Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

Posted on

like a ton of bricks


First day back at work, even if it is from the comfort of my couch in slippers, and I’m already ready for another baby-vacation. It’s always been hard for me to truly work when I’m “working from home,” so I’ve been closeting myself away in the computer room – attempting to be isolated as much as possible from the hustle and bustle of the new-baby rest-of-the-house area. It’s working OK so far, I was able to catch up on mail and at least bring myself up to speed on what’s going on – now if I could just read enough e-mail to make me care. Nah, that’s unfair; I care… just not as much as I do about the new little life that’s sleeping behind the office double-doors, just in the other room. Somehow work just pales in comparison.

While I was sleeping on a hide-a-bed in the corner of the hospital room where our daughter was born, I’d put the iPod on “shuffle songs” and drift off to sleep to some rand() generated mix of tunes. Today I took advantage of the rarity of recent days that was sunshine and mowed the front and back lawns during a working-from-home lunch break. Again, I put the iPod on “shuffle songs” and let the little computer decide what I’d hear. It was during that random listening session that I got the idea for a blog feature centered around the iPod’s “shuffle songs” function: the iPod random memory generator. For me, songs are tied to memories almost as closely as smells are (I’ve written about it before, so won’t put myself through documenting it again). So, this evening while Sharaun and her mom were out shopping, I put the iPod on shuffle and began remembering. The rules: I document what the song makes me think of, what I remember thinking about the song, and I skip songs that have no appreciable memories. Here goes:

The Byrds – Eight Miles High
Middle-school summer, maybe 7th or 8th grade. I think I 1st heard this song as part of some “deep discount” bin 60’s psychedelic comp cassettes. The seemingly random guitar jumble that makes up the bridge immediately turned me on, as did the foreboding harmonies throughout the track. Another one of those songs that made me want to try marijuana.

The Beatles – When I’m 64
Middle school again, 8th grade this time. Sitting in the backseat of my best friend Kyle’s mom’s miniature Dodge Colt, Kyle’s had her put his Sgt. Pepper cassette in the deck. At the time, I’m deeply in 7th-grade-love with Kyle’s little sister – something about which I think he has no idea. In reality, sometime later Kyle tells me all his friends eventually come to be infatuated with his sister. I felt bad, but that can-count-the-weeks-on-my-hand closet “relationship” did wonders for me on the road to the perfected womanizing I’d so enjoy come my nubile college years.

Ministry – Flashback
9th grade. I’ve taken to wearing black steel-toed boots, long back socks which, when coupled with my too-long black shorts, leave only an inch of exposed calf, a Skinny Puppy t-shirt, and shades. My lord, I must’ve made the worst looking wannabe goth of all time. I remember diving into the industrial/noise scene head-first. Fueled, of course, by a fascination with the music – and then later bleeding into a misguided attempt at adopting the culture. I tried my best though: bought incense, outlined my windows in velcro and affixed a hook-side copy of the velcro square to pieces of 5mil black visqueen which I could use to completely blot out all external light from my bedroom, dressed the part, etc. I did everything short of dying my hair, painting my walls black, and posing for pictures in graveyards. What a joke; but what a memory.

Dungen – Sluta Följa Efter
Fall 2004. Riding around with the windows down, this absolutely euphoric album blaring. Sharaun is complaining, they’re not singing in English, she can’t understand them, they sound all “fjordy” and stupid, like the hurdy-gurdy Swedish Chef muppet or something. But God as my witness, this album is infectious – saccharine and dreamy, with layered cymbal, bursting beats and spinny guitars. Eventually, I oblige and change to something more “intelligible” for Sharaun’s sake – but I think this LP will always remind me of my last pre-baby summer.

The Decemberists – Los Angeles
Driving the 405, headed to a yacht on which my best-friend from 5th grade is about to be married. Before this, I’ve only seen him once since I left California so many years ago. A surreal experience, seeing him again and being able to be there at his wedding – so many years in the future.

Donovan – Riki Tiki Tavi
College. I have a one-bedroom place in town, Sharaun stays with me most nights even though we’d be condemned to Hell should her family find out. We don’t hump, I swear. My computer is stashed away in a desk that’s been shoved into my walk-in closet – and it’s here that I struggle through my first few engineering courses. Every night I fall asleep to music, and Sharaun with me by default. I’d picked up a bunch of Donovan LPs remastered as CDs at the local college used-CD store, and kicked them fairly often. Visions of pizza boxes on the counter and second-hand futon furniture… college.

Sleater Kinney – Little Babies
Junior year of college. I take a 36hr bus trip halfway across the country to visit Kyle in his Air Force barracks. An amazing journey in itself – but while there he introduces me to some new music (as he’s done for years). Sleater Kinney is one of the acts he turns me on to. Without re-writing what’s already been written, here’s what I remember when I hear this song. Oh, and I think there’s a paragraph in here too.

That’s enough of that for now. It’s fun though, I think I’ll try it again sometime.

Today the baby stepped up her game and launched a three-front attack on her poor old dad. Sharaun pawned her off on me for a wet diaper change, so I stripped her down and laid her on the changing table for a wipedown. She immediately peed on herself, and the table. Pee on her back, legs, everywhere. I cleaned up the pee, wiped down her entire body, and laid her back down on a cloth diaper. I turned to reach for a fresh diaper, turned back, and she’d peed on herself again. Wiped her down, put her on a new cloth diaper, and began strapping on her new clean one. Then the coup de grace, she spit up all over her face, neck, and hair. A three-fluid attack pretty much warrants a bath… those scented wipes can only go so far.

Oh, and I’m happy to report that the dead-animal smell which was coming from my beautiful new daughter’s nasty bellybutton is waning – as the shriveled thing finally made up its mind and dropped off. But man, we had neighborhood dogs ringing the doorbell and asking, in an extremely complicated sequence of barks and whines, which I eventually deciphered, if they could roll around on her. I don’t know if I have an extra-sensitive nose or what, but, to me, it really was that bad. Apparently, rotting stuff stinks. Sure, they look cute in photos when there’s not liquid poop running down their legs and curdled boob-milk leaking from their mouths. I was misled, people, babies are nothing like their presskits.

Until tomorrow, hope all is well out there in the blogosphere. Oh, and a warning, tomorrow’s will be a completely canned entry about religion – written long-ago and saved for a “vacation” day. Despite this admission, I urge you to keep reading, and keep commenting – it’s what keeps me going.

Goodnight.

Posted on

easin’ back into it


I’ve got a pretty random entry today, stuff I binned over the weekend that’s non-baby, and the obligatory baby. Here we go, short and sweet.

Grandma (on daddy’s side) left Sunday, and we had to check her carry-on twice to make sure she wasn’t trying to smuggle baby Keaton away with her. Grandma (on mommy’s side) arrives Tuesday – so Keaton won’t be doting-deprived for too long. Oh, and to satisfy the masses, I’ll go ahead and link Keaton’s gallery straight-away. I’ve updated it with some new pictures, and even some moving pictures (the future is now).

I half-wrote the following the day before the baby arrived, and wanted to be able to finish the thought.

I was thinking today about life-before-baby. Those post-college, marriage & career years, those before you decide to procreate. You settle into a complacency, because you’re ultimately familiar with the drill. My pre-child career years have conformed to a well-defined mold; so much so that I’ve kinda developed the feeling I’ve mastered things, know the ropes as well as they can be known. Not a conscious thought, I’m not that conceited, but a subconscious thing – a level of comfort with the established routine, a tried hand that knows how to execute the defined motions it’s practiced again and again. I suspect, though, that this baby thing is really gonna shove my perceived wisdom in my face. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m gonna find out pretty quickly that there’s a lot I don’t know. Time to learn new routines, to stumble and fall and curse the fact I wasn’t even given training wheels to ease me into this one. I think about this, and I actually get excited – excited about the new challenge, the new learning, the chance for new mastery. Bring it on little Keaton, I’m ready.

While I’m usually not one who makes a habit of stealing movies, I did download a screener of Brokeback Mountain last night (don’t tell the MPAA, OK?) – the hype just got to me I guess. Sharaun and I plan on watching it today (Monday), and I hope to at least have some kind of opinion formed to write about it tomorrow. I’ve wanted to see it for a while, dude-humping or not, as the story does admittedly sound pretty compelling. Not sure how much I’ll buy into a love story about two rugged cowboys – but I have a sneaking feeling that, if I do, I’ll know what the hype’s really about.

And, to end this entry – let’s get to some bloggin’ standard fare, eh? Link rodeo!

  • First off, and may be somewhat old as it’s been making the rounds on the ‘net for some weeks now – the compelling story behind one of the most sampled drumbreaks in history: the Amen Beak. Who’d’ve thought that a single drum breakdown from a ’60s track could’ve fueled an entire musical genre some 30yrs later.
  • Next, and continuing with the music theme, I ran across this hilarious little film about indie record store clerks the other day on videosift. Turns out it’s hosted at stereogum, and I must’ve missed the original post – but watch it – they’ve got us indie snobs pegged.
  • Now, check out this awesome “civil obedience” experiment by some GA State students, where they form a 4-lane front of cars going the legal speed limit and film the results.
  • And, second-to-last, some non-music links: these couple links about a hilariously overstuffed “Ebay house” and not-so-hilarious (but thematically related) pictures of folks dealing with depression-induced squalor.
  • Lastly, and equally unrelated – the results of treehugger.com’s “waste of packaging” contest – pretty shameful.

That’s it folks, lots of nothing. Goodnight.

Posted on

geezer in training

FetusWatch 2006
One week to go! That’s one measly week, or seven even measlier days. Funny how havin’ babies makes you change the way you think about things. I was watching the Simpsons at lunch yesterday, and was aware for the first time that, in the opening theme, where Maggie’s sitting in her carseat turning a fake steering wheel, she’s doing so from the front seat. For a baby Maggie’s age, it’s a cardinal sin of modern parenting to ride in a front-facing carseat – let alone one in the front seat next to mom. See, that and my constant yelling a the local “whipersnappers” to “tone down their hootenanny” show me I’m already a geezer in training.

Heard about this new “Digital Wax” program via Coolfer, and was pretty excited. It’s an auspicious effort to digitize rare, out-of-print, and perhaps previously unreleased vinyl. I’m not too interested in the initial lineup of labels, seems kinda underground punk and hip-hop based – but if they every make it around to some of the stuff that was released in the 60s and never again after that, I’d turn my head. I guess it may be doubtful though, that any major/major-owned label with potentially marketable unreleased stuff would license it for the project when they could skip the middle-man and digitize/sell the stuff themselves. Either way, the audiophilia associated with the press release is certainly boner-inducing:

The system, almost eight months in the making, offers Orchard labels a digitization platform that is unrivalled and unlikely to be exceeded in the future. A modified Simon Yorke S7 turntable fitted with a Kondo IO-j cartridge feeds the esoteric, rare, expensive and exquisite Kondo M1000 preamplifier, via a Kondo KSL SFz step-up transformer. This signal is in turn converted via an audiophile A-D 2 channel converter, and archived in DSL. All wiring is Kondo age-annealed 99.9999% pure silver wire, and all components are isolated by Vibraplane active isolation platforms.

Falling asleep, goodnight.

Posted on

the two iPod family

Happy Valentines Day, nerds.
Happy Valentines Day peoples. I hate Valentines Day… I really do. But, if I get a nice dinner with my wife and unborn child out of it, I figure I about break even.

A loooong time ago, I signed up for a website that was all the rage at the time, a website called freeipods.com. I linked the site on the blog, and also added a link to my completely old and busted, yet still highly trafficked, ? and the Mysterians page. When my free iPod didn’t materialize in a month or so, I lost interest in the whole deal – it seemed it took too long to get five people to sign up and jump through all the required hoops. Every few months or so, I’d log on to freeipods.com to see if I’d perhaps accumulated enough folks – but despite nearly fifty people registering, only four of them had completed their offers. Then, the other night – I got an e-mail at my hotmail address saying one of my referrals had completed an offer. I logged on to freeipods for the 1st time in several months and, sure enough, was greeted with the the free iPod screen. So, if all goes well, Sharaun and I will have gone from iPodless to a two iPod family in the course of a month – both free. There was some rigmarole about them needing 7-10 days to “verify” that all my referrals were real and did whatever they’re supposed to – but if that all goes off without a hitch, my 60GB video will get a new little 30GB video sister to play with. I’m so pumped.

Watching the news in between episodes of the Simpsons Monday night, the 10 day extended forecast came on – and I realized that Keaton’s due-date was on the screen. You know it’s getting close when the weatherlady is saying it’ll be cool and partly cloudy on the day your daughter is set to be born. I wonder, y’know, if she’ll actually come on the due-date. I wonder what that percentage is… babies born on their Dr.-pronounced due-dates? I never thought the last few days would be so excruciating – being able to see that little baby squirm and move under the seemingly paper-thin skin on my wife’s swollen belly, I know she’s all crunched up inside, she must be ready to get out and stretch her legs, right? I know she hears my muffled voice from behind all that blood and goo and thinks, “I can’t wait till the day I get to met this handsome lumberjack of a man, the timbre of his voice alone tells me he’ll be a good dad.”

Somehow I came across a remastered/re-released copy of a 1968 album by a British group called Love Sculpture. Now, I’d never heard of Love Sculpture, but allmusic tells me that the one and only Dave Edmunds was a member, and, man… does this record cook. I mean, outstanding driving guitar-based blues rock. Edmunds showing on this album is simply brilliant, sharp and slick and a pleasure to listen to. If you ever get a chance, pick up this disc – or stop by my house with a USB key and I’ll “loan” it to under the Fair Use clause, with explicit instructions for you to delete it to NSA standards 72 hours later. That way, you can hear some great music, and we’ll all be cool under the watchful eyes of the RIAA – the music lover’s best friend and compulsory conscience.

‘Night.

Posted on

blues on the speakers

I'm sky high.
Not just any old Monday for me this week folks, nay – this Monday marks the 1st day of single-digit pre-baby waiting. Nine days to go, nine measly days… incredible. A weekend filled with a few last-minute baby-related tasks: installing the carseat in Sharaun’s car, putting together the baby swing, and getting Sharaun’s hospital bag ready to go when the contractions finally come. When the contractions finally come… wow.

I don’t know what it is, maybe a sign of musical maturity – but lately I’ve been wanting to listen to nothing but blues. I’ve been on a rash downloading streak, grabbing byte after byte and building a pile of gigs in my blues directory (all legally purchased music, of course). I always enjoyed the blues, had always been aware of it’s influence on rock music, and was an instant fan of blues-based rock acts like the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin. But, despite all that, I never really was a hard-core roots blues fan. Lately though, I’ve been immersing myself in the scratchy acetates of Furry Lewis, Son Seals, Blind Boy Fuller, Mississippi John Hurt, and a myriad of other amazing blue pioneers. I just can’t seem to get enough – the music makes me feel anything but blue. It spreads a smile across my face, and makes me somehow feel connected to the beginnings of rock and roll. Some of this stuff, being nearly 90 years old, is completely amazing and engaging, like being musically transported back to another time.

The past few days in Northern California have been simply outstanding. 70 degrees and sunny, with the air clear enough to see the Sierras stretch from the edge of my left eye all the way to the edge of my right. Friday was so gorgeous, in fact, that I decided to play work-hooky and pull a “working from home.” Unfortunately, I had meetings to call into most of the afternoon – but even sitting on meetings was ten times as good in the ground-level, breeze-thru-open-windows, blues-on-the-speakers comfort of home. I keep thinking about my upcoming time off in a week or so – sitting at home with the windows open and sun shining, holding my new daughter. I’m anticipating spending hours just looking down at her tiny face and drinking in her baby-skin-smell. Damn, I am straight homo.

Everyone’s on about Songbird lately and, I must admit, it does look pretty dang cool. An open-source music app, not unlike iTunes, built on the FireFox browser engine but with some pretty cool twist. Songbird treats webpages containing MP3s as playlists, and even has the ability to auto-download songs from your favorite canon of MP3 blogs. I grabbed it for the home PC, and plan on pointing it to me regular rotation of music sites to see what happens. Who knows, maybe they’ll build in iPod support some day and this thing will be a working iTunes alternative. A guy can only dream.

Before I go, I wanted to pass on my congratulations on to the now two-bigger family of sounds familiar reader maygsters – who gave birth to twin boys this weekend. You guys beat us by just about a week, way to go. Can’t wait to get all the babes together for a puke ‘n’ poop party.

Later peoples.

Posted on

who is mike jones?!

I am Mike Jones!
Happy Monday… lately I sometimes feel like the days and weeks are simultaneously dragging and speeding by blurrily. It seems like this day will never get here while feeling like it could be tomorrow at the same time. Think, think, think… babies and money and all sorts of things. Let’s move forward.

OK, I’d heard about it, but hadn’t actually heard it. Then, this weekend, I decided to hunt down the new Built to Spill album, which leaked a week or so ago. Word on the street was that the album sounded great, and it’s certainly one of the more anticipated efforts of 2006. Rumor also had it that the early leaked version was protected with a unique type of DRM: each song being marred by rapper Mike Jones asking, “Who is Mike Jones?!” every minute or so. Yeah, so, Mike Jones isn’t actually on the new BTS record, but he was sampled over the top of this leak… either by a band with a sense of humor, or some sadistic, perhaps rap-lovin’ and indie-hatin’, release crew. Whoever the culprit, the “Who is Mike Jones?!” form of copy protection is probably one of the more effective schemes I’ve run across. It’s hard not to listen to the songs without trying to guess when the next “Who is Mike Jones?!” sample will pop up, and it’s impossible (yeah, completely impossible) not to laugh when it eventually does. I like the album so much though, that I’m afraid I’ll become accustomed to the Mike Jones version. I’ll be the guy at the BTS show in a few months who shouts out “Who is Mike Jones?!” every few minutes so I can experience the songs the way I learned to love ’em.

I’ve been wondering if I should change my blog theme… I like the front page OK, but I think I’d like to change the comment section. I’ve got some stray div tags that get put in when you’re looking at a post in permalink/comment view which I’d love to clean up. Thing is, WordPress theme implementation has changed sooo much since I first hacked together my blog, it’s almost like I’d have to start from scratch. My index page and stylesheet, while functional, are spaghetti on the inside. My CSS skills are mediocre at best, and most of what I get is luck rather than skill or artful use of the stylesheet. I’d love to start with a clean modern WordPress them and start hacking from there… just so I could slim down my main page loop code and bloated stylesheet. However, that’s a lot of work… and I am partial to how things look now – it’s been my format forever, after all. What do you think, friends? Should I redesign from the ground-up, or are you, too, familiar and happy with the look of this page? I’m just not sure.

Continuing the blogging thing, keen observers may have noticed that I removed the toplink to my “cast of characters” page. I did this because the thing was just sooo outdated. I thought about going through and making a sweep of it, to bring it up to date… but the thing about that is having to stay on top of it. I’m not sure what the eventual fate of the page will be. I entertained a quirky thought about opening it as some kind of limited-access wiki where each person in the cast would own their own bio, and be responsible for keeping it up-to-date. Those who didn’t log on and polish their info once every three months or so would be bubbled-down and eventually “hidden” from the cast, re-listable only after an update. It’s a cool idea, maybe I’ll give it a shot. Right now though, the page isn’t gone, it’s just delinked from the header – several older entries still point to it. We’ll see.

Let’s do some linking, shall we? I know it’s lighting up the blogosphere lately, and I’m rather late to the party – but for the benefit of those who may have not seen this yet, I really recommend reading Jeff Jocoby’s We Are All Danes Now op-ed piece over at the Boston Globe. I’ll let you read it and mull it over, but I certainly enjoyed it. Not sure I like the term “Islamofacist,” but I do like the article.

Before I go: What does Mike Jones have in his hand? A neon pickle? Dildo? No, folks, after much analysis I’ve decided it’s a wad of bills. Classy Mike Jones; classy. Goodnight friends, until tomorrow.

Posted on

3 weeks and counting

FetusWatch 2006
Tuesday night and that means baby class, only one more to go and we’ll be fully educated and ready for birth. Things are really coming to a head now, as the FetusWatch logo indicates. The occasion this time is the arrival of the t-minus three weeks and counting milestone. As for the update, not much. Things are progressing nicely. In related news, I’ve actually figured out neat way to post blog entries from my cellphone. While this may seem stupid, I plan to use it to provide real-time short updates to the page when the big day comes. The posts will fall under the new “txtblog” category, and will be accompanied by nice little graphics that will tip you off to their real-timeness.

Last night was Coldplay at the local 18k-attendance arena. I remember when I first “found” Coldplay, via Napster (that should give you an idea of when it was). Struck immediately by their likeness to Radiohead, the Beatles, and U2 – I was smitten. At the time, they’d only released a handful of EPs in their native England, and I greedily stole them all over the wires. I remember reading about the group of college students, how their first couple EP releases had garnered so much praise that they made the decision to give up school and go 100% music. Stories like that enthrall me, bands making it big, chasing dreams and stuff. Anyway, I ate up those initial batch of EPs, and only just recently threw out the 1st Coldpay comp CD-R I made for the car: “EPs.” As the group rocketed to stardom, I never really lost interest so much as I did passion… it’s a byproduct of my “commercial is evil” attitude (I know, I’m working on it). But man, seeing them last night was amazing – seeing how far they’d come, all the way from EPs to CG explosions on huge digital displays… it was a testament to the rock ‘n’ roll dream.

What’s more, the performance was outstanding. The sound was great, as were the vocals, the “artsy” stuff like lights and confetti-filled balls falling from the sky was also awesome. I haven’t been that engaged be a performance in a long time, it truly was an excellent concert – and man am I glad Sharaun scored tickets for my birthday. The band was a class act all the way, from the show-ending Broadway style arms-on-shoulders bow to Chris Martin personally coming on stage to introduce Fee-Owner Apple. I’ll tell you what, when it’s an empty stage, and your band isn’t on for almost another two hours – yet you still walk out to that lone microphone and say: “High, I’m Chris Martin from the band Coldplay. I’d like to introduce Fiona Apple, I know you’re going to enjoy her.” That’s grade-A rock chivalry right there. What headliners these days take the the time to even thank their openers, let alone take the stage to personally intro them. Class act; Class. Fuckin’. Act.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.01 before I hit the sack, fixed my image uploading problem. I love this program. G’nite.