At least I think that Eliza Carthy's 2001 album, Angels and Cigarettes, was better than anything else I heard. Carthy, the scion of British folk artists, moved from her earlier folk-influenced recordings, to create something akin to what Kate Bush...
Continue reading "Best Album of 2001" »
Ogg Vorbis is a different standard for encoding music digitally, like the current popular standard mp3. The problem with mp3 is that part of the computer code that the mp3 compression uses is owned by a company who demands a...
Continue reading "Ogg Vorbis - Not Science Fiction" »
I first started reading Mark Pilgrim's excellent blog, dive into mark, last month during his special series called "30 Days to a More Accessible WebLog" (which I still need to finish implementing). I continued to read him because he's a...
Continue reading "dive into mark (the deeper the better)" »
There's just a few musical artists that can instill in me some excitement with a new release, and the list keeps getting shorter. I'm hoping for another Kate Bush record one of these days and I've now added Eliza Carthy...
Continue reading "Obligatory two-letter title" »
One of the interesting things about thinking about this weblog and coming up with things that I think worthwhile to write about has led me to look at my collection of web links from the seven years that I've been...
Continue reading "Fighting Silence" »
Eliza Carthy I liked Eliza Carthy's latest album, Angels & Cigarettes, so much that I had to special order this one (I had actually hoped to get the two disk set of Red/Rice, but the CD Exchange wasn't able to...
Continue reading "Red" »
I don't see many concerts these days. I'm not sure that I've ever been someone who really saw that many concerts. My first was back in 1983 and was Bob Seger (with Jon Bon Jovi, shudder, opening for him), and...
Continue reading "Elvis Costello, nearly 15 years later" »
And because of their unfair pricing schemes (price fixing) and a settlement they've entered into with 43 states and territories, you can get a little change back from them....
Continue reading "You Were Cheated by the Music Industry" »
I haven't posted anything about music in a while, and I noticed that Keith Martin (who just began blogging his reading and is a new entry on my blog roll) keeps an interesting list of albums by years. That's the...
Continue reading "My Favorite Albums" »
by Suzanne Vega With some albums, to fully enjoy them takes some extra knowledge that you have to acquire outside of the tracks and liner notes themselves. For example, Eric Clapton's "Layla" is a beautiful song, but it becomes something...
Continue reading "Songs in Red and Gray" »
I've been waiting forever for a new solo album by Lindsey Buckingham, but it looks like I'll be waiting a little longer. On the other hand, while I never hated Christine McVie's contributions to Fleetwood Mac, I did tend to...
Continue reading "New album from Fleetwood Mac" »
by Darden Smith I vividly recall buying this album--from a used CD shop in Pasadena--and bringing it back home, putting it into the player, and simply sitting back on the couch realizing that this was the type of music...
Continue reading "Trouble No More" »
This week's Friday Five is another good list of questions: 1. What was the first band you saw in concert? I think the first concert I chose to go to myself (rather than simply "being there" as in a concert...
Continue reading "Five Questions about Music" »
Talking Heads The "live" album--music recorded from a concert rather than the studio--is such a tricky creature. In rock and roll, there's a number of live albums that have achieved classic status (those that come to mind immediately include...
Continue reading "Stop Making Sense" »
It's not that I don't like used CD stores--they're wonderful things for avoiding the inflated prices of new CDs--but I'm always looking for a new way to cut out the middleman in my shopping transactions. Half.com is one way, but...
Continue reading "Bring Back Barter!" »
The Best of Van Morrison In the early 1990s Alan Parker filmed Roddy Doyle's wonderful book, The Commitments, about working class Irish kids trying to escape dead end jobs through the power of classic soul music. The band's lead...
Continue reading "The Bard of Belfast" »
Liz Phair, Liz Phair Although there's even a term for it--the May/December romance--we are pretty accustomed to that equation involving an older man with a younger woman rather than the reverse. And in that, people don't even kid themselves as...
Continue reading "The Phair Report on Female Sexuality" »
Wish You Were Here Pink Floyd One of the side-effects of the digital revolution in music for me has been the rediscovery and reevaluation of music that I have known for years but put aside for some reason. In...
Continue reading "Wish You Were Here" »
Steve of Now This loaned me a couple of issues of Paste magazine last weekend and after I spent most of Sunday reading through them, I instantly subscribed. I love the concept of a music magazine that comes with samples;...
Continue reading "Paste it up" »
The velocity of time turns her voice into sugar water..."Sugar Water," Cibo Matto Today was a big one for those of us hooked into the computer music scene, as Apple unveiled iTunes for Windows (already downloaded and playing music on...
Continue reading "Hell Deluged with Sugar Water" »
I'm excited to finally get to meet Keith Martin tonight, as he's coming to the area for a conference and wrote me last week to see if there was a time we could get together. Keith's one of those long-term...
Continue reading "It Says Something About Me..." »
Below is the track listing and some notes I put together for a compilation I made for Keith. I seem to have become a Texas music pusher recently, if only because here in the northeast it is more likely that...
Continue reading "But You Might Like the Music" »
Aimee Mann Lost in Space Some albums take time to understand and appreciate. In fact, I've found that a number of my favorites started out being simply interesting and that it took several listens, sometimes years, before I discovered that...
Continue reading "Lost in Space" »
Of course, while I was away, Jim Henley has to start a great blogthread about one of my favorite subjects, the "cover song." I've long been an aficionado of strange versions of songs, likely due to the fact that one...
Continue reading "Cover Me" »
Jim Henley's continuing discussion on cover songs reminded me of another of my many interests in music because of something else that I share with Jim, a love for comics. I've long been keeping a list in my head of...
Continue reading "Songs about Guys and Gals in Tights" »
More on this topic, since I like it so much (and so does Jim). First, Michael Bowen says that Weird Al is a cover artist. I love Weird Al, and his music is great, but he's a parodist, not a...
Continue reading "More Covers" »
Following up on my previous post about songs with comic references, I discovered another while coming into work today, as the iPod on random play found a reference to Superman, albeit one that doesn't mention him by name:I wonder what...
Continue reading "Comic World" »
Bruce Hornsby, Harbor Lights Although both emerged from similar roots, the cross-pollination of rock and jazz is fairly limited. There's the heavy horns of 70s groups Chicago, Tower of Power, and Blood, Sweat and Tears; the cool jazz fusion...
Continue reading "Harbor Lights" »
We did our bi-annual visit to the CD Cellar in Falls Church yesterday, in anticipation of the yucky weather that moved into our area last night. There's a rule in our house that you can't purchase a CD over $10,...
Continue reading "January New(ish) Music" »
Keith proposes a neat idea: "List your favorite artists, from A to Z, with only one artist per letter."A is for Anderson, Laurie B is for Bush, Kate C is for Costello, Elvis D is for Doe, John (and X)...
Continue reading "From A to Z in the Favorite Listening Alphabet" »
Nate at Polytropos brings this to my attention: what can you tell about someone from their musical taste by putting their entire music collection on random and then listing the first ten songs played (something that was basically impossible before...
Continue reading "Ten Shuffled Songs" »
by Talking Heads My memories of Friday nights when I was in high school center around two things: playing in the band at football games and watching late night TV while eating a much-delayed dinner afterwards. In the early...
Continue reading "Speaking in Tongues" »
by Elvis Costello I was six years late to this discovery, but that was somewhat typical to my situation. I grew up in small town Texas and, whereas disco had already died by 1980 elsewhere, it fought a losing...
Continue reading "My Aim Is True" »
by the Kingston Trio When my mother was in high school she joined the record club where they automatically sent you that month's selection unless you told them not to by sending back the selection card saying 'not this...
Continue reading "...from the "Hungry i"" »
Steve Bogart introduced me to the music of Randall Bramblett on a mixed CD swap with him, putting the song "Vague Child" from Bramblett's 2001 CD No More Mr. Lucky as the first song on it. A good opener, too,...
Continue reading "Randall Bramblett with special guest Bill Deasy" »
He's a small man, dressed in jeans and confident in his age to not care that his hair is entirely gray now. He comes out on the small stage in front of the dinner and show crowd at the Birchmere...
Continue reading "David Byrne at the Birchmere" »
by Michelle Shocked As music lovers, we all have certain styles or similarities that mark our musical tastes. This was illustrated for me recently when my friend Steve made me a mixed CD that was heavy on multi-part harmony,...
Continue reading "Captain Swing" »
by Timbuk 3 For most people, Timbuk 3 is the answer to that music trivia question of what band had the one hit in the mid-1980s about the future being so bright you have to wear shades. But for...
Continue reading "Greetings from Timbuk 3" »
I know it's hard to believe, but there are still some great albums that have never made the transfer to the digital domain. Some are just too esoteric, like the soundtrack to The Black Stallion, which might have a couple...
Continue reading "The Name of This Post is Happiness" »
Work on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie continues apace, and Douglas Adams continues to garner more posthumous attention as well with radio adaptations of the final three books in the "trilogy." I've long been a fan of the...
Continue reading "Hitchhiker's Guide to Radio Adaptations" »
by Darden Smith The progression of Darden Smith from his debut as a Lyle Lovett-lite country crooner to the smooth adult contemporary sound of Little Victories would have been alarming had there not been three intervening albums (two solo,...
Continue reading "Little Victories" »
by Kate Bush The liner notes for this album say, "This album was made to be played loud," which might surprise someone who comes in on the song which features someone braying like a donkey. But playing this album...
Continue reading "The Dreaming" »
I wrote here over a year ago about my love for collaborative filters, the use of informatics to collect information and provide recommendations based on that collection. At the time, I said that I was using Amazon and RateYourMusic for...
Continue reading "AudioScrobbler" »
I've got John Scalzi in my sidebar, added originally on the recommendation of Medley, then stuck there because the guy is interesting and can make a post about writing a book possibly more interesting than reading the book itself. So,...
Continue reading "Follow John Scalzi" »
by James McMurtry We went and saw McMurtry with his current touring band, the Heartless Bastards, live at Iota in Arlington a few months ago, and I was disappointed. Not with McMurtry, but with the venue. I doubt he...
Continue reading "Live in Aught-Three" »
by Elvis Costello Unlike other rock artists with superb debuts, Elvis Costello's sophomore release only improves on the strengths of his first release. The lyrics are sharper, the songs even more energetic, the production cleaner, and the players an...
Continue reading "This Year's Model" »
by The Polyphonic Spree Whatever happened to the concept album? It seemed in the 70s and 80s that you couldn't escape them, that every band with any pretension of artistry released one, if not more, and this fueled the...
Continue reading "Together We're Heavy" »
I spent most of last week around Austin, Texas, and a lot of that time in the car as I was driving between stores and shopping for Christmas gifts. As is normal when I'm in the area, I tuned the...
Continue reading "In Praise of KGSR" »
by Tim Finn My introduction to Tim Finn was his entry into Crowded House, his brother Neil's band of the time, on the album Woodface. Most people, however, were already familiar with the brothers Finn from Tim's previous band,...
Continue reading "Before and After" »
by William Shatner This is a good, maybe even great, album of personal music. Right now, as I listen to it once again, I shake my head in disbelief, because I never expected to actually enjoy listening repeatedly to...
Continue reading "Has Been" »
I'm with Jim Henley in being excited about a new Aimee Mann album, although I strongly disagree with him about her last couple of albums, which he called a "droning jag." At first listen, the songs on both Lost in...
Continue reading "New Aimee Mann album forthcoming" »
When I was writing my first novel in 2000-2001, I would often want to play some kind of music in the background. Unfortunately, I'm a very active music listener, and lyrics would distract me from the writing I was trying...
Continue reading "Dead Can Dance at Strathmore Music Center" »
I got in the car today and my new favorite radio station, WTMD, was playing a song I had never heard before (one of the reasons why it's my new favorite radio station). I turned it up because it sounded...
Continue reading "Breaking a 12-year Silence" »
by Rodney Crowell The first six songs of this album are as hook-laden and catchy as anything by today's teen queens, but that's where the comparison ends, because Rodney Crowell's lyrics are unusual and his voice has a frequently noticeable...
Continue reading "The Outsider" »
by Laurie Anderson I think this is probably Laurie Anderson's single best work, although there are some great songs and stories on her other albums. But there's usually something on one of those other albums that I'm quick to hit...
Continue reading "Mister Heartbreak" »
Is it just me, or is there more than a passing comparison between Badfinger's 1971 hit "Day After Day" and Joe Jackson's "Breaking Us in Two" (from Night and Day)? And, then, that begs the question if Jackson intended you...
Continue reading "Separated at Composition?" »
A chance comment from a Puzzle Pirates buddy led me to check out Charlotte Martin's web site to see if she was going to be in our area, and lo and behold, she was set to play Vienna, VA's Jammin'...
Continue reading "Charlotte Martin at Jammin' Java" »
I didn't get tickets to see Neko Case at the 9:30 Club, mainly because I dislike standing for three hours in a smoke-filled room. Turns out the smoke was gone, although I'm sure it was still standing-room-only, because Case is...
Continue reading "Neko Live" »
Lindsey Buckingham is one of my favorite artists both solo and with Fleetwood Mac. So when I saw that he was going to release a new album and tour solo, I checked to see if he would be playing near...
Continue reading "Why I Won't Go See Lindsey Buckingham" »
I've got tickets for two upcoming shows, both by fellows named Bob. The first is Bob Pollard, playing at the Sonar in Baltimore. Pollard is the ex-leader of Guided by Voices, and is one of those older musicians who actually...
Continue reading "Upcoming Concerts" »
Apple announces that it has teamed up with a number of airlines to provide iPod connectivity in-flight. I certainly hope this is true, as my 3G iPod can barely make the 6-hour trip to England without running out of juice....
Continue reading "AirPod?" »
In the last year I've been listening to a lot of music, and yet I've not been tempted at all to try to tune into America's music TV sensation, despite having a number of friends who recommend the show. It's...
Continue reading "What's Wrong with American Idol" »
by Bob Schneider Bob Schneider has been a mainstay of the Austin music scene for over ten years now, and still remains fairly unknown outside of Texas. In fact, at a recent concert in Virginia, it seemed the audience was...
Continue reading "The Californian" »
by Rush I recall once telling Mike Godwin that this was one of my favorite albums, to which his reply was, "But you can't dance to it." I'm not sure if he was being facetious at the time, referring of...
Continue reading "Moving Pictures" »
by Kate Bush I bought this in 1986, having heard Bill Humphries sing the praises of Kate Bush for months. It was the Spring-Summer of my triumphant return to UT Austin (before the inevitable Second Fall from Grace that was...
Continue reading "Hounds of Love" »
We thought it a bit unusual that Bruce Cockburn would be playing a set at the Washington National Cathedral, but who are we to turn down an invitation to see an artist that we've liked for some time (I can...
Continue reading "Bruce Almighty: Bruce Cockburn at the Washington National Cathedral" »
The band I'm in, the Semiotics, will be playing our first "gig" in my backyard on August 4th at 6pm. The Semiotics are Matt Cutter (Vocals, Guit