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

— Walt Whitman

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.