It’s so easy to procrastinate and say that a trip abroad can always be done later but there’s never a better moment than this moment, now. and with a site like DialaFlight.com, it’s easier than ever before to get a vacation trip put together at the best prices.

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why didn’t anyone inform me of how good the movie Stardust is? I overlooked it a while back, dismissing it as some sort of Lord of the Rings/Chronicles of Narnia rip-off. But the movie holds it own. in fact, I’ll place it near The Princess Bride in terms of classic fairy tale films. director Matthew Vaughn did a wonderful job in bringing to life a small 19th century village in England that just so happens to be situated next to a portal to a magical world called Stormhold. the story centers around Young Tristan who crosses over “the wall” in order to retrieve a fallen star for his love, Victoria. Tristan soon finds out that the fallen star is actually a beautiful girl named Yvaine who is being sought after by a witch and the son of the King of Stormhold. Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Charlie Cox are all featured in the film. the film is a true joy to watch with a great story line and some well timed bits of humor sprinkled throughout. the movie isn’t perfect however and left me with a couple lingering questions -
1) why doesn’t Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro) have an English accent like everyone else in the movie? is this simply a De Niro thing or is there some backstory to the character’s american accent?
2) also, Michelle Pfeiffer’s accent comes and goes at random places. but she does a fantastic job otherwise.
3) why doesn’t Una (Tristan’s mother) look any older than she did back when she met Tristan’s father at the very beginning of the story?
4) even though Ian McKellen’s voice over explains that Tristan will live forever because he has Yvaine’s heart, why does he end up looking like an old man (in the deleted scene on the DVD) while Yvaine looks the same at the end of the story? shouldn’t Tristan not age as well?
5) I love Ricky Gervais but will he ever be able to act like someone other than Ricky Gervais? seemed like his role was tailor made just for him. or maybe the director simply just worked around Gervais’ limitations?

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have you ever noticed how you end up choosing certain brands of a product over other competitive brands while at the supermarket? at times you’re choice comes down to price or familiarity but how about when you don’t know much about a certain product? I hate to say it but sometimes a choice is made based solely on the design of the product’s label. I’m sure companies hate to hear it but the fact remains that a great product may end up getting overlooked by consumers simply because of the way a Food Label is designed. don’t leave that aspect of the business to chance. get top professionals like Label World to design your labels for you. they are geared toward helping corporations and food companies design and manufacture custom labels on a large scale basis. head on over to labelworldusa.com for more information.

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how about some fun Beatles covers for today’s edition of the Retroblog mix tape.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs - And Your Bird can Sing : With the splendid guitar riff and wonderful harmonies, you simply can’t go wrong with covering this song.

the Smithereens - Hold Me Tight : from their 2007 Beatles cover album - Meet the Smithereens. the whole album is fun to listen to every now and then.

Sara Gazarek - Junk : sorta counts as a Beatles cover since Paul McCartney worked on an early version of this song during the filming of Let it Be. Garzarek performs a nice lounge version of it here.

Todd Rundgren - While My Guitar Gently Weeps : It simply isn’t a Retroblog mix tape without me trying to insert Rundgren somewhere. here he is performing a searing guitar solo at the end of the track. lovely.

Laurence Juber - Oh Darling : yup, an ex-Wings member doing a Beatles cover. it’s actually pretty good. Juber shows off his acoustic guitar chops here with an instrumental version of one of my all time favorite Beatles song.

Paul McCartney - P.S. Love Me Do : yes, even old sir Macca can’t help but do a Beatles cover. actually a re-recorded “mash-up” of P.S. I Love You/Love Me Do! It’s a rare late 80’s track that is absolutely CRINGE-Tastic!!

enjoy!

if you like the music, please consider purchasing the albums at amazon.com:

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as we live out our busy lives, working constantly from one day to the next to earn a living, it’s so easy to forget that there’s more to life than what’s within these four walls. with all the stress from deadlines, appointments and meetings, sometimes you just gotta stop and take a breather, you know what I mean? just simply get yourself out of the office and stop to smell the roses. that’s what I’m planning on doing with an upcoming trip to Shangri La Gardens and Nature Center. a visit out to the gardens will do me a load of good. viewing the beautifully maintained flora and natural areas can do wonders for the mind, body and soul. just being out of the office setting is great in and of itself but to be able to take in the glorious beauty of nature at the botanical gardens is truly an effective way to recharge and relieve yourself from all that built up stress. The Shangri La Botanical Gardens feature over 300 plant species and spans over more than 250 acres. The Shangri La even earned the U.S. Green Building Council’s Platinum certification for LEED®-NC which is one of the highest honors for public places in being earth-friendly. I love the fact that my kids can learn a lot about the environment and local wildlife while visiting the gardens. the Shangri La offers a variety of educational programs to encourage children to learn more about nature, plants, insects, birds and ecology. there’s a lot to see and do at the gardens. I love seeing their 1200 year old pond cypress tree named The Survivor which is truly remarkable especially when you think about the fact that it has been around longer than the state of Texas!! for more information about the Shangri La, be sure to visit their informative website which has a great photo gallery of all their exquisite plant life. get back in tune with nature - head out to the Shangri La Botanical Gardens today!

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as with most SNL seasons, the current season has been pretty uneven in terms of comedy gold. but I have to say that the recent Tiny Fey hosted show was pretty strong. I also have to mention the one with Christopher Walken as well. The Annuale commercial spoof in particular featuring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler has to be one of the best things they’ve done in a long while. They’ve shown the Annuale clip a couple of times since the Tina Fey show and it still gets me every time. I can watch it all day long. really. Just in case you haven’t seen the clip OR if you want to see it again (and again like me!), here it is:

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it’s tough coming up with a good catchy domain name that hasn’t already been registered. especially for the top tier extensions like .com and .net. I got lucky about a year ago when I found my current domain- retroblog.net available. it had been registered to someone else before but apparently the person had no use for the domain name and let it expire. and as a matter of fact, grabbing an expired domain name is probably your best bet in getting a solid top tier domain name. the trick is to snag the name before anyone else does. there’s a tool offered by Network Solutions that can help in monitoring domain names of interest. it’s a domain name RSS Feed that can be customized for keywords that you’re interested in. for instance, if I wanted to monitor for expired domain names that have the word “retro” in it, I can create a custom feed over at the Network Solutions that I can then subscribe to and watch for any new names to pop up. the tool is very versatile in which I can specify the extensions to look for, the maximum character length in the name and if the keyword is to be positioned at the beginning or the end of the domain name. the Network Solutions RSS feed makes things a lot easier than having to perform domain name searches every day.

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what can I say that hasn’t already been said about Gnarls Barkley’s latest album, The Odd Couple? most music bloggers have been buzzing about it for months now. as for me… I don’t know. I think I prefer their debut over this new album. I must start off by saying that Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse did a commendable job following up their smash hit debut St. Elsewhere and their worldwide phenomenon, Crazy. There is NO WAY anyone can top the way the song Crazy took off and I’m sure Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse must have felt all kinds of pressure to do so. But they steered clear of doing a “Crazy -rip off” and just focused on releasing a solid sophomore album. unfortunately, nothing leaps out at you like “Crazy” here on The Odd Couple but one can easily recognize the creativity that went into each track here. the songs are smart, quirky and never dull. but what’s lacking for the most part are the melodic hooks that a listener can sink his/her teeth into. there are some songs that come close: Charity Case, Whatever, Surprise and Going On. but there’s really nothing here that makes me want to come back for more. In fact, listening to the Odd Couple makes me want to pull out St. Elsewhere and re-listen to their debut album instead.
TrackList:
1. Charity Case 3:12
2. Who’s Gonna Save My Soul 3:15
3. Going On 2:54
4. Run 2:40
5. Would Be Killer 2:22
6. Open Book 3:20
7. Whatever 2:18
8. Surprise 3:50
9. No Time Soon 2:55
10. She Knows 2:44
11. Blind Mary 3:25
12. Neighbors 3:05
13. A Little Better 3:07

watch Gnarls Barkley’s recent performance of Run on SNL:

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