"...no dead end in sight..."

music monday

Lately I've been prone to music suggestions. Not that I'll listen to just anything - but most of the time if it's got a good beat and is work-safe I will pile it onto my teensy iphone and away it goes to the office. Even sometimes if it's not work-safe - if I know I'll be in the office by myself I will give it a listen.

I was listening to the radio and KKITM was discussing Music That Makes You Cooler. I think that's an odd concept, as different people have different definitions of Cool, but whatev; it's a radio bit. So they mentioned a band called Shiny Toy Guns. The name itself conjures images of something spacelike yet playful, which is a pretty good way to describe a lot of their music. I downloaded the We Are Pilots album (which version? well, apparently there are a couple. I have no idea which one I have, except it's the one on iTunes. So maybe the final version of the album?) as well as the cover they did of Major Tom, which was an awesome car commercial and gets stuck in my head every time I hear it. And coincidentally, they have a remix album coming out in two days, which I had no idea about until about 30 seconds ago when I went to look them up.

Sometimes when I listen to music it reminds me of something else I'll get a hankering for. Listening to the Glee soundtrack's cover of Keep Me Hanging On made me want some Diana Ross & the Supremes, stat. I downloaded a huge album of their #1 hits, and am listening to this in the car, singing loudly, by myself. Luckily since the time change the sun goes down sooner, so most people do not see me rocking out shamelessly to their awesome tunes.

Also, the first time I heard Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" on the radio I hated it. Absolutely hated it. But now that the radio has shoved it down my throat approximately 406870483706 times, I had to download it. Something about the backbeat reminds me of a Russian game show, but Gaga still manages to ooze sex through my radio and something about her music is so perpetually delish.

I also downloaded Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" because it got stuck in my head and I needed it out, out, damn spot! ASAP.

Even though payday's not until Friday I already have my eye on the following:

Silverchair, Tomorrow
Justin Bieber, One Less Lonely Girl
Cascada, Evacuate the Dance Floor
And holy crap, apparently Sufjan Stevens has put out a Christmas album! D:

Thank you, Shazam, for being such an awesome app. Not only is my teensy iphone projecting tunes, it is also sucking them up through the waves coming from my radio. Awesome stuff!!

friday five

1. What song do you play the most?
Don't Stop Believing. The version from the Glee soundtrack >_>

2. What song do you play the least?
I'm...not sure? o.o;

3. What's the last song you added?
That will probably be in an upcoming Music Monday post :D

4. What's your favorite playlist?
Salsa or Latin music! It makes me feel like dancin! ...and eating some Mexican food >_>

5. What kind of iPod (or MP3 player) do you have?
I used to have an iPod nano (one of the old kinds, with the tiny tiny screen) but now all my music is on my iPhone. Awesome :D

music monday

This week, having avoided going through the hard drive like the plague (and not having enough time to sift through the awesome), I allowed myself a few tiny, tiny album purchases.

Owl City, Ocean Eyes
Glee - The Music, Vol. 1

The latter was an impulse buy. I love the show and am pretty sure this is going to be my guilty pleasure music for quite some time. Owl City I'd heard on the radio and flipped through a bunch of their songs on iTunes before buying the album because there were a few here and there that I could see growing on me.

At first listen, their music seems to be a cross between Dashboard and a poppy, less dark (less British!) version of Coldplay...you know, before dude married Gwenyth and started recycling all their audio tracks. More electronica, which I like, but where a lot of electronica or techno music is SO SEWIOUS in a stern eastern European music type of way, it seems like these people have fun with their music. I think this will hold me over until the next Sufjan Stevens album comes out.

Also on the purchase list, as far as individual tracks go, are:

Kings of Leon, Use Somebody
Beyonce, Sweet Dreams

I realize it's a short list for being payday and all. This week's mix will be a combination of the following:

Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons
Buddy Holly
Alanis Morrisette
Yiddish Radio Project (album)
Atomic Platters (album)

Here's to an awesome music week, everyone!

music monday

So when I came home from San Francisco I had something glorious in my possession. No, not mochi, although that was in my bag as well, and barely lasted two days once I'd touched down in DFW. What I'm talking about here is approximately 145 gig of delicious, strange, brand spankin new (at least to me) music. 

Last weekend I fired the thing up to see what I could find, and after almost three hours I wasn't even halfway through it all. I've put a bunch on my iPhone and have been listening to it at my desk for the last week.

Some favorite artists/albums so far:

Fats Waller, Portrait Vol. 2

Baden Powell, Afro Sambas

Beau Soleil, L'Echo

Ibrahim Ferrer, Buenos Hermanos

Yo-Yo Ma, Soul of the Tango

Global Cultural Collective, Red Sands Dreaming

This week I find I'm being drawn to really poppy, jazzy, or bright music with Latinate beats. And I've tried zydeco - I didn't realize I'd like it so much. Maybe my coworkers' opinions would range on the other side of the spectrum, but I think it's pretty spicy stuff to have on hand for the streak of rainy days we had last week. It also makes me want to fire up the Visa and take a trip to New Orleans! (someday...)

The Process

The way I pick out such crazy music is pretty logic-based. I go into my iTunes and I've set up several Smart Playlists by genre (like Classical, Jazz, Latin, Rock, World, Zydeco). I click on "Match the following rule...", then select "Genre" and "contains" from the first drop-down box. In the last box on that row, I type in the genre that I'd like it to pull from, then underneath I set up the option as "Limit to [75] items, selected by [random]", and select "Match only checked items" so I don't get music I wouldn't otherwise listen to. (All of the music I've downloaded I have checked, because without listening to it I don't know if I'd want to listen to it, you know?) This means in that particular category I get 75 random songs from a genre I've specified. It sounds like a lot, but when you have the iPhone playing for hours on end it goes through pretty quickly.

I had five full days last week of this music, and had left my typical fallbacks (Chopin piano music, Aaron Copeland, most pop music, the Beatles Anthologies) at home in the hope of venturing out into something completely different. Using the aforementioned formula, this week will have a mix of the following, among others:

Flaco Jimenez

Benny Goodman

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields

Spacehog

Blue Men Group

Audioslave

If anyone reading this (lurkers or otherwise!) has suggestions for music I should try, please leave a comment. I'm pretty much open to any artist, any genre, although for the purpose of putting it on my iPhone to take to work I like to keep it pretty mildly work safe. Here's to an awesome music week!

book + music

Brick Lane: A Novel, Monica Ali. I read this over the course of, what, a few months? Little bites at a time. Normally when the POV changes, or there are large sections of plot that differentiate from the main storyline I get bored rather quickly, but with this novel it was done in such a way as to keep things moving. I liked the characters, and I liked the setting as it wasn't a Westerner's view at all. Also, I noted that Amazon has a version for the Kindle, which is a plus in my book even though I don't own one.

***

What I'm Listening To (list shamelessly ganked from my iTunes):

• The Ultimate Petula Clark.
• To Sir With Love, Lulu.
• Circus, Britney Spears (*ducks)
• Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, Dave Matthews Band - This album marks a couple of firsts for me. The first time I bought a DMB album on iTunes and didn't purchase a tangible CD from a store. The first time I bought a DMB album without listening to any of it first. The first time I sat there for an hour, listening to a DMB album from beginning to end (no stops, no skipping through songs to listen to my favorites first).

I have varying opinions about this album. I know a lot of DMB fans are going to listen and be all smarmy, like "d'awww, tribute to LeRoi" etc. and so forth, and completely disregard any criticism because the entire thing could be viewed as a tribute album. I get that, and in a way, it is. LeRoi was an excellent musician, one of the driving forces in the band, and the sound will never, ever be the same again. It's not that DMB has rolled downhill with this one, or even plateau'd - in fact, they play around with new musical concepts while keeping true to their standard feisty DMB-ness - but just that after recent albums like Everyday and Stand Up it was going to be difficult to branch out into a completely foreign sound or structure.

When I compare the structure of an album like Big Whiskey to, say, the Foo Fighters' Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (which I realize is more apples to oranges than I would like, in terms of genre, etc), it seems that both bands are trying to keep that same eclectic style and sound, yet evolve into something better than what they have been. While the Foos manage a logical, natural progression from screamy alternative into a mellower, more mature, instrumentally-driven sound from the beginning of ESPG to the end, it seems at times with Big Whiskey that DMB is still clinging to that last thread of days gone by and can't quite evolve to the next level musically. I wonder if arranging the tracks in a different order would have facilitated this.

I agree with a lot of critics who say it's an excellent album, and one that clearly marks a maturation in the lives of the bandmembers, particularly Mr. Dave Matthews himself. However, I think that those who are comparing it to Before These Crowded Streets need to get their heads screwed on straight. They aren't the same people they were fifteen years ago, and if you want to listen to something with the sound of BTCS, go pull out that CD and pop it in the player.

Favorite Track: Alligator Pie

Least Favorite Track: I haven't decided yet. There are certainly tracks that aren't as memorable as others, or that sound like they could have used a little more work, but nothing that I just go "ugh!" and click NEXT on the brave blue iPod. Go buy this album. I'm pretty sure you will like it.

Grade: 4/5