cover song – Kevin Trent Boswell

The Weight

This is my cover of the song “The Weight” by that excellent group known simply as The Band.

“It consisted of four Canadians and one American: Rick Danko (bass guitar, vocals, fiddle), Garth Hudson (keyboards, accordion, saxophone), Richard Manuel (keyboards, drums, vocals), Robbie Robertson (guitar, vocals), and Levon Helm (drums, vocals, mandolin, guitar).”

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Band

I’ve had a deep love of this song for as long as I can remember. It’s got a fun, upbeat vibe to the music but the lyrics (as the title suggests) are very heavy.

It’s a song about loneliness, disappointment and suffering. It’s about asking where you turn when all your best laid plans have fallen apart.

When I do a cover song, I usually try to reinvent it to some degree. I try to put something of my own mark on it. In this case, it didn’t feel right to completely reshape the song. There are really only two ways that I’ve wandered away from the original.

One is that I had to somehow fill up the empty space left by Garth’s piano playing. I chose to do that with harmony guitar parts, because guitar is my instrument and I gave them a simple and slightly somber quality, to accent the lyrics.

The other is that I shortened the chorus and used heavy effects on the vocal harmonies. I’m doing all the vocal, guitar and bass parts on this. The drums are by Stinky the Robot, my computer-based drummer, who is even more difficult to work with than a real drummer, if that’s even possible.

Gratitude

Special thanks to the following people for providing the evocative video footage that helps bring to light our social problem of the lost and disenfranchised. Homelessness and mental illness are entirely too prevalent and much more needs to be done.

We can’t be a healthy society unless we take care of our own and that means everyone, however unpleasant it might be to look into that chasm and think “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” We must do more… much more.

If you have the means to do so, please donate your money and your volunteer time to one or more of the many quality organizations that offer help to the homeless, the mentally challenged and to stray animals. Most of the people and animals on the street got there by bad luck and they deserve a second chance.

MART PRODUCTION

RODNAE Productions

Mental Health America (MHA)

Anastasia Shuraeva

Support the creation of more music, poetry and madness by Trent Boswell, at:

Childhood’s End

Here’s a Pink Floyd cover I did. This is the song “Childhood’s End” and it’s from their album, Obscured By Clouds.

Trent Boswell – vocals, guitar, bass

Lyrics:

You shout in your sleep
Perhaps the price was just too steep
Is your conscience at rest
If once put to the test?
You awake with a start
To just the beating of your heart
Just one man beneath the sky
Just two ears, just two eyes

You set sail across the sea
Of long past thoughts and memories
Childhood’s end, your fantasies
Merge with harsh realities
And then as the sail is hoist
You find your eyes are growing moist
All the fears never voiced
Say you have to make the final choice

Who are you and who am I
To say we know the reason why?
Some are born; some men die
Beneath one infinite sky
There’ll be war, there’ll be peace
But everything one day will cease
All the iron turned to rust
All the proud men turned to dust
And so all things, time will mend
So the song will end

Words and original music written by Pink Floyd. I’m covering the song but I’m not charging anything for it, because seriously… who can afford Pink Floyd royalties?!

But you can support the creation of more music, poetry and madness by Trent Boswell, at:

https://Patreon.com/Magus72

Many thanks to the following, for the images in the video. You may or may not like the music but if you like the video, the credit for that is all theirs.

Aaron Burden

INNORECORDS PhotoVideos

Space Oddity

David Bowie already captured the ideal, studio sound for “Space Oddity”. My version is quite different.

His original recording has the slick, studio mixing of the vocals and the instruments. The original gives all of the cool, background sound effects that give the impression of space travel. Bowie’s “Space Oddity“ is arguably a masterpiece.

Any attempt to re-create that would be an exercise in vanity, and one which is bound to end in failure and disappointment.

If it did somehow succeed, it would still be nothing more than a staid rehash of something that was already done and done incredibly well. So, I went the opposite way with this.

I think it’s safe to say that astronauts don’t get to take their guitars (if they have them) on space flights. But if they did… that’s what I wanted this to sound like.

I wanted to give the auditory impression of a lonely space traveler, Sitting inside a little capsule, out there, in the unknown. Therefore, The audio is nothing more than a guitar and vocal track.

It’s mixed in such a way as to sound small, like it’s being played from inside the rocket. It’s supposed to sound like it’s being transmitted on a frequency that the space traveler isn’t the least bit certain will ever be heard.

Much like the plaque that American astronauts placed on the Moon, all those years ago, it’s a statement to some thing, anything, that may be out there. It’s an isolated signal, announcing “I am here”, even if no one else ever knows that I was here. It’s the tree falling in the woods, with no one around to hear it.

The video attempts to capture what I can only imagine are the two predominant emotions astronauts must feel. One is the giddy, childlike exhilaration of exploring uncharted territory… “We’re going into space! We’re going to the Moon!”

The other is the dread, mortal fear of something going horribly, horribly wrong. When things go wrong in space, it’s no small matter. Errors in space often result in immediate, violent death.

Perhaps even worse, is the possibility of becoming stranded. It’s the fear of being all alone, with no possibility of rescue. It’s the real and present danger of being doomed to endless wandering, sitting and waiting to run out of oxygen, to run out of food and water… waiting to run out of hope.

I hope that you enjoy watching and listening to this as much as I enjoyed making it for you. If Mr. Bowie happens to be listening, on any frequency, then I sincerely hope that he enjoys it, as well. It’s also fitting that today, NASA set a new record for space exploration, with their helicopter on Mars.

My grateful thanks go to the following people, for providing the images that I used to (hopefully) convey these ideas. The musical performance will likely fall short of even the sparsest expectations. Yet, I believe that the visual imagery is more than enough to make it worth the four and a half minutes of your time. This is a credit which goes entirely to the photographers and videographers. The honor is all theirs.

Support the creation of more music, poetry and general madness by Trent Boswell at:

Patreon.com/Magus72

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The Gold, It’s In The…

This song is a Pink Floyd song that we did. This one isn’t very well known, except by the most hardcore Floyd connoisseurs. The tune is from an album entitled More, which was the soundtrack to an even more obscure movie by the same name.

Recorded live by Magus & The Plastic Infinity, at a club in Wilmington, NC.

Trent Boswell – guitar, vocals

Skip Eames – drums

David Fleet – bass

Lyrics

Come on, my friends, let’s make for the hills
They say there’s gold but I’m looking for thrills
You can get your hands on whatever we find,
Because I’m only coming along for the ride

Well, you go your way, I’ll go mine
I don’t care if we get there on time
Everybody’s searching for something, they say
I’ll get my kicks on the way

Over the mountains, across the sea
Who knows what will be waiting for me?
I could sail forever to strange sounding names
Faces of people and places don’t change

All I have to do is just close my eyes
To see the seagulls wheeling
In those far distant skies
All I want to tell you, all I want to say
Is count me in on the journey,
Don’t expect me to stay

Music and lyrics written by Pink Floyd (Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright). All rights to the song belong to someone else, someone really, really rich.

Support the creation of more music, poetry and general madness by Trent Boswell at:

Patreon.com/Magus72

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