I noticed today when I logged in to Netflix that they had a new option “watch now.” They have a whole lot of movies that you can stream and it’s included in my subscription.
It’s a win for them (server bandwidth << shipping costs + wear/ depreciation of DVDs) and a win for me because I don’t have to wait…
except they don’t support mac.
Keep trying, Netflix.
I’ve been doing this in stealth for a couple days, but I feel like it’s time to announce my other blog. It’s a music blog.
I’ve felt for a while that I was writing too little about music for this to be a music blog and too much about music for this to be a personal blog. In one case, outside readers see too much personal ranting and in the other, friends get alienated by the constant music talk , so I’ve split it off.
I’ll still be blogging here. I won’t be posting here about music, unless it’s related directly to me, like music I write/ record, radio playlists or if it’s a mixtape. I’ll be co-posting the last two of those.
I feel a bit weird about it—I’m always written this for myself and maybe a couple friends, but writing about any specific x is an admission that someone wants to read that. Now I have a whole blog where I pretend that people want to read my writing about music.
I had a 3 hour slot–from 6-9pm tonight. Playlist.
The streamripper had to reconnect so it split the mp3 into two parts for this week’s NEWSPECIALFUN:
I once was Canadian, KZSU - 3/28/07 [1/2] mp3
I once was Canadian, KZSU - 3/28/07 [2/2] mp3
For the record, it appears it split it right in the middle of Spanish Harlem.
5 odd questions people (totaling 5) in my car were asked by a member of the MPPD after being pulled over for an out left tail light on Sunday:
And, yes, I’ve replaced the bulb; it’s fixed.
Last night, Sulu and I saw the Last King of Scotland.
It’s the story of a Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda in the early 70s to escape his controlling father and to have a fun. He gets into the good graces of Idi Amin shortly after the coup that puts Amin in power and becomes his personal doctor.
The doctor is fictitious (though apparently based in part on Bob Astles) but Amin was unfortunately very real. As a story, it’s enthralling and gripping. As a historical perspective on Amin, it makes me want to learn more about Amin’s life and rule. He was a ruthless man.
That the doctor being taken in Amin’s character is a testament to the really impressive acting from Forest Whitaker, a role for which he won an Oscar. He completely takes on this role and it’s tough to see him as anything but Amin in the movie.
It’s really good overall. There is one obvious complaint, though. As some reviews have noted, this story is centered on a European and all of the bad that comes to him—it’s a human story, after all— but it obscures one’s view of what really was happening: hundreds of thousands of Ugandans dying. I guess you could explain that away, saying that it’s more a story of how reasonable people can be taken in by unreasonable but charming dictators. I’d recommend this, though, even if it’s just to see Whitaker’s performance.
My radio show will be on early tomorrow and next Wednesday, from 6-9pm Pacific (a reasonable hour for you east coasters!) on KZSU. You can even Listen online.
I might have a special guest tomorrow, Adem, a great indie folk artist out of England. It’s still a bit up in the air so check back here frequently for updates.
Last night I saw Elvis Perkins (in Dearland) at the Cafe du Nord. I got there a little bit before he went on when they were finishing setting up and sound-checking their mics. I was a bit surprised because they had large diaphragm condensers for his vocals, the harmonium and as an overhead for the drums (?!).
When Elvis and co. came out, they pretty quickly launched into “While You Were Sleeping” which was fine with me, as it’s my favorite track off of his album Ash Wednesday. The band consisted of Elvis on guitar and vocals, a guy that switched between guitar, harmonium and trombone; an upright/ electric bassist and a drummer/ percussionist. Everyone sang back up vocals. “Ash Wednesday” followed soon afterwards. His sound from the get-go was really good. His voice was clear and the mix was nice.
His set quickly veered away from album songs. “Weeping Pilgrim” was a great song. I think it’s a traditional song. It was rollicking and fun. On a few songs including that one, the drummer got out from behind the set and played a marching bass drum with a mallet on one side and a set of jingles (like on a tambourine, but in a line) on the other.
All in all, the show was a lot of fun and the band and sound were good. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Ash Wednesday or if you’re on the fence about Elvis Perkins.
Perkins did do a couple things that could be taken as arrogant or endearing, depending on how you look at it. The one that I’m mostly thinking of was before the last song he said “Well, the last song before we go backstage and you clap for a while and we come back out.” and then later while people were clapping he stuck out his head out of the dressing room and said “louder!” It was a little much
more photos after the jump
where does dracula go for his movie listings?
that’s right: fangdango!
get it? FANGdango.
A pretty good evening last night.
First Uncle Frank’s BBQ in Mountain View w/ andyl and liz. This place is awesome. You walk through to the back of Francesca’s bar to get there and it’s the sort of place where there are paper towel holders at the tables. They don’t mess around. Ridiculous brisket, good links and ribs, good corn bread. I couldn’t get to the sides (baked beans and greens) due to stomach capacity issues. Hilarious waitress.
Second, my friends the Light Footwork played at Make Out Room. They have cheap beers. When’s the last time you got two pints (Anchor Steam and PBR) for $6? (Answer only if you live in an overpriced city.) The Light Footwork put on a fun show, as always. I also ran into KZSU alum Nick Mirov again. We chatted about SXSW and various bands.
Really, I can’t complain. Good times.
Those google people are CRAZY.
I noticed the other day that there was a new option on my google map, traffic.
Looks like I should take the 280 and avoid the 101. It’s a bit slow around 92.
[I just learned it’s about three weeks old and it’s only available in 30 cities so far. When’s the Bay Area going to get google transit anyway?]
Should be worried that I can and sometimes do finish a 2L of Diet Dr. Pepper a day without really noticing?
Yes, I think I should be worried.
I did my radio show last night (with some help). Here’s the playlist and the NEWSPECIALFUN:
I Once was Canadian - KZSU 3/21/07 (mp3)
Also, I never posted my playlist/ mp3 from last show. Part of it was there were some problems with the mp3. It was half Irish music (for St. Paddy’s Day) and the rest indie. Anyway, if you’re interested:
playlist
NEWSPECIALFUN
I once was Irish - KZSU 3/15/07 (mp3)
The mp3 has two bad edits where it was split up before and one part where there was a chunk of maybe 10 minutes missing (just showed up blank in the recording) so I just cut out all that dead space.
Here it is, a little late as always… (I should just say that I’ll post it on the 21st of every month instead of mid-month…maybe I’d be on time more often).
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—I think the m3u file might actually be right this time)
(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 2007march 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 (first time as a google doc). This one includes a strange variety of music. I have a few indie pop/ rock songs (Benoit Pioulard, The One AM Radio, etc.), a couple field recordings of prison work songs and then a few South African songs, given that I spent much of February there.
Adrian’s March 2007 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.
I should have all my posts written for me like this:
From: Randy X <x@x.com>
To: Dave X <x@x.com>,
Adrian X <a@ab.com>,
Andrew X <x@x.com>
date: Mar 21, 2007 2:35 PM
subject: Three things that if I were Adrian I would post to my blog….… but I’m not Adrian and I don’t have a blog, so I’m just emailing them. And really, you 3 are the only ones who would care. It also constitutes a majority of the readership of Adrian’s blog.
Funny story about how kids see things (as seen from Daring Fireball)
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/03
/26/070326sh_shouts_richAndy, you could do this!
http://www.coudal.com/pinsetter/
(also seen on DF - I’m bored, still at work, waiting for a friend for
coffee, and determined not to do work anymore because its after 5.)And
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5JY1KKYZo
for the impatient, skip to around 1:20.
Again, reminded me of Andy, and his Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.
Thanks, Randy!
There’s an interesting study on genetically modified mosquitos that can resist malaria. Malaria is serious business. Once you get it, you never get rid of it and if you don’t catch it early on, it can be fatal. I chose one of my charities based on the fact that they supported research into malaria in addition to HIV/ AIDs and other prominent medical problems in Africa. I’m worried about malaria every time I go to high risk areas.
I’d always thought that a solution to the malaria problem would come from the human medicine side of things. Of course getting rid of mosquitos helps the problem a lot too, but I’d never even considered that it might be possible to change the mosquitos themselves.
This story seemed cool, but worried me at first. I mean, couldn’t this just be a mongoose-introduced-into-Hawaii sort of situation? That’s the cool part of the findings, though. Feeding on non-malaria-infected hosts, these mosquitos replicated the same as normal mosquitos. On infected hosts, they have lower mortality and were more fertile.
I’d like to see follow up studies, of course, but this seems like one promising path.
on the phone a minute ago:
me: hello, this is Adrian
caller: Hi, this is X.
me: Oh, hi X. how are you?
X: good. how about you?
me: good. how about you?
X: …
me: <awkward laugh> so….what’d you call about?
[fin]
Note to self: don’t let brain go into autopilot.
After seeing some good reviews, Libs and I decided to see Into Great Silence (Die Grosse Stille auf Deutsch) (wikipedia/ imdb) on Sunday. Check out the trailer.
It’s a documentary about the Grande Cartreuse, the head monestary of the Carthusian Order. The wikipedia page on the Carthusians is very interesting and gives you a good overview of the Order, but the basics are that they speak only when necessary (not a vow of silence, per se, but they also don’t speak much) and spend much of the day in solitude praying or meditating or performing manual labor. They sometimes get together for communal meals (where they don’t talk, it appears) or other communal time, where they do talk.
There’s also no narration (or music).
And the film is close to 3 hours long.
A three hour film with little-to-no talking and no narration. Sounds like it could be boring, right?
This movie is strange, though. It’s boring, in a sense, but it’s also interesting and fascinating and extremely artistic. The movie goes in cycles; it sort of reminded me of the rondo form in classical music. The repeated elements give you a grounding and then new stuff comes up. It’s also visually very striking. There are many shots throughout the movie that would make great photographs. It also helps that the Grande Cartreuse is isolated in the beautiful French Alps.
Obviously, it’d be silly to say that watching a three hour movie is like living in a monestary for any length of time. But this movie does, in a way. At the end, you feel sort of serene and meditative.
The movie lacks plot in the most obvious ways, but it does have an arc, starting with the newest members and their initiation into being novitiates (I’m guessing) and going to some of the oldest members over the gradual course of the movie. (I’m totally stealing some of these ideas from Libs.) There are some particularly strong moments later in the movie with an old, blind and partially deaf monk talking about life and death.
The movie isn’t entirely made of serious moments, though. It has some moments where the entire theater laughed, particularly a very cute moment of these serious, usually silent monks laughing and sledding/ skidding down a snow-covered hillside.
There are some interesting things that I learned after the movie: the director, Philip Groening, asked the Grande Chartreuse about filming there. Their response was that it was too early, perhaps in 10 or 12 years. 15 years later they called. He spent 6 months living there and did all the filming himself over that time.
I’m a little backlogged as far as the concert review posts go, but here’s one I definitely wanted to mention.
[As a side note, does anyone but myself like these concert reviews?]
On Friday I saw Hrishi Hirway and the One AM radio at Fort Oregon in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned the One AM Radio before in this post about his kickball music video (which I still love) and this concert recap of his last Fort Oregon show.
Gumbeaux and I got to the Fort around 10pm. It’s just a house in Berkeley with occasional shows in the basement. As a venue it’s pretty odd–you’re standing under ducts or next to a furnace quite often. The opening band was the Golden Birds. It was quite a turnout for them and I think they have a following around here. The basement was pretty full. They were good indie pop but the sound seemed a little bit like a band playing in someone’s basement.
The One AM Radio’s sound combines the electronic elements with intimate vocals and colorful arrangements. Their live set up this time through was Hrishi on guitar, vocals and laptop operating; a tenor saxophonist, a tenor/ alto saxophonist and an upright bass player. The only things that were amplified were the vocals, guitar and laptop.
The One AM Radio started out with the Greatest of Ease (mp3). A really nice version of “Drowsy Haze” with the audience singing backups followed [1]. After a few songs from the new album (including In the Time we’ve Got (mp3)) he asked if there were any requests and after hearing a few, he played Flicker (mp3). He then played my favorite new song (”Echoing Airports”) and favorite old song (”All I Can Recall is the Haunting”) in a row.
His last show I was pretty tired and wasn’t all that into it. This one was completely different. I enjoyed it a lot. The mix was great (despite the fact that the mix was being done by the guitarist/ vocalist/ laptopist and the rest weren’t being amplified); Hrishi’s voice was great; the song selection and the songs were great.
[1] I have mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: I like when bands ask the audience to sing along. I like it a lot.
Conan’s coming to San Francisco April 30-May 4. Here’s where you can get tickets. I asked for May 4.
First: Winner of the Noise Pop one day music video contest, the Blammos “Girl of My Dreams” video. The guy walks around the Mission and sings a love song to strangers.
Second: (for the jdawg, a pinball wizard) a Pepsi commercial with San Francisco as a giant pinball machine.
(both via sfist)
I’m catching up on a blogging backlog.
Last weekend I saw Das Leben der Anders (aka The Lives of Others).
It’s the story of a well regarded Stasi agent, Gerd Wiesler, in East Berlin (circa 1984) who starts spying on a playwright who they suspect might be a sympathizer. Wiesler learns that the real reason that they are spying on him is that the Minister of Culture, a high ranking official, wants the playwright out of the way so he can make advances on his girlfriend unencumbered. Wiesler becomes more sympathetic with the playwright because of this, even though he’s a strong party supporter.
It’s really an amazing film. The writing and direction (both by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck of the famed Henckel von Donnersmarcks) are both superb. The lead actor playing Wiesler, Ulrich Mühe, has a very Kevin Spacey quality to him, both in looks and some of the restrained, subtle acting he does.
It manages to be a lot of stories in one. It’s at least love story and a political thriller.
Last week, I saw Mr. Ted Leo a couple of times, first as part of Noise Pop and then as part Stanford Concert Network’s campus concerts.
I came to the first concert with a familiarity with Hearts of Oak and Shake the Sheets. I like those albums, but didn’t play them too often.
I got there on Friday just before the Georgie James set. They were competant musicians, but it was sort of take it or leave it in the end… I might post separately about some thoughts it got going in my head, but I don’t want to connect them directly with this band, because the thoughts aren’t.
After the usualy pre-headliner shuffle and push toward the stage, Ted Leo came up to much applause and excitement. Immediately he started rocking out with high energy. After a handful of songs, I started thinking “oh, he’s just playing the hits. what’s he going to do when those run out?” After a few more songs I realized he wasn’t just playing hits; his catalogue is just really good.
He bantered well between songs, answering people yelling out from the audience and whatnot.
Ted Leo live is like the best things from punk, indie rock, and folk. Punk: high energy and a DIY melody. Indie: great melodies and chord progressions. Folk: interesting and multi-layered lyrics.
Ted really goes all out with the whole show. I’m surprised he can put so much into his vocals and not completely destroy his voice. His falsetto is pretty amazing, too.
He played a handful of new songs, including a really great one called “Lost Brigade” with a really nice repeated line “Every little baby has its own song” (which doesn’t sound great when I write it, but you can check out a live version of the song here). They also did a live covers of Chumbawumba’s “Rappaport’s Testament: I Never Gave Up” and the old Irish tune “Dirty Old Town.”
I went in not knowing what to expect and in the end, I was pretty much floored by his performance.
Sunday’s concert (which the Stanford Daily covered) had different openers: Stanford bands. They weren’t really good at all, though the last, the Bee’s Knees were an interesting combination of 50’s throwback and modern pop.
It was in an odd venue, Kresge Auditorium. Immovable seats close to the stage made for awkward standing during the show. The crowd was not your standard indie rock crowd. Far more—what do you call them?—frat boys in attendence.
But for Ted’s part it was a fairly similar performance in that he brought his A game once again. There was a fairly similar set list, but he was still great. One amusing anectdote from the evening was when Ted started saying that their set was originally going to be longer but … (then he sort of trailed off, I think he was going to say that his voice was starting to go or that he wasn’t feeling well). Someone from the crowd then shouted “Fuck you!” to a completely stunned Leo and crowd. He then just said something like “Okay. I guess we’ll keep going” and then they rattled off another half dozen songs.
Overall, two really enjoyable shows.
Recommendation: go see Ted Leo when he comes to your town. He’s touring the US starting at the end of March. Check to see when he’s in your town and buy tickets.
I’m giving away some shirts, cleaning house. Let me know if you want any. They could be yours for the low low cost of free (plus shipping).
Overheard at last night’s Mountain Goats show at the Bottom of the Hill.
Peter Hughes: You know, we’ve been playing at the Bottom of the Hill for so long that I remember a show where my now ex-wife’s best friend was buying us shots of liquor.
fan, from the back: yeah, it was Old Grand Dad
Peter: yeah, it was.
and later in the show
fan, diferent from the first: T SHIRT SONG!
John Darnielle: There is no such song!
fan: T SHIRT SONG!
JD: It was an improvisation and therefore not a real song!
A portamanteau for all of you:
bischawkwardness
bischoff + awkwardness! to describe my awkwardness and its peculiarities.
nor can it be. NYC is out of luck as well.
At least according to this essay about what it takes to be Silicon Valley.
I subbed for someone tonight on the radio. I did an hour and change of old-time music.
newspecialfun (mp3)
The strangemaps blog is a blog about, well, strange maps.
It’s a bit weird, quite a bit interesting.
(via kenjennings)
Grab the latest mixtape now. I’m moving it into a password protected folder a day from now.
So my ridiculous pursuit of the moment is my concert list
It’s meant to be a list of every concert I’ve ever been to. It’ll never be complete, but I’m trying. I have a lot of concerts on there already and then I have a lot of concerts that I don’t remember/ can’t find the dates of.
Fionn Regan topped my list of best albums of ‘06 and for the first time (I believe) he’s touring America.
Well, actually he’s just playing four dates. But if you’re in Austin (or will be for SXSW) or NYC, you really shoud go:
15 Mar Stubbs Austin SXSW
16 Mar BD Rileys, 204 East 6th St Austin SXSW
17 May Mojo BBQ (1-4pm) Austin SXSW
20 Mar Mercury Lounge (7.30pm) New York w/ Get Cape Wear Cape Fly
So buy tickets already!
There’s a great interview with John Vanderslice on the Merlin Show which is a new online/ iTunes free short TV show (video show?).
Merlin Mann of the Merlin show is the internet famous guy who also runs 5ives and 43 folders. He also goes to some of the same rock shows I do.
The episode after the John Vanderslice one is another good one with Chris Wetherell, a Google employee/ touring drummer.
I’m not talking about the movie, but rather about reposession men and more specifically about this story of a guy who reposesses large ships. It’s fascinating, like something out of a movie.
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