California Playlist

…in honor of my cousin (in law) Therese who is returning to California right now. This is what I’m listening to today:

Luna – California (All The Way)
Her Space Holiday – Sleepy California
Josh Ritter – California
Liz Phair – California
Mason Jennings – California
Propellerheads – Take California
P!nk – Gone To California
Semisonic – California
Boom Bip & Doseone – directions to california
Essex Green – Never Been To California
Magnetic Fields – California Girls
The Beach Boys – California Girls
The Eagles – Hotel California
The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin’
Tupac Shakur – California Love
Vampire Weekend – California English
Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – California Uber Alles
Everclear – Like A California King
Kid 606 – Die In California
Low – California
R.E.M. – I Remember California

Been a long time since I posted on here. I have a five week old baby girl named Colleen now.

My Favorite Extended Metaphors

I have absolutely no idea if I’ll even remember any others right now, but I can think of two songs in particular that take the idea of extended metaphor and run with it beautifully.

The one that prompted this post is called I Used To Love H.E.R., by a hip-hop artist named Common. I have probably heard this song before, but have been listening to it a lot lately remixed with the Hyrule Market theme from Legend of Zelda. It’s part of the Ocarina of Rhyme mashup, which is quite good. I don’t want to spoil the song, in case you haven’t heard it, so I won’t tell you what the metaphor is, but it’s well worth a good listen.

The only other one I can think of is the song I sang to my wife at our wedding, The Book of Love, by The Magnetic Fields. It is easily one of my favorite songs of all time. Perhaps obviously, the metaphor is that of love as a book. Since I already have them transcribed, (they’re on our wedding website), I’ll reprint the lyrics after the break below.

Oh, and if you think of any other really good extended metaphors, post ’em here!

Continue reading “My Favorite Extended Metaphors”

Breaking Down

To commemorate my newfound love of Jeremy Messersmith, I am compiling (and have listened to today) a list of songs that I like that contain the phrase “Breaking Down”:

Breaking Down – Jeremy Messersmith
All the Way Down – Glen Hansard
Breakin’ Down – Ben Harper
Stop Breaking Down – The Rolling Stones
Breakdown – Tom Petty
Miniature Breakdown – Quintron

Bonus Tracks (that may not be true to the exact phrase):
Make This, Break This – Bitch
Break on Through – The Doors
Communication Breakdown – Led Zeppelin
Break It Down Again – Tears For Fears
Breakadawn – De La Soul
Give the Po’ Man a Break – Fatboy Slim

Reformat the Planet

Today was the last day to finish watching Reformat the Planet over at pitchfork.tv, so I just did that. The documentary, about the first “chiptunes” Blip festival in NY in 2006, featured some interview and performance by Neil Voss, who I have babbled on about here before because I liked his video game soundtrcks for the N64.

It strikes me that there are so many scenes and subcultures that I think are awesome and would love to be a part of, but never will be.

I will have be satisfied with downloading more mustic from the 8-bit people website. Yum.

I’ve got Mono!

At a friend’s suggestion, I have now listened to all the full-length albums released by Mono. It’s basically ambient instrument-only music that frequently has many layers of guitar and distortion. I guess this particular blend of melodic guitar noise is referred to in some circles as “Post Rock”. I’m tempted to make some blogging jokes here, about writing a post about post rock, or something equally asinine, but you see how I didn’t make that joke, but instead made a reference to it, and that was more tolerable?

Anyway, I like this. It has the same “wash over you” feeling that Sigur Ros has consistently, and I’m intrigued to find that they have another EP released in conjunction with Pelican, whose album “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw” I also have and sometimes enjoy. (I have not really listened enough to know whether I really dig it or not.) Anyway, for today at least, Mono is the perfect music to relax to while coding-away productively.

Bill Stains on youtube…

In response to the news that texting while driving is now illegal in MN, a co-worker sent out a link to this song on youtube today. That song really reminded me of another song by Bill Stains, one of the guys my dad used to drag us out to see when we were kids. (This was usually at the Coffeehouse Extempore, now known as the Cedar Cultural Center).

The song it reminded me of was one I remembered as “The Ballad of Ten Ton Molly”. And when I couldn’t find that particular song on youtube, I found a few other Bill Stains songs on there. (Mostly poor quality though, which is rather sad.)

Apparently the song is actually called Jake and 10 Ton Molly, and was originally by Mike Agranoff.

Oh, you can hear it on his myspace page! My memory of Bill Stains’ version is better, but it’s well worth a listen. It’s also worth finding some old Bill Stains albums. He’s got such a great voice.

Fire Playlist

Our office building had a fire today. We’re all back in the office and fine now. Here’s the playlist:

Prodigy – Firestarteer
Prodigy – Fuel My Fire
The Doors – Light My Fire
Semisonic – Down In Flames
Jimi Hendrix – Fire
Ash – Burn Baby Burn
ARKARNA – House On Fire
Talking Heads – Burning Down The House
McLachlan, Sarah – Into The Fire
Nirvana – Lake of Fire
Social Distortion – Ring Of Fire
Talking Heads – Love: Building On Fire
The Clientele – House on Fire
U2 – The Unforgettable Fire
M83 – Don’t Save Us From the Flames
The Wiseguys – Face The Flames
Vast – Flames
Daft Punk – Burnin’
M83 – Let Men Burn Stars

Feel free to add your favorite fire songs in the comments!

Tetrisphere soundtrack by Neil Voss

Last night I was reminded of my fruitless search (back in 2002, I think) for the Tetrisphere soundtrack. Tetrisphere was (and still remains) one of my favorite games of all time. It was released for the N64. Sound for the game was done by this guy Neil D. Voss, I learned at the time, but Nintendo never actually released an official sountrack, even though the game won a “best soundtrack” award from Nintendo Power. Conspicuously the wikipedia link above doesn’t really say what Voss has been up to since then.

Anyway, you can find mp3 rips of the Tetrisphere Soundtrack and The New Tetris (which he also worked on) available at this random Galbadia Hotel site.

Also interesting is this IGN interview with Voss on the making of the Tetrisphere soundtrack (via wikipedia).

I <3 last.fm

I’ve been using last.fm since it was audioscrobbler, and they just keep making it better. I really feel like this kind of open API driven data collection is the future of all consumer industries… not just the music industry.

Last.fm just launched http://build.last.fm/, a sweet-ass showcase of all the awesome stuff that can be done with last.fm’s data. Just browsing for a few minutes, I found a script that will generate my personal cloud of musical recommendations. Here’s mine:

Air Andrew Bird Azure Ray Boards of Canada Bright Eyes Broadcast Broken Social Scene Built to Spill Cat Power Death Cab for Cutie Dntel Efterklang Elliott Smith Eluvium Emiliana Torrini Erlend Øye Explosions in the Sky Feist Flunk Fridge Frou Frou Goldfrapp Groove Armada ISAN Junior Boys Lamb M. Ward Manitoba Mogwai Ms. John Soda Múm Okkervil River Orbital Pinback Stereolab Sufjan Stevens Telefon Tel Aviv The Album Leaf The Appleseed Cast The Books The Boy Least Likely To The Fiery Furnaces The Mountain Goats The Octopus Project The Unicorns Thievery Corporation Ugly Casanova Wilco Zero 7 of Montreal

I think this list is split about 50/50 artists I’ve heard of (and in many cases already own and listen to — I have all of AIR’s albums, for instance), and artists I’ve never heard of… maybe I’ll do a more in-depth analysis later if I have time.

Marketa Inglova at this year’s Oscars

I just spent the last twenty minutes googling for a good image of Marketa Inglova’s dress at the oscars (for florence). I didn’t really come up with anything, but in the process we watched her and Glen Hansard performing their Oscar winning song, Falling Slowly, both at the oscars, and then, randomly, in a much earlier performance. Then we watched their acceptance speech, which was cut off after Hansard spoke by the infamous music of cutting-people-off, and before Inglova could get a single word in edgewise. But then… later, she was brought back out onto the stage to speak her piece! I really have no idea whether that has ever happened before, but it seems unprecedented to me.

Anyway, the point is that, after all that, her speech was quite moving. Here is an excerpt:

“No matter how far out your dreams are it’s possible and, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope. And hope, at the end of the day, connects us all, no matter how different we are.” -Marketa Inglova