Archives For music

It’s a holiday mix

December 4, 2011 — Leave a comment

it’s been a while since the wife and i put together a mix but based on the success of the last one, we decided to put our own spin on a holiday collection.

Track Listing:
Ice – Shelleyan Orphan
That Was the Worst Christmas Ever! – Sufjan Stevens
Christmas Card from a Hooker In Minneapolis – Neko Case
The Christians And The Pagans – Dar Williams
The Rebel Jesus – The Chieftains
Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues
Father Christmas – The Kinks
A Christmas Duel – Cyndi Lauper, The Hives
Christmas Tree’s On Fire – Holly Golightly
Outsourcin’ Christmas (The Unemplyed Little Elf Song) – The Canadian Dollars
Christmas Reindeer – The Knife
St. Stephen’s Day Murders – The Chieftains
All I Want for Christmas – Timbuk 3
Merry Christmas From The Family – Jill Sobule

click here or on the image above to download, hope you enjoy.

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sample this

March 4, 2005 — Leave a comment

in my reminiscing about the halcyon days of rap and hip hop i put my rap playlist on the ipod and enjoyed the sounds of the late 80s and early 90s.

i think part of my enjoyment of the early days of this musical artform was the sampling; not so much the blatant ripoffs a la Puffy; but the snippets of tracks. i grew up with a diverse musical background with all manner of influences. my mother had music appreciation on Sundays after church and she`d unleash the Al Green, Bob Marley, Handel`s Messiah, Ace Cannon, Herb Albert, whatever she thought was appropriate. I also spent a lot of time at my aunt`s house and she had children in their late teens to early adulthood who shared their music as well. this sound musical background help me rediscover music i`d know and loved as an element in music i was just discovering.

i`ve always said i would give almost anything to go through Fatboy Slim`s record collection, his use of obscure samples is sublime. there also used to be a website that kept track of samples in popular hip hop but it seems to have gone the way of the dodo.

lately i`ve been enjoying the smash-ups. i`ve never been a big fan of either the Beatles or Jay-Z but i love Dangermouse`s Grey Album as well as the Kleptones` Queen/hip hop smash-up and the London bootmixed which is a remix of the Clash`s London Calling.

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the heart of rock and roll is binary

August 10, 2004 — Leave a comment

for more than a year, i`ve been playing with one of the coolest electronic toys, it`s called iscrobbler. it’s is a plug-in that keeps track of the songs played by your favourite music player and posts them to a server. it works on a variety of players on a number of platforms and is still free.

but you`re probably wondering what is the point of having another bit of info about you online;  as side from the cool shit like that RSS menu on the right side of this page [near the top] that shows the music i`m listening to pretty much as it happens without any diddling by me; is hosted by a site called last.fm

last.fm is a personal radio station. i have close 30Gb of mp3s, i don`t feel like taking the drive with all this music to work everyday and i`d rather not put my entire music collection on my work computer either, last.fm is like having my mp3 collection with me, without the stress and a few surprises.

over the last 13 months i`ve submitted close to 9000 tracks to last.fm, so they have a pretty good idea of my musical tastes and even if you don`t have the time or the inclination to go through all that trouble you chose three artist you`d like to hear and they`ll find you a station.

unlike other radio streams you can skip tracks you don`t particularly like, you can click the love button if you`d like to hear more of the same and there is a ban button for songs like the ketchup song that you wish to never hear in life again.

AS and last.fm have gotten a lot of press in the last couple of weeks in wired but their servers are up and running strong and sign ups are open. JS-development implemented my rss feed and had mentioned making it accessible for the rest of JS users but at the time, AS wasn`t accepting new sign ups. i don`t know if this feature will be accessible to all JS users in the near future now that everyone can sign up for an account.

[edit based on a comment i received]

i should clarify, last.fm doesn`t host or share music, they facilitate the sharing of music streams with people similar musical tastes as you self or based on your selections. the only file you ever receive from them is the initial file that allows your mp3 player to connect to their servers.

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if you love someone set them on fire

May 14, 2004 — Leave a comment

last night the good wyf and i sat and sorted out combined cd collections and put them in alphabetical order and as with the books we have more cds than shelving. this after a major culling after i arrived and another culling last night. we have a lot of music, a diverse selection that covers classical, hard rock, new wave, massive amounts of techno, compilations and soundtracks whose variety are quite impressive.

we also combined our mp3 libraries. i culled albums that i still own in their original format to make room on the 25Gb drive for the tunes that were rescued from the dying iMac. It`s interesting to see what compromises our 4800 tracks, some of it would not have graced my collection voluntarily and i`m sure there is some stuff in there that would make vic`s ears bleed if she were forced to listen to it as well but it`s nice to see the stuff there, like the books, it`s one of those signs that we`re one household, finally.

i`m doing the final clean up, with a collection this large it`s easy to miss overlaps, especially when we share musical tastes. when we stopped last night it was close to midnight and when you`re tired it`s easy to miss stuff.

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standing on an anthill is cold and lonely

May 4, 2004 — Leave a comment

this weekend was riverstages which i didn`t attend because it was a CCE — Clear Channel Entertainment event.

I live in Music City, USA. and this summer promises more big name shows than you can shake a stick at and it appears, even if i can afford i`m going to be letting a lot of them go by.

like i said before i find Clear Channel morally reprehensible and as long as i`m able to, i`ll avoid any dealings with them. meaning any show coming to Starwood amphitheatre this summer including Ozzfest, Dave Matthews Band and Prince, i`ll not be attending.

this anti-Clear Channel tirade is not about Howard Stern, well not entirely. i personally don`t like Stern, but there are functional station tuners on my radio. this is about a continued commercialisation of radio, the music industry, radio stations and government in a cosy relationship deciding what`s best for me listen to or for me to hear. i believe every business has a right to make a profit, i don`t object to that, i object to unfair business practices and i think Clear Channel epitomises that. they are rich and powerful and believe they can do whatever pleases them.

i disagree and i`m showing my disagreement in the strongest way possible, as a consumer. yes, they will continue to exist but they will just have to do so without my dollars. i`m sure there are other people who share the sentiment, eventually there will be enough for them to get the general idea.

i hope.

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subtlety and nuance

May 2, 2004 — Leave a comment

i`m a big music fan with diverse tastes, but i can`t stand modern R&B. I grew up on Marvin Gaye and the Motown sound, so all this crap now masquerading as music, just makes me wince. i am not a prude, not by anyone`s stretch of the imagination, but what passes for R&B today, disgusts me. i don`t need to have everything explained to me, the same way i don`t need to see the print of your labia through your clothing, it just lacks subtlety.

listen to Marvin, Teddy, Barry, sure they`re talking about sex, but it doesn`t have to be blatantly in your face. Go back even further to the jazz standards,  it`s still subtle.  I was listening to the Lady Ella`s Isn`t this a lovely day, it`s about staying in with your lover on a rain day, structured and beautiful without ever being nasty. even Grace Jones, showed more discretion in her one hit than any of the current crop of R&B posers.

this phenomenon isn`t limited to R&B, it seems wide spread over musical genres, from calypso to rock, people don`t write anymore. or is it that people no longer read, so the subtlety of word play is lost on them?

or as Sparrow said when confronted by accusations of lewdness — “Kill them dead, is the vice in dey own head”

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the 9th circle of my own personal musical hell

April 21, 2004 — Leave a comment

i`ve been hearing varying opinions on the blender 50 worst songs of all time and it got me thinking, these are just songs. some of them are one hit wonders, others are mostly talented musicians who just went wrong somewhere.

the 9th circle of my own personal musical hell is more about artistes whose every utterance cause my ears to haemorrhage and my brain to leak from every available orifice.

in my circle i`m strapped to a chair, front stage; with surround sound speakers around me tuned to the deadly quartet of celine dion, peter cetera, barbra striesand and the bastard child of all that is evil and wrong on this planet, michael bolton on lead vocals with musical accompaniment by yanni, kenny g, john tesh and ace cannon. background vocalists include neil sadaka, john denver, richard marx and the backstreet boys with guest raps by the cash money clique and  a plethora of guest vocals, all of whose names escape me at the moment; singing a medley of their greatest hits, over and over and over again.

i`ll be the first to admit that even though my musical tastes are diverse, i listen to a great number of things; the current track being one in question; that most people find unappealing, but you don`t hear most of what i listen to on the radio with any regularity. these artistes; and i use the word loosely; have been unleashed on a unsuspecting public, repeatedly.

this is my own personal hell, but i`m sure you have one of your own as well.

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day 14 (post script)

April 21, 2003 — Leave a comment

nina simone, jazz great and source of comfort died today. i didn’t know her personally, but her music, has been a part of my life for a long time.

in the last 3 months two of my musical icons have moved on, never to utter another note.

farewell to you both, andre tanker and nina simone.

thank you for the music.

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