Saturday, 28 September 2019

Highlights from My Bob Seger Blog Posts


The music of American rock singer Bob Seger is one of the key topics on this blog. I have been
writing about Bob Seger for 3 and a ½ years. I have written ten blog posts dealing with Bob Seger
and decided to write a post giving highlights from them all. Bob Seger’s band the Silver Bullet Band
is part of my Bob Seger posts, and is mentioned throughout this one. There are links to the original
blog posts, allowing you to access them if you wish. I feature quotes from some of them. Let’s start.
When I wrote this, there wasn’t a Bob Seger biography available. I gave my descriptions of how a
Bob Seger biography could function with things I’d like to see in it which include Bob’s working
relationship with the Silver Bullet Band, stories of his songs, information on his unreleased songs,
his working relationship with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, touring stories from the road and
more. I’m so pleased that a Bob Seger biography was published this year which is “Turn The Page,
The Bob Seger Story” by Edward Sarkis Balian. 
This is an article I wrote giving news on Bob Seger’s then upcoming album “I Knew You When” from a radio interview he gave and made my speculations about the album based on the information I had heard about it. The album did end up being released the following year in November 2017. I was correct in my speculation that it would have a mix of updated unreleased songs and completely new songs. Bob mentioned a track he re-wrote from 1976, which did not appear on the album. I’m pleased that the album still ended up titled “I Knew You When” and the fact that this blog post ended up becoming my most viewed one. 
As I like piano in rock music, I decided to write an article about the use of piano in Bob Seger’s
music. I listed ten Bob Seger songs with great piano in them played by different piano players. His
hit songs “Old Time Rock & Roll”, “We’ve Got Tonight” and “Against The Wind” were included. I’m
including one of them as well as an additional one for this post.

 We’ve Got Tonight - Barry Beckett (1978)
This song is a ballad credited with the Silver Bullet Band, but was recorded with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and has Barry Beckett playing the piano & organ. It opens with the great piano intro that’s played over and over during most of the song. In the bridge, the piano playing changes where it is played faster. The song has a good section where the chorus is played three times at the end, first as usual with the band, then a slow version just with piano & Bob’s voice that’s joined by the other instruments at the end which is followed by the last chorus with the band again that works very well.

 Even Now - Roy Bittan (1982)
This is my favourite Bob Seger song which is one of his forgotten hits. It reached Number 12 in the
US charts. The song has an incredible melody, powerful singing and it is piano driven rock. It has the
signature Bob Seger heartland rock sound. It opens with the very good piano playing from Roy
Bittan which is the lead instrument throughout the song. There is support from Craig Frost’s organ
and the sole guitar part by Don Felder. Just before the chorus, throughout the song Roy plays the
piano notes up the scale in a good way. Near the end of the song, Bob uses his powerful singing to
phrase ad libbed words such as “Oh” in an amazing way, and Roy’s playing there seems to be in
response to Bob’s singing.
This was a blog post where I imagined an unplugged concert by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band.
I’m giving my take on how one of his hits could be featured from it below with one additional song
not covered in the original post.

Hollywood Nights
The intro would be extended played on the piano sticking to the melody with some improvisation
from Craig Frost (Silver Bullet Band keyboardist) who’d be joined soon by the other instruments. 

Mainstreet
Have Craig Frost play the incredible electric guitar riff from the original song on piano and come up
with a new piano solo in place of the original guitar solo.


Bob Seger Pinball Game - 14 Jul 2017
Bob Seger’s website produced a pinball game in June 2017 to celebrate his music joining streaming
services. It’s a fun game that I recommend playing. The game had been available until earlier this
month. The link to the game still works, but there is no content. I call on those behind Bob Seger’s
website to make the game available to play again. 
These are a set of classic rock songs that I think would be great for Bob Seger to cover where I
mention how his version could go. The artists featured are Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, REO
Speedwagon, Eddie Money, Journey, The Doobie Brothers, Boz Scaggs, Toto, Huey Lewis and The
News and Bruce Hornsby & the Range. I’m including one of the cover songs below from the article
and one new imaginary cover.  

Lights - Journey (1978)
This is a great song due to its melody, piano, guitar, organ and powerful singing. This version would
sound fantastic sung with Bob Seger’s powerful voice. I’d like to see Bob play more rock songs on
the piano, and am envisioning him play piano on this song as its piano rocks well, but isn’t
complicated.

Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) - Billy Joel (1977)
This is a great song which sounds similar to Bob Seger’s music, thus I consider it a great fit for him.
Silver Bullet Band saxophonist Alto Reed would play the saxophone parts. Billy stutters a word in
each chorus, which reminds me of the “K-k-k-k Katmandu” stuttering that Bob did in his “Katmandu”
song. The stuttering is at the end of the words here, unlike in “Katmandu”. Have Bob keep the
stuttering parts at the end of the words, but bring in the feel of his “Katmandu” stuttering here. He
should also bring in a bit of the feel of his song “Sunspot Baby” to this version including adding a
guitar solo.


This is an article about the making of Bob Seger’s “Stranger in Town” album to celebrate its 40th
anniversary in May 2018. It’s one of his most successful studio albums as it has got certified six
times platinum in the US and features his hit singles "Old Time Rock & Roll", "We've Got Tonight",
"Still The Same" and "Hollywood Nights". “Stranger in Town” is the first Bob Seger album I listened
to about nine years ago and listening to it made me a Bob Seger fan. I consider it to be his best
album. I feature contributions from David Hood, Forrest McDonald, David Cole and John Arrias who
worked on the album.
I’m also a fan of Elton John, so I decided to write an article imagining the two singers performing
together in concert. The band combination I used is Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band members Craig
Frost (organ, keyboards), Alto Reed (sax, percussion, guitar), Chris Campbell (bass) and Elton
John’s original band members Davey Johnstone (guitar) and Nigel Olsson (drums). I’m featuring one
existing song I imagined them performing from the original post and a new one. 

Sunspot Baby (1976)
There would be the additional organ by Craig. Alto would play percussion. Following the last guitar
solo have an extended jam where Elton would incorporate a piano solo.

Miami (1986)
This song is chosen as its a pop rock ballad which also fits in with Elton John’s music. Interestingly,
there was a reference to Miami the city in “Sunspot Baby”. Bob played piano on the original, so have
both him and Elton play piano. The original had other horn instruments in addition to Alto’s parts, so
Alto would adapt some of his parts as he’s the only horn player in this version. There’s a bit of rock
piano playing by Bob in the original towards the end of the song. Have both Bob & Elton play the
rock piano parts together, extend it and have Elton come up with good piano parts of his own to go
alongside Bob’s playing.


This is a post featuring tweets about Bob Seger from the social media site Twitter. I had previously
written a similar post featuring tweets about Sri Lanka which gave me the inspiration for this one.
Topics featured “include his songs, his use of piano, his skills as a singer/songwriter, live performances, photos and more.” I’m featuring two tweets from the blog post below.






This is a blog post featuring embedded views of American places from Google Street View. They are American places referenced by or connected with Bob Seger. I had previously featured similar blog posts on Sri Lanka & Dubai and got the title idea from my previous blog post “Virtual Views of
Colombo, Sri Lanka”. Places featured include Detroit, Muscle Shoals, Miami, Manhattan, the Blue
Ride Mountains, Los Angeles and more. I’m giving two embedded views below with a quote from the original post. If the image of the place doesn’t load, you can click the “View on Google Maps” button.

 I’m featuring the iconic American landmark the Statue of Liberty which was featured on the cover of
his 1991 album “The Fire Inside”. The title track is one of the epic long Bob Seger songs (totalling
nearly six minutes) with incredible piano playing from Roy Bittan.
Here’s a look at the iconic building of his record label Capitol Records.
Additional Mentions
These are three other blog posts of mine that have mentions of Bob Seger.

Toto Tribute Album - 27 Jan 2016
This blog post is imagining a tribute album to rock band Toto by big names in classic rock. In the first
song, I wrote of Bob Seger & Elton John performing a duet of “Rosanna”. I used the same band
combination as my other blog post “Elton John & Bob Seger Live in Concert” above. 

Api Kawruda by Senaka Batagoda - 10 Mar 2017
This is about a great classic rock song that I recommend from my country Sri Lanka which sounds
like a Bob Seger song. I mention the similarities in this post. The post embeds the song from
YouTube. 

A Sri Lankan Classic Rock Station - 22 May 2018
I would like to see a Sri Lankan classic rock radio station and I wrote an article explaining how it
could function. Bob Seger is mentioned three times in this article.

So that was the highlights from my Bob Seger blog posts. It has covered a range of sub-topics which
include thoughts on Bob Seger’s songs, news on his music, imagining songs him performing in
concert & covering, the story of one of his popular albums, American scenery tried to him and
more. I feel that my blog could be the only blog to deal with Bob Seger as a key topic as I so far
haven’t seen another blog that mentions Bob Seger as one of its key topics or sole topic. If anyone
has a blog dealing with Bob Seger partly or fully, please let me know and I’d be very interested in
checking it out. I’ll continue writing about Bob Seger and I hope that through this blog, I’ll be able to
introduce Bob Seger’s music to new audiences around the world.
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Saturday, 7 September 2019

Highlights from My Sri Lankan Blog Posts


I’ve been writing blog posts about my country Sri Lanka for 3 and a ½ years now. I’m very interested
in Sri Lanka and it is the topic that I write the most about on this blog. I decided to feature a post
giving highlights from ten of my Sri Lankan blog posts. I selected ten from a diverse range of sub-
topics and ones which I thought would give a good reflection of my perspectives on Sri Lanka
featured on this blog. The headers of the post are clickable allowing you to access them if you wish.
I will give a description about each post sometimes with quotes from it.

This is a blog post featuring content from Google Street View of Sri Lanka which debuted earlier that year in 2016. This is the first post I did featuring Google Street View content. I’ve done one every year, having also done ones on Colombo and the international destinations America & Dubai. Places included are Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Point Pedro, Mullaitivu, Negombo and more. I’ll be providing two embedded locations from the blog post below. The text featured is directly quoted from it. If they do not load, you can click the “View on Google Maps” button which will open it in a larger size in a new window.

Here’s Point Pedro by the sea.

This is near Wasgamuwa National Park.

“Api Kawruda” is a popular song recorded by the band Wayo. The song was written by a songwriter
named Senaka Batagoda whose version remained unreleased until December 2015. In this blog
post, I embed Senaka Batagoda’s version from his YouTube channel and say why I find the song to
be special. It’s a great song which has a classic rock feel and I include similarities I see with my two
favourite singers Elton John and Bob Seger. I’m pleased that Senaka Batagoda’s version of “Api
Kawruda” was made available globally to purchase on iTunes this year. I pointed out that I would like
this song to be discovered by people all over the world. 

In May 2017 I interviewed Consultant/Team Leader Dr. Dimantha De Silva about the Colombo Transport Plan of the Megapolis. I said the following in the introductory paragraph “The Megapolis is a massive project that seeks to improve the quality of the Western Region of Sri Lanka which includes Colombo. The Colombo Transport Plan includes improved roads, monitoring by CCTV cameras, increasing average travel speed, an inland water transport system, a modern bus service, an electrified rail system and a Light Rail Transit (LRT) system.”

 A key component of the Colombo Transport Plan is the LRT system, officially known as the Colombo Light Rail. According to Dimantha, the Colombo Light Rail is expected to be about 75 km and have 7 lines. 2 of the lines is funded via a loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The Colombo Light Rail has the potential for the growth of Colombo, as Dimantha mentioned how the LRT system in Calgary, Canada (where he previously lived) made the city grow and brought in more investments including in other areas.

 There has been progress in the project this year. Firstly, the Cabinet of Sri Lanka approved the proposal to sign the agreement for the first phase of the Colombo Light Rail in January. Following that, JICA signed the agreement with the Government of Sri Lanka in March for the loan. The Colombo Light Rail was launched at the beginning of July. The first phase of the Colombo Light Rail is a 16 km journey from Malabe to Colombo Fort. Most recently in mid August, the project began construction with borehole testing.

In Sri Lanka, there is more talk about the negative issues that go on in the country than the positive
ones. I think that the negative issues are a real problem, but am disappointed that the negative
issues are often overfocused with positive issues being ignored. Highlighting positive happenings in
Sri Lanka is one thing I do in my blog. In August 2017, I thought I saw more positive occurrences in
Sri Lanka so I decided to write an article highlighting them. Now, I know that time has passed with
some of them no longer relevant or not living up to what was promised, but I think it does give
information on a side of Sri Lanka that is less heard. Some of them featured in the article include the

I thought I’d add some recent Sri Lankan positive occurrences over the last three months. In June, Sri Lanka’s first satellite Raavana-1 was launched into orbit at a distance of 400 km from Earth. At the start of July, the World Bank elevated Sri Lanka from a lower-middle income country to an upper-middle income country. This is based on a new country classification by the World Bank evaluating Sri Lanka’s 2018 figures. 

This reminds me of a point Dr. Dimantha De Silva made in my interview with him. He said that we won’t be able to receive the JICA loan when graduate to upper-middle income status that he predicted would occur in 1 and a ½ years time during May 2017. Through Sri Lanka’s new classification occurred in July 2019, his prediction is close to reality as the classification comes from 2018 figures. It’s good that we were able to get this loan in time. Dimantha was part of a recent positive development. He lead a project comprising of his students which entered transit data into Google Maps. Thus the railway routes throughout Sri Lanka and most of the Western Province’s bus routes have been available in Google Maps from late July onwards. This project was carried out by the University of Moratuwa’s Civil Engineering Department in collaboration with the National Transport Commission.

Lastly, Sri Lanka had another achievement when it comes to space exploration. In late August, it
was reported that a team led by Sri Lankan scientists discovered two planets outside the solar
system known as ‘exoplanets’. These planets were discovered by going through many thousand
data files captured from the NASA Kepler/K2 Mission.


 This article is written in response to the area measurement sector in Sri Lanka still being primarily
imperial, despite adopting the metric system in the 1970s. The usual practice Sri Lanka uses is
square feet for the size of built-up areas and perches, roods & acres for lands with the metric square
kilometres used for large lands. The metric units for area measurement are square metres and
hectares. I am making the case for metric area measurements to be used giving its benefits.
Benefits include the interrelatedness among different metric units as seen in the above image, the
simplicity of calculation, one unit for land and living area instead of two, fixing the area measurement
muddle, synergy with the construction industry and more. I also included metric area sizes of Sri
Lankan landmarks in it. I’m pleased that people have been finding this article on Internet searches
making it as of this writing my eighth most popular blog post. I’m also working on another article
about Sri Lanka and the metric system, that being the story of how it switched.

 Metric is the preferred area units on government projects and is common on foreign funded or
assisted projects, thus one major project that is both of these is the Colombo Port City project. It is
Chinese funded, and part of the Megapolis (I interviewed Dr. Dimantha De Silva about the transport
aspect of the Megapolis) comprising 269 hectares of reclaimed land. The project also will feature
5.65 million square metres of built-up area. This includes 1.5 million square metres of office space.
According to the Sunday Times the amount of office space in Colombo (as of December 2017) in
contrast is about 300,000 square metres with 200,000 more being constructed.

I’ll now show how metric shows the difference between some of the Port City figures using my image above. The land size of the Port City is 269 hectares = 2.69 square kilometres = 2.69 million square metres. Thus, we can see that its built-up area of 5.65 million square metres is more than two times that of its land size. I’ll conclude this section with a few news stories about the Port City. It finished its land reclamation in January. In July, a Resolution was passed in Parliament that made the reclaimed land of the Port City part of the Colombo District. The total project area is 446.61 hectares, comprising the reclaimed land (269 hectares), water area (113 hectares), sea bed area (29.58 hectares), canal area (15.24 hectares) and the beach area (19.79 hectares). This development made Sri Lanka’s land size approximately 4.5 square kilometres larger.

In this article, I gave a list of good qualities I wish to see in Sri Lanka, as the country has issues
being a developing country. I’m including five of those points here.

 I dream of a Sri Lanka
  • Where we have a new political culture not known for bribery, corruption, nepotism, lies, etc but to serve the nation with honesty and integrity.
  • Where we don’t have several issues of crime allowing citizens to relax for both serious and minor crimes.
  • Where the rule of law applies equally to all.
  • Where there aren’t serious issues regarding the cost of living.
  • Where all citizens are treated equally.

I’m into classic rock music, so I would love to see a Sri Lankan classic rock radio station. I think it
could work well as retro music stations are the most popular Sri Lankan radio stations right now. I
mention how I see the station functioning including songs I could see being played on it. The
paragraph below features some quotes from it put together as a paragraph.

 The presenters would offer their usual commentary on topics such as Sri Lankan & world affairs and music. They would offer interviews with important Sri Lankan personalities (including musicians) as well as interviews with American and British rock musicians. As a Sri Lankan Bob Seger fan, I would love to hear Bob Seger interviewed by a Sri Lankan radio station. This station would have the American influence that I like which is common among Sri Lankan radio stations. There would be an American giving voice overs for some of the show ads and audio clips about the station that are played between shows and during ad breaks. This station would make a deal with a western company to get original recordings of songs and the licensing rights to play it. There would be competitions to win original copies of iconic rock albums.

I enjoy comic books and wrote this blog post where I gave types of Sri Lankan English comics I’d like
to see produced. Different types of stories that I discussed in the article include social commentary,
history, politics, humour, graphic novel adaptations, superheroes, sci-fi and international themes. I’m
including the sci-fi section below

Sci-Fi
Sci-Fi is the type of comic I’d most like to see. Sci-Fi is perfect for comic form as it allows the comic artists to draw creative and enjoyable imagery. Sci-Fi is at its best when it discusses the human condition. Sri Lankan sci-fi comics could discuss the human condition and of course Sri Lanka & its society.

There could be stories set in the future offering two possibilities which are:
  • A dark future showing us where we as a country do not want to go to.
  • An optimistic future showing us where we as a country wish to be. 

 Another option is an alternate version of the present which could go in all sorts of different ways.
  • An alternate universe Sri Lanka which is worse than our current setup. This would show us where we as a country do not want to go to.
  • An alternate universe Sri Lanka which is better than our current setup. This would show us where we as a country wish to be. 
  • An alternate universe Sri Lanka which is neither better nor worse but simply different.

Some Sri Lankan sci-fi stories which could be featured are aliens landing in Sri Lanka (It could be in
an open way or where only a small number of people get into contact with the aliens), a Sri Lankan
inventor inventing a new piece of technology and its implications for Sri Lanka (and possibly the
world), time travel stories which go to the past and/or future, a Sri Lankan or group of Sri Lankans
travelling into space set in the present or the future.

I decided to feature a collection of Sri Lankan content from the social media site Twitter. I focused on
the month of September 2008. I subsequently wrote similar blog posts on Bob Seger and Star Trek:
The Original Series. The content I featured is tweets, which is a message of 280 characters or less.
Types of tweets I featured include economics, politics, pictures and positive occurrences. I’m
featuring two tweets from the post below including the accompanying text.


It’s good to see a story of a whale shark being rescued. It’s interesting to note that whale sharks are not harmful to humans.


This is a great photo of Nuwara Eliya taken by Rovin Shanila featured on the Sri Lankan Trends
Twitter account.

This article is advocating positivity for Sri Lanka, as negativity is very common among Sri Lankans.
In each paragraph, I give an example of a negative attitude with my thoughts on what I’d like to see
instead. I’m featuring one of the paragraphs from the article below.

People Getting Written off Too Easily
There is a trend to write off a person because of something questionable that they did, even if they
were individuals who were viewed very highly prior to that incident. I do think that some individual’s
actions can have gone too far to the point that being critical of them makes sense. However, there
are many cases where I agree with the criticism, but think it's taking it too far to write them off for it
as the individual's actions do not discredit his or her good qualities and achievements.

So that was a collection of highlights from my blog posts on Sri Lanka. I’m pleased that I was able to
reference all the key topics of this blog in this post which are Sri Lanka, Songs, Bob Seger, Sci-Fi,
and Star Trek. If you’re interested in any of my future posts, you have the option of following me via
options in the right sidebar. The sidebar also has a search function where you can search to see if
I’ve referenced or written about a topic you’re interested in. I will continue writing about Sri Lanka on
this blog and will feature many of the same issues I’ve focused on so far while also aiming to break
new ground and cover different topics. 
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