Second Life Live Music Review
Written by Enniv Zarf
Metaverse Music
Fyrm Fouroux Website
The Best of SL Boulevard SLURL
Here's a different kind of charity concert today. The Best of SL Boulevard decided to throw a whole day charity event with 10 musicians to raise money for Mankind Tracer's mother's heart surgery. That's definitely different. They even have a website off world to collect donations - http://www.sethregan.com/donate.html.
Well I got home after my audition in the morning and was just happy there is actually music going on live this afternoon for me to review, and a list of names of people that I have never heard of jackpot! Well time to log in as all my different alts!
The concert took a few minutes to get along, some technical issues but I'm not sure what exactly happened. I heard this ambient techno music but was pretty sure it couldn't be Fyrm Fouroux since on his profile he had a guitar on.
I can say this is definitely a different kind of concert, very different. Now although Fyrm is your normal guitarist and singer, the stuff he sings are very different. The first song he started with was his original song "Fish and Chips," and a part of the chorus goes with a repeating "All I want is a bag of fish and chips."
The lyrics are actually pretty funny and catching even though he is just an ok singer and a descent guitar player. But he doesn't need to be a great singer and he doesn't pretend to be anything an ok singer singing really funny songs. Think Adam Sandler singing his Turkey Song or Christmas song. So it's pretty fun. He sings his songs with character voices of sorts that just works very well with the sound.
His second song was about bacon and ham and coffee and fried eggs - "Fried Eggs for Breakfast." It's really just singing about very mundane subject in a very funky way and I LOVE IT!!!! I have to say Fyrm is just fun to listen to. He does them in all sorts of funky voices. This second one has this low bass voice for a good chunk of it.
Even when he tried to change the pace with a romantic song, it's still the funniest thing I've heard in a very long time. He plays it all straight, serious, and doesn't ham it up at all. When he announces his next song it's just this normal musician who's about to sing a serious song. The British accent of course adds a lot to the serious factor.
Though I feel that Fyrm is still holding back just a tad bit. I think he really can take this really to its fruition, again think Adam Sandler! It can be just so funny and funky and just great! It's like a singing Dr. Seuss!!! But of course his poetry isn't quite on par with Dr. Seuss. Ok, it gotten even better as the concert go on, I think he was just getting into it at the beginning.
The biggest problem I had with the concert is with the stream skipping. I think he's having upload problems with his setup and it's causing a lot of breaks in the stream that do take you sort of in and out of the performance too.
No matter Fyrm is really a different type of performer and he is good with what he does. If you are looking for an amazing singer or an amazing guitarist, I don't think he would be the one to turn to. But if you want a nice laugh and hear songs about mundane daily activities, this is the guy for you. I mean how often do we find a comedy song singer?
This is awesome!
Hi Enniv
ReplyDeleteI like your revieuw, but i think you missing out on a few points.
You state it as if Fyrm is some self made singer instead of the classical
trained bass/baritone ( witch you should have heared offcourse )
Someone who just sings comedy songs.
If you have listened carefully to the lyrics you must have noticed that every song
has a mutch deeper meaning.
Fish and Chips is not about eating fish and chips,
it's generally about how the harvest and consumption of fish / patotoes have an effect
on the people involved. Based on a documentary he saw about the loss of lives
on sea while people fish for our food.
Fried Eggs for Breakfast is about the negotiations you might have as a couple
you can look at it as it is about a minor thing as breakfast but listen carefully and you
hear it is a song about how relations work.
it might be well hidden in the lyrics but what can you expect from a former
teaching psychology in a university in England.
I am glad you liked his music, it is a form of art that requires some thought.
Not everyone can do that, or is willing to do.
But once you do, and once you notice the hidden clues you will notice that
this man is a brilliant composer.
Its a mix of lyrics, the very clever composed music that backs up the lyrics
( listen to the Breakfast song and hear how the music totally backs up the lyrics with
different parts ) together with his trained voice to give accents.
Again your revieuw is supportive to Fyrm's Music but i felt the need to reply
anyway.
Love, Peace and Harmony
Homeless Martian
Hi Enniv,
ReplyDeleteThank you for reviewing the show I played as part of a charity concert recently. Clearly, as a singer and guitarist (and occasional pianist) it is not for me to comment on your evaluation of my skills. I trained as a bass/baritone to the highest level beneath university examinations in the uk when I was a young man and had quite a lot experience singing in choirs and choral societies. I shifted to contemporary acoustic music after that and ran an amateur live music club that met once a week in a pub in the north of England for about a decade in the 1980s. It was while I was M/C for that club that I developed some humourous songs, mainly to capture the attention of the audience and bring good order to the performance environment. Still, be that as it may, singing has always been an amateur interest and activity for me.
I feel that I write songs across a wide range of topics. For example, I have written a song about chemical warfare and that is a chilling lyric totally devoid of humour. My song "Holocaust on the home front" deals with the futility of published civil defense procedures in the event of a direct nuclear attack. I recently wrote about what happens when everyday life is disrupted by a domestic heating failure, and used it as a way to talk about how fragile our civil infrastructure is and how this might be seriously disrupted with the impending global warming. My song "Waiting up for someone you think you love" is about how devastatingly awful it can be if someone you are deeply in love with does not come home, and thus triggers the break-up of a marriage or a love affair. I once witnessed a bird of prey (sparrow hawk in England) take a small bird, pluck it and eat it on my lawn; this became the subject of my song "A hawk's dinner" and more broadly a comment on the food chain in nature. One of my more recent songs takes the poetic form of a villanelle and is descriptive of the sun glinting on the North Sea in the early morning like; it has an almost hymn-like quality to it.
I hope I have said enough to dispel the myth that I write only humourous songs. I realise that it is difficult to judge a singers repertoire on the basis of the songlist for one show. As for the funky voices comment that you made, all I can say is that I do not put on strange voices to any great extent. I will admit, though, that I am guilty of exaggerating a classical or operatic voice in some songs, such as "Fried eggs for breakfast". What may be happening here is that you are simply not used to regional English accents. I wonder if that is the case.
I have responded to your review not to refute your somewhat luke-warm assessment of my musical abilities :)) but in order to prevent readers being disappointed should they come to one of my shows expecting to hear only comedy songs. Sure, they will hear some, but I shall expect them to take my serious songs seriously, be they about love, war, or the planet. Best wishes,
Fyrm Fouroux (05 DEC 2008)