Sam and I are prepping for our upcoming wedding and one (large) part of it is selecting our "favorites" from the endless stream of music out there. For someone like me, that's a hell of a thing because there's no favorites, and half the music I pick is vetoed because it's not dance-worthy. Well, who can blame me when I can't dance?!? Like I'd know what people will dance to.
I'm going through my ipod in order to see what I like. Maybe that's the problem, I get stuck on songs that are sentimental for me, but when you're all boozy with emotions you're not thinking about people dancing--you're crying in your beer. I just need to surf the web and see what suggested lists are out there, I guess, because this whole process is getting the better for me and all I'm doing is finding music to put on my gym play list. And by the way, why the hell is there a lot of Elton John on the play list? Should I even mention that in public? Think I'll have to balance that with some Misfits . . . .
So now it's only 4 short months before the wedding. And then, the honeymoon! We'll be vacationing in the Canadian Rockies, with the centerpiece of our trip being a heli-hiking adventure for three days. Can't wait.
Music being on my mind, I want to post this song for my friend, Jess, who's got some questions of his own on the subject. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
March 6, 2008
January 2, 2008
plug
After writing that last post I listened to the tracks Quinn has up on his MySpace site. I'd highly suggest checking them out by linking here. And listen to them all, there's not a bad one. There's never a bad one, just ones that go by the wayside. Quinn, when are we going to have another "Cousins & Friends" release? Just because this song was so good . . .
May 9, 2007
you can shake it, you can break it
It's officially the end of the semester for me. Had my last class yesterday, handed in all my papers the day before that. Now it's time for job hunting--out of the frying pan and into the fire. A few months ago, I made it my goal to have interviews lined up after classes ended and I've been successful at that. I have an interview today at the Peabody Institute Library, which is the public library for the Town of Peabody. It's for a part-time Reference Librarian position, only 14 hours but a good job for someone still in grad school. Tomorrow, I have an interview at Simmons for a full-time position in cataloging and interlibrary loan. Seriously, the past week I've been more worried about these interviews than I was my semester-end projects. There just aren't that many library jobs out there and the applicant pool is pretty saturated with grad students, so there's a lot of competition for what little there is.
All this worrying and work doesn't mean that I haven't been enjoying myself, however. Since I had all my projects done by Sunday, I've picked up a few books and begun reading for enjoyment. At the moment, I'm reading Moanin' At Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. I figured it was time to get back to the blues--had been a while since I had listened to the greats and the biography on Howlin' Wolf is a great way to get back to it. American Born Chinese is a graphic novel that's been out for a year and has won all sorts of awards and recognition, so I figured it was high time I read it.
Aside from some recreational reading, I've got a couple of things I'm looking forward to in the next week or two. Tonight I'll be heading into the lovely Town of Brookline (one of the wealthiest towns in the Boston area, home to John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox) where I'll be visiting with classmates and enjoying fine Belgian Ales at the Publick House. Later next week I'll get to see my first Sox game of the season, where they take on the Detroit Tigers. I had tickets for a game in April but it was rained out and postponed until August. Anyway, the game will be shown on ESPN, so keep an eye out and you might see me, cup of Guinness raised high and in full Sox regalia.
So it's getting to the time where I should start thinking about my interview. Means it's time to get to the weekly music! Since I'm reading about the blues, I'm going to post some of 'em.
The first tune is done by Bo Carter, better known as the guitarist for the Mississippi Sheiks. Their tunes are some of my favorites, with songs like "World Gone Wrong" and "I've Got Blood In My Eyes For You" representing greats covered by all sorts of musicians. But Bo Carter was a little bawdy on some of his solo recordings, playing tunes such as "Banana In Your Fruitbasket" and "Pin In Your Cushion," which made for lighter fare than what the Sheiks recorded. The recording I've made available here is a great jumping tune where Bo admonishes a woman that if she doesn't change her ways, "the law's gonna step on your . . . yes yes yes." Seems to me that plenty of times in blues music "yes" is substituted for "ass"--just listen to how close it sounds.
The second tune is by Howlin' Wolf, whose worn his .44 so long, he's made his shoulder sore.
As an added treat, I'm posting the always-difficult to understand Charlie Patton to confound you. It's an amazing display of his guitar prowess and one of the tunes that's easier to understand. He'll be serenading you with tales of "those happy days, where I didn't know your name." Or at least that's how I hear the song--see this great article (the first line of which is "Who was Charlie Patton, and what the hell was he singing about?") on arguments surrounding interpretations of his lyrics. Good stuff. Anyway, enjoy the music, posted below:
All this worrying and work doesn't mean that I haven't been enjoying myself, however. Since I had all my projects done by Sunday, I've picked up a few books and begun reading for enjoyment. At the moment, I'm reading Moanin' At Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. I figured it was time to get back to the blues--had been a while since I had listened to the greats and the biography on Howlin' Wolf is a great way to get back to it. American Born Chinese is a graphic novel that's been out for a year and has won all sorts of awards and recognition, so I figured it was high time I read it.
Aside from some recreational reading, I've got a couple of things I'm looking forward to in the next week or two. Tonight I'll be heading into the lovely Town of Brookline (one of the wealthiest towns in the Boston area, home to John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox) where I'll be visiting with classmates and enjoying fine Belgian Ales at the Publick House. Later next week I'll get to see my first Sox game of the season, where they take on the Detroit Tigers. I had tickets for a game in April but it was rained out and postponed until August. Anyway, the game will be shown on ESPN, so keep an eye out and you might see me, cup of Guinness raised high and in full Sox regalia.
So it's getting to the time where I should start thinking about my interview. Means it's time to get to the weekly music! Since I'm reading about the blues, I'm going to post some of 'em.
The first tune is done by Bo Carter, better known as the guitarist for the Mississippi Sheiks. Their tunes are some of my favorites, with songs like "World Gone Wrong" and "I've Got Blood In My Eyes For You" representing greats covered by all sorts of musicians. But Bo Carter was a little bawdy on some of his solo recordings, playing tunes such as "Banana In Your Fruitbasket" and "Pin In Your Cushion," which made for lighter fare than what the Sheiks recorded. The recording I've made available here is a great jumping tune where Bo admonishes a woman that if she doesn't change her ways, "the law's gonna step on your . . . yes yes yes." Seems to me that plenty of times in blues music "yes" is substituted for "ass"--just listen to how close it sounds.
The second tune is by Howlin' Wolf, whose worn his .44 so long, he's made his shoulder sore.
As an added treat, I'm posting the always-difficult to understand Charlie Patton to confound you. It's an amazing display of his guitar prowess and one of the tunes that's easier to understand. He'll be serenading you with tales of "those happy days, where I didn't know your name." Or at least that's how I hear the song--see this great article (the first line of which is "Who was Charlie Patton, and what the hell was he singing about?") on arguments surrounding interpretations of his lyrics. Good stuff. Anyway, enjoy the music, posted below:
Bo Carter "The Law Gonna Step On You"
Howlin' Wolf "Fourty-four"
Charlie Patton "Some Summer Day"
April 26, 2007
another week, another project
So I'm playing hooky from my schoolwork. There's only three more projects to do but I've found way too many reasons not to do them. What have I been up to? Well, I read a comic book, read some blogs (this one is my favorite at the moment), listened to music, posted more pictures to Flickr, and tried not to play wii (which Sam bought me for my birthday).
On the topic of wii, let me give a little bit of information on it, for those of you who don't know what it is. It's a video game console, made by Nintendo, that represents a new market for video game systems. The controls are spatially interactive, meaning that you move the control within a 3-D environment and the game responds to these directions. An example of this is a baseball game, where you hold the controller like a bat and swing at the pitch. If you're playing with two players, one person controls the batter and the other the pitcher. Here's a video from youtube that shows what this type of gaming looks like:
Needless to say, playing video games on the wii is no longer just sitting your butt on the couch. This looks like it's the next generation of video games, because Nintendo and other video game programmers were able to apply this technology to create very fun and interesting games.
In other news, today I've posted new photos to flickr (see photostream at right), mainly because I wanted to show you all a picture of my daily torment. In the mornings I tend to get up around 7 or 8, have a cup of coffee and surf the Internet. Now I usually get involved in my surfing and don't get around to eating until 10 or so (it's just about 9.45am at the moment and my stomach is starting to grumble). Because of this, I have temptations that I face daily, this being the Entemann truck that's delivering its wares to the supermarket across the street.
Before I get light-headed and goofy from not eating, I'll end this post with my weekly tunes. Since it's spring and the weather is cooperating, I've decided to post a couple of happy-go-lucky tunes. The first of these is Van (the man) Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)" which is full of hand-clapping and la-da-da's. The second is The Velvet Underground's "Beginning To See the Light" which has a great lyric: "some people work very hard but never seem to get it right."
Next blog I'll try to post some videos that Sam and I took on our last hiking excursion to the Ipswitch Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw a beaver and a very large snapping turtle and lots of mating birds. Oh boy!
On the topic of wii, let me give a little bit of information on it, for those of you who don't know what it is. It's a video game console, made by Nintendo, that represents a new market for video game systems. The controls are spatially interactive, meaning that you move the control within a 3-D environment and the game responds to these directions. An example of this is a baseball game, where you hold the controller like a bat and swing at the pitch. If you're playing with two players, one person controls the batter and the other the pitcher. Here's a video from youtube that shows what this type of gaming looks like:
Needless to say, playing video games on the wii is no longer just sitting your butt on the couch. This looks like it's the next generation of video games, because Nintendo and other video game programmers were able to apply this technology to create very fun and interesting games.
In other news, today I've posted new photos to flickr (see photostream at right), mainly because I wanted to show you all a picture of my daily torment. In the mornings I tend to get up around 7 or 8, have a cup of coffee and surf the Internet. Now I usually get involved in my surfing and don't get around to eating until 10 or so (it's just about 9.45am at the moment and my stomach is starting to grumble). Because of this, I have temptations that I face daily, this being the Entemann truck that's delivering its wares to the supermarket across the street.
Before I get light-headed and goofy from not eating, I'll end this post with my weekly tunes. Since it's spring and the weather is cooperating, I've decided to post a couple of happy-go-lucky tunes. The first of these is Van (the man) Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)" which is full of hand-clapping and la-da-da's. The second is The Velvet Underground's "Beginning To See the Light" which has a great lyric: "some people work very hard but never seem to get it right."
Next blog I'll try to post some videos that Sam and I took on our last hiking excursion to the Ipswitch Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw a beaver and a very large snapping turtle and lots of mating birds. Oh boy!
November 30, 2006
Dreams, Schemes, and Themes
Leave it to Bob Dylan to show us how radio shows should be done--it's not enough that he tours most of the year, just released his 44th album, and is working on the second volume of his memoirs. Yes, I'm talking about Theme Time Radio Hour. He's contracted for 50 episodes of the radio show and he's currently at number 31 (the most recent theme was Tennessee). If you're interested in downloading some of the shows, you can get them here. If you're interested in getting your feet wet, I would recommend the following themes--Jail, Divorce, Bible, Time, and Halloween. That said, they're all great (with a few exceptions, such as Flowers, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it).
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