In the wee days of this blog, back before I migrated it to Blogger, I ended every post with a list of Things to Cherish and Things to Bemoan. This roughly translates to things I like/dislike; if I'm feeling smug that day, it's good things/bad things. And then I stopped. This happened around the same time that I stopped regularly updating. But no more!
Things to Cherish:
- There are blackberry bushes behind our house. Yes, this neighborhood supports vegetation! And it turns out that wild blackberries are so much better than the store-bought kind if you pick the ripe ones. They also don't cost $4.99 for a container the size of a coaster. The general rule: If you have to work hard to pick the berry, it isn't ready.
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Everyone has been linking everyone to this. It's worth the hype. I don't know if it's still available at this point, but most people are probably sick of my incessant plugging it. I swear I'm not being paid.
- The cumulative and continued musical output of Kristin Hersh and Carol Keogh. If I've blogged about them too much, it's only out of utmost respect. I just found out that Carol's done guest vocals with the Dudley Corporation. A very nice surprise.
- And speaking of Dudleys... Dudley's Dungeon. This is a good idea of my interests. Not ashamed. I've written a few of these, even. Some were crap. Some were decent. Today's is amazing.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
July 14, 2008: Keeping track
I like to keep track of things. A bit too much. So consider yourself warned: the following is mainly babble, only interesting to me. It's about my list obsession. I keep a lot of them. Lists and lists.
There are two places I do this. The first is my wiki. They put banner ads on it, recently. That's not enough of a distraction. When it goes to pop-up ads, I'll either subscribe or, better yet, find an alternative, because I am a master of freeloading. I've been keeping track of the albums, artists, and songs in my collection. I'm thinking of adding two lists: one of books I've read, and one of films I've viewed. The problem with this is time; I can't remember when I read books, since I read more of them than I buy CDs. I'm too obsessive for this not to matter.
Funny enough, I was forum-browsing and I read someone saying they absolutely loathed doing this. I suppose it's different when it's busy-work, as opposed to something you do to track yourself. I like knowing what books I've read. It reassures me. And there are plenty of books I read as a child that, for the life of me, I cannot recall. I don't even have enough information to search for them - and I'm really good at doing this, considering it's my semi-part-time job. (If any readers out there know what the title of that (dystopian?) children's/YA book is where they visit a cafe with psychedelics called the Purple Orange, please let me know! It's been bugging me.)
Some things are too personal to keep on a wiki. While I'm sure that nobody is out there looking at my wiki, you never know. I use WordPad documents for these lists. Not Word - I don't need bells and whistles and loading time for plain text. I keep a file each for the books I'm writing,and a file for my dreams, and a file for the things I want to do before I die, a file for the names I like, and a file for my rudimentary love life, and a file for things I have now done thanks to college. If someone were to exhume my laptop, they wouldn't know the most about me (I hold that title), but they'd know enough to be a leading scholar.
~*~*~
I'm supposed to be following music, right? That's a hobby of mine, I think. And I do. Google's minions can attest to that. I've been rather silent about it on my blog. Ecto is a different story. My wiki is another. But here? Silence.
Anyway. Rose Kemp. She's the daughter of Maddy Prior, a traditional folk singer. Her name is pretty much the epitome of traditional (unless you put it in the middle-name slot, in which case it becomes the epitome of filler, which is a shame because it's a quite lovely name.) So you'd expect her to follow in her mother's footsteps. Whenever a blog post tells you what you'd expect, you can pretty much expect (whoops!) that the opposite will be the case.
Despite the mire of expectations I just threw at you, the opposite in fact IS the case. The critics are doing a piss-poor job of describing her, which means she's been compared to Kate Bush. A better description would be Carina Round if she hadn't hooked up with Glen Ballard. And decided to listen to a lot of old Throwing Muses cassettes. The lead single, "Nanny's World," is available for free if you know where to look - I should clarify, it's available legally for free - and it's quite a listen, starting with stripped-down guitars, crumbling into guitar sections which critics have pegged (wrongly) as "black metal" but which more closely resemble Kristin Hersh's new offerings. They're never the same twice. The end of the track abandons this and drifts away, which I assume is supposed to lead into another song. If you put "Nanny's World" on repeat, it has a decent enough effect.
I wish the other tracks on her Myspace were as good as this; maybe I need some time to get used to them.
There are two places I do this. The first is my wiki. They put banner ads on it, recently. That's not enough of a distraction. When it goes to pop-up ads, I'll either subscribe or, better yet, find an alternative, because I am a master of freeloading. I've been keeping track of the albums, artists, and songs in my collection. I'm thinking of adding two lists: one of books I've read, and one of films I've viewed. The problem with this is time; I can't remember when I read books, since I read more of them than I buy CDs. I'm too obsessive for this not to matter.
Funny enough, I was forum-browsing and I read someone saying they absolutely loathed doing this. I suppose it's different when it's busy-work, as opposed to something you do to track yourself. I like knowing what books I've read. It reassures me. And there are plenty of books I read as a child that, for the life of me, I cannot recall. I don't even have enough information to search for them - and I'm really good at doing this, considering it's my semi-part-time job. (If any readers out there know what the title of that (dystopian?) children's/YA book is where they visit a cafe with psychedelics called the Purple Orange, please let me know! It's been bugging me.)
Some things are too personal to keep on a wiki. While I'm sure that nobody is out there looking at my wiki, you never know. I use WordPad documents for these lists. Not Word - I don't need bells and whistles and loading time for plain text. I keep a file each for the books I'm writing,and a file for my dreams, and a file for the things I want to do before I die, a file for the names I like, and a file for my rudimentary love life, and a file for things I have now done thanks to college. If someone were to exhume my laptop, they wouldn't know the most about me (I hold that title), but they'd know enough to be a leading scholar.
~*~*~
I'm supposed to be following music, right? That's a hobby of mine, I think. And I do. Google's minions can attest to that. I've been rather silent about it on my blog. Ecto is a different story. My wiki is another. But here? Silence.
Anyway. Rose Kemp. She's the daughter of Maddy Prior, a traditional folk singer. Her name is pretty much the epitome of traditional (unless you put it in the middle-name slot, in which case it becomes the epitome of filler, which is a shame because it's a quite lovely name.) So you'd expect her to follow in her mother's footsteps. Whenever a blog post tells you what you'd expect, you can pretty much expect (whoops!) that the opposite will be the case.
Despite the mire of expectations I just threw at you, the opposite in fact IS the case. The critics are doing a piss-poor job of describing her, which means she's been compared to Kate Bush. A better description would be Carina Round if she hadn't hooked up with Glen Ballard. And decided to listen to a lot of old Throwing Muses cassettes. The lead single, "Nanny's World," is available for free if you know where to look - I should clarify, it's available legally for free - and it's quite a listen, starting with stripped-down guitars, crumbling into guitar sections which critics have pegged (wrongly) as "black metal" but which more closely resemble Kristin Hersh's new offerings. They're never the same twice. The end of the track abandons this and drifts away, which I assume is supposed to lead into another song. If you put "Nanny's World" on repeat, it has a decent enough effect.
I wish the other tracks on her Myspace were as good as this; maybe I need some time to get used to them.
Read more...
Friday, July 4, 2008
July 4, 2008: Meme time
This was going around the TMO Twitters, and it's written in grammatically correct English, and it's about music, so it must be done! (I'm tagging people elsewhere.)
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.
All right then.
1. Tychonaut - My Father the Jeweller: Subversively anthemic. The best love song I've heard against the sanctity of marriage. Summer, for me, seems to be about big songs. Witness:
2. Kristin Hersh - Krait: Determinedly anthemic. Kristin wasn't kidding when she called this a big song. Or primordial or biblical. It's earned all of that.
3. Martina Topley-Bird - Baby Blue: Sinuous and compelling. A warning, though: Listening to this song more than a few times in a row can induce a state of claustrophobia and unpleasantness that will last for days. You have been warned.
4. Kristy Thirsk - Hourglass: Summer shouldn't be about bad dance music when there's so much great dance music out there. When I'm fantastically rich I will co-opt all clubs' music systems and the world will be infinitely better. The part of it that dances, at least.
5: Autamata - Interrailing: The most beautiful song I've heard this year and more proof - did we need more proof? - that Carol Keogh is one of the best vocalists out there.
6: Kristin Hersh - Your Dirty Answer: Late to the party, I know. But I don't even think I need to clarify this one. Pure perfection.
7: Kay Hanley - Think Bad Thoughts: Nobody can function without pure happiness, and this entire album is amazing for summer.
Read more...
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