Category: music

If I ever start a punk ska band, it’s going to be called Cryptosporidium Toothpaste. I should never blog while ill. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but my head feels like a bowling ball. My eyes don’t want to focus. My stomach hurts and I can’t seem to wake up. I will never ever ever let the optometrist dilate my eyes. Nor will I ever not eat for twelve hours. Thus endeth the stupidest post ever.

David Byrne‘s Look Into The Eyeball is grrrrrrrrrrrr-eat. I got it from Jen’s parents and I can’t stop listening to it. Every song is perfectly layered. If I turn up the volume, there are small nuances that I didn’t hear before, and every listen exposes some new inflection or chord I didn’t hear before. Mr. Byrne, you are my hero.

The Six Feet Under is very nice too, as is Bricolage, by Amon Tobin. I even got Lyle Lovett’s first album and a great little blue’s compilation. Hooray for music!

There’s something to be said for a change of pace. While work has been fairly busy lately, it’s been busy in spurts, and not so busy that I can’t work at a leisurely pace and still get things done early. Lately, it’s been busy. Busy enough that I don’t notice when Groove Salad has to re-buffer and I’m left without music for a minute or two. I don’t notice that it’s 11:30 on the dot and time for lunch. It’s fun to be so busy that the days fly by. I’m working on important and top secret projects that make coming to work more fun. I’m looking forward to my new job and the freedom I’ll have to affect change and make our products cooler and keep up with new standards and technology. Yeah, baby, I’m a geek. I have the carpal tunnel to prove it. Stand back, it’s a GEEK OUT!

Ok, Britney, you’re at the top of your game. You’ve got endorsements, rabid pre-teen fans, and hit songs. There’s one thing you’re missing though, in your rise to the top of the media heap. You need a restaurant. Not a Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock over-priced event place, but a real down-home, like your mama used to make restaurant. You could invent a new cuisine, “Nouvelle Cracker” and serve fried balogna in new and fascinating ways. You could call it Britney Spears’ Oops I Fried It Again. It would be a huge hit with those little girls and homosexual men who want to be just like you. Pickled pigs feet on the counter, grilled peanut butter and jelly sam’miches, cheez whiz on crackers, Pepsi products in mason jars. Think of it as a cross between Cracker Barrel and Kenny Rogers’ Roasters (only without the whole bankrupcy thing). It could be huge, baby, huge!

Do you know who Bela Fleck is? Should you? Laws, yes you should! He and the Flecktones have been creating amazing music for about ten years now, and show no signs of slowing down. They’ve broken all the laws of their instruments and man, you should just go out right now and buy Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, Live Art, Tales From the Acoustic Planet and Live at the Quick right now and melt into music bliss.

Other than that, I have nothing to say today that I haven’t said already. Work is really busy and it’s sapping all my creativity.

For whoever it was that searched for “amon tobin bmw”, the name of the song from that commercial was Get Your Snack On from Supermodified, which is an amazing album. The same song was also used in a Coke commercial. And, if you watched the latest Clairol commercial with Heather Locklear, the song they used was Boss on the Boat by Tosca (can’t remember which album it’s on).

There, I’ve done my part to make the world a more informed place. Now, I’m going back to my TiVo and decongestants.

I know there are things you say and do that you can never take back. But, if you could see it in your heart, could you please make it a cheeseburger? – Lyle Lovett

Yesterday afternoon was all REM and for no other reason than I listened to my Randy Newman stuff and REM was next in iTunes’ playlist. I didn’t have the heart to change to something else. There’s something comforting about REM (the old stuff). It’s safe and sweet and innocent and reminds me of junior high parties in basements, games of sardines and hours spent trying to sing along with It’s The End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).

I’ve been listening to Feelings almost non-stop for the past 36 hours (when not sleeping or doing something else). It’s an amazing album. The more I listen to it, the better it gets. I was a huge Talking Heads fan, but David Byrne always seemed to be fighting his voice on those albums. He was trying to corral it into something it wasn’t. I don’t own the albums he did between Rei Momo and this one (a problem that will shortly be rectified), but this album really shows off his voice. He’s not straining against it, and doing some amazing things. It’s gorgeous. Also, his choice of instruments, and layering of textures is sublime. The Balanescu Quartet provides haunting strings on several songs, my favorite being Burnt by the Sun and Finite (Alright).

His lyrics on this album are also a point of praise. Both songs mentioned above are beautiful stories in themselves. He matches music to lyrics so well.

What am I saying? Go out and buy it! Even if you hate his old stuff, this is well beyond anything he did with Talking Heads, and I know you’ll hate me for this, but it’s even better than Rei Momo.

Someone at work loaned me Prodigy’s old Fat of the Land album. (sorry, I’m doing my best Larry King impression here) For my money, there isn’t a song that makes me want to move my ass more than Breathe. The cockney accent, that beat, the riff… Oh yes, this is my large ass movin’.