Tag: gypsy star
Gypsy Star releases a holiday music video, “Tale of the Mistletoe”
Seasona greetings, joyous yule tidings and all that jazz!!
It’s been several years since I posted about the folk-rock group Gypsy Star. I personally still listen to them regularly as I try to rekax or entertain myselg. Hey, I like their arrangements…
Anyway, yesterday (December 9_ the band unveiled its first release in three years, a little melody and music video for the 2020 Christmas season. The press release from the group is below. The music video follows it. Happy holidays!!
| Season’s Greetings!Here’s a little something to get you into the Christmas spirit. We put together a video of our original song “The Tale Of The Mistletoe“. Hope you enjoy it!Watch it here: The Tale Of The Mistletoe VideoWishing you and yours the very happiest of holidays and a healthy New Year!Gypsy Star |
Soft rock, easy listening, adult contemporary and the Tampa Bay music scene
With the growing and growing and growing and growing nature of the Underexposed Soft Rock and Easy Listening playlist on Spotify and me crossing work on the Music Tampa Bay playlists that embody the underexposed moniker and yet are also aging with some artists missing in general from social media, I’ve been compelled to start a new soft rock/adult contemporary playlist.
This isn’t open to all and any musicians; this is open to artists in the Tampa Bay metropolitan region. The Lighter Side of Tampa Bay currently has only nine musicians on it, but a number of songs from each:
- Ed Woltil
- Four Star Riot
- Fowler’s Bluff
- Gypsy Star
- Rebecca Zapen
- Robert Andrew
- RosewoodCreek
- Steve Dockendorf
- Swearingen & Kelli
There are more groups and artists in the region with worthy content than this. This is, in part, why I’m posting on my blog: Hey! Tampa Bay musicians with calmer tunes! Share’em with me and potential listeners online please!
You might want to listen to the list as-is to get an idea of the sound I’m going for. I don’t know if hip-hop would mix in, or a bass/beat heavy dance/pop number with wailing vocals. Explicit content is also frowned upon. Seriously, I’m not calling it “The Lighter Side of Tampa Bay” because of the sun.
Feel free to suggest artists or songs to me through comments or directly to me through the site contact form. I’ve also got a music-specific Twitter account or my Facebook page where I can be reached at.
Music Tampa Bay’s Top 100 list of 2017: Top 25
This is where the proverbial countdown of 100 acts from the Music Tampa Bay 2017 list comes to its pinnacle with the top-voted songs from their web site. These are the folks who’s songs represented here were most often voted to remain in the weekly Top 40 voting chart displaying on the site each week.
Fan support bolstered these numbers; Gypsy star is known for being among the high-rankings annually with thanks to their fans. Yet for popularity of all the songs, some can’t be found on the common media-embed sites like YouTube, SoundCloud, ReverbNation, BandCamp, MySpace, or others. In fact, the entire reason for this series has been to grant direct exposure to the songs for the general public (well… you the person who clicked to see this. Yeah, you. Hi.).
I encourage you to sample the songs if not here then on Part 1, Part 2 and/or Part 3. For the performing artists, it’s got to be nice to have a song that airs on the radio or an audio stream, but it’s even better when someone chooses to listen to it optionally and see what the artists or group sounds like.
Music Tampa Bay’s Top 100 list of 2017: #75-51
As the annum that was 2017 drifts off into the history books, its stories and stats are reflected upon in one way or another in a multitude of categories through the world. The facts of the year-that-was will be referenced and reviewed because… Well, it’s history and things that happen are relevant.
Like music.
It’s an annual thing from St. Pete, Florida-based community radio station did a reflection post on 2016 last spring to give people a taste (and the music optional exposure) of some of the local music created from Bay area artists. With a new (old) year comes a new list of songs that were successes on the Music Tampa Bay voting poll through 2017. Each week, users are able to vote on the Top 40 on the site and those votes are tallied up into what becomes this grander list.
Unlike the Top 100 listing on Music Tampa Bay, the list version here includes (when available) links to the artist personal web site or a social site (Reverb Nation, Facebook) linked to them. The song is listed of course as well as embedded on the post (when possible). 25 songs are listed on 4 seperate blog posts (100-76, 75-51, 50-26, 25-1.
So, if you have time, interest and a musical curiosity, may I present to you the second group of songs from the Top 100 Songs from Music Tampa Bay from 2017. Read More
Music Tampa Bay’s Top 100 song list of 2017
As the annum that was 2017 drifts off into the history books, its stories and stats are reflected upon in one way or another in a multitude of categories through the world. The facts of the year-that-was will be referenced and reviewed because… Well, it’s history and things that happen are relevant.
Like music.
It’s an annual thing from St. Pete, Florida-based community radio station did a reflection post on 2016 last spring to give people a taste (and the music optional exposure) of some of the local music created from Bay area artists. With a new (old) year comes a new list of songs that were successes on the Music Tampa Bay voting poll through 2017. Each week, users are able to vote on the Top 40 on the site and those votes are tallied up into what becomes this grander list.
Unlike the Top 100 listing on Music Tampa Bay, the list version here includes (when available) links to the artist personal web site or a social site (Reverb Nation, Facebook) linked to them. The song is listed of course as well as a hyperlink to a location you can listen to the song (when possible). 25 songs are listed on 4 separate tables below (100-76, 75-51, 50-26, 25-1.
So, if you have time and interest and a musical curiosity, may I present to you the first 25 songs from the Top 100 Songs from Music Tampa Bay from 2017. Read More
Members of the Tampa Bay music scene
I’m a regular in a Reddit subgroup that represents the entirety of the Tampa Bay area, /r/tampabay. Most of the citizens of the cities in the Bay area aren’t members of that group, they’re in the singular cities like /r/tampa, /r/stpetersnurgFL, or not in a city subgroup as all (hey, power to the people – it’s not like everyone goes on Reddit to talk about local life).
Anyway, a couple of months ago on the less-populous /r/tampabay subreddit, a new-resident sounded a disdain for the lack of original musicians in the Tampa Bay area:
So, I’m starting to think there just doesn’t exist any kind of local music scene here at all, unless you consider septuagenarians playing jurassic-rock covers a “scene”. Please tell me I’m wrong. The only show that I’ve gone to in a year and a half was when I flew back to Ohio to visit. This is depressing.
This opens up a question of where in the Bay area they were looking for performances and when – it’s not like it’d happen every day of the week. It’s also not like you can expect original music by local band members to be available at a golf resort or at a bar/pub/club/tavern deep in suburbia. Oh, it likely happens but you’re more likely to get cover acts in small time locales like that.
Lack of local music scene, though? No… That’s not the case. Read More
Music Tampa Bay’s Top 40 for June 26th, 2017
Earlier this year, I posted a list of the Top 100 songs from Music Tampa Bay for 2016: Converting the image list to text and linking to various locales where you could actually listen to the songs (side note: I’ll still take link and genre submissions for some of the unlinked artists/songs, thanks).
Well, the Top 100 list for each year on Music Tampa Bay is built around a weekly running Top 40 list that Music Tampa Bay has going on. I’m not sure how it has functioned long-term but as of now you can vote once per day on a song that’s been placed on the Top 40 list. Voting ends at 6 PM ET on Sunday nights and the results make up the Top 40 list for the week ahead. How a performer or band get on the list to begin with is Music Tampa Bay’s choice while the songs listed aren’t all recent releases by Tampa Bay musical artists.
Now, exposure to the song is subjective to those who cross the Top 40 list. You either have to be a Music Tampa Bay listener (online streaming or over the airwaves in St. Pete, Florida at 96.7 FM), or have crossed the music by other means (like deliberately hunting down a listed song online, as I’ve done in the past).
Well, this article is a little twist on things. Below you will find the Top 40 list from Music Tampa Bay (released on Monday, June 26th) with embedded versions of the songs from the list. Not all songs are embedded. Omission like that is not a deliberate act as-so-much an inability to locate the song online. Some songs do appear on the web in sales locations or on streaming locations like Spotify. For the sake of accessibility, those instances aren’t linked. In other cases where a song can be accessed by anyone but the tune isn’t embeddable, things will be simply hyperlinked.
Many of these songs have been and will remain listed on the Music Tampa Bay Top 40 for some time to come, so if you like one of these tracks a lot then you should support it: Go to Music Tampa Bay and view the Top 40 list and cast a vote in favor of it (button next to the song on the Top 40 list). Read More
When an established band gets deemed as nothing
I like Reddit. I’ve already posted here about Reddit and promoting content on Reddit. I also know Reddit doesn’t work for everyone, especially at the community-level where commentary can get volatile and discussion stunted by way of sarcasm and reactionary responses.
I want to speak of ill I’ve encountered, but not a malicious incident. No, no, it’s posting restrictions that thwart participation. Subreddit’s having rules are a necessity or everything goes chaotic (or spam-laden), so I’m not trying to frown on rules here. It’s when they go too far and are over-reactive in an effort to… what, exactly? Read More
Exposing songs from Music Tampa Bay’s Top 100 list of 2016
Indie music is…well, independent to the point it adds additional responsibilities to the artist to expose their tunes to the masses. Sometimes that comes with ease. Sometimes that’s an afterthought.
I cited the other day when talking about Gypsy Star, keeps a competitive Top-40 list (which listeners and web visitors vote on). At the end of the year, the songs that rank highest in votes on the Top 40 are piled into a Top 100 song list. The site has a page devoted to the listings from several years – though the lists are graphics and somewhat illegible. It doesn’t really get the songs out there or make it easy for you to actually find them online.
This post is an attempt at changing that. I’ve taken the 2016 Top 100 listing from Music Tampa Bay and converted the image to an actual list. To build on that, to actually expose the artists who ranked so well to make this list, I’ve hyperlinked to as many of the songs as I could find.
While these are supposed to be Tampa Bay based artists, some have national attention (Four Star Riot among others). Also, while this list was for 2016 – some of the songs were published before then and I don’t mean just a year earlier.
The ranking of the songs itself is based off of votes cast in the Top 40 listing. I can’t say this was pure song rankings, or as if there was no “fix” regarding the top 10; don’t take the order as an opinionated or fine performance ranking. It’s just voting.
As of this writing, 80 out of the 100 songs are linked to so you can take them in yourself. I’ve linked to YouTube most of the time, but other places such as Reverb Nation and Soundcloud also get linking. Spotify contains many of the songs, including non-linked songs (I decided against using Spotify due to the forced registration to use the service). Some of those unlinked songs also are readily available on commercial sites such as Amazon or iTunes – this isn’t a sales-pitch though, so I didn’t link to any of that either.
Some of these songs, despite being listed as Top 100 and having age and radio play on Music Tampa Bay (at least) had never been viewed on YouTube by the time I crossed them while compiling this piece. Some came off as deeply hidden. It sort of furthers the point of limited exposure.
This article remains an ongoing project as I’d like to get music genre listed next to each song… I mean, c’mon! You’ve likely never heard of most (if not all) of these artists and you’re not exactly encouraged to blindly click to a song. At least knowing it’s supposed to be pop, rock, country, folk, etc. will encourage where you go.
Also, as this remains an ongoing project, if you can provide a link for a non-linked song that would be great. Just use comments below or contact me via email with a link. Read More
Indulged by the glimmer from Gypsy Star
I was on the Music Tampa Bay website yesterday. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an indie rock/music station in the Tampa Bay metro area (96.7 FM). I’ve interacted with the site before as I helped get the Pretty Voices on air on the station.
One key element on the Music Tampa Bay website is a Top-10 list of songs from local artists. It’s also directly tied to voting on the Top-40 of the station. I was looking at the list specifically to see if the Pretty Voices had any tracks listed at the time (nope). None of the listed artists or bands were familiar to me and that’s regularly the case with me and indie music.
What’s also regularly the case with me is checking out an indie artist because… why the hell not?
So, listed at #1 at the time on the Top-40 list was Gypsy Star, “I Feel Love”. I jumped to Google and typed that in and instead of pointing to a version of “I Feel Love” on YouTube, it pointed to the song Paramour:
All too often what I hear and what I see is bland rock. It’s not the lyrcs that make it bland, it’s just the non-riff of guitar and everything layered on top of each other to make the tunes forgettable. This was not that. I was taken aback by a violinist and accordion being part of the arrangement. Gypsy Star describes themselves as being “dynamic folk / rock” and this sure as shit felt like it. It transfixed me through Monday night.
Yet, listening to the opening of the song again, familiarity crept in. I’ve heard another variation of this before, haven’t I? Listen to the song alone for a minute, without the show distraction. Think about it for a minute.
It reminded me squarely of a song that “you can check out any time you like, but you can never” leave:
Don’t take that as a criticism, folks. I highly recommend checking out more of their tunes; they just released the album Under the Moonlit Night in January. Listening to “Paramour” and checking out some of their other songs (like the previously mentioned “I Feel Love”, you can find “I Feel Love” here, it is on YouTube… Not in concert version) I’ve been left curious and surprised. Gypsy Star is only a Tampa Bay local group? They sure as hell look an sound like a group that should be seeing a broader playing area in Florida, in the US and perhaps around the globe.
