I am completely gutted about Sinead O’Connor’s passing yesterday. When Sweet Jelly was in its heyday, I would listen/sing to this song to and from practice, with nothing but complete admiration for how perfect her lyrics are. I felt seen and incredibly inspired knowing she was in the world.

Thank you, Sinead 🙏🏼🕊️💐

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I’m not that into this holiday but I remember my Mom making each Valentine’s Day special for my sister and I with little presents in the morning before we’d go to school and no matter what happened at school that day (good or bad) we had that to look forward to when we got home. Thank you for your thoughtfulness Mom.

Today’s Carolaoke tune comes from my favorite Beatle George Harrison and all his buddies (fellow rock ’n’ roll legends) while with The Traveling Wilburys. I love the lyrics to this song and I especially like that during the choruses there seems to be Flamenco clapping! I hope everyone eats all of the chocolate today. All of it. Every last piece. That’s the best thing to do on this particular day. That's the only thing to do.

Carolaoke Song #54 - The Traveling Wilburys - "Maxine"

Original Song Reference:

Bonus! Flamenco clapping instructions!

Music Mondays going forward will be more of "works in progress" for a while. I know it has been super radio silent over here on carolkroll.com. I go missing like this from time to time to quietly and peacefully refuel my brain and my will. I’ve been learning more about making karaoke tracks; that has both really inspired me and totally frustrated me. One discovery I have made is that female vocals are impossible to erase. I won’t name which ones because that’ll spoil all of my future music surprises, but the female vocals are anchored in there. When I finally made a version that successfully edited out the original vocals, certain instruments dropped out during the process. Today I experimented with trying to replace those missing instruments with my keyboard. Here is a tiny sample of what the tune sounds like thus far. Again, progress not perfection. I sang a lot of songs today, I was ridiculously and obnoxiously loud and learned things that I didn’t know about before. Today was a good day.

Carolaoke Song #53 - Sheryl Crow - "Mississippi" (snippet)

Original Song Reference:

A couple of things. Back in December 2021, I said I’d be back in January 2022, I just didn’t say when. I like to keep everyone guessing. Even myself. Especially myself. That’s the best part.

Back in the beginning, when I started posting all of my wares, I made sure that I numbered my music and art posts so that I wouldn’t feel like I’m falling behind regarding “calendar” dates. That causes stress and guilt which also causes the very problems you were trying to help with creativity in the first place.

I have a small offering of what today brought. I had many false starts and struggles with a couple of different songs. It was super frustrating so I only made it this far for this Music Monday. But at least I showed up and made noise today. That’s the important part even though that seems absurd. But for me, that is the important part.

To be continued.

Carolaoke Song #52 - Annie Lennox - "Little Bird" (snippet)

Original Song Reference:

December is one of my favorite times of the year and also one of the busiest so I won’t be posting any of my art or musical wares for the rest of the year. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great festive winter season however you may celebrate. Here’s to a promising 2022! Please keep well everyone.