Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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fathering gold


What’s that they say about a man’s home being his castle? It’s true – I’ll tell you now. As I sit here, the final bits of daylight streaking Wednesday’s cloudy sky, I’m all alone (save for the cat and the pasta on the stove, if they count). Sharaun’s with Keaton at church. I, an occasional heathen, chose not to go. I know, I know, I shouldn’t forgo it, but… I did. So I sit here once again, with the windows open wide to catch the failing sun before it’s gone, Radiohead’s new LP loud on the speakers, and some bachelor-style pasta aboil on the stove. I can put an ‘a’ before “boil” and make it a fancier verb, right? I think you can do that with any verb, technically, if archaically at that. Anyway, I’m’a do it and you’re’a read it… and that’s about it, K? Let’s do this thang.

Seriously though, I’ve explored the theme of how much I love my “home” before on this blog, but moreso lately the whole theme keeps replaying in my head. Pretty sure it has to do with the fact that, during these last few days of sabbatical “downtime,” I’ve not strayed far from the comforts of the place. Cloistered tight within the walls, satisfied to waste the wonderful days reading and listening to music and lounging. I know, you’re saying, how many dang times can I write about “being lazy and listening to music?” A lot, apparently. For reals, though, I am having a truly good time… even if I do have a slight tinge of guilt about wasting so many fine outdoor hours. I feel I’ve earned some time to atrophy and watch the dust motes drift, I just do. In fact, the way I feel right about now, nothing could pry the smile from the corners of my mouth – I just feel good; happy; contented; in clover.

Speaking of Radiohead’s new album… What? Oh, I wasn’t? Hmmm…. well, shutup then. Speaking of Radiohead’s new album, I find it fantastic. And I’m confident that, with the two-plus hours of unadulterated listening time I have before me now, of which, by the way, I’m already taking full advantage, the thing will continue to grow on me. Man, I hope the comma/clause thing I have going on in that sentence is valid. You should get this album. It’s free, what do you care? Seriously… go and download it from anywhere… it’s all over the internetsites out there. If you have trouble finding it, this link should help. Good listening to ya.

Before I leave the subject, though, and because the message boards I frequently lurk on are alive with Radiohead chatter this day, I wanted to just pass along a hilarious quote from a looong thread about In Rainbows. This quote, I’m afraid, holds Nostradamus-esque signs and portents for how my own listening party will likely tonight, mere minutes from now, I’ll wager:

Well, after an evening of Radiohead holiday, reality slaps me in the face as my girlfriend walks in, politely listens to “15 Step” and “Bodysnatchers,” and then asks me to turn it off so she can watch that reality show about the restaurants that suck until the one guy comes in and makes them not suck, while making people cry.

Seeya tomorrow, Radiohead.

Moving on.

One of the fondest memories I have from my days as a kid is throwing a bottle to sea. A note I’d written, with help from dad, rolled tight and tucked inside, I can remember rearing back and tossing it off the end of the pier with all my might into the breakwater. My dad suggested both my brother and I do it, something to do together for fun. I don’t know what it is, but there is something distinctly “manly” feeling about throwing a message in a bottle into the surf. I suppose it evokes the survivalist archetype ingrained in the male psyche, or somesuch Jungian nonsense… Regardless, as activities for young boys to do with their dads go, it ranks up near the top to me. We used the resealable clamp/stopper-type bottles, you know, the ones with the ceramic/rubber stopper on the metal hinge thing you push down against the neck for the tension seal.

Even though I don’t remember the exact contents of the notes us young castaways tossed asea that day, I do remember including our addresses and an admonishment to any potential finders that we’d love to hear from them. I remember walking to the very tippy-top of the pier and chucking the thing into the coming waves, watching them bob in place for a bit before losing sight of them in the wash, hoping they’d make their way out to the deeper waters and maybe catch a swell that’d carry them to some foreign land. Man, what a great “bonding” thing to do with your kids, eh? Kudos, pop – that was fathering gold right there. Never did get a response from those bottles, I suppose. Likely they ended up in tidepool on the beach near the pier, never really going anywhere – but, that didn’t matter to me. I’m gonna do that with my own kid(s) one day… I promise. Way cool.

Awww crap, I thought it sounded familiar… last paragraph here. Three and a half years ago… must be running out of memories.

‘Fore I go, I was randomly reading posts again… here’s another bit I found funny and had forgotten writing altogether. Third paragraph into this one. A piece of string… still laughing.

Goodnight.

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waiting for rainbows


Mmmmmargggh… turning to stretch the tight knots from my neck, knots formed in the lazy contortion I’ve been holding for the past hour or so, stretched awkwardly across the loveseat reading my book. Through the window I hear the clink and clack of treaded heavy machinery, they’re busy building something-or-other new just down the hillside a bit from our place – a Mormon youth hangout… or something. Sharaun left a little while ago to do some shopping, Keaton’s napping.

As I wrote about yesterday, I made marinara sauce. I think it came out OK, but I was surprised that the near five pounds of tomatoes only yielded enough sauce for perhaps one four-person meal. At first when I saw the recipes online for freezing larger quantities of sauce demanding twenty pounds of fresh tomatoes, I didn’t believe it; now I know. At lot cooks off, after both seed and skin are discarded. Either way, I’ve got enough for a meal – I guess that’s cool.

My second goal for yesterday (today, as I write, but that’ll just mess with your head) was to “mill” some of the wheat seeds (which I also intend to plant) into flour. After some research, I decided my best bet for an “accurate” idea of what goes into making flour was to use a mortar and pestle to hand-mill the grains. Aside from setting up a donkey-powered milling stone in the backyard (a bit grandiose for my needs), I figured this would give me the best notion of the effort required. Too bad I don’t have a mortar and pestle, huh? Owell, I figure something out – and carry this “to do” onto the next day, I suppose. Anyone have an old-style mortar and pestle lying around they’d let me borrow? Let’s move on to things which are… sadly… likely not much more exciting (sorry).

Well, I must be honest: I’d have even thought I’d’ve written about it before now – but, hey, I’ve been gone. I’m referring to, of course, the whole Radiohead “LP7” revelation of the past week. Those who frequent the internet may have heard about this by now; heck, even those who still cling to ink-on-paper style information dissemination should’ve, by now, heard: Last week, Radiohead announced that their long-awaited new album, up until that point referred to by fans simply as “LP7,” but now officially titled In Rainbows, was not only complete and ready to be heard, but was to be sold exclusively (sort of, looking past the details) online. What’s more, the band would set no fixed price for the “record.” Buyers can, amazingly, name the price, down to, and including, zero, they wish to pay for the work – which, again, is available (for the time being) solely as a digital download. The news blazed across the internet, and even made the Wall Street Journal.

For me, the news was brilliant. Just returning from Germany and learning that a brand-spanking-new album by one of my all-time favorite bands of modern-times would be in my grubby little hands (or, on my grubby little hard disks, or, something) in a few days was news to smile over. For me, thought, the decision about how to obtain said work was one to ponder. The place where I “get” music now (which, as an aside, is a perfectly legal place where I trade hard-currency for musician’s hard-work…) would of course have In Rainbows available for 100% zero-dollars as soon as it became officially downloadable from Radiohead’s site. But, it seemed silly to “steal” something that the band is, if optionally, giving away.

Furthermore, I likely respect Radiohead more than most other acts around today – even to the point of giving me a willingness to pay them for their sounds. So, the decision was made: I’d go the “official” route and buy the music from their site. I decided against the ~$80 “discbox,” which would ship, in physical form, with an entire album’s worth of additional new songs sometime early December (I’ll use my favorite legal download site to obtain the extras, I suppose), and went instead with just the digital download of the material available immediately. As for price, I settled on $8 US. I entered less than half that in pounds sterling (stupid Bush), and received my confirmation code via e-mail seconds later.

And now, for tonight at least, I’m bound to this internet even moreso than than usual – as the hours tick by and I wait for my “activation code” to download the album. It’s already 4am October 10 in the UK as I write this, and the webpage says the downloads should become available sometime “UK morning” on the 10th. On a forum I frequent, someone e-mailed the webpage support address asking for a more pinned-down timeframe for the digital release, noting that “UK morning” is fairly vague. The response he received was a simple sentence of three words: “Vague is good.” Bitchin’. That is so Radiohead.

Sometimes, when I lack inspiration for writing, I’ll use the “random posts” section of my sidebar (over there, on your right) to leaf through some old entries. Every once in a while I find something I’d totally forgotten I’d written, and get impressed (more often, I find something I’d totally forgotten I’d written, and get un-impressed, to be more properly self-deprecating). Like the 2nd-to-last paragraph in this entry, about the guy trapped under a tractor and his dog. That plain cracked me up, and I have no recall of penning it. Guess that’s what happens when you write meaningless crap for four years plus (I missed this year’s sounds familiar four-year anniversary, but it happened back in September – congrats to me).

Let’s hope for four more. Goodnight.

[Late-breaking Radiohead update: It’s 11:23pm and I ended up downloading the entire thing off some sharing-site link posted to a forum before I ever got my “legit” download link from the inrainbows.com site (that came at 11:40pm). The internet: it happens faaaast. Now to load on the iPod and give it a whirl as I drift off to sleep.]

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another fine day


Another fine day in sabbatical land. We went to visit my Uncle Tom today, spent a few good hours hanging out and visiting, and also managed to watch Dr. Strangelove, a movie I’ve always meant to see, but have only managed to catch bits and pieces of over the years. As I suspected, it was great.

Anyway, Sharaun’s cooking some spaghetti tonight and the whole family is gonna come over to mange. Should be a good time, and it’s one night we don’t have an obligation (every night from here until we leave is booked at this point).

Before we go on, I did manage to post two new galleries full of pictures:

I was so happy to read about the new iPod, which comes in a massive 160GB model (double what I have now), and is now dubbed the “classic” model to differentiate it from the also-new iPod “touch,” which seems to be just an iPhone sans the phone. As a solemn promise to myself, I decree that I will be carrying this new iPod with me to Oktoberfest. That’s how serious I am about getting it. Just think about how much media I can get on that thing, I can have all sorts of “good… but not good enough to take up space on my iPod” albums on there now, just in case I get the urge to listen to ’em. I will buy this. Perhaps even this weekend in Orlando, where I’m pretty sure there’s an Apple store (providing they’re not sold out).

Meanwhile, plans for our remaining days in Florida are coming together. It always seems like we end up blocking off time for this and for that, with little room left for improv. That’s the hard part about “vacationing” in the place where you grew up. The visits with friends and relatives, while not compulsory, always seem to fill up the calendar quite quickly. This coming Monday, my old buddy Kyle and I decided to catch The National in concert over in Orlando. I liked the National’s album Alligator, but have had a hard time getting into their 2007 effort. Maybe seeing them play some of the numbers live will cast them in a new light. I’m excited about that, actually, as I think the last “real” concert I saw with Kyle was a Bob Dylan / Carlos Santana double-headliner – a bit of a stylistic mismatch, but two heavyweights in their own right. Still, I feel now that I was too young to truly appreciate the show (plus, I remember having a killer headache that wrecked much of the evening for me). Should be fun to make the pilgrimage and see a gig.

I’ve been trying to work out WordPress’s “post via e-mail” feature lately. This neat functionality allows you to send an entry to an e-mail address, and have it auto-magically appear on your blog. WordPress checks the mail via POP3 and posts whatever’s in there. I had it working before, but had no real use for it. Now that I’m on sabbatical, and that I have a more thumb-typing friendly BlackBerry, I figured I may actually get some mileage out of it. Problem is, I switched hosting companies recently, to GoDaddy, and, for some reason, GoDaddy doesn’t like the WordPress POP3 methods. The PHP times out, it’s apparently a semi-known issue with GoDaddy. What’s worse, WordPress doesn’t support SSL connections (this means no Yahoo mail and no Gmail). I also can’t use free POP-able mail services that send e-mail advertisements as part of the deal, as anything new gets autoposted. Anyone know a good, free, non-SSL, POP3-readable, e-mail service that has good spam blocking capabilities? Lemme know.

Until later.

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last day at the sawmill


Today is my last day at the sawmill until November 5th.

Let’s just ruminate on that last statement for a minute: Last day at work until November 5th. Uh-huh, roll that around in the old noodle for a bit: Until November 5th. No more work until November 5th.

Maybe I should put this another way: There is this place I’ve gone five days a week nearly every single week since I left college. After today, I won’t have to go there for nine weeks. I know, it may seem like I’m blowing it out of proportion. But, to me, it’s that big. Nine weeks to spend with Keaton, nine weeks to spend with Sharaun, nine weeks to spend with me.

I’ve decided that, in the future, when I hear a song that reminds me of those last days leading up to tomorrow, I want it to be “Sandy” from the recent Caribou album, Andorra. Seriously, you must hear this song. It gets my vote right now for best bassline of the year, that bouncy thing could be a song unto itself. And how about the choppy breakbeat fills behind the choruses? Insane, right? Sounding like something lifted from the Odyssey and Oracle sessions and modernized for today, I am ready to rock this as the happy-goodtimes track that closes the summer. You want to hear it now, right? Seriously, you should. Go listen to it here. If you like it, let me know… love in the comments.

Goodnight.

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no. shut up.


Works sucks. No. shut up.

I am totally serious. Work is killing me. Right now. Every day. Just a little bit every single day. I don’t write at night because I work instead. Not fun.

I just don’t know, you guys. Don’t know if it’s my pending sabbatical (nine weeks of not-work), or if it’s the fact that work is at one of its “peaks” right now. Maybe both, as that would make most sense… But, whatever the reason, I’m suffering from a severe case of the “oh no I have to go to work tomorrow morning” blues. Much worse than I’ve had it before. Things are just so busy, and I’m having a hard time commanding the focus I’m usually able to. I think it’s just high time I was out of there. Thankfully, I have only nine more days left as you read this.

Last week I was helping Sharaun get some of her party planning done (Sharaun’s rolled her life-odometer to the big three-oh this past weekend). I knew she was stressing, and it seemed like a good time to work on the musical playlist she had planned: the top few songs from every calendar year she’s graced this Earth (plus some standard perennial party faves). I had a lot of them on-hand already in miscellaneous 80’s directories, but we still needed to go down a fairly long list and “acquire” a few more (of course, we did so by exchanging real, gold-backed, American currency for the digital representations of said songs). Anyway, as I downloaded each bit of party fuel, I queued them up in Winamp and we did some real-time “checking” of each to ensure quality. This, inevitably, turned into a living-room danceparty, starring my wife.

I loved it, because I could see she was having so much fun. With each new (old, actually) track that came across the speakers, she’d get more and more excited. “Oh. My. God.,” she’d say, “This song is the best!” Sometime later, as the string of hits continued to deliver, she paused and remarked, “See… people won’t get nearly as much from this as I do. People just don’t like music the way I do.” It was like she was reminding me of one of the reasons she’s the best. “Yeah,” I replied, “Most people don’t really care. But, don’t let it get you down.” Anyway, who cares right? It’s just beats and words in the background, anyway.

Anyway, the mix worked out great, and the party was a good time for all. I’ll post some pictures as soon as I get around to it.

The other night I decided to trawl through the music collection on the ol’ harddrive and find something that I haven’t listened to in a long time. Turns out I stopped on a live album recorded when The Quicksilver Messenger Service played Winterland in 1968. As one familiar with the “San Francisco” sound at that time, you may suspect that this performance is nothing more than a humongous set of noodling on old blues numbers, each wandering off into the tens of minutes, some if it interesting, some of it boring. Anyway, it sounded good to me, and it was the sound at the time. Put ’em on a bill at the Fillmore with Country Joe, the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, and Beefheart – and you’d pretty much sum up the late 60’s west-coast sound. And, before I move on, check out the Concert Vault website, which apparently bought up the rights to all Bill Graham live material from 1965-1980 (Winterland, the Fillmores, etc.), as well as the entire King Biscuit Flower Hour catalog. Interesting indeed…

Goodnight.

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hopelessly given over to anticipation


Monday night and I’ve not got much for you. My mind is wandering day and night, thinking about the nine weeks off that are just around the bend. At work, I think about drinking beer in a tent in Munich. At home, I read Muir Trail hiking diaries on the online. Between the two, I listen to music as I drive and think about lounging on the beach at Hawaii. Hopelessly given over to anticipation, it’s like Christmas at eight years old.

The new Rogue Wave leaked today and I’m sitting here listening to it, a freshly assembled pile of bits plucked from this machine and that machine, downloaded willy-nilly swarm style and magically reassembled on my end through the power of Bram Cohen. Sharaun’s at the gym and I decided to pause the episode of PBS’s History Detectives I was watching in favor of checking out some new tunes at volumes she simply wouldn’t allow. Besides, I noticed when queuing up the History Detectives that the TiVo is recording a new episode of that abysmal So You Think You Can Dance show she so enjoys, which means that’ll come on when she gets home. I figured I better enjoy some tunes while I have the chance. Man I hate “dancing” shows… Anyway, this album sounds fine enough.

About the lack of writing: I had partial entries for both Friday and Monday, but couldn’t pull it together enough on either of them, so gave up with a paragraph or two on each. Friday’s was about an unsettling experience I had at work. The kind that makes you all nervous and tweaky kinda like you know something bad is happening. This particular experience was so unnerving to me that I decided I wouldn’t be able to focus until I was able to truly clear my head of it. So, I up and left the sawmill and went home. That’s where I wrote the one or two paragraphs that I could never fill out. Y’know, the ones about the thing at work that set me off. Yeah. Monday’s entry was a half-written try at a new blog “feature” I’ve been wanting to debut, called “music appreciation,” or somesuch… I haven’t decided yet. Even with sights set so high, I just couldn’t make it happen. And, to be honest, I’m only writing a paragraph now about not being able to write paragraphs then because I need another paragraph now. Gripping, no?

Goodnight.

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another iPod one


Well, I’m off to Houston early tomorrow morning – humid, hot, swampy Houston. It’ll be a short trip, with a good bit of the two days I’m gone being devoted to travel. I’m not looking forward to it, I just don’t want to go… there’s all sorts of reasons I’d rather stay here instead: mowing the lawn, playing with Keaton, sleeping in my own bed, and not having to present to customers. Alas, however, I’ll go. Bright and early to the skies and back late the next night. Enough lamentation though, eh?

Remember back a while ago I mentioned that I’d submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI in attempts to find out if there was any juicy information out there to be hand about my grandfather? I was inspired by the Get Grandpa’s FBI Files website, and half figured I’d never hear anything at all. The other day, though, I got confirmations from both the local field office and the DC headquarters that they had received my request and had assigned me a FIOA tracking number. Not that it means I’ll actually get some dirt on Grandpa, but was still a neat “next step” to get a couple letters from the FBI.

Gonna get nerdy now.

If you’re like me, you have a huge distribution of music on your iPod, spanning decades, genres, and focus. One of the classic problems I used to run into was maintaining a peaceful iPod coexistence between music that I really enjoy on some occasions, but don’t necessarily want to hear on shuffle. That may seem odd, but I submit that there are plenty of musical scenarios for which this sort of “selective shuffling” would be desirable.

Take for instance the case of holiday music, who doesn’t love a nice collection of time-honored Christmas classics to put on shuffle while the family sits around in pajamas sipping coffee and opening presents? You may only listen to it once a year, but it’s an important asset to your iPod’s overall portfolio. Problem is, you don’t exactly want Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” to get served up along with your “general purpose” library during, say, a Saturday afternoon wakeboarding or, worse still, a beer-drenched evening throwing darts in the garage with the boys.

Similarly, what about artists that you really like – but only when the mood strikes? For me, that’d be the Grateful Dead. I absolutely love a good, long, noodly Dead jam – and the more live shows I have on my iPod, the better chance I have at hearing something new and unique. So, my ‘Pod is disproportionally packed with the Dead, I have like all the Dick’s Picks series and more on there, gigs and gigs of live Dead. So much so, in fact, that statistically, a Dead track is more likely to be shuffled up than a non-Dead track – and I run the risk of overly-Dead “random” shuffles. This, again, can be a mood killer when you desire a truly random mix of your tunes. I face a similar issue with my large stacking of Beatles music, I’m sure I’m not alone.

My solution to these issues is to implement smart playlist based shuffling. Here’s how you do it, using Christmas music as an example: Highlight all your Christmas music in iTunes and right-click to “Get Info,” in the options screen that appears, tick the box titled “Skip when shuffling.” This means that all your Christmas music will no longer be considered when you choose “Shuffle Songs” from the main menu. However, it also means that, if you have the Main|Settings|Shuffle|Songs enabled in the Settings menu – the songs you just ticked will be ignored, and won’t be played. Seems like a quandary, right? You don’t want Christmas music shuffled in with your normal jams, but you most definitely want to put all those Christmas songs on shuffle while you open presents. What to do?

Never fear, Smart Playlists offer a perfect solution. First, make sure that all that Christmas music (or those live Dead jams) is set to “Skip When Shuffling.” Then, with your iPod highlighted in the lefthand iTunes pane, choose “New Smart Playlist.” Now, define your smart playlist so that it chooses those songs (for Christmas music, I suggest defining your playlist on the “genre” tag – assuming you’ve assigned the Christmas tunes to the Christmas genre; for the Dead, you can filter on “artist;” for others, get creative). Limit the playlist to however many songs you want (use a high number if you want them all), and set “select by” to “random.” Next, tick the “Live Updating” box and save the list. Voila! Non-shuffled songs in shuffle mode, ripe for that special occasion without having to worry about them popping up at the wrong time. For some more cool Smart Playlist ideas, check out this page (you can really do some cool stuff with these things).

Jeez, after typing that, it seems like such a waste of effort.

Goodnight.