Amrys, don’t think I didn’t notice the drop in my name in your “blog roll” from second behind mole to 13th behind, among other things, Scott’s fake and infrequently updated blog.
Anyway, I hope things are good for you. Are you doing anything for halloween? Decide on a costume yet? Classes treating you alright?
starting a few days ago, you can get a free trial of the Smithsonian Global Sound website. The promotion runs from Oct. 24 to November 23. Smithsonian Global Sound has something like 35,000 songs, most of which are field recordings from around the world. You can sort by type of music and instrument and make playlists on the site. I could make a playlist of all the bagpipe music they have from Europe, for instance.
You can’t download the files but you can stream all the music you want.
A guide to/ for Nice Guys. I found this pretty funny and I didn’t at all think it was something I could relate to.
It’s a bit crass; avoid if you dislike such things.
This has probably been up for a while but Hirishikesh Hirway’s The One Am Radio has made a video for “Witness.” In a way it’s one of the best video’s I’ve seen. I like the song more because of the video and it has a story I really like too. It’s about kickball and love. Hrishikesh can be seen a few times during the video, most notably as the first baserunner. Anyway, it’s worth watching.
Don’t forget to
I prerecorded a show with Mehran Sahami last night. It went pretty well. That show will air probably December 13.
Strangely, I’ve bought lots of things in the last 24 hours. First I got a call from African Hut to say that the goods I had ordered in mid-August had come in and they were sending them. Then, later in the day I decided to pick up that Mark Kozelek/ Sun Kil Moon Modest Mouse covers record from Insound at which point I found that you could answer a stupid quiz and get 25% off your whole order, so I got a few things there. Then, this morning, I read that there’s a new 7″ Half-Handed Cloud/ Sufjan Stevens EP out today so I decided to pick that up and noticed something else while I was at the Asthmatic Kitty website.
So, the full haul:
So yeah, that’s me going crazy. I’ll be getting piles of stuff over the next few weeks though!
Worst piece of writing in today’s Palo Alto Daily News, from the front page:
In the months since Caltrain launched the popular express trains a year and a half ago, it report nearly a 20 percent increase in ridership as commuters embraced the new, faster trains.
When we have parties we have music playing just about everywhere, including the bathroom. Up until now, we’ve had Motown in the bathroom, the playlist for which I’ve written about before.
This time we decided to change it up a bit. Indie rock was the thought. I made a pretty awesome playlist of songs people might know along with some they’re guarenteed to not know. Not too hard, not too soft. Some old, some new. I stayed (mostly) away from the depressing songs I sometimes play on my radio show. This is a party after all! I think this is sort of what my radio show would sound like on the best day if I decided to not play any depressing music and wasn’t worried about over-playing songs that you can hear on commercial radio.
Well here it is:
Patbird just changed domains on his blog and even though he didn’t take any of my suggestions for a blog name, (what’s wrong with nastydonkeyporn.com I ask you??), he’s got a new domain name. Nevermind that I didn’t know of his blog before, but, I present to you urbansaddle.com. Patbird is really rockin’ out over there. I read just about all of the posts so far last night.
Here are my favorites:
I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog there, Pat. I’ll also put it on my blogroll over on the right side there at some point.
Another thing that I’ve been meaning to add to the links on the right is largeheartedboy.com. He writes a lot about music and books. His daily “shorties” are just links to about 10-15 articles or blog posts. I usually find a couple interesting articles in there everyday. Some of his longer articles are pretty good too.
I’ve been swimming pretty regularly for a couple years now and never quite saw what I saw tonight.
A number of factors played into this. I was swimming outdoors; they had one half of the pool open without any lane dividers; it was dark out; I recently got prescription goggles.
Looking up at the surface of the water was just surreal. It looked somewhere between molten metal or molten glass. The lights in the pool reflected off of the surface of the water so it looked like these artificial suns setting on a molten metal lake.
I was so distracted I didn’t really count my laps.
I was reminded of this today. Human Clock is a pretty sweet site where they have have pictures of the time for every minute of the day. The pictures aren’t of clocks (usually), but rather people holding up the numbers or the numbers occuring in scenes around the world. That’s a dumb description, so just go see for yourself!
Also, there’s a new thing which is the time song database which is trying to collect all the songs with times mentioned in the lyrics. That’s pretty cool. I’m trying to think; there must be some Mountain Goats songs with the time. John Vanderslice maybe?
I did two radio shows today. man am I tired. blah!
Today’s Lunch Special with Mayor Jim Burch turned out to be really interesting. He’s led a facinating life.
Then I did a sub for an indie rock guitar show from 9-midnight, with a playlist here.
As a bit of warning: I’m trading my radio show this week on the KZSU. I’ll be on Thursday 9pm-midnight for the indie rocking. To fit in the format of the normal show that’s there, Lick My Moody Guitar, I will be playing guitar-based music only. Lots of mogwai and indie rock! here we go!
In my place on Thursday (6-9am) Red West will be doing my show. (Red West doesn’t host Lick My Moody Guitar show; this is a three-way trade that would make major league baseball teams jealous.) He’s going to have a guest host from Pittsburgh (that’s good), doing some 80s indie rock (that’s good) and some obscure gothy stuff (not so good). Should still be a decent show if you want to tune in.
Part of the reason I switched is that I found out that I could get a staff ticket to see Iron & Wine and Calexico at the Warfield on Wednesday night. I don’t want to be super tired on Thursday after staying late-ish for the show on Wednesday.
Two quotes from musicians from PopMatters interviews in the last month that made me laugh:
I go to someone’s site, and I see they have a 100 MP3s and I love them forever. But then I go to bands’ sites, and they have one song up and it’s in Real Audio and I’m thinking, What’s your home address because I’m going to stab you in the lungs. Just come out for your mail because I’m going to shank you.
—from this interview with John Vanderslice.
PopMatters: When I asked the last two artists I interviewed what contemporary musicians they liked most, they both immediately mentioned Smog. Richard Buckner even said that he buys everything you release “the minute it comes out”. How does that make you feel?
Bill Callahan: I have come to realize that I am really, really fucking good. So much better than almost everything that is going on around me. I am sorry but it is true.
—from this interview with (smog)’s Bill Callahan.
I decided to keep an online list of concerts I’m interested in or think will be good. It’s up with my stuff at kzsu.org here.
Any SF people interested in these concerts?
The first real show of the Lunch Special goes on tomorrow at noon. I’m quite excited about it. You can give it a listen online. The show is me with a Stanford professor or other community member. They bring music. We chat.
Tomorrow’s guest is Robert Harrison, Professor of Italian and Italian Literature. He’s bringing a bunch of an album by Gentle Giant. I don’t know that band, but it’ll prove to be interesting.
The schedule’s filling out quite nicely for the quarter. I’ve asked a few people for the open dates in December, so hopefully we can fill the rest of the quarter out nicely as well.
Red Sox are out of the playoffs in a sweep. I mean, come on guys. At least go down 3-2 in the ALDS!
Yankees are tied up in their series. I’m hoping the Angels will win tonight at 8pm, in the only major league game today.
A punter, Michael Koenen kicked a 58 yard field goal (after a “practice try” of sorts, caused by the opposing team calling time-out). Who would think of putting in a punter to try for a really long field goal? I guess he did kick field goals in college. What’s the league record longest field goal? Something like 63 yards, right?
Steelers play the Chargers tonight on Monday Night Football. I’ll be watching. Chargers beat the Patriots last week and the Patriots beat the Steelers the week before so if the Steelers win tonight, they’re—what?—better than themselves?
Most question marks in one of my posts ever. I don’t know if that’s actually true.
These roundup posts are pretty lame.
Two weekends in a row, I went to music festivals for no cost to me. I’m a big winner!
Last weekend I went to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 5 last weekend in Golden Gate Park and this Saturday (the 8th) I went to the Download Festival at Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View. The first is an annual free festival. The latter I got a staff ticket to from KZSU. This is the first year of the American version of the Download fetsival; it’s been over in the UK for a few years and it’s yet to be seen whether it’ll be annual here.
I went up last Saturday for the first day of HSB. I ran a bit late and it took me a while to find parking, so I got there just before Earl Scruggs went on. He was pretty fantastic. Classic bluegrass and some hot playing on all the instruments. Gillian Welch played a great set after that. She and Dave (Rawlings?) both played mostly guitar, but Gillian (Welch, not Amrhein, which I have to specificy because Amrhein seems to be confused about these things lately) also played some banjo (girl banjo players? so hot!) and harmonica. The crowd went nuts for her excellent cover of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
(I tried to go to HSB last Sunday too for Ralph Stanley, Ricky Skaggs and JD Crowe, but drove around for an hour and some not finding parking before I headed back. I lose!)
Saturday (the 8th), I went to the Download festival. There were a bunch of bands playing, but I showed up just before the Arcade Fire and stayed for Modest Mouse. Shoreline is sort of like a lot of those outdoor ampitheater places, with regular seating and lawn seating behind that. It’s not nearly as big as Starlake, for those of you who are familiar with it, but it can handle a good number of people (25,000, says the webpage). The Arcade Fire came on and did a thoroughly entertaining set. The people in the band seemed really energized, but, in a place that big, it’s hard to project the energy, I think. I’d like to see them again—this time in a small club, like the Great American Music Hall. (If you haven’t heard the Arcade Fire or need proof that their performances can just about bust open with energy, listen to this show from KEXP. These five songs are the first I heard from Arcade Fire and I’ve listened to this recording enough that I still think of these versions over the album versions in my head.) Modest Mouse came on and did a pretty good set. They didn’t seem to be really into it and I was feeling a bit tired so I left about 45 minutes into their set. They do a decent set, but I’ve seen them twice now, both times fairly similar, so I’ll probably won’t see them again.
I’m going to have two shows this quarter (which runs until early January):
I Once Was Canadian is my indie rock show. It’ll be Thursdays 6-9am PST again. Tune in.
Adrian’s Lunch Special is music-and-talk show with members of the Stanford community bringing in music to play and chatting with me. That page has a schedule as its shaping up for the quarter. Some interesting people sofar. It’s on Tuesdays from noon-1pm PST. Here are some of the guests so far:
Matt Pond PA was on Conan last night. Anyone see them? I recorded it on my “tivo” (what I call my VCR), but haven’t watched it yet.
U2 is the only guest on Conan on Thursday night. I’m going to tune in, if I can stay away, to watch. They’ve been really good on SNL in the past couple of years.
Death Cab for Cutie does a a pretty interesting interview with the Onion AV club.
Also from largeheartedboy, Nick Hornsby talks to the Boss.
NPR did an interesting piece on the singing/ playing of “Sweet Caroline” (by Neil Diamond) in the 8th inning at Fenway Park.
There is a song that is good and you might forget this fact.
It is “Love is a Battlefield” by Pat Benatar. When I listen to this song, I want to sing along. I also want to dance, but not if you’re looking. It’s got a great structure (except for the spoken word part at the beginning, but that can be forgiven), the way the bridge comes in and the song builds back up.
Thanks for reminding me of this fact go to Helene via Dug.
Andy’s made a handy chart of all 9 possible outcomes of Yankees, Red Sox and Indians outcomes of the next two days. Each game will eliminate a row or a column.
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