Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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a heart made of dead, cold, steel

And then you forget.Good evening web friends.

Hope your week is going well.  Mine, so far, which has consisted of Monday only, has been slammed busy.  But let’s go.

It’s Tuesday as you read this and tomorrow morning I leave for Oregon.  Two days at the local sawmill there and then Friday my brother and I hit the trail.  A three day trip in the wilds of the Columbia River Gorge, trekking alongside creeks and waterfalls and camping alongside lakeshores.  The backpacking trip is honor of my brother’s 30th birthday, which is this coming Sunday.  I spent some time tonight gathering and checking all my gear: filling a couple flasks with port, stuffing my clothes into a compression sack, checking off items on the list of things I need to bring.  I think we’re all set – and I am probably more excited about this short hike than I’ve been about any in a while.  Really looking forward to spending the time with my brother and getting away from it all.

Keaton and I went to the gym together tonight (Mom had to go shopping with some girlfriends in preparation for a party they’re throwing this weekend).  On the way home, I had the radio off (can’t listen to the iPod in Sharaun’s car and there was nothing on the radio worth listening to) and Keaton began to sing.  It was so cute hearing her voice that I risked life, limb, and a citation by holding the iPhone in the air behind my head to record her.  I slapped together two of the best choruses from her singing and folded them down into a  single MP3 for your listening pleasure.   Check it:

[audio:youbelongtome.mp3]
Why can’t you see-ee-ee?  You be long to me-ee-ee!

Can someone find me an A&R man already, please?  If that doesn’t melt your heart then you either 1) have no heart or 2) have a heart made of dead, cold, steel.

Got word that both our new flooring (the raw materials, at least) arrive Friday.  Same day we’re supposed to get the new dining room table we ordered.  All the “upgrade 2009” projects seem to be hitting at the same time.  It’s going to be a busy few weeks around here as the projects kick into gear, but we’re both excited about the coming results.  I’ll post some pictures of the progress as it’s made.  And, the whole internet is invited over to check out the work when it’s finished.  OK?

Goodnight friends, I’m all done for the evening.  Until tomorrow.

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we’re all beaters

It's gross when anyone does it.Great weekend with my folks in town; it felt like a nice long drawn-out time together.

We crammed a lot in, too: went up into the hills and wandered around some farms, making a stopover at a brewery; watched football with friends; went out for sushi; and did a picnic lunch (complete with geese-feeding) at the lake. I think Keaton had a good time with her grandparents and, for me, it almost felt like a three-day weekend even though it was only a standard old two-day one.

Switching gears.

Keaton has a new turn of phrase I wanted to write about, for posterity, and all. Whenever she’s doing something with Sharaun or I which can be measured in time (walking somewhere, eating something, etc.) she races us. And, she always begins her race by saying, “I’m gonna be the beater!” To her, this means she’s going to beat us at whatever task we’ve now been cast into competition around. Funnier still, Keaton can never not be the beater. Oh, if she wins, she’s definitely the beater, and she’ll let you know it by chanting as much. If she loses, however, then she’ll say, “We’re all beaters now!” So: she wins, she’s the beater; she loses, she’s still the beater… but we all get to share the crown.

I told my brother about her “beater” method of scoring contests, and he loved it. He in turn told the folks he works with and now they all apparently go around shouting that they’re gonna “be the beater” as they get their graveyard-things done. Oh, yeah, my brother is a gravedigger. No; for real.

Switching gears.

The other day, I was on Sharaun’s Facebook account looking at some pictures she wanted to show me and I saw a post by a friend of a friend where you’re supposed to list fifty concerts you’ve been to. Easy enough, but he put a twist on it and added the name of a friend he’d been to each show with alongside the artist seen live. I thought this sounded fun, but wanted to see if I could make it even more challenging.

My rules: Try to list fifty shows along with fifty friends who I’d been with at each. But, the catch is that you can’t list the same artist twice – even in the legitimate instance when you may have seen them more than once with different people; and you can’t list a single person more than once, which is tough when you do most of your concerttin’ with a small hardcore clique. Anyway, that’s what I set out to do. I told Sharaun, and she (correctly) predicted that the number of friends, not the number of concerts, would be the limiting factor if I did it my way… but I had to try anyway. So, for no real reason at all here’s my list…

  1. Bob Dylan (Kyle)
  2. Ween (Andy)
  3. Van Morrison (Jeremy)
  4. Smashing Pumpkins (Natalie)
  5. Paul McCartney (Sharaun)
  6. Arcade Fire (Cynthia)
  7. Band of Horses (John)
  8. BTO (Tiffiny)
  9. Alien Sex Fiend (Siobhan)
  10. The Strokes (Anthony)
  11. Killers (Suzy)
  12. Subrosa (Scott)
  13. The Bravery (Rob)
  14. Crosby, Stills, & Nash (Mom & Dad)
  15. Radiohead (Ben)
  16. Wallflowers (Robin)
  17. Coldplay (Jeff)
  18. Of Montreal (Colleen)
  19. Hot Hot Heat (Erik)
  20. Modest Mouse (Brontë)
  21. The Advantage (Mika)
  22. The Decemberists (Melissa)
  23. The Shins (Pat)
  24. AK1200 (Chuck)
  25. Donna the Buffalo (Joey)
  26. Gwen Stefani (Michelle)
  27. Doug Martsch (Joe)

Today I went up to the watch store at the outlet mall where I bought my watch so many years ago, as the battery died for only the second time since owning it. Turns out it wasn’t the battery, but the watch itself died somehow… old age gets us all, I guess. They said they could send it in for repair, would cost $30. “How much are the new watches?,” I asked. “About $40” was the reply… so I bought a new watch.

Goodnight friends.

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studded belt like a vacancy sign

Free HBO; ice.Morning.

It’s Tuesday night internet and, I swear, I had the best of intentions… I swear.

Someday it would be interesting to chart the frequency of my posts here on sounds familiar against the density of my work calendar for a given week.  I’d be willing to be there’s a high correlation between days and weeks when I’m absolutely slammed at work and those which go void of writing here.  Not because I write at work, but more because my brain gets overwrought during the day and isn’t readily available for writing at night.  If I had I had it my way I’d still be posting every day.

I did write some over this extended weekend, so I’ll go ahead recycle that as content now first:

Monday morning and I’m not at work.  The weather outside is unbelievable, and I’ve already been productive enough with the weekend and general, and my scant waking hours today, that I’m deserved a tiny break.  So the house is wide open and Jesse Colin Young’s “Song for Juli” shuffled up on the iPod (I had to take a break from my marathon Beatles tear, read more about that below).

I wrote last week about the Beatles’ albums leaking in their new remastered format, and since then I’ve been listening non-stop, analyzing and enjoying (but mostly enjoying).  The remasters came down in FLAC (as any self-respecting lossless files would), but in order to get them on the iPod they needed to be transcoded to ALAC (Apple lossless) format – the only lossless codec the iPod understands.  Since transcoding removes all the song metadata, I have to re-tag all the resultant files.  After all that, I was finally able to load the lossless files on the iPod, in their full sonic glory, and lock myself away in an imaginary room with headphone walls and a nice wide stereo image painted across my brainscape.  And, no sooner had I got the stereo remasters loaded on the iPod then did the mono remasters leak.

So there I was, Saturday, home by myself (well, Keaton is napping).  I’d just converted and loaded the entire mono and stereo boxsets onto the iPod, and it was time to play them loud.  I started with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in it’s original mono.  How the bass didn’t wake up Keaton I have no idea… but the plodding bottom-end of “Fixing A Hole” has never sounded more in-the-room.  I can hear nuances in the double-tracked vocals on the White Album moreso than ever before.  Makes me want to hear it on an audiophile rig (which my setup is not).  In the forums online, there are already fierce (for online forums, at least) debates ongoing about what sounds better and what sounds worse.  But, for me, one listen to “I Saw Her Standing There” at top-volume seals the deal… I swear I could be hearing a studio playback.

Monday this past three-day weekend Sharaun took Keaton for the morning so I decided to go for a bike ride.  I did a short five mile loop and made a stop at the local REI to pickup some supplies for the month’s-end backpacking trip in the Columbia River Gorge.  It was supposed to be just a ten mile loop there and back, but while there I got a text from some friends saying there were headed into town for a ride and wondered if I’d want to join them.  After a texting volley I found out they’d be arriving about four miles from where I was in about twenty minutes – perfect.  I rode to meet them, then did a ten mile loop around a local lake (this area is so fantastic for riding… trails everywhere and you hardly ever have to be on the road).  Home again after that and before I knew it I’d been gone for three and a half hours and ridden twenty-eight miles.  The day was so fantastic weather-wise, I felt like I could just go forever and ever.

I guess I’m outta here now.  Nothing more has come in the 40min I’ve stared at this page.  Goodnight y’allz.

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waiting on music again

Loose lips...Man I’m glad it’s Thursday night.  Tomorrow (today as you’re reading) is Friday; three-day weekend come on.

Today after work I ran around like a newly-headless chicken, running an errand downtown for a buddy and then trying to get back in time to join some friends for the evening… but traffic and frustration and general lateness made me forgo that friend time.  I rolled into the garage around 8pm and decided that, having had a burrito as big as my arm for lunch today, I probably didn’t need any dinner.

With no dinner and no friends and just Keaton and I at the crib, I decided to put on some music and hang out.  Fired up the internet and discovered that, lo and behold, the Beatles stereo remasters had leaked in pristine FLAC and the torrent was marked for freeleech.  There goes 3+ gigs on the iPod.  I’m fifteen hours late to the swarm; but amazingly there’s only two seeds.  No sooner had I jumped into the fray than was I at the top of leech pack (glacial seed so closing in on 5,000-strong now).  This is the Titanic of torrents… smashing all records.   Hopefully I can have them all converted to ALAC and loaded on the iPod for some work listening tomorrow.  Woohoo.

And now the songs are just dribbling in… one by one I’m getting to hear the remasters.  I started with the ones that’ve hit 100%.  “I Am the Walrus” was one of the first.  Oh man this sounds good.  I hope it all sounds like this.  Holy crap I just put “All You Need Is Love” on… the separation and clarity is amazing.  Strings.  John.  Drums.   For kicks, I spun the 80s CD mix in pieces alongside… no comparison.  I can’t wait to listen to Pepper once all the way through.  I don’t have the patience to tolerate the audiophile rantings about the horn being too “up front” or “bright” in the new mix of so-and-so-whatever… this sounds way better than the ’87 stuff to me; limited, compressed, whatever.  Sounds spectacular.

Getting late and I have nothing to do aside from wait for this album to finish.  Guess I’ll queue up an episode of History Detectives and practice my patience.

Goodnight.

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requires adult supervision

Back when things were things.Happy Tuesday world.

At some point early along in my adolescent life, both my mother and father had to work during the summer. I think this was the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years of junior highschool.  That would’ve made me about thirteen or so, and my brother around ten.  6th grade was my first year in Florida, so I hadn’t yet built up any real network of friends, and I entered that first summer after my first year at junior high without much prospects for socialized fun aside from interacting with my brother.  And, since it’d been he and I up until that point anyway… I don’t think it bothered me too much.  Anyway, being that our folks were working during the day, this meant that he and would be home alone during the day.

Well, it meant we would’ve been home during the day… had my parents not got us a babysitter.

That’s right; here I am with thirteen long years of life experience… and, in my mind, solidly qualified to care not only for myself, but also for my brother (should the need arise).  My parents, however, saw it differently.  I remember feeling insulted when my mom told us she’d hired a sitter to come over during the days. I can imagine my teenage brain reeling; what would my (non-existent) friends say?  How would I explain this (to David the Gnome)?  But, fight it as I might, they were going through with it. Looking back, thinking about things as a parent, I can see the desire to have some adult supervision for a thirteen year old punk and his ten year old brother.  I mean, I wasn’t setting forest fires or stealing Now and Laters yet, but I did have that teenage raskishness about me.  Anyway, in the end it turns out that our last summer of being babysat made for some good memories… so maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

The first babysitter I remember was a pixie-like college-age girl; short blond hair, very pale, and tiny like a compressed spring, a gymnast.  I don’t remember her name, but I do remember (or rather, the thirteen year old in me remembers) that she wasn’t particularly attractive.  However, since thirteen year old boys are notorious for having ridiculously high standards, I’m sure that unless she looked like Alyssa Milano from Who’s The Boss I’d think she was dogmeat.

Anyway, the one thing I remember about this babysitter was her taste in music.  She was deep into what I know now as the “Madchester” scene, and I recall her listening to things like Candy Flip’s cover of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and some Happy Mondays stuff.  I’ll never forget sitting in the passenger seat as she drove us to the mall one afternoon, watching her work her hand in rhythmic waves to the beat of that crazy Beatles cover… I thought that was so cool.  As I got older, and began researching the musical trends of my youth (as all good music nerds at some point do), I realized that she was actually pretty cutting-edge at the time… Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets… pretty cool.

The next babysitter (not sure if we drove the first one away or she could only do part of the summer) was completely different.  A big-haired party girl, she spent most of her time “watching” us lounging around the pool in the backyard in a skimpy bikini.  Truth be told, I likely kept a much better eye on her that summer than she did on me; it had to be at least 2:1.  Oh yeah man, she must have been about nineteen and, to me, she was masturbation incarnate.  Again, I can’t seem to remember her name, but I remember her reeking of cheap teenage perfume and hairspray.  What’s more, whereas our first sitter treated me appropriately, as a thirteen year old boy – this babysitter saw in me a burgeoning young adult, and interacted with me more like a peer.  To me, this was amazing, and likely did wonders to boost my self confidence in the psychological long-run.  In fact, I can remember most distinctly one afternoon when she called to talk to my mother.

After telling her I’d go get my mom, but before I actually could, her raspy voice came through the phone, “Hey, guess what I did last night?”  Holy crap… this girl was talking to me… asking me a question like we were about to have an honest-to-God conversation or something.  My heart raced, my brain ached for the appropriate response… “What,” I asked, trying to sound like I talked to incredibly hot nineteen year old girls on the phone all the time.

“I went to see 2 Live Crew down in Miami.”

My mind raced, I knew something about this… I’d followed the recent national drama around 2 Live Crew on the MTV news, I’d even listened to their debut offering on Luke Skyywalker records back before I left California (how cool was I!?).  Bottom line: if I responded right, I stood a chance at being relevant here.

I asked her about the performance, did the cops show up?, how crazy was it?, did they do “Throw the Dick?”  She proceeded to tell me how wild the show was, how there were girls taking their tops off and, yes, the cops did come (I’m not sure if this was the famous show where the band was arrested or not).  And thereafter that minute and a half marked the most engaging conversation I’d had with a female in my post-pubescent life.  Here I was, a barely-teenager talking about stuff I really didn’t have much clue about, and doing best to discover my own game before I knew what game even was.  And I did it, too.  We talked for a bit before I handed the phone over to my mom; I handled it with aplomb.

Ah… that blissfully empowering memory almost makes me forget the teenage shame of once rummaging through her duffel bag in search of her thong…

Funny, I guess both of those babysitter memories involve music.  What do ya know.  Anyway, I think we may even have had one more sitter over the course of those three months, but she must have been rather unremarkable in the end.

Dear Lord I wrote!  Call the papers.

OK, before I go, I wanted to pass along this thread I saw on reddit the other day.  Y’know, we all drew that thing in 6th grade too… it’s like some vast international mind-meld or something.  Crazy.

Goodnight.

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two entries on the week

Close to the edge.Two entries on the week.  That’s not so good.

Sitting here listening to Yes’ Close to the Edge, one of those albums that’s about as close to a perfect album as there’ll likely ever be. Up there with Dark Side of the Moon and other luminaries, it just never gets old or ceases to be fascinating in every little note, downbeat, or Anderson-dominated harmony. If you don’t have this album, your collection is sorely lacking. Maybe one day I’ll put together a list of my top-ten “essential” albums or something; that would be totally fun and interesting… for me only. Moving on.

Today I got hit by a mini-wave of morning-time malaise… something that I’m unaccustomed to as I’m usually quite the morning person. I went through my well-rehearsed routine: Waking; heading to the water closet to evacuate and read, in order, CNN, MSNBC, the local California paper, and paper local to where we grew up in Florida; saying a small prayer of thanks for the things I have, a smaller one asking forgiveness for some of the more ridiculous things I’ve done to put those things in jeopardy, and another one as a catchall for all those among humankind who hurt and have needs (with age, these prayers, you see, don’t seem like just so much soliloquy to me anymore); stripping for the shower; dressing post-cleansing; and heading out the door after kisses for Sharaun and Keaton.

At some point in this daily dance I was struck by a gloomy thought: This is what I always do, and this is what I’ll be doing for a long time to come. Really, it shouldn’t be a gloomy thought… but this morning it seemed that way. While I consider myself far from a person prone to depression, for a flash there today I felt a little “locked-in.”  But, the moment passed almost as quickly as it alighted, and (almost) all was right with the world again.

And now I sit here in the evening, like so many other evenings, perched above the keyboard of this machine again.  I changed the music; Close to the Edge played through nearly three times and it was time to shuffle.  Playing a nice Emitt Rhodes track now, pleasant, sounds right.

Well guys, after that… time to talk Halloween.  I’ve been becoming more and more aware that I’m actually a little late getting started on my annual prop project.  I’ve already decided what I’m making this year, and even have the a parts list; I’ve just not started cobbling it all together.  Moreover, I’ve actually been a bit on the fence this year about doing our annual party.  I do this every year though; start thinking we’re too old to throw such a raucous bash, start thinking it might be nice just to decorate the house as usual and save the Halloween fun for trick-or-treating with Keaton instead of having a houseful of drunk folks.  But… in the end, upon sharing my reservations with Sharaun, she always manages to convince me to go ahead with the status quo (she’s nearly done it again this year as well…).

Before I go, I figured I’d link-drop the P4K’s recently finished weeklong feature, “The Top 500 Songs of the 2000s.”  I’ve been enjoying the list immensely; and while I don’t always agree with it (who could, at 500 tracks strong and Pitchfork’s love for freak-folk and electro-dance), I do heartily support some of the choices.  For instance, while I’d liked to have seen Amerie’s “One Thing” crest higher on the list (I love that song so hard), I do agree that Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” is definitely in the right sitting atop it (if you wonder why I chose those two to compare, just give each on a listen and you’ll get it).  And, as for the #1 pick… I was surprised.  Interesting, in that Sharaun has always loved that track, even more than I did (or ever have) upon first hearing it waaay back when.  I always knew she had pretty decent taste in music.  No wonder I married her.

Goodnight friends.

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when are you coming back?

Because it's all knotty, innit?Thursday.

Music post. If you don’t care you may safely ignore. Although… before you do, note that this one contains both mystery and intrigue and perhaps the makings of some cool “internetty stuff” too. So, maybe you wanna read it after all.

Got online for the first time tonight around 10pm, and was greeted with a pleasant surprise. Let me explain.

See, for Radiohead fans, it’s been a neat couple weeks. Just last week we get the surprise online-only release of their tribute track to Mr. Harry Patch, Great Britain’s last surviving WWI veteran who passed away last month. Then, an online interview with Thom in which he says the band is “done making albums.” No, not breaking up, just presumably eschewing the aging long-player format for a while. In this same interview, Mr. Yorke says the following:

“… we’ve actually got a good plan, but I can’t tell you what it is, because someone will rip it off. But we’ve got this great idea for putting things out. In a physical realm and a digital realm. But, yeah.. no, I can’t tell you what it is. [Laughs] Sorry to be so vague about everything.”

Cryptic… And, finally, tonight. I log on to the internet’s #1 “back alley” for digital music acquisition. No, I won’t mention where. However, upon checking the top ten items for the day, I was surprised to see yet another unrecognized-by-me Radiohead item in the top spot. Sure enough, it’s a new song – and it’s legit; it’s Radiohead. But where did this thing come from? In an odd twist, the uploader hasn’t provided any information about where the track was sourced. Unusual for something as high-profile as a brand new Radiohead track, which is a sure-thing to take the #1 spot. Most uploaders would want to bask in the glory of breaking such a leak.

Anyway, it’s ostensibly a “scene” rip, and it comes complete with an NFO file. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about at this point, check the links on those words.) Opening the NFO, the mystery deepens: The release group is some heretofore unknown called “Wall of Ice,” and although the file appears quite authentic to a scene release, replete with the standard ASCII art and rip/group info, its only other contents are just some rambling (not very much unlike the ramblings of Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke on the band’s official website, hmmm…):

    iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
      iiii         i just wanted to reassure readers          iiii
      iiii          that following representations            iiii
      iiii              seeking confirmation                  iiii            
      iiii           that before your very eyes               iiii                       
      iiii             behind the wall of ice                 iiii
      iiii         that the box is not under threat           iiii
      iiii          however they are set to remove            iiii
      iiii                    other boxes                     iiii
      iiii       in fact i have the list in front of me       iiii
      iiii         i went to a briefing on their plans        iiii
      iiii           and challenged them to tell me           iiii
     iiiii           exactly what the cost would be           iiiiiii
    iiiiii                                                    iiiiiiii
   iiiiiii             they spoke in broad terms              iiiiiiiiii
 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Furthermore, dear Watson, the uploader of the song and NFO is also a mystery, having been registered for quite a while on this particular site, but without much account activity of note. After uploading the track his or her “paranoia” settings were changed to “level five” (the highest level of usage-statistics obfuscation allowed). Who is this person? How and where did they come by this track? Are they perhaps an agent of the band, or someone actually from the band? Could this be an orchestrated, purposeful “leak?” My cursory research shows that the track likely made its internet debut through that uploader on that site…

Perhaps more telling, the track, entitled “These Are My Twisted Words,” is numbered as “01” and the release date listed in the NFO file is 8/17/2009… or next Monday for Marty McFly. An indication that more are to follow? Could this be the “great idea for putting things out” Thom talked about in the above quoted interview? Are Radiohead going to do a NIN-inspired album release, maybe all ARG style? Drop a new track on the web’s most exclusive underground music sharing site and bury clues to the next track within the self-leaked release? Could the NFO file be hiding breadcrumbs leading to the next track?

Dunno; but I’m willing to follow everyone else (well, those fanatic enough like me) down the rabbit hole on this one just in case.

There. Wasn’t going to write tonight. Pulled this together while listening to the new track and F5ing the sluething threads on the forums. I get totally engrossed in this stuff.

Goodnight.