GIJG!, LLC Records

Music is the only truly universal language (besides English, obviously) and can be translated by anyone with the ability to hear, or even feel vibrations. Prior to watching a stunning performance by a professional musician who was in fact completely deaf I would have assumed music could not be experienced by those who can not hear.

This musician, Evelyn Glennie, for anyone who wants to check her out, experiences music through vibration which is why I will never again fart around a deaf person. Come to think of it I just realized that deaf people usually have the ability to smell so apparently I was not fooling anyone anyway.

Listening to a lot of the popular music today might lead one to assume that the majority of people in the music industry are deaf. If I listed off and poked fun at individual musicians or bands that I strongly dislike it might come off as arrogant and it would probably drive my readers Gaga, so I will spare everyone. Instead I will discuss a music genre that I have had a recent adventure with and have even come to enjoy after many years of disdain.

In this computer age it is obvious that humans have become reliant on technology. According to a recent poll by Time magazine, 84% of people polled believed they could not go an entire day without their cell phones. I do not know how to feel about the fact that I often go the better part of a week before noticing that I left my phone at my brother’s house or on the toilet paper dispenser in the hospital’s bathroom.

Instead of the pride I should feel for being different, I feel increasing fear for what the future will bring for me. I already am unable to navigate my wife’s I-phone, and recently gave back my Droid for the first cell phone I ever owned.  When I told a co-worker that my phone could not take pictures, she asked how I could live without that capability of taking pictures with my phone. I asked her if she remembered “the camera.”

As she listed the capabilities her phone had that mine did not she became frustrated with my responses. She asked how I would find my way around without GPS. I told her “a map.” She said she loved playing “Words with Friends” and I told her I loved playing Scrabble. She said she liked how she could play it anywhere. I told her I had a Scrabble board in my car and asked if she wanted to play and she said no.

Needless to say there are technologies that I rely on. For example I would not survive longer than a day without air conditioning. If Apple made a phone that made air conditioning I would go wait in line at Wal-Mart with all the other people in various colored tank-tops to get one, even though they would proceed to come out with better air conditioning phones in subsequent months.

I also fear that music will be so mechanized and over-marketed that there will be no one left making music for free, just because they can make a sound that blows people away. Do not get me wrong, I would take ten million dollars to share my music with a world willing to pay for it. However I would still want to take pride in my music, and I would want it to sound the same in my living room as it does on stage and on the radio.

That being said, I have a feeling that if I were around when the electric guitar came out, I probably would have been the old man warning people that playing it was a sure-fire way to Hell, along with alcohol and tennis shoes.

I recently brought technology into my musical existence by building a recording studio. I felt it would be a Good Idea to have my first ever recording from the new Good Idea John G, LLC studio be more up to date with today’s music technology capabilities.

Actually, I just started picking up different instruments and messing around while recording them until I ended up with a version of Gotye’s song “Somebody That I Used to Know” that sounds like Akon and T-Pain produced it.

I chose this song because my nephew believed that I wrote and performed the song and therefore included it in my beard shaving video (50 Shades of Grey(Hair).) I had to teach him the important lesson about ripping off other people’s hard work to make my videos better.

I am pleased to announce that this song is also the singing debut of my wife, who I am now calling ‘Lil J, in her first vocal performance that I am now putting all over the internet against her will. (Feel free to leave comments complimenting her performance; I need to build her confidence because I need her to sing all the female vocal parts to the Grease soundtrack I’m planning to record next.)

Somebody That I Used to Know by John and Jill G

(For anyone that enjoyed the hip-hop version of this song, it can be downloaded completely free on my sidebar!)