Music
drorzel | May 30, 2008This year's DAMOP meeting is in State College PA, which has good and bad points. It's not exactly a tourist Mecca, but then that means I won't feel bad spending all day in physics talks. It's also probably relatively cheap, unlike Calgary last year.
But the most important feature of the location is that it's in western Pennsylvania, meaning I get to drive to it. This is good because I like driving, and because it keeps me out of airports and airplanes. It's bad because the meeting ends on Saturday morning, and there's a baby shower for FutureBaby on Sunday. In Boston.
So, I'll be spending my…
drorzel | May 20, 2008The new Death Cab for Cutie album was released last week, and I've been intermittently earwormed with the first single, "I Will Possess Your Heart." And, wow, is that one of the creepiest songs ever-- you get the sense that he's not entirely sure whether he needs to possess the rest of her, or if her heart in a jar in the basement would suffice.
You don't see many pop songs that are quite that unabashedly creepy. Which makes this seem like a good topic for a Non-Dorky Poll, in multiple-choice format:
The creepiest pop song ever is:
A) "Every Breath You Take" by the Police
B) "Creep" by…
drorzel | May 10, 2008There's been a lot of talk about REM's decision to finally sound like a rock band again for their new album, Accelerate. I rather like the first single, "Supernatural Superserious," which sounds like the REM I remember, rather than some bloodless adult contemporary act.
So I bought the album, and it's been of shuffle play with a bunch of other stuff for a few weeks now. And you know what? The rest of it is pretty tedious. It is a departure from their recent stuff in that it's at least loud and tedious, rather than adult-contemporary tedious, but I'm not liking it all that much.
I just wanted…
drorzel | May 4, 2008I'm typing this on the tablet in my in-laws' kitchen, while Kate sleeps in-- we're in Boston for a wedding, heading back home this afternoon. I need some sort of post to keep things going on our travel day, and I see Scott doing the guess-the-lyrics thing, so that's as good a topic as any.
The following songs are taken from the FutureBaby playlist on iTunes. I'm not doing the first line of each, because the first lines aren't necessarily memorable enough to identify, and because I'm too lazy to go through all of the tracks and confirm the lines.
Internet fame and glory will accrue to those…
drorzel | April 17, 2008I picked up the new Rustic Overtones album a week or two ago, partly on the strength of this review at 75 or Less, but mostly because I really liked "Hardest Way Possible" off Viva Nueva, and can't understand why it wasn't a huge hit. (The self-cover on this album probably indicates that the band doesn't understand it, either. Alas, like all self-covers, it's nowhere near as good as the original).
The record as a whole is pretty good, though I'm not as enthusiatic as Tom D. "Rock Like War," "Oxygen," and "Carsick" are really good songs, and most of the rest is solid. Unfortunately, it also…
drorzel | April 10, 2008I'm feeling pretty harried this week, because I'm teaching using a new curriculum, which requires all-new lecture slides and notes and homework assignments. I'm also going away this weekend, to Williamstown for the celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of my college rugby club.
As a result, I've been losing more mental processor cycles than usual to thinking about my own college days, and remembering the lyrics to the dozens and dozens of songs I used to know. So, because it's on my mind anyway, and because the mixing of college sports and alcohol would really cheese off…
drorzel | April 6, 2008I'm looking for some recommendations of music in the instrumental jazz sort of vein, and I figure this is an area in which the Internet knows more than I do. I have some fairly idiosyncratic constraints, though, so please read the whole post before recommending stuff in comments.
Background: For reasons that don't bear going into, I prefer to listen to music at bedtime. I can get to sleep without it, but I get to sleep faster and sleep better with music than without. Other noise sources don't work-- ticking clocks drive me up the wall, and actually keep me awake, and the glurping noises the…
drorzel | April 1, 2008In which I steal post ideas from Kate: The following are two-word phrases from songs in my iTunes library that ought to be enough to identify the song in question. Leave your guesses in the comments:
Pre-Raphaelite curls
Chrome horse
Pink torpedo
Jasmine tea
Ashtray floors
Quartet practiced
Lickety splitly
Burnt sienna
Guaranteed personality
Danville train
Balalaikas ringing
Silicon chip
Silicone sister
Toadstool sandwich
Diamond car
Uninterrupted prosperity
Golden fiddle
I'll stop there, for now.
drorzel | March 28, 2008Today's question come to us courtesy of Ivy League white-reggae band Vampire Weekend:
So, who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma, anyway? Well, John Scalzi, obviously, but the real question is: why? Why does this simple piece of punctuation engender such strong negative feelings in people who are otherwise mostly sensible?
Personally, I lean toward using it, to avoid the "my parents, Ayn Rand and God" problem, but I can't say I feel strongly enough about that to go through an entire book manuscript "STET"-ing removed serial commas. So what gives?
drorzel | March 15, 2008We had an appointment yesterday for a fetal echocardiogram, to look for heart problems that might've caused the scary first trimester screen result back in January. This was basically a high-resolution ultrasound focussed on the heart (with Doppler velocity imaging to look at blood flow), and after half an hour of looking at FutureBaby's heart beating from different angles (which is so cool), all was declared well. FutureBaby appears to be perfectly healthy. Also, wiggly-- the whole thing took a little longer than it otherwise might've, thanks to a whole lot of baby squirming.
To celebrate…
drorzel | March 14, 2008You know, there are really a remarkable number of bands whose names begin with "S"... There may be more "B" or "T" acts in my library, just because I own a bazillion songs by Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, but there sure are a lot of "S" artists.
This set continues to show that sing-along-ability is the most important criterion in picking FutureBaby tunes. On strict moral grounds, the Pogues have no business on such a list, not due to lyrical content, but rather the make-up of the band, but how could I not include a couple of theirs?
"Murder (Or A Heart Attack)," Old 97's (Despite the title, it's a…
drorzel | March 13, 2008Looking at this segment of the playlist, it's clear that I was, consciously or not, giving a good deal of weight to how well a given song works as a sing-along. For whatever reason, this chunk of the artist alphabet is loaded with tunes that are maybe a little dubious content-wise, but good fun to sing along with.
"Play the Hits," Hal
"Fools By Your Side," Hal
"Your Asterisk," The Halo Benders (It's just this side of word salad, but really fun to sing along.)
"The World Without Logos," Hellsing (This is word salad, on account of its Japanese origin, but there are few tunes that sound cooler…
drorzel | March 12, 2008As noted in the previous FutureBaby playlist post, I started doing this after hearing Don McLean's "American Pie" on the radio while running errands the other day. Amusingly, you will note that that song is not present in this part of the list-- that's because I don't have an electronic copy of it. Which I suppose explains why I haven't heard it much until the other day in the car...
There's some stuff here that would be a little... incongruous to hear sung by a small child, but nothing too offensive, I don't think. And they're all songs I like, which is the important thing.
"Good Times Roll…
drorzel | March 11, 2008As Scalzi wrote some time back, "one of a parent's more minor but nevertheless important responsibilities is to make sure his or children grow up with a love of music that doesn't totally suck." I was reminded of this the other day while driving around, when "American Pie" came on the radio. I have weirdly distinct memories of listening to this in the car as a small child (young enough to have absolutely no idea what a "levee" was, or why one would drive a Chevy to it), which got me to thinking about music and FutureBaby.
This, of course, presented a wonderful opportunity for cat-vacuuming,…
drorzel | March 1, 2008Via Orac, a religious movement I think we can all get behind:
Pastor Wants 30 Days of Sex for Couples
The pastor for Relevant Church in Ybor City is challenging the couples in his congregation to get busy in bed every night for a month.
Wirth said the supposed 50 percent divorce rate is the reason behind the 30-Day Sex Challenge.
I don't really have a point to make about this. I just wanted to use that subject line before Travis Hime got to it. By way of apology, there's some live video of the Hold Steady below the fold.
And here's a music video:
drorzel | February 12, 2008Over at Musical Perceptions, Scott has something that seems like a "meme": go to the Metropolitan Opera archives and see what they were playing on the day you were born (keyword search with your birth date written out).
For me, the answer was "Concert Cavalleria Rusticana {471}."
You know, this would probably be more fun if I knew something about opera...
(It appears to be a concert performance of a handful of pieces from other opera, held in the Botanical Garden. None of the names mean anything at all to me, though.)
drorzel | February 9, 2008In the middle of reviewing the top ten songs from Feb 7, 1987, which includes the Georgia Satellites at #7, Jason Hare offers us a list:
Artists I'd Like To Hear Cover "Keep Your Hands to Yourself":
Andrea Bocelli
Barbra Streisand
Anita Baker
Smokey Robinson
Tom Waits
Beverly Sills
Glass Tiger
Maybe it's the cold pills talking, but I find this inordinately amusing. And, of course, the obvious question is who else should be on the list? The Old 97's are probably too obvious. The Afghan Whigs/ Twilight Singers/ Greg Dulli are my default "Who should cover this song?" artist, because I'm always…
drorzel | January 22, 2008I'm not organized enough to make this a regular feature, or to use it to divine the future, but every now and then, I get a really good run of songs on the iTunes shuffle, and make a note. Here's a batch from this weekend (with a smattering of comments):
"White Russian Galaxy," The Crimea
"Be Sweet," The Afghan Whigs
"Ain't Wastin' Time No More," The Allman Brothers Band
"Papa Was A Rodeo," The Magnetic Fields (You gotta love an ambiguously gay cowboy song...)
"Check," Rustic Overtones
"Right Next Door (Because of Me) (live at KBCO)," Robert Cray
"Total Eclipse of the Heart," Bonnie Tyler (…
drorzel | December 27, 2007Here are the 22 five-star-rated songs that I added to my iTunes library in 2007 (aphabetcal by artist):
"Rehab," Amy Winehouse
"Antichrist Television Blues," Arcade Fire
"Open All Night," Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band
"Bottom of the Rain," Buffalo Tom
"CC and Callas," Buffalo Tom
"Sly," The Cat Empire
"Gimme Some Motivation," Delta Spirit
"Gasoline Drawers," The Holmes Brothers
"Ruby," Kaiser Chiefs
"Sugar Buzz," Li'l Cap'n Travis
"Dashboard," Modest Mouse
"The Road I Must Travel," The Nightwatchman
"Lost to the Lonesome," Pela
"Mr. Stupid," Richard Thompson
"The Angels Hung…
drorzel | December 22, 2007Thanks largely to the leather canary, I've amassed a surprising number of non-sucky Christmas songs this year. There's some painful stuff in there, too, but most of the tracks on their mixes aren't likely to make you want to stab ballpoint pens through your eardrums. If you're in need of a holiday soundtrack, you could do a whole lot worse.
The tracks added this year that rated four or five stars:
fairytale of new york," the pogues w/ krsty maccoll
"only you can bring me cheer," alison krauss
"christmas comes but once a year," amos milburn w. charles brown
"yeah, i know, it's christmastime,"…