Category Archives: Music

January 26, 2014 · 22:25

Just About Nothing Makes Me Feel Older Than The Grammy Awards

If you’re in your teens or twenties, you will have no idea what I’m going to be talking about and you think I’m just a doddering old fart going off on some rant again. (Well, yeah, I am, but…)

If you’re older than 30, you’re starting to get hints of what I mean. You probably still listen to the radio stations that are playing the music that’s at the top of the pop charts, at least, some of the time. But maybe that “classic rock” station playing stuff from the 1980’s is sounding better every day. Occasionally you’re in the mood for some country, but you don’t let your friends catch you listening to it.

If you’re closer to 60 than to 50 and you care at all about music, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have become your parents!

You want to watch the Grammy Awards because you have always watched them. It was about the music and the music was a huge part of your life. It still is! You would sit back for a long evening of great live performances and see if one of your favorite bands or artists won. U2. Don Henley. Metallica. Green Day. Bruce Springsteen. Aerosmith. Madonna. Pink Floyd. Genesis. The Doobie Brothers. The Eagles. Stevie Wonder. Led Zeppelin. THE BEATLES!

Now you see the article in the Sunday paper about what a show it’s going to be with tonight. There’s lots of speculation as to who’s going to win. And you might recognize one in twenty of the artists nominated. Maybe. One in freakin’ twenty!

This is how reality sneaks up on you, grabs you by the lapels, and bitch slaps you. Twice. Because it can.

It helps if you have kids, particularly if you raised them right and they’re as enthusiastic about music as you are. My kids have been exposed to enough of my generation’s music to listen to Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Phil Collins, and so on. But they also have helped me stay in touch with pop music as it’s left me behind.

Because of my daughter, I saw more N’Sync concerts than I care to admit in the late 1990’s. On the other hand, I remember one year at the Rose Bowl when Pink was a total unknown who got a break and was their opening act. The teeny boppers ignored her and were screaming for Justin, Lance, Chris, Joey, and JC (no, I didn’t have to go look up their names – I told you, I went to a LOT of their concerts) but I thought that Pink was pretty good and might go somewhere.

Because of my son, I got exposed to a lot of rock from the early 2000’s, such as Muse and Bare Naked Ladies. We even went to Muse in concert at The Fabulous Forum a few years ago. (The same place I saw Led Zeppelin in the mid-1970’s.) I don’t remember which kid first got me hooked on Linkin Park, but I really love their albums. They have a lot of really good anger and passion.

Despite all of that, for the last couple of years, The Long-Suffering Wife and I have looked at the Grammy lineup and not seen a single pop or rock (i.e., non-country) artist that we recognized. And we have felt old.

This year I’m watching again. Perhaps the last couple of years have been a wakeup call, but I have paid more attention to pop and rock music this year.

The internet helps. Put down social media if you wish, but through that I’ve got people I respect (John Scalzi, for one) telling me I should give a listen to Daft Punk. My kids have badgered me (thank you!) until I looked at the videos for Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Someone else recommended Bruno Mars and I liked what I saw there, lots of energy. I heard a lot of good things about Justin Timberlake’s new album (hey, he looks a lot like one of those N’Snyc guys!) and Pink seems to have done alright after that long ago tour opening for Justin and the boys.

On the flip side, you couldn’t avoid hearing about Robin Thicke and “Blurred Lines” after that spectacle with Miley Cyrus. I’m pretty sure that I hadn’t ever heard that song before then, but after I saw the outrage over the lyrics of the song and the way it refers to women, it wasn’t hard to root hard for ANYONE to win except for him.

So I’m watching, trying to let the music make me feel young and energetic like it should. Some of it does. Some of it makes me hear my father’s words coming out of my mouth. He was talking about The Beatles and The Who and Jethro Tull. I was talking about rap. Seriously, not to sound like a prude (I’m not), if they have to bleep out two out of every three words, why bother to put it on television to begin with? Why?

Anyway. I’m enjoying the show for the most part. I actually have heard of about 2/3 of the nominees this year. That’s progress.

Then they go and put Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on stage together and while that’s really awesome, wouldn’t it be nice if John and George were there as well? (No, I didn’t have to go look up any of their names either! Shut up!) Earlier they showed Aerosmith and they really, really look old. (Granted, there might be extenuating circumstances there.) And really, Black Sabbath is still performing and winning awards? Where’s my well-worn vinyl copy of “Masters of Reality?” It’s got to be around here somewhere.

At least I don’t have to use one of those fold-up, aluminium walkers with tennis balls on the feet to get over to the record player.

Yet.

 

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October 29, 2013 · 07:00

Odds & Sods For Tuesday, October 29th

Item The First: Heads up! (Literally.) I’ve seen several folks on Twitter talking about how they’re seeing bright ISS passes listed for their cities in the US this week. Check it out, especially for Halloween night. If you’re already out and about with the kiddies, setting your phone to go off a minute or so early will give you the “heads up” you need to see a pass.

Here in Los Angeles, there was a pass  last night that I didn’t think I would see because of the heavy clouds. But I happened to be taking Jessie out at the right time and found some holes in the clouds to see the VERY bright ISS blinking in and out through the gaps. Spectacular!

For the rest of the week, at least for Los Angeles, there are passes this week tonight (Tuesday, the 29th) at 18:22 and 20:01 (the first pass is higher and brigher), Wednesday the 30th at 19:14, and Thursday night (Halloween!) at 18:23. The Thursday night pass is supposed to be especially bright, rising in the WNW with a maximum elevation of 47.2 degrees, a magnitude of -3.2 (which is much brighter than Venus), and setting in the SSE. You can’t miss it!

Item The Second:  Yes, the central scientific idea in my October 24th Flash Fiction story is similar the idea in Larry Niven’s “Inconstant Moon”. Yes, while mulling over the random title I got (“Fire On The Sea”), I did think of Niven’s story as a source of the fire, since I wanted to do something other than just telling a story about a guy in a burning boat or oil rig or something. That’s how my thought processes go. I don’t want to do the “usual”. What else could be on fire on the sea? An oil spill? A large explosion of some sort? Maybe an asteroid impact over the horizon. What about the sun? What was that Niven story? Maybe the guy in my story is dealing with something similar. He’s looking east, waiting for the sunrise, so where does that put him. Jersey? Virginia? Florida? I don’t want to do the “usual”, so let’s make it Africa. OK, that works, so what’s this guy doing and thinking in that situation. (By the way, if you haven’t read “Inconstant Moon”, go do so immediately. It’s a classic and most excellent.)

Item The Third: So far, neither Rocky, Raquel, or “the kids” has managed to pry the screen off of their hidey-hole. Sorry, Pat! But I’ll keep an eye on it. They’re up there on the roof every couple of nights, there are plenty of half-eaten oranges left around, and the dog’s water bowl is occasionally quite muddy from where they’re using it to wash their food – but they haven’t reclaimed their hidey-hole. Yet…

Item The Fourth: Two thoughts on the media’s changing reaction to a certain couple of pieces of music. First, I thought that it was interesting to see Filter’s “Hey Man, Nice Shot” being used as the background music in an episode of NBC’s “The Blacklist” a couple weeks ago. A few years ago, when the song came out, I remember quite a bit of protest about it and folks trying to get it banned. Ditto for “I Don’t Like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats, which I heard on a middle of the road, “classic rock” FM station the other day. Back in the day, I remember folks hollering for KROQ’s license because they dared to play it.

The second, equally upsetting thought, was the realization that “Hey Man, Nice Shot” came out in 1995 (eighteen years ago) and “I Don’t Like Mondays” came out in 1981 (thirty-two freakin’ years ago!!), so when I casually think to myself that it was “a few years ago”, the only one I’m fooling is myself, I guess. It’s not just a river in Egypt any more…

Item The Fifth: Which NFL team is undefeated at 8-0? Hmmmmm? Face it, coming off of a terrible year in 2012 at 2-14, this year we sincerely hoped that we would be better. Most folks were praying for an 8-8 year, and a few brave souls thought we might get to 9-7 and squeak into a wildcard playoff spot. To say that we need to reassess those goals and expectations is the understatement of the year. I don’t think we need to be reserving hotels and airfares to New York just yet. But it’s much, much better to be 8-0 at this point in the season than it was being 1-7 last year!

Item The Sixth: I swear, someone in the neighborhood has a kookaburra. I hear it almost every night, right around an hour before sunset. It’ll sound off repeatedly, sometimes a dozen times. I have no idea if it’s caged in someone’s house or if it’s on the loose (like Lester), but I would love to track it down and see it, take a few pictures, maybe some video. If nothing else, just to prove that I’m not hearing things and hallucinating.

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Filed under Astronomy, Critters, KC Chiefs, Music, Odds & Sods, Science Fiction, Space, Sports, Writing

October 9, 2013 · 20:16

Yeah, It’s Country Music, But…

I have pretty eclectic tastes in music, as demonstrated by the list of my favorite albums. Rock, punk, new wave, country, bluegrass, classical – I like to listen to them all. That having been said, over the past dozen years or so I have listened to a disproportionate amount of country music.

Given the genre and its history, there have been more than enough songs over the years that have generated controversy due to their portrayals of violence. In the years that I’ve been listening, for example:

  • Garth Brooks was criticized for “The Thunder Rolls“, the third verse of which depicts a battered wife shooting her abusive and cheating husband, supposedly to prevent him from sexually abusing their daughter. The label wouldn’t release the song either on the album or as a single with that verse included, although he still always sings it in concert.
  • The Dixie Chicks were taken to task for “Goodbye, Earl“, which tells the story of two women poisoning and killing an abusive husband who “walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care.”. Despite the subject matter, it’s actually a very upbeat and funny song. And a great video.
  • Toby Keith got a bit of grief from some folks about “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue” because of its gung-ho patriotic values post-9/11, particularly the line about how “we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the Amercian way”.
  • Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” was quite controversial, telling the story of a mother who burns down the house with herself and her drunken, abusive husband inside, thereby gaining “independence” for her daughter.
  • Carrie Underwood took heat over her “Before He Cheats“, where she gets revenge on her cheating boyfriend by trashing his prized pickup truck, slashing the tires, ripping up the seats, taking out all of the glass and lights with a baseball bat, and so on.

For the record, I had no problems at all with any of these songs. All five are in my “Favorites” playlist. None of the depictions of violence, revenge, suicide, or vigilantism bothered me at all.

On the other hand, there are a couple of new songs that have gotten the hairs on the back of my neck standing up a bit, and it’s their portrayal of domestic situations that are doing it.

“Redneck Crazy” by Tyler Farr came out about five months ago. I distinctly remember hearing it for the first time and immediately wondering how it ever got on the air. Now, it’s a Top 20 hit and I’m still wondering every time they play it, about every other hour.

Check out the lyrics and the video. The guy has lost his girlfriend and she’s now got a new boyfriend. Our singer is parking his truck on her lawn at night, getting drunk, shining the truck lights into her bedroom window. He’s throwing empty beer cans at the shadows in the bedroom windows. He’s TPing her house and yard with all of his buddies, who are in camouflage, blacked out faces, and surrounding the house in ATVs. He’s blaring the music at full volume and waking up her and her family. He didn’t come here to start a fight, but he’s up for anything tonight. “You know you broke the wrong heart, baby. You drove me Redneck Crazy.”

Her offense? She broke up with him. His response? Stalking, threatening and aggressive behavior, and vandalism.

Country music has a long history of songs about broken hearts, loves lost, and relationships tested and torn by drinking and infidelity. Friends, this isn’t one of those. In my opinion, our “hero” in this song is in need of a call to 9-1-1 and a restraining order, not a reconciliation.

This morning, after the video for “Redneck Crazy” was played on CMT (I muted it), a new premier video came on for “Stay” by the group Florida Georgia Line. It was the first time I had seen the video or heard the song. Again, my first and immediate impression is that it’s way over the line into inappropriate.

She’s leaving and taking the dog with her. He’s done her wrong and is begging forgiveness, sending one text after another asking her to come back and give him another chance. She keeps driving. He realizes that it’s over.

So what does he do? Be patient and hope she changes her mind? Make changes to his life and demonstrate to her that he can re-earn her trust and love? If nothing else, learn from the experience and be a better man for the next relationship that comes along?

Yeah, that would be one way to go.

Instead our “hero” throws all of her furniture, clothes, and stuff into a pile out in the yard and torches it. After putting his guitar in his truck (you gotta have your priorities) as the belongs bonfire burns, he then blows up the trailer that they lived in, leaving it a flaming pile of scattered debris.

Really?

For a genre that strives to balance its wholesome, All-American side against its drunken, rowdy, good ol’ boy side, these two songs are woefully misguided.

They’re not about mourning heartbreak, they’re about celebrating domestic violence.

Take a look at the news, people. Somewhere in the whole music chain of command between the song writers, the artists, their managers, the record labels, the radio stations, the guys making the videos, SOMEONE needed to take a step back and say, “Um, maybe we should think about this just a bit more. Maybe this isn’t OK.”

I don’t know why the first five songs mentioned didn’t bother me at all and these two new ones do. Maybe it’s just me.

But I don’t think so.

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Filed under Moral Outrage, Music

September 18, 2013 · 21:15

Random Blatherationings for September 18th

Looking for enlightenment, bubbie? If you look here you’ll be enlightened about the “rules” of this exercise. (I haven’t looked recently, so I may be breaking every rule – although I think there’s a rule requiring me to break the rules, so…) The three random seed words (from a NEW random word generating site) are “pail”, “garlic”, and “trailer”.

Pail – The first few dozen random Google hits are either for Garbage Pail Kid dolls on Ebay or for diaper pails on every retail site on the internet. Who knew that diaper pails were such a big business these days? But finally I hit a listing for “PAIL” which is the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) airport code for Iliamna Airport in Alaska. It looks like a mid-sized, regional airport with two runways, 5086 feet and 4800 feet long respectively. No tower, but I doubt that’s unusual in most places in Alaska. At least the runways are paved!

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the series “Flying Wild Alaska“. It was on the Discovery Channel for three years and I really enjoyed watching it. It was a hoot watching the Tweto family and their family of Era Alaska employees fly around through fall, winter, spring, and summer. (They apparently don’t have a regular route to Iliamna, though.) It really gave a good idea of what bush flying is all about and how critical general aviation is to just maintaining the basic necessities of modern life in a state bigger than Texas where there are fewer paved roads than in some counties down in the lower forty-eight. I’ll admit, sometimes they got all “reality TV” on you, building up some relatively minor thing (like a go-around) into a huge crisis. But there were plenty of other times when I was watching folks try to land on an ice runway in a Caravan or twin Otter with a fifty-knot cross wind in instrument conditions and I had nothing but total respect for the pilots who can do that!

Garlic – Yeah, yeah, yeah, world’s healthiest food, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Out here on the west coast, if you’ve been anywhere near the Bay Area or driven from LA to San Jose, you know about Gilroy, which bills itself as the “Garlic Capital of the World”. Going west on California Route 152, up over the coastal mountains from I-5, past the San Luis Reservoir and Pacheco State Park, you can smell the garlic ten miles before you get into town.

But today Google randomly led me to the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, which seems to be the east coast equivalent of Gilroy. And it’s coming up on September 28th and 29th! Serendipity Rears Its Ugly Head Yet Again! Food, drinks, musicians (including Captain Squeeze and the Zydeco Moshers!), games for the kids, and more! What’s not to love? And really, I say that sincerely, because if I were in the area and didn’t have other more pressing plans, I would be there because that all sounds wonderful.

Except for the Morris dancers. I never knew of Morris dancers or Morris dancing until I heard Stan Rogers talk about it on his live album, “Home In Halifax“. Track six, you know the one I’m talking about.

Wait, what? You don’t know who Stan Rogers is? Please go and instantaneously (or sooner) listen and learn to love all of his albums, then come back. We’ll wait…

OK, now that you know why you need to beware of the Morris dancers (WARNING – this link will take you to a video that shows that every horrible and terrifying thing said about them is true) and you have a deep and abiding love of Stan Rogers’ music, go and have a great time at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival (New York State Thruway exit #20, mile marker 101).

Say hello to Captain Squeeze for me!

Trailer – A word with two major meanings so Google either gives me a place to rent or buy something to haul behind my car or lets me look at upcoming movies. Rather than pick any one movie or television show trailer, I want to do a mini-rant about the movie trailer art form in general and one old one and one new one in particular.

First of all, I love movie trailers. I think that it’s brilliant how someone can take a couple dozen tiny little clips of a movie that lasts two hours and get you in the mood to plop down hard-earned cash to see the film when it comes out. I also think it’s extremely clever how some people in this day and age can mess with trailers and re-cut them to be for a completely different mood. The first one of these I remember seeing was a faux trailer for “The Shining” done as a romantic comedy, but just this week I saw another great one for “Monty Python & The Holy Grail” done as a serious medieval battle flick.

However, this is a power that can be used for evil as well as for good. In 2001 there was a trailer that is on my short list for the best ever made. It made me want to see a movie so bad it hurt. I had tears in my eyes every time I saw the trailer. Looking at all of the pictures of planes and incredible flying, I just wanted to let all of that flying SPFX wonderfulness just swallow me up and surround me for two hours. I knew that “Pearl Harbor” was going to be spectacular! Um, yeah, that “Pearl Harbor”. The one that turned out to be a film that I could barely sit through, one of the worst movies I had seen in years. Still a fantastic trailer, but a good example of a trailer that is 1000% better than the film it advertises.

Now, everywhere I look at the theater, online, or on television, there are new trailers for “Gravity“, which opens in the US on October 4th. They are all intense, gripping, spectacular, amazing, utterly terrifying, and I haven’t wanted to see a movie this badly since the original “Lord of the Rings” films first came out. I really, Really, REALLY want to see this film! I keep seeing comments from NASA folk and science fiction people who have seen sneak previews, and every single one of them says that it’s one of the most spectacular thing that they’ve ever seen.

I hope so. I need it. I couldn’t take another “Pearl Harbor”.

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Filed under Flying, Movies, Music, Random Blatherationings, Science Fiction

September 10, 2013 · 20:20

That NASA-TV Music

First of all, congratulations to both our Russian partners and NASA on the safe and successful return of the ISS Expedition 36 crew. About forty minutes ago Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin, and Chris Cassidy landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan after spending 166 days in space and they’re all now safely out of the Soyuz and getting reacquainted with our old friend gravity. (It’s gotta suck coming back to that, but if you get to be in space for five months and change in order to set up that suck, it can’t be all bad.)

With the Expedition 36 crew saying goodbye to their Expedition 37 crewmates (who remained on orbit, awaiting the launch of the Expedition 38 crew in about two weeks), getting into their Soyuz, closing the hatches, leaving ISS, firing their retro rockets, and returning to Earth, I’ve has NASA-TV on most of the day. (That’s not so unusual even on routine days which don’t have any spectacular launches, landings, or space walks.) In doing so, I’ve once again become fascinated with the “interstitial” music that NASA-TV uses.

“Interstitial” bits are the small bits of audio and video that are broadcast in between the major segments of programming. These bits can be anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes long and are designed to simply as space holders. The video is usually some sort of NASA logo or a frame showing the upcoming programming schedule. The audio is some sort of instrumental music.

With a “normal” day of programming the segments are planned out in advance to fit together efficiently to fill the time, so there are a minimal number of long interstitial segments. But on a day like today with a lot of live segments of odd and unpredictable lengths, they have to scramble between live segments to get back onto a schedule where things start on the hour and half-hour. Sometimes this leads to long interstitial segments, maybe as long as five minutes or more.

I really like a lot of the music that NASA-TV uses in these long interstitial segments. It’s orchestral and sounds a lot like the music you get on the soundtrack album from a movie. Sometimes you get these long, sweeping themes with horns and violins like if you were watching a western or maybe watching Gandalf race across Middle Earth on Shadowfax with a hobbit in tow. Sometimes it’s staccato and building to a climax, like the music from an action film or something with a superhero facing down the supervillian.

Can anyone identify what these instrumental or orchestral pieces are? I’ve tried to ID them with the SoundHound app on my phone, but it always comes up empty. “No close match found.” Given the size of the SoundHound database and some of the truly obscure stuff that I’ve seen it identify, it’s a bit of a puzzle that there’s no match.

Based on that, I’m guessing that they’re original pieces commissioned by NASA-TV, strictly for use as interstitial audio? Maybe? Not unlike the music soundtrack for a TV drama, where they have to churn out hundreds of hours of music over the course of a long series’ run?

I ask because I really like a couple of the pieces and would like to see if they’re small portions of larger pieces. If so, I am also interested in whether or not the larger pieces or other related works are available as MP3’s or CD’s. But first I have to figure out what the works are and who wrote them.

If NASA-TV commissioned the pieces would they be public domain? After all, our tax dollars pay for NASA. Based on that, I’m pretty sure that all of the NASA pictures, film, audio, and video going back to the 1960’s are all public domain, subject to some pretty liberal usage policies, especially if you’re not using it for profit. Yes? No? Maybe?

Any clues out there? (Does anyone at NASA read this blog? I wish!)

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Filed under Music, Space

August 11, 2013 · 14:17

Albums To Listen To Any Time

A few days ago I wrote about movies that I could watch at the drop of a hat, even if I just happened to flip by it on cable, already half over. Thinking about music along similar lines, what albums are there that you can listen to any time, cover to cover?

I’m setting the bar high here. I’m not talking about albums that are OK, with three or four songs that became singles and you can sing along with, grouped with eight or nine other songs that you couldn’t care less about. For example, I like Brad Paisley a LOT, and his “American Saturday Night” album has seven songs in my “Favorites” play list. But that’s out of fifteen tracks. It’s a favorite album, a really great album – but it doesn’t make this list.

I’m talking about the albums where every single song (except for maybe one) is just freakin’ great, to the point where it should be a felony to listen to the songs out of order or in any way other than as an album because they just fit perfectly and when you hear one song finish you just know how it naturally leads into in the next song.

It’s not just a collection of songs – it’s an ALBUM! (No “Greatest Hits” or compilation albums allowed, that’s cheating.)

Yeah, I might have a few of those that I can think of. In no particular order, having flipped through the tens of thousands of songs (literally) filling my iTunes, I would offer these as fitting the bill:

  • End Of The Innocence (Don Henley)
  • Invisible Touch (Genesis)
  • We Can’t Dance (Genesis)
  • Tumbleweed Connection (Elton John)
  • Madman Across The Water (Elton John)
  • Flag (Yello)
  • Breakfast In America (Supertramp)
  • Hotel California (Eagles)
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
  • Dark Side Of The Moon (Pink Floyd)
  • Theatre Is Evil (Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra)
  • Fly (Dixie Chicks)
  • Wide Open Spaces (Dixie Chicks)
  • Fragile (Yes)
  • Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Moody Blues)
  • Oxygene (Jean Michel Jarre)
  • Chronologie (Jean Michel Jarre)
  • Rendezvous (Jean Michel Jarre)
  • Abraxas (Santana)
  • “Woodstock” (Soundtrack)
  • “LoTR: Return Of The King” (Soundtrack)
  • Tommy (The Who)
  • Chicago Transit Authority (Chicago)
  • Chicago II (Chicago)
  • Chicago III (Chicago)
  • Graceland (Paul Simon)
  • Violator (Depeche Mode)
  • Life In The Foodchain (Tonio K)
  • Fresh Horses (Garth Brooks)
  • Who Needs Pictures? (Brad Paisley)
  • Part II (Brad Paisley)
  • Mud On The Tires (Brad Paisley)
  • Aqualung (Jethro Tull)
  • Thick As A Brick (Jethro Tull)
  • Diva (Anne Lennox)
  • Bat Out Of Hell (Meat Loaf)
  • Jesus Christ Superstar (OCR – Andrew Lloyd Webber)
  • Phantom Of The Opera (OCR – Andrew Lloyd Webber)
  • Les Miserables (Complete Symphonic Recording)
  • Hybrid Theory (Linkin Park)
  • Meteora (Linkin Park)
  • Fogarty’s Cove (Stan Rogers)
  • Northwest Passage (Stan Rogers)
  • IV (Led Zeppelin)
  • Crosby, Stills & Nash (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
  • Jagged Little Pill (Alanis Morissette)
  • Divine Intervention (Julia Ecklar)

Most of those are mainstream albums (well, OK, extra points if you recognize Yello or Tonio K, but if you don’t recognize Amanda Palmer, you must be new here and should click on that link ASAP), but my non-fannish readers may not recognize Julia Ecklar.

Remind me to talk about filk music one of these days…

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Filed under Entertainment, Music

June 28, 2013 · 22:21

Odds & Sods For Friday, June 28th

Item The First: That was odd… Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Hello? *insert feedback squeal here* Hello? On the one hand, it looks like a daily record for the site in visitors and views (17 visitors & 27 views, so it’s not John Scalzi’s “Whatever” blog, but it’s still a record) and all week’s been similar, but it looks like 90% of the traffic is going to the “Raccoon Rescue” post, and absolutely NONE of it to the story I posted yesterday. Hello? OK, moving on.

Item The Second: Speaking of the little raccoon family, they’ve been out and about around sunset every night this week, being quite bold about lounging around on the tool shed roof (on the west side of the house so it gets the late afternoon sun). I can stand in the front yard and watch them, but as soon as I try to get close enough for pictures, they scatter.

Last night in the late dusk I could have sworn that I saw there were three kits (raccoon babies are called “kits” I now know). A little research shows that raccoon couples have litters of two to seven, so there very well be more than the two I saw at the spa last week.

And if you want to know what they sound like, I found this. Imagine four or five of them roughhousing on the roof in the middle of the night, jumping off into the trees, chasing each other all over the yard, screaming that noise.

Item The Third: In other critter news, one of the local skunks has apparently had a very bad night tonight. We’ve got the house all buttoned up and the A/C going full blast and it still reeks in here, so it must have been close and a major event. I hope that Jessie doesn’t get any stupid ideas (AGAIN!!) if she has to go out tonight.

Item The Fourth: Why would the house still be buttoned up and the A/C going full blast at 22:00 at night? Because it’s still pushing 95F out there after reaching a high of about 102F, with temps pushing 110F over the weekend. At least we’re not in Palm Springs (119F), Las Vegas (117F), Phoenix (119F), Lake Havasu (126F). That is not a typo – One Hundred And Twenty-Six Degrees Fahrenheit is Saturday’s expected high in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Words fail me…

Item The Fifth: The June “earworm” comes from the new Natalie Maines album, “Mother”. It’s a nice album and I have been deeply in love with her voice for near on fifteen years since the first Dixie Chicks album hit like a bombshell. There are several very good songs, but the title track, her take on the Pink Floyd song from “The Wall” is just spec-freakin’-tacular. Can’t stop hearing it in my head, can’t stop twitching unnaturally unless I listen to it two or three times a day. Very, very tasty indeed.

 

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Filed under Critters, Music, Odds & Sods, Weather, Writing

June 7, 2013 · 20:12

I Know Who To Blame!

It’s really late and we were up really early this morning for niece graduation stuff and we were up really late last night with niece graduation stuff and I didn’t get much sleep last night due to a noisy family reunion group that’s on the floor of our hotel and they’re already being really loud again tonight and we had a very full and busy day today and a very full and busy day yesterday and I’m tired and cranky and I have a headache.

I blame Kenny G.

Before and after the niece graduation stuff last night and again before and after the niece graduation stuff this morning they were playing Kenny G music in the auditorium. Isn’t that stuff toxic?

If you work in a nuclear power plant you have to wear a dosimeter to keep track of your exposure to radiation.

If you’re going to sit in that high school auditorium for graduation awards ceremonies, shouldn’t there be something similar to measure your exposure to Kenny G?

Hey, science dudes! Get to work on that!!

If those revelers down the hallway stay noisy, can I start playing Kenny G to annoy them? Or at least as white noise?

G’night…

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May 31, 2013 · 20:22

Please Listen To This Woman (NSFW)

I would like to talk to you about a woman for whom I have a tremendous deal of respect and admiration, Amanda Palmer.

(A brief warning for those who might be offended or bothered by strong language and/or nudity. As much as I love Ms. Palmer and her art and music, she won’t be your cup of tea. Whatever else can be said about her, terms like “shy”, “proper”, “modest”, or “conservative” aren’t used. You’ve been fairly cautioned.)

If you know of her and her music and her Kickstarter project of a year ago and her February 2013 TED talk, then you may love her art as much as I do. In that case, perhaps you can pass this article on to others as a quick primer to her art. It’s possible that you’re familiar with her and hate her guts and now think that I’m a freakin’ idiot and you never want to speak to me or read my work again. That’s OK. (Bye!) Or perhaps you just don’t care but you’re tired of me proselytizing and sending you links to her videos, and that’s OK too.

She’s not a middle-of-the-road personality. Commonly known as “AFP” for “Amanda Fucking Palmer”, she tends to have people either love her or hate her. I am quite obviously in the former group, and proud of it.

For those of you who don’t know her, she’s a musician and artist. She was a singer in the Dresden Dolls alternative rock duo in the mid-2000’s. She was and is a performance artist. She’s a writer, a poet, a lecturer, and so much more. She’s also now married to one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, and that just makes her even more cool and special.

In May, 2012 she used Kickstarter to raise funds for her new album, “Theatre Is Evil”, raising $1,192,793 after setting an initial goal of $100,000. It’s still one of the handful of most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever. (That album, by the way, is fantastic.)

Over the past couple of years AFP has been a pioneering genius in using online social media (Twitter, forums, blogs, YouTube, email, Tumblr) to break the conventional model for how music and art is exchanged between the artist and the audience. (Which I realize is like describing the Golden Gate at sunset with the fog rolling in as “a bridge”.)

Listen to what she has to say.

Listen to her talks, play her music, read her poetry.

You may be awestruck, you may be infuriated, you may be overwhelmed.

I seriously doubt that you’ll be bored.

AFP’s art, music, words, and thoughts will make you think. They’ll make you care. They’ll make you pay attention. It’s quite likely they’ll sometimes make you cry.

Today I just was able to watch her latest video, a 34-minute speech she gave at The Muse 2013 in early May. This talk is wonderful. Watch it here.

In February she gave an astonishing TED talk in Long Beach. Listening to it is one of the most wonderful thirteen minutes you can spend and one of the best TED talks ever. Watch it here.

I said there were songs and music videos? Yeah, some of the best I’ve ever seen. These are all from the “Theatre Is Evil” album with the Grand Theft Orchestra. If you like them, just check out her site or Vimeo or YouTube for many others. (I will also point out that the links below are for the full, unedited, versions of the video – if you want to see versions with edited and censored language and images, you can find them on YouTube for most songs.)

“Want It Back” is very Not-Safe-For-Work (NSFW) but has excellent stop-motion animation & it’s a great song. After I got hooked on AFP’s work about eight or nine months ago I realized that I had already seen this video, not realizing who did it, just that it was an amazing video and song and I really wanted to find the artist. Now we know! Watch it here.

“Do It With A Rock Star” is also NSFW, a good rocking song and a great, fun video! Watch it here.

“The Killing Type” video doesn’t contain any nudity or actual violence, but it’s an extremely powerful song and video with lots of blood, so be forewarned. I like it a lot. Watch it here.

“The Bed Song” video is completely safe for work, but it may well rip your guts out & leave you in tears. A gut wrenching, emotional song with an excellent video, it’s her best yet! Watch it here.

If you like any or all of this, look for other videos, concerts, clips, music, and so on. She’s everywhere! (Much like Chicken Man.)

I hope you find her as inspiring, moving, and motivational as I do!

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