One Media® presents "Miner49er" by Trash Juice (Funk Rock Electronica streaming mp3)
"Miner49er"
a 'power trio' arrangement of round wound string bass, drums, and distorted/wah/flange guitar patches along with percussive and sweeping digital and analog synthesizer...
One Media® humbly submits its Steemit Music League #smlchallenge season two, round four (S2:R4) entry befitting a theme of "That classic era, golden (emphasis added) era of music and pop culture history, the 1990's."
When considering the 1990's, the composer decided to reflect upon some personal experience of the 1990's. Having migrated to LA in 1989 at about the height of the U.S. Crack Epidemic -- a charming time to become acquainted with Southern California culture while looking for a studio musician/engineer gig in Hollywood, the composer quickly acclimated to the local culture, without undertaking any major self-destruction, though every artist likely bouts with some form of self-sabotage (lest we digress)... The composer did acquire a fondness for guacamole and an occasional (not habitual!) shot of tequila, while noticing the locals still retaining a strong predilection towards Funk and Metal 'power trio' style music. Emerging from this one may surmise, came perhaps the last of the great, popular, 'power trio' (sounding) bands of the Twentieth Century, The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
This tune and its cover photo geographically refers to a moment in California history, the Gold Rush and directly refers to a lyric in the American Western folk ballade, "Oh My Darling, Clementine"...
Often, The Red Hot Chili Peppers have used themes and imagery more in context with Southern California, for instance, music videos shot in the LA River basin around the 4th Street Bridge, or in the Mojave Desert. Here the composer decided to stay with the California theme, however, to make this piece more relevant to present day topics, he chose two Northern California themes, namely the Gold Rush and Silicon Valley.
Some may infer from the cover image comprising a composite of a mining excavation with a processed silicon wafer image overlay, that perhaps 'ASIC mining' is the equivalent of mining operation companies compared to individuals 'panning for gold' using GPU hashing algorithms. The fact that the silicon die on the wafer may appear as upside-down American flags is purely coincidental, and not intentionally meant to represent what effects cryptocurrency may cause the petrodollar in terms of geopoltical hegemony. Note that history bore out that more individuals made their wealth selling 'picks and shovels' than individuals made panning for gold, i.e. as with all life decisions, Caveat Emptor.
In a 32 bar ABAB song form composed and recorded on February 25, 2018, here the composer exercises some constraint from his usual 'fat mix', minimizing to a total of five albeit rather full-spectrum tracks themselves. Foremost, the composer gave considerable care to fairly accurately represent Flea's thumb-popping round wound string bass funky style. The composer however could not extricate himself from the strong influence of his favorite power trio, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and thus the listener will likely recognize a Jimi-styled 'dive bomb' here and there during the distorted/wah/flange guitar patch solo section.
The composer laid the final two tracks with the intention of bringing the tune into the 21st Century which brought a strong preference for electronica into popularity, by including percussive and sweeping digital and analog synthesizer floating, dynamically panning, while mostly low in the mix. The digital percussive loop 'clack and ring' is made with a Commodore 64, 6581 Sound Interface Device based synthesizer, the 'SIDnth' and the sweeping analog is performed on the probed-ribbon strip of the PAiA Gnome synthesizer.
Happy listening!
Zig