A new commercial for the new Honda Civic. (Worth the download time, Ted.)
Turn up the speakers or don headphones and listen carefully to the sounds as the video loads.
When you see the car, click on the “WATCH” button at the bottom. Watch the film. Then watch the rehearsals.
A radio interview with Andy Jackson on the making of The Wall (movie soundtrack) which spun off The Final Cut. Didn’t know that. The combined 3 disks are some of my favorite CDs.
Wade borrowed the idea from Walt:
I sing the body electric
I celebrate the me yet to come
I toast to my own reunion
When I become one with the sun
— Wade Lassiter, soundtrack to the movie Fame
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul
I knew the line from the song in the movie Fame, but not remembering that, I stumbled on the original by Walt Whitman. Or rather, a revision, by Walt Whitman. The 1860 original version of the poem started off “O my children! O mates!” He changed the first line to “I SING the body electric!” in 1867.
I ended up searching for the line because I thought of it when I used my finger in place of my broken cell phone antenna. I was only able to get good reception if I pressed my finger into the antenna well where it had snapped off. This created an indention in my finger, but I was able to get 5 bars instead of 2.
The body makes a good cell phone antenna in a pinch.
When I first heard about Nickel Creek a few years ago, I bought their first, self-titled album and gave it to Danny. This was an example of three young kids who were created excellent music through what was obviously years and years of practice and hard work. Their bluegrass sound and vocal harmonies deliver a lot of punch for three kids using no electrical instruments or drums. I thoroughly enjoyed their instrumentals including Ode To A Butterfly and the House of Tom Bombadil.
I so also bought their second album, This Side, and gave it to Danny. Danny is now off to college and has left both CDs at home, although I’m pretty sure he has them stored on his iBook. I’m not sure how much he likes their music. Maybe he can leave a comment here.
Nickel Creek recently came out with their third album, Why Should The Fire Die? I heard about it on XM Radio’s The Loft. The band planned on playing their entire new album straight through live in the XM studios. I marked my calendar and made sure to record it using my XM MyPal (which can record up to 5 hours at a time.) The session was a lot of fun to listen to because of the small audience and the banter that occured between each song. The band members took turns giving background on each song.
I decided to try to make my own “LIVE CD”. I discovered that the newly installed Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) included Sound Studio. I was able to record the entire session, then break up the songs into tracks and create a CD. If you are interested in Nickel Creek, I would be glad to let you listen to this CD. Just send me an e-mail. If you know about the mac17 library, you can visit that, too.
Through this whole process, I’ve listened to the session four or five times. I really like the new album, and I think my favorite song is Anthony, which is a short, funny “old school” sounding song.
I’ve run into several songs from the album Badlands – A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and as a collection I’ve enjoyed the songs as much as I’ve always enjoyed the original album. So I bought it. Finishing the first listen, I can tell it will be one of my favorites. Much like the Elton John / Bernie Taupin tribute album Two Rooms, the variety of artists makes for a great listen.
I don’t know why Nebraska has always been one of my favorite albums. It is as much a demo record in that Springsteen recorded the songs in 4 track for what he intended to be a full band album, but he liked the raw sound enough that he published the songs mostly recorded in his home.
The Badlands tribute, at Springsteen’s request, were also recorded in 4 track. I particularly like Crooked Fingers’ Mansion On The Hill, Dar Williams’ Highway Patrolman, Deana Carter’s State Trooper, Ani DiFranco’s Used Cars, and Aimee Mann & Michael Penn’s Reason To Believe. Ben Harper’s My Father’s House is probably my favorite.
There’s not a bad song or artist rendition on the album.
Now playing: My Father’s House by Ben Harper
This is a TinyUrl that will (for the rest of time) search for the exact phrase “The Psychic Hearts”. Putting the quotes around a phrase in Google will look only for pages with that exact phrase.
So as long as TinyUrl.com and Google.com exist, this is the URL that will do that search:
UPDATE: The owner of the dot com variation ends up at the top of the search above. So I created this second tinyurl which adds “nico” to the search string at google. So the search is: nico “The Psychic Hearts”
I’ve also updated the title of this posting.
The MyFi has a “mem” button. Press it and the current artist and song title are recorded in a list. Nice way to capture on the fly a song you want to research later:
Jerry Douglas: We Hide & Seek (Bluegrass Junction)
Skaggs/Carpenter: Blue Night (Bluegrass Junction)
Long Winters: Blue Diamonds (XM Cafe)
Patty Griffin: Mary (Hear Music)
Stevie Wonder: Reggae Woman (Hear Music)
The Old Runined: The Old Ruined (Fine Tuning)
Lee Morgan: The Rumproller (Real Jazz)
Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard TIme : Sweet Home Alabama (Bluegrass Junction)
Alison Krauss: Unionhouse Branch (Bluegrass Junction)
Rick Wakeman: Yes Medley Live (Fine Tuning)
Cat Stevens: Angelsea (The Loft)
Damnwells: Sleepsinging (The Loft)
Aztec Camera: Jump (The Loft)
Rickie Lee Jones: Show Biz Kids (The Loft)
Now standing on a side table in our dining room is a small, iPod-like device that you might not notice except is has a soft, glowing screen. If you look close it says “Frank’s Place.” At the same time, every radio in the house is now tuned to FM 88.0 playing commercial-free jazz, including Frank Sinatra songs. Our Tivoli Audio radios do an exceptional job at picking up the signal and producing very rich, static-free sound.
The little device is a MyFi and if you look close you can follow a little black wire that goes behind a curtain. On the windowsill behind the curtain is a little black thing a bit larger that a matchbook. It is watching the southern sky and receiving 150+ stations from XM-Radio’s satellite.
A thumbwheel on the little device lets me quickly navigate through the channels. Earlier I was accidentally listening to country music because I had chosen “Hank’s Place” thinking it was “Frank’s Place.”
I can press a “2Go” button and the MyFi will record up to 5 hours of music tracks. If I take the MyFi for a walk, ride, or into a basement without a southern exposure, I can replay the last 5 hours of recorded tracks off any of the channels. The rechargeable battery also lasts 5 hours.
* * *
I’ve always liked the idea renting all of the music vs. buying some of the music. That’s one reason I’ve never gotten an iPod because it depended on me managing my own limited collection of music. I prefer to let someone else manage the collection because it leads to more surprises and greater diversity. I’d also rather listen to speakers than headphones, although the MyFi comes with ear buds. The FM broadcasting feature works amazingly well in the house or car.
This purchase was preceded by several people at work thoroughly enjoying XM-Radio. More recently a few have picked up the MyFi (sort of an iPod fed by satellite.) For several weekends I tried out the 3-day trial service to listen to the 150+ stations over the internet. I really liked the Jazz, Bluegrass, Deep Tracks, and Frank’s Place (Sinatra) stations.
When someone at work signed up this week for a buy-one-get-one-free / family plan offer at Best Buy, I looked at it and decided I would sign up, too. Kelly and I picked one up last night on the way to Mom and Dad’s. I got home pretty late, but had the thing hooked up and working in about an hour. Signing up for the service took longer than setting up the MyFi, and that was mainly because I took time figuring out a way to avoid the $9.95 registration fee. I ended up doing even better.
Tip 1: Avoid registration fees and get the first three months free by finding a promo code through Google. Search on “XM-Radio promo code.” I was able to find one and waive the $9.95 activation fee as well as the first three months of $12.95 fees.
Tip 2: You’ll need southern sky exposure for the satellite antenna. The device is quite small and comes with about 20 feet of wire, so you could have the antenna in one room and the MyFi in another.
Tip 3: Buy Tivoli Audio radios. The experience of using multiple radios on multiple floors with the FM broadcast mode (vs hard wiring to a single stereo) would not have been as pleasurable without the Tivoli fine-tuning technology.
While I bought the MyFi to help relieve my long commutes to work, I think I’ll end up using the “free” Roady2 XM Radio in the car so that the family can use the MyFi by day. I sent off for the rebate Roady2 in the mail today. Stay tuned…. (ha ha.)
No, not Macintoshes or iPods. Newsweek has an article about Fiona Apple’s new album, Extraordinary Machines. Apparently it was made in 2003, but Sony did not think the experimental music was commercially viable and decided not to release it.
Someone started leaking songs out recently, and now the entire album is available all over the internet. There is speculation it may have been Fiona herself because she has something of an anti-music industry sentiment because of some bad experiences with her first two albums.
Took about 3 minutes to find the entire album. I’m enjoying listening to it as I type. It’s also in the Mac5 music library… if you know about that. 🙂