One of the episodes of Letterman that was mythed while I was gone was one with Darlene Love, one of Phil Spector’s singers. She sings Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) a song she was the original singer of. And she just tears it up. It’s pretty impressive that she can still belt it out at her age.
Check it out on youtube: Darlene Love on Letterman
(You can also check out the U2 cover of the same song from back in the Bono-has-long-hair-and-wears-dumb-hats phase.)
I had to wait till after Christmas to post this (it was present-related), but the Phil Sector Back to Mono 4 CD box set is only $16.99 at amazon, brand new.
I have it (and paid a lot more it than that, used) and it’s fantastic. 3 great CDs with songs like “Be My Baby”, “He’s a Rebel”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Spanish Harlem” and “Unchained Melody.” The fourth CD is the Spector Christmas CD, which is enjoyable during that season.
In any case, this is a great price for a great and worthwhile box set.
After some considering, I am now signed up Escape from the Rock Alcatraz Triathlon.
1.5 mile swim, 2.5 mile run, 13 mile bike, 10K (6.2 mile) run. I’d better start working on my running.
I managed to see the three Pittsburgh sports teams a total of five times this year.
Due to some fortuitous scheduling, I saw all of them in the Bay Area (in three different cities):
I saw two of the three in Pittsburgh:
Today when I was sorting through my desk drawers, I found this receipt from Beluga Records:
[they said to save the receipt and I did]
Colin had told me that this band, the Coctails, had musical saw because he knew I was interested in it, so I decided to order The Coctails’ Peel. I’d also heard him talking about bands like Superchunk and Sebadoh, many of whom appeared on the Lounge Ax Relocation and Defense Fund CD.
I ordered those CDs and I believe they were my first indie rock CDs. I possibly bought Sebadoh’s Free Weed before that, but I’m not completely sure. July 1997 would place me at the end of my sophomore year of high school, about to enter my junior year.
Andy said that yesterday: “I had embarrassing teen years.” He was going through some boxes of stuff that his parents wanted to get rid of to make space. I laughed at him. I’m not embarrassed by my teen years, I thought. I did alright with them.
Here’s one gem Andy found yesterday:
[yeah, I should crop this and make it a smaller file.]
It’s the original lyric sheet to the Where’s Luke theme song. This was when we were preparing for the coffee house that they hosted at Westminster Presbyterian. I think we might have just been asking Colin if he’d be our drummer.
Tonight I went through my drawers in my desk tonight. I was laughing again, this time at myself. Despite myself I did have an embarrassing adolescence. I found all sorts of ridiculous things that I saved. The pot of gold at the end of the embarrassment rainbow was the half-drawer full of love notes, poems and drawings from a high school girlfriend. I was smiling so much at the ridicilousness of it that I almost cried.
If you choose to celebrate, Merry Christmas.
I hope you have a wonderful and relaxing day with family or friends.
Our Christmas crackers had some pretty funny jokes in them!
Q: What happens when a frog’s car breaks down?
A: It gets toad away
And the piece de resistance:
Q: Why is a leaking parking lot like Frankenstein’s Monster?
A: Because “it’s a porous car loft”
Indie rock (in the broadest of senses) lives and dies on credibility, so much so that ‘indie cred’ is a common phrase. Sure image helps and gimmicks help and music/ songwriting ability may also help, but cred is important. I won’t go as far as saying that cred is king, but it’s certainly important.
And yet, indie rockers often take on genres they are not intimately familiar with. That is, they lack imediate credibility. Beirut takes on Balkan brass music. Iron & Wine take on southern folk.
Even when indie rockers are not taking on other genres, they are often tackling music that isn’t familiar to the listener. Sufjan’s epic folk, Joanna Newsome’s weird harp screeching, Andrew Bird’s experimental, looped violin pop and Neutral Milk Hotel’s emotive fuzz pop are all examples.
What do these people have in common? Unique voices. And they don’t lack credibility.
The unique voices lead to the listener to view these artists with more authenticity than otherwise. If they not going to sing normal then they must mean it.
I’m not sure this is a conscious thought on the artists part, but it’s more likely some bred by the culture.
calm down and don’t strangle people this instant.
yeah, I’m stuck in O’Hare.
a corrollary to this is, I believe, a new phrase I’m coining: comfort music which, like comfort food, may not be great in and of itself and probably isn’t good for you, but helps on those tough days.
I was delayed there a bit, but here’s the December mix tape. Hopefully there’s enough time for you to download it and get it on to your favorite digital audio player for your holiday travels. Play it while sitting around the Christmas tree with your family.
You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)
(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006december playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).
If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. It’s a mix of normal indie fare along with indie and oldies/ Motown Christmas songs.
Adrian’s December 2006 mix tape [zip file]
This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.
If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.
Enjoy and have a happy Christmas or other winter solstice-timed religious, ethnic or other holiday.
My Second Annual I Once was Canadian Christmas Extravganza turned out pretty well. You can listen to it if you missed it.
(You can find some more gift ideas/ philosphy over at Colin’s blog.)
Gift cards are really easy. They also show something slightly more personal than cash or a check. They say “I know you enough to know that you might enjoy something from Best Buy[1] but I don’t know you well enough to actually pick something.”
Here’s the thing: gift cards tie your money up in plastic that is non-transferable and often expires. You are basically guaranteeing that some of your money will wasted or that the receiver will have to spend some of their own money to get full use out of it.
My recommendations:
[1] And if you are being a total hippie about it, gift cards usually requires the person to patronize a large corporate retailer, which the receiver may not wish to do.
Jesse and I have been having conversations like this forever. Jesse’s new phone can send email.
OH WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD tHAT wOULD bE!!@^$@$^#$^
On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 08:00:14AM -0800, Adrian wrote:
INTERNET SHOULD BE coNNECTED STRAIGHT TO OUR BRAINS PERMANENTLY
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006, Jesse wrote:
yea tell me about it… this seems to happen way too often, considering
it should happen oh about … NEVER!On Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 08:35:09PM -0800, Adrian wrote:
oh disaster!
Adrian
On Mon, 18 Dec 2006 jesse@ wrote:
My wireless stopped working…
I walked out my back door this morning to grab my bike and head off to work. There was a lid of a container that had overturned and filled with some water. This water had turned to ice. I think this is the first time I remember seeing naturally formed ice in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. There was frost on the neighbor’s grass.
I need to figure out if I own gloves in this state. My hands didn’t work for many minutes after I got to work today.
This sketch, from last year, is meant to be funny, and it is, but it’s also a good song.
[Warning, paulpham style joke coming.]
School bike? What’s that? A long yellow bike that all the kids get on?
Well, it’s been announced and the Time Person of the Year is me.
Wow. I never thought this would happen. I have so many emotions. I don’t have a speech prepared, but I’d like to thank everyone who has supported me through all the tough times: my parents, my friends, my teachers and my collegues. I’ll never forget this day. Thank you. Thank you, Time Magazine!
Hypothesis: everyone has a bit of a soft spot for the music that (s)he liked in high school.
Discuss.
I did my top dozen albums of 2006 show last night. My picks and start-with-these tracks:
A little bit about each album after the jump.
Just a reminder that the Light Footwork will be playing live on KZSU tonight at 9pm PST. It’s the first live gig of this blog-acclaimed band. You can listen at 90.1FM or online.
Update: If you missed it, check this out (and the playlist). It starts a couple minutes in.
This is not quite as totally sweet as the “Adrian is Rad” shirts, but still pretty good. Reader mim sends in this:
As TW Walsh points out, Rosie Thomas has put out (digitally, at least) her new album which was recorded with Denison Whitmer and my fav Sufjan Stevens. You can listen to a track or two at her website (streaming, flash), one at her myspace (streaming), or head over to Aquarium Drunkard to grab one mp3. The one at her website and myspace, “Much Farther to Go”, has Sufjan singing and playing banjo and TW Walsh on percussion. It’s a nice song with good finger-picked guitar and orchestration. Sufjan and Rosie’s voices go very well together. It’s still very much a Rosie song, so if you’re hoping for a new Sufjan song, check out his Christmas box set.
I’m working on my top albums of 2006 list. I’ll have my list posted probably Thursday because I need to have it done Wednesday for my “Top Albums/ Releases of 2006″ special on my radio show. In the meantime, though, here is a list of some good albums from 2006. Have I missed any? What are your favorites?
In no particular order:
Thoughts?
[Also, I’ve been rediculous this year in CD purchasing. The only albums among that list that I don’t personally own: Fionn Regan, ms john soda, Danielson, V/A Big Mack, Built to Spill, Belle and Sebastian, Centro-Matic. I’ve heard all of those extensively, though.]
I don’t really get into webcomics much, but I’ve been really enjoying xkcd “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
It’s pretty geeky stuff, generally. Some of it reminds me of jokes friends would make in college (like thing jwerberg said about the Apollo 11 space shuttle and it having the same computing power as a TI-85 “and that thing can’t even do tan 90!”)
There are some of my favorites.
I may relate a little too much to some.
Some are at the heights of geek humor while others are just sort of random.
Business Week has a article about Best Buy’s new corporate philosophy of measuring output rather than hours at a desk. They’re basically encouraging people to come in late or leave early as long as they get their work done.
It’s sort of like flex-time, but it isn’t because the metric (hours vs. output, however that’s measured) is different.
I do enjoy collaboration so doing away with the office entirely sounds like a bad idea to me, but something along this line sounds pretty good.
BoSox tickets for April and May games go on sale tomorrow morning at 10am PST.
Vigneto wine opener, single screw pull action. BNIB:
Well the boozy season is nearly upon us…
I think I should start calling the Christmas season the “boozy season”.
Tonight Judit and I made gingerbread houses (from the Trader Joe’s kit).
a) I am now diabetic.
b) I should pretty much be a professional gingerbread house maker.
I’m pretty proud of my two-mini-candy-canes-as-a-heart innovation.
I figured it’d be paying rent or doing my own taxes that’d do it. Or perhaps it’d be my first real paycheck. Or buying a more expensive product to get better quality so it’d last.
Well, I did those things and don’t feel particuarly like an adult. Yesterday, though, I realized it comes in steps. I realized this because I clipped my fingernails. I looked at my hands yesterday and saw that my fingernails were getting long and realized that I hadn’t bitten them, none of them.
Now I have nothing against biting one’s fingernails (or picking one’s nose) and I realize there’s a time and place where it’s not appropriate (in a client meeting, for instance), but, while I wasn’t doing anything about it, I also didn’t particularly like this habit. Well, apparently I’ve unknowingly stopped. I guess it was just time.
And so the realization that I’m one step closer to being an “adult.” Next step: talking to girls like they’re normal people.
I just posted five times. You weren’t ready for it, I know. You have got to steel yourself for stuff like that! Steel yourself!.
Also, I cut the palm of my hand today scaling a fence (legally!). The skin is really thick there. Now, lacerated. It’s fine, just a bit strange.
[this is possibly the first of a series of ‘vinyl gems’, songs that are weird or wonderful and can only be found on vinyl records]
This is a total gem that the station’s music library. It’s from the b-side of “All the Umbrellas in London”, one of the best Magnetic Fields songs out there.
This song is just crazy and weird.
I’ll give on one reason to take a listen to this and it’s the only reason you’re going to need: the chorus is “We are the rats in the garbage of the Western world…so let’s dance!“.
Magnetic Fields - Rats in the Garbage of the Western World (mp3)
I’ve been considering, trying to decide whether to do the Alcatraz swim again. It’s early next June.
There’s also this event two weeks later. It’s a swim-heavy triathlon, so that plays to my strengths that and 13 miles of biking (even hilly) I could do today, but the running would take a lot of preparation.
I don’t know if you have been there lately, but Trader Joe’s is overflowing with German Christmas sweets these days. I picked up some Pfeffernüsse the other day and they’re almost all gone. Delicious and fairly cheap!
Today I noticed that they have Lebkuchen and Stollen as well. I also picked up a gingerbread house kit, which I’m going to make with Judit on Monday.
I also have been absolutely ecstatic to open the little doors of my advent calendar these past two days (though as we all know Advent only starts on Sunday (which is still tomorrow to me)). Today chocolate treat was an aeroplane! What’s tomorrow’s going to be??
I’ve owned the first three and tried the last two at work the other day for a couple hours each. These are all pretty pricey.
Overall, I’d say the HD600s are the best sounding, but the DT990s are my favorite everday headphone for comfort and listenability.
A couple weeks ago, I finished Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon (named after the “clever” shirt.) (Amazon, , one review, two mp3-blog like posts by the author about Christian music)
It’s a look at Christian Rock, capital C, capital R, by an outsider. Beaujon is a writer for Spin so he comes from the mainstream rock criticism side of things. I’ve never been really involved in the scene he talks about although I stood at the edge of it a couple years, so I’m a bit of an outsider to it as well. (Which reminds me of a post about an article of the same topic and perspective…)
He spends chapters looking at aspects and events in the Christian music world. He looks at particular bands and people as well as other cultural forces like Mars Hill Church and Tooth and Nail Records. There are various people that come off earnestly and then there are some more slimey people. I’d heard some negative things about T&N (that they don’t give their bands a fair shake) and they were sort of confirmed in this book.
Perhaps my favorite section is the chapter about David Bazan (at the time of the interviews, still in Pedro the Lion). Where a lot of interviewees seem to sidestep questions that might result in controversial answers, Bazan seems to take any and all questions head on without flinching. Sufjan denied the interview request, apparently, so there’s only a brief section on him, which was a bit disappointing.
Overall, it’s an interesting, informative and well-written book about a large cultural phenomenon (Christian records easily outsell jazz records currently). I’d recommend it if you are curious about the scene or genre.
I’ve since moved on to the Dave Eggers editted The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004.
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