Published on April 10, 2008
in music.
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!
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’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.
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
Published on February 25, 2008
in music.
I have recently re-discovered the magical site that is fabulist.org. For some reason, all the mp3s they post are gold. Or anyway, about 80% of them I like… which, believe it or not, is a fucking HUGE amount for me. And even the stuff I don’t really like (Johny Cash covers Rainbow Connection?) I can _appreciate_ why someone else might like it. I’ve been listening to a playlist I downloaded over there for about a week now, and am totally in love with Laura Marling, Lisa Hannigan, Vampire Weekend and Noah & The Whale.
UPDATE: I now HATE the fabulist.org for introducing me to music that is neigh impossible to obtain!!! Laura Marling’s CD has only just been released in the UK… Import rates are not terrible from amazon.co.uk, but Noah & the Whale have not even released an album yet!!! Vampire Weekend is readily available, and I haven’t yet looked into Lisa Hannigan. I have listened to all the Noah and the Whale songs on myspace, and they are fucking awesome. I’m retiring from the internet to play Mass Effect now. *cries*
Published on January 16, 2008
in music.
I was particularly proud of this song queue I created this morning:
Kathleen, Josh Ritter
Evangeline, Matthew Sweet
Gracie, Ben Folds
Jolene, Cake
Allison, Pixies
Gloria, Them
Maybellene, Chuck Berry
Layla, Derek And The Dominos
Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
Peggy Sue, Buddy Holly
Lola, The Kinks
Roxanne, The Police
Alison, Elvis Costello
Jezebel, Iron & Wine
Julianne, Ben Folds Five
Kate, Ben Folds Five
Mary, Joe Purdy
Laura, Charlie Parker
I’m sure there are tons more, but these are the ones I thought of / found on our tunez server this morning.
Published on November 21, 2007
in music.
Florence turned me on to the band Common Rotation way back when we first met. They’re an awesome folk-type band. Anyway, she’s also on their mailing list, and read me this hillarious quote last night:
There is a saying that can be traced to the great French scientist Jean-Read Boisseriely. It goes vaguely like this: if a woman learns to levitate an object with her mind, it doesn’t really matter how high off the ground it goes–as long as she’ll sleep with you.
I spent a good five minutes searching for this particular quote (or any reference to Jean-Read Boisseriely), and I’m 90% sure it’s totally made up.
Published on April 15, 2005
in music.
Forgive me if I am overly excited right now. I just discovered that one of my favorite artists is going to be in town next saturday. Ulrich Schnauss. The two albums I’ve heard of his are magnificent. Absolute genius-level techno. That entire genre of music doens’t translate all that well to performance, but I don’t care, I’m just excited to see him, and the merch table!
PS… oh yeah, and I don’t think I’m going to review a poem tonight. I just spent the last four hours doing my taxes. I picked up my copy of Octavio Paz’s collected poems, but only halfheartedly read a few poems before deciding to turn to fiction for the evening. There was one called Certainty that I found pretty interesting. No really good metaphors or imagry, but I like the idea quite a bit. See you on the flipside.
Published on March 10, 2005
in music.
Bonfire Madigan (a band containing at least one former member of Tattle Tale,) has a CD out that I hadn’t before seen. It’s a retrospective kind of thing, called i bleed: a decade of song.
It contains the song Glass Vase, Cello Case.
I had heretofore been giving away that mp3 because I’d assumed the song was only available on Tattle Tale’s out-of-print album Sew True. Now that the song is back in print (and making the artists money), I can’t in good conscience give away the song anymore.
Philosophically, I think the artists should probably offer that particular song (one that is incredibly sought after because of its inclusion in the movie But I’m a Cheerleader) for download. This would obviously increase their fanbase, and I have little doubt that many listeners would then want to purchase more music by the artist. (Of course, the artist doesn’t technically exist anymore, so maybe that was part of the decision to release a new CD with the song on it instead.)
Anyway, you can order the CD from their website. I plan on doing so myself as soon as I get a spare minute.
Published on October 9, 2004
in music.
I didn’t write or post a poem yesterday. I did write a 1200 word short story (that doesn’t actually feel finished quite yet). In a few minutes I’ll post two short ones as penance.
Last night Laura and I went to see Low, Kid Dakota, and the Fog at the Tripplerock. It was an alright show, but toward the end of Low’s set I found I was having trouble standing up. My big toe joint was seriously in pain. I decided to check out the merch table one last time before we left, and I’m glad I did, because I’d somehow missed Dosh’s new album lying there. (Not in stores till Tuesday.) I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the third release of his first album before I got it, (since I picked up the re-release not knowing it was the same album with a different cover — in retrospect a third cover for the same album would be extremely unlikely, but what do I know?), and when I asked him about it, he said he’d have to cut me a deal to make up for my buying the other one on accident. He basically threw in his live album when I bought the new one and the new single. He was really nice about it, seemed like an awesome guy.
After I post this, I’m going to go see John’s art exhibit at the Tilsner in the St. Paul Art Crawl.
There is no ice cream cone.