Delicious Grace

[alcaponedudu]

Hello everybody. I would like to introduce you to Delicious
Grace. That's a project I started where I write all the music and lyrics in english (I'm a native portuguese speaker). It's very intimate, genuine but I'm not a pro.

Any feedback would be good. Hope you like it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUwFibhINwA

DELICIOUS GRACE - ON MY WAY TO YOU

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! For the first time ever, posting comments online or writing a newspaper article,
I'm going to refrain from any critique right now, and come back to listen to you again.
All I'm going to say is that my comments aren't going to be duplicates, but stereo,
coming at you from two different sides, just like the two different approaches to music I'm hearing here.

 

[John Watt]

This is going to be a very difficult musical commentary.
I'm seeing and hearing English and North American content with an original style,
when I agree right away about alcaponedudu being a native Portuguese speaker,
and a very heart-felt and sincere musician.
Right away, the graphic image turns me off, more about what it is,
than for not having a video to watch instead.
I'll be explaining that and more, but I want to listen again and get all the words.

 

[alcaponedudu]

Thank you John for taking the time to listen to it.

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! If you're thanking me for taking the time to listen to it,
you're going to want to do more than that after I give you a professional critique.
I shouldn't joke around.

The reason I haven't written anything is because I want to be very familiar with it.
You and I are friends here already, so I want to be serious.
I've listened twice, the second time not all the way.

Here's a small preview, about the artwork, nothing about the music.
Please remember I'm a son of Sons and Daughters of the Gael, and you could say Scottish.
The nude woman you show is for me, Victorian era artwork, totally English.
The Victorian era is known as the opium era,
when women were made to be "ladies of langour", easy to use for sexual gratification.
Modern people might not see this statue as being pornographic, but it was back then.
However, I am used to seeing such things,
and it's the fact that there is no video, just a graphic, that is most disappointing for me.
I don't watch You Tube to see videos, but if I did, I'd only watch live bands onstage.

I am aware of the difference between me in North America, in the Niagara Peninsula,
and you in your foreign country, where it looks and sounds like you have a big American influence.
That also takes into consideration your use of American online technology to promote your music.
I'm using a computer in a business downtown, taking care of business myself,
and I want to listen with my speakers one more time, hopefully tonight,
before I take your music apart note by note.
Is that a little critical intimidation, maybe, but for sure,
I'd sooner be jamming with you myself or being in my own band,
when I'm going to be typing about you.
I'm hearing someone I can believe in, and I hope my comments help.

 

[alcaponedudu]

I appreciate, John.

I hope to get more stuff out soon. We're planning to go back to the studio in the months to come.

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! I just hafta say, after reading what I just typed, that sounds so serious.
I am serious.
I used to write a weekly column in the entertainment section of our local newspaper.
Musicians liked it because I just quoted what they were saying about the band,
and everyone thought my personal comments were right on.
That was in the seventies, and now, here with you, I still want to be right on.

I got in late tonight, have too much of a good time doing a jig-saw puzzle with an attractive woman.
That was in the public library, where all the surrounding books made me feel more serious about typing.
Yes, I'm under more stress than you are about your music.

Here in northern Ontario, where many motels have a statue of a deer beside the highway,
there are many photos and videos of a real male deer "dry-humping", or trying to mate with the statue.
I hope that's not why you have one for your artwork,
and like Donna Summer with "Love to Love you Baby", use those sounds for part of your song.

I'm going to put up a statue created in 1914, "The Spirit of Communication",
and I'll try to live up to this imposing statement.
This was ordered by "The American Telephone and Telegraph Company",
what became known as AT&T.
If you notice, even back then, they saw themselves as standing on top of the world.
I hope I have enough electricity in my computer when I write your review.

Just because it's already in my library here,
I'm using this drawing of a horse I did as part of a logo for an online business,
so you can see what these fingers can do besides typing away on this keyboard.
Could this be me hoping to get a gig doing some artwork for you?
Maybe....

 

[John Watt]

The man from Fort Erie who rents the main floor for his buy and sell business,
didn't show up today, phoning with a customer outside to find out he's only open tomorrow.
That meant I didn't have to watch the basement floor for the Toronto owner,
part of my storage deal, so his father or wife didn't have to come down and mind the store.

When I went downtown, and that meant stopping in at the library to return some movies,
I went into St. Vincent de Paul, a Christian charity store across from the City Hall and library.
They had boxes of stuff outside the main door, and a woman I know came out,
saying they're clearing out for new spring stuff, and I could pick through everything for free.
That saw me looking through a couple hundred CD's, nice to try some new music that way.
For Delicious Grace, that means I'm freshening my ears, hearing music I like and don't like.

I even got lucky.
I knew Alanna Myles when she was fronting rock bands in Holiday Inns in Toronto,
just to hang out during the day when I had gigs there,
and I got her first self-named recording that has "Black Velvet", her biggest hit.
She won Album or the Year, Song of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year,
at the Grammies after that hit.
I got a Suzie Vinnick, a female blues guitarist-singer who moved to Welland two years ago.
When she was performing at the amphitheater I sat with her boyfriend,
and he gave me their address and phone number, even if I never came around.
If I do now, at least I've heard one of her CD's. She's gotten Juno nominations the last few years.

Yes, Delicious Grace is up against some ears that have gotten lots of new content in them,
but I now I'm going to like typing about them, as if I was writing my old newspaper music column.
I've got "Medeski, Martin and Wood" on right now, "Friday Afternoon in the Universe".
I'm not sure if that means I'm getting old-time spaced out, or a modern up in the cloud.

 

[John Watt]

In some ways, too much is happening right now for me to feel as musical as I want to be,
and that's as I used to be all the time.
This Delicious Grace recording is making me think, and I want a heart-felt response.
One of the CD's I got was made by the guitar Professor at Humber College,
famous for their jazz course, but it's too smooth, or in other words,
I'm not being as moved by it, or as challenged, as I am by this Delicious Grace.

 

[alcaponedudu]

Hi John. Sorry for taking too long to answer you. It was carnaval here in Brazil. Big holiday for us.

I'm glad you're feeling challenged about my music. Delicious Grace is a project of life. I have so many ideas to put out.

About the art work thing... Nice drawing! I intend to release some other tunes in this form, like a single. Every song is going to have a different setting of images. They won't follow a model/pattern.

I'm a very visual and I do think that this is just as important as the music itself.

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! Today could have been a good day to listen again and write a review-critique,
but I was asked to work with a woman from India, the wife of the building owner,
helping her paint an apartment.
The chance to chat with this wealthy woman who lives in Toronto, not my home town,
and work with water based paints, and earn some serious self-employed income,
was too good to turn down.
Saying "carnaval here in Brazil" is better than me saying it's after ten and I haven't had supper,
so you're doing far better than me.
It wasn't freezing today, being foggy all day, so winter looks like it's going away.

I'm an old man, and can remember a world before bikinis... and thongs.
I'm sure you know bikinis were named after the Bikini Atolls,
that the Americans used to test their A-bombs.

don't she tweet, as she's scrolling down the street,
and I ask you very confidentially, don't she tweet.
She re-tweets, using her device that's wireless,
as I look to find out her IP address, she retweets.
She sends me, as she's walking down the beach,
as my words rise up to meet her in the cloud, she sends me.

and the rhymes, they are a'changin'.

 

[John Watt]

This is going to be self-defeating for anyone reading who expects an extension of thread thought,
but I'm here to say that I'm thinking about this, and myself, almost every hour of my waking day,
and I still can't begin to express myself and where this music takes me.
I even worry about being wrong, how I hear the music, how it's made, and how it makes me feel.
alcaponedudu, at first just a user name I would not have any confidence in at all,
has shown himself to be a perceptive and gracious person.
And that means I'm feeling more than just responsible for what I might type.
Yes, I'm feeling it, and that's going to be hard to explain.

 

[John Watt]

There's some very serious reasons I haven't been able to write a review here,
and there are just as many serious reasons why I want to write a review.
Before I begin typing about this, as a former newspaper music columnist,
lead-guitarist vocalist, songwriter and political news and speech-maker,
I want start by saying Delicious Grace eu te amo.
They've got me speaking their language already.

 

[alcaponedudu]

Hello John. Thank you for the kind words and your support.

I wish I could show you more stuff already.

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! I'm going through an intense emotional and psychological time of my life.
I have to admit my life has changed, and what other people expect of me is far more important,
in society, than anything I might want to have for myself, as a band player or artist.
The new work I'm being offered, the new people I'm working for, and with,
are proof that this change is being offered to me, for who I am, not what I've done.

It's very challenging, trying to think beyond my southern Ontario society, my music career,
to see you and your music for what it is. I don't want anything I type to seem harsh.
That is also me coming at you as your elder, when you are just beginning a career.
This might make me seem like a head case, but when your life is hanging in the balance,
it's very easy to feel very sensitive about everything.

Brazil has been a part of my life this last few days... beyond thinking about you.
It's being published here that your government is placing soldiers around the country to suppress revolt.
Up here in Canada, it's well known how Americans have taken over South American countries.
If it wasn't for the British of Ontario and the French of Quebec selling out our country,
we'd have to be invaded.
When school teachers from around Ontario took buses to the Parliament building in Ontario,
to protest what the government was doing, Toronto police officers beat them, breaking up the protest.

When I typed "eu te amo", I got that from a Katy Perry DVD movie, "A Part of Me".
I saw the DVD sitting there and decided to see where she was at,
seeing her as a dominant California product, as corporate as that music can be.
Towards the end she goes to Brazil for a concert, saying it's her largest audience,
and I saw that phrase on a sign a fan was holding up.
I understand Latin enough to see what it says, with the difference in spelling.

I'm not thinking that anything I can type about your music is going to be important for you.
But I want to feel that I'm in a place where I'd be talking with you as if I'm hearing you playing out.
It's not easy, getting past the technology, when so far, that's all it is.
You might not understand the depth of that comment, thinking in terms of media and online psychology,
because that's been a part of my life since the late sixties, seeing that rising up around me.
Yes, words that seem kind are easy to see as being supportive.
I want to make some informed comments with some strong observations,
as a musician, as an agent, as a newspaper columnist, and someone who is getting into you music.

You can see my name all over these forums, the only music domain I visit and log into.
What I'm thinking here, what I'm seeing in myself and your music, and your gracious replies,
is going to make me or break me here as a legitimate Magle.dk member.
If that's the pressure I'm beginning to feel, I can only rejoice in feeling any pressure at all.
This is like standing onstage before the band starts playing, looking out over the audience,
looking past the dance floor, feeling a little nervous, not sure how it's going to sound,
how it's going to go over, until the band starts playing.
And when I start typing about you, that's who I want it to be about.

 

[alcaponedudu]

I hope everything turn out ok for you.

Yes, Brazil is going through some rough times against crime. The main problem about this military intervention, as they call it, in Rio de Janeiro is duo to the narco business. Let's see how this is going to work.

About the music, I really appreciate the way you handle it. I'm not looking for thumbs up. But I do care about respect and you have always been very respectful about my music.

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! I'm also respectful of your proper use of English and sincere attitude.
It was a very busy day for me today, working on a sign in a business across from City Hall.
Many people came to see me when they heard I was there, talking about the criminals that dominate this city.

Here's some Scottish knowledge about Columbia.
I have typed this here before, but even now, in 2018, it can't be seen enough.
I think it was 1954,
when Americans took a used war cargo airplane and converted it.
They took off the side cargo door and installed a new big caliber machine gun,
that worked like a Gatling gun, firing hundreds of rounds a minute.
They filled the cargo plane with ammunition and flew over the main roads in Columbian cities,
blasting buildings on both sides of the road and everyone in sight,
until the Columbian government surrendered.
American C.I.A. have been manufacturing and transporting cocaine to their own country.
That's such a British and French thing to do.

Guatemala is known to be suffering the worst.
Bruce Cockburn, a local singer-songwriter, wrote a song about Guatemala,
called "If I Had a Rocket Launcher", saying he would retaliate.
I knew Bruce from being backstage with him.
After he was given an Order of Canada Medal for his peace work in the Amazon,
he was a headliner at Canadas' Live Aid Concert, where he was introduced by Dan Ackroyd,
a local comedian who made it big as one of the Blues Brothers.
If you look at You Tube for Bruce Cockburn, If I Had a Rocket Launcher, Live Aid,
you can hear his words, singing about bodies being behind the gates.
He's getting older, but he's still an energetic, bass-heavy acoustic guitarist.
I like his use of echo and other effects, especially for the guitar solo.

When he came back from the Amazon the first time,
he said he saw birds that went into another dimension and come back.
I'm waiting for Quetzalcoatl to do the same.
It's very late at night. I'm just looking to see if you replied.

uh... is it true... did I hear it right...
are the camouflage bikinis your girls are wearing so good you can't see them?

I must be more tired than I thought.
It just came to me, so here's a link to the You Tube video.

If you notice the huge side screens with changing graphics at the beginning of the video,
they show the shape of South America hanging by a big, slave traders' chain,
with the words "we want your voice", underneath.
This same South America with the chain is in the middle of the word Canada,
as part of the middle of the stage backdrop, that is also shown here.
I'm offering this personal invitation for you to continue to share your voice,
just as I am, here at Magle.dk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z02J_kPincA

 

[alcaponedudu]

Thanks for this Youtube link, John.

I generally don't write about politics and stuff but I have one and just one song that's politically based. It's a open critic aimed at the brazilian politicians. They **** us everytime they got a chance. Sorry about the F word but that's just they way it's. Maybe you will hear it someday.

 

[John Watt]

alcaponedudu! Tonight was going to be a nice evening to spend in my apartment,
finishing some signs and getting paid this afternoon, but I didn't even shop for treats.
There was a major robbery in the store where I have my living space, on the same basement floor.
Over $5,000 worth of new rolls of decorative carpeting was stolen, police being involved.
The building owner, from India, who lives in Toronto, was here with an employee.
He was angry with me, and being from India and living in Toronto, didn't want to call the police.
He wanted me to leave right away, and even I said it was a hit against me as much as a theft.
I phoned the police, and the owner said that when he saw how the policeman respected me,
he changed his mind, saying I shared his hurt, and he wanted to help me with my living space.
When he said he would install a big bathtub, when I always talk about soaking in hot water,
for my three spinal injuries I am able to successfully maintain, I thought it was just big talk.
I also like to sleep in water, something not every human can do. That's a thing unto itself.

But this morning, he showed up again,changing the door locks, building a wall with a new locking door,
and there, sitting on the floor, was a brand new bathtub in a box.
He asked me to move all my storage items and art supplies and paintings,
so he could convert that space for the bathtub, so I did that before I went to finish the signs.
I'm not jammed up in the room with my mattress, TV and computer set-up,
but it's been a long day.
Larry, who runs a buy and sell on the main floor, showed up at 7:30 this morning, waking me up,
so I've been on the go ever since.
I also came back early to make sure everything was okay with my stuff,
and I've got some two inch phone numbers to make, cutting computer vinyl by hand with my own stencils.

Now, alcaponedudu, my friend, if I can offer you some English translation and North American cultural advice.
Please, don't type "the F word", "the N word", or what is becoming "the P word", for pedophile.
Up here in Ontario, that's becoming the new racism, seen as promoting their use in family friendly areas.
Saying those words is so ordinary for most American TV and movies, it's enough to let that be as is.
Using upper case font, or capital letters, as short forms for trans-sexuals and other versions of sexual behavior,
also is seen as just causing further confusion about very personal, and up here, medical concerns involving surgery.
What people don't want to show in public really shouldn't be shared elsewhere as public viewing.
That's as much a part of people wanting to get away from online and devices,
a growing movement, and get back to actually talking with people around you.
I'm surprised to be quoting a political American,
but when Michelle Obama spoke in Vancouver, British Columbia, a couple of weeks ago,
that was her main theme, saying devices were causing a bad shift in social behavior
that was bad for society. She was saying put them away.
Up here in Canada, Professor Marshall McCluhan wrote books about that in the '60's.
He invented the phrase "global village", became a Professor at the University of Toronto,
and was the biggest TV talk show guest for over a year, after publishing "The Media is the Message".
When people started to realize he was really saying computers were going to bring society down,
he was taken off TV and his books were suppressed.
I always say, if The Testament of the Third Millennium was being written as a new biblical chapter,
it would feature the writings of Professor Marshall McCluhan.
You would only further your understanding of the impact of American technology on global society,
and gain a further understanding of the authentic psychology of mankind.
And to be further personal myself, as sharing some Sons and Daughters of the Gael, uh, trivia,
Professor Marshall McCluhan is like many people who shared the Scottish and Hebredis Islands.
His body was not the same as others. He had two veins going from his heart to his brain.
For another example, the Seal and Sealy Clan have three nipples,
the men up on their chest, and the women on their abdomen.
The Seal clan are the Scottish natives who painted themselves all blue in "The Eagle" movie,
starring Channing Tatum. That's not real history, just some movie fantasy.
The fact that a Roman Legion who attempted to conquer Scotland, going over Hadrians' Wall,
to simply disappear without a trace, that's true.

Now I'm thinking that you and I have gotten into such a lengthy dialogue, between just us two,
now on a second page, I've got an idea. I'm thinking many readers might not keep reading what we wrote.
I'll start a new thread with your link when I comment on your music,
so others can see it right away and find some room for themselves.
I hope it works out that way.

It's one thing to perform a political song for an audience of friends,
it's another to create evidence of your dissatisfaction by recording it,
that might be used against you, especially if you want to travel outside of your country.
You might get too inspired and say F-off.
American border guards would detain a band and listen to their recordings,
and if there were drug references that might lead to denial and detention.
During the Reagan era, having the remains of a marijuana cigarette in the ashtray got jail time.

Let me ask you how you feel about your English, or translating your lyrics into English.
It would be important for me if I could offer you some lyrical advice.
I'm always surprised at European bands where English isn't their first language.
The music and production might be very professional and interesting,
but the English words sometimes don't have the meaning I'm sure they are intending,
or else they really don't make sense, or are just pieces of what used to be popular.
You're not going to break into the North American market like that.

Max Webster used to sing on the album,
"we're going to have a bug party, and everybody gets some Raid".
Live, "we're going to have a rug party, and everybody will get laid".
For a band that made it big in Canada and the U.S.A.,
you can see how careful they were,
and how foreign musicians might get wrong thoughts about the words.

Oh! That felt good. I needed that. Carpets...
A new bathtub... I'm going to have splash party,
where I've "got me floating, round and round, always up, I'm never ever down."
Maybe I'll be able to sleep and have a return to the womb experience.

 

[John Watt]

Not everyone is going to know all the reasons why a hot tub means so much to me,
so I'm going to explain, because it might find someone who can find these same benefits.
First of all, I am Clan Watt, and the Gaelic spelling of water is watter. That just feels good.
I was also born a month overdue by natural childbirth, having a stronger return to the womb meditation.
When I was a teenager, my parents could be out of the bathroom after eleven at night,
and I'd start a bath and fall asleep, and they would wake me up in the morning.
At first, they thought I must being doing something else, being in the bathroom too long during the evening,
so they had me leave the door unlocked.
When my mother checked in on me, she was surprised to see me sleeping with my nose out of the water.
They thought I might get water up my nose, maybe even drown, but I never ever inhaled even one drop.
Once everyone understood that, my rule was waiting until everyone had gone to bed.
My brothers weren't like this.

When I was invited by a psychic to go with her to a big psychic show in Niagara Falls,
I was told that if I could sleep in water, something most humans can't do, I must be psychic.
No... I didn't buy a big crystal or pay for a Tarot card reading, but it made me more confident about it.
When your body is underwater, the energy it uses to fight gravity becomes a primal healing power,
and as soon as I heard that I understood why I feel better sleeping in water.
One to two hours of sleeping in a hot tub is as good as eight hours in a bed.

I've never had callouses on my fingers, playing lefty the way I do,
so I can be soaking in a hot tub, get out and get dried off, and start playing guitar.
Some guitarists who play full-scale electrics with metal strings,
have to wear gloves when they bathe or shower so their callouses don't come off.
A shower is supposed to be a shock to the nervous system, helping you wake up in the morning,
so please, don't think of that as being like soaking in a hot tub at all.
Hot springs, hot geysers, hot mineral springs, all were known in ancient times as healing places.
Modern day athletes soak in hot tubs to help them after games.

I see a hot water heater and a hot tub as being one of the greatest luxuries modern society can give.
My friendly landlord agrees, and is installing it up over eight inches in the air.
Will I have to get a heater to put under it, to keep the temperature up?
We'll see.... if a merman I would be... moon, gently... gently... turn the tides away...