Tag: music

Just add DJ

During this whole pandemic I have been pondering how to have satisfying social events that are not centered around food and drinks, which was my usual in the before times.

New experiment today was having a friend do a masked dj set in the kitchen during a craft party. 10/10 recommend craft rave.

New album from the MRI

Update: just got a middle-of-the-night MRI and I cannot recommend it enough to (non-claustrophobic) fans of noise music, experimental techno, etc.

The MRI tech explained that the magnetic pulses can induce currents in your body, so in addition to the vibrations from the loud noises, some people feel tingling or see lights. Wish they could harness that for a club experience.

New album from the dishwasher

One time I finished listening to an ambient album but I didn’t realize for 45 minutes because the dishwasher was on.

One time I sent my work chat a link to a website that autoplayed a weird ambient soundtrack, but I didn’t realize because I was already listening to weird ambient music and it blended right in.

But none of these beat Simon, inveterate listener of weird ambient music. One time he was reading alone in a room with no music on, and our child walked in and announced “this is the weirdest music you have ever listened to” about the sound of a sprinkler coming in through the window.

Always a happy sight

Dark photo of a nightclub stage where three musicians are playing under red lighting. In the center, the drummer is wearing a black, ear-loop mask.

Shout out to the drummer from Sumac for performing in a mask the other night. And shout out to Vancouver Jazz Fest for having an early show with a bit of seating so this Long Covid / ME/CFS spoonie could attend some nightlife (in a respirator).

(Not perfect– stairs-only access! But I appreciated that they marked that info on the ad at least.)

For Jessica: Sexy Ladies Let Me Talk To You

Sexy Ladies Let Me Talk To You by Justin Timberlake

  • In the course of spending some quality time with myself over my 32nd birthday, I found myself cleaning the bath and having a 5pm dance party.
  • Jessica Yarish if you named a Justin Timberlake song you would name it this, I think?
  • I am trying to post gifts for people over here instead of on Facebook.

Like Busby Berkeley with censorship bars

Toe Jam by David Byrne feat. Dizzee Rascal (via).

I need to organize more time to hang out naked with my friends. I love it so much. In the summer, there is usually night swimming and maybe this year I’ll go to our local nudie lake with it’s one hilariously small dock. But what about winter? What about now? I don’t think there is a women’s bath or anything in this town. I need to organize some nudeness at home. Anybody want to come over and take expressive naked photos? Give me a call.

Dead teenager songs

Undead teenager... Madonna/Iggy Pop

Behold! The only discussion of dead teenager songs that I haven’t found completely tedious!

I love ridiculous catalogs that overwhelm even the archivist, and this archivist is barely keeping a handle on his dead teen songs. If I set out to organize dozens of melodramatic ballads by cause of death (cars, rivers… surfing…) I’d probably get a bit silly too.

Honey – Bobby Goldsboro (1968) Kind of a twist, it sounds like she crashed the car and survived, but then died of some sort of disease. Most of the song is about the tree he planted.

He makes fun of most of the songs, but he still catalogs them. This role model might help me break on through to a “so bad they’re good” appreciation of these songs. I’m always game to stop hating something.

What really makes this list for me, though, is the inclusion of songs I genuinely like. I may be all burnt out on Leader Of The Pack and Tell Laura I Love Her, but I can still handle these post-punk gems:

(The photo above is a shot of Madonna that Galen pointed out looks just like Iggy Pop. They’re both kind of undead.)

Songs about death #1 (with bonus beard)

One of the death-related things I’ve been collecting is music. Death songs aren’t as common as love songs, but they’re up there, especially if you count songs about killing. I’m hoping to regularly post music here… say, every Tuesday, since today is the day I found The Saddest Beard In The World.

“Hope There’s Someone,” by Antony & The Johnsons is one of my favourite songs about dying. So weighty! “Oh I’m scared of the middle place between life and nowhere…” I wonder if the solution to that fear could actually be unlocked by contemplating this bearded gentleman and his ice cream (and the ice cream in his beard).

I’m not kidding— those heavy sighs are committed and respectful as well as hilarious. Watching this video makes me feel ok about most things.

I should really go visit my old relatives

Last night Galen and I popped down to Pagliacci’s to pick up a pre-amp from Brooke, who was playing there. Pag’s jazz jam in full effect! It had been awhile since I’d been down for one of those nights. I think it was officially a Marc Atkinson show, but he was out of town, so the rest of the band asked Brooke to come play, and then various musicians came in off the street, and everyone on stage played several instruments so they all took turns switching. A pot pourri.

Of particular note, I finally got to hear Devon sing, and he is not kidding around about singing. I was having major grampa-convergence feelings watching him get settled on stage, though, because he was wearing the same kind of cuddly, old-man cardigan that my grampa always does, and this great plaid cap. Furthermore, Devon started out sitting in a chair on stage with no instrument and no microphone, no obvious reason for being there, just looking contented and watching the other guys play the intro.

My grampa does that kind of thing a lot, since his Alzheimer’s got noticeable. I’ve done a lot of sitting with the old guy, looking around and being contented. It made me think that my grampa should join a band. I think he’d be into it, as long as they played something old timey.

Watching people sketch

We ran into Erik and Leni at the show last night and shared their table. I got distracted, watching Erik draw on the back of a poster he ripped down from the bar window. He’s fast, and starts right in on the details without blocking anything in. I took a dark picture of the poster after he taped it up backwards on the window again, but I forgot to look at it from outside when we left.

After that, and spending a lot of time scribbling on our bar table as a group, I was excited to see a little ““watch people sketch online”:http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/12/watch_and_rate_peopl.html” game posted on BoingBoing this morning. But it turns out to not be that interesting. Maybe it has to do with texture? Maybe I only like watching people I know.

Galen is still considering starting some kind of one-thing-every-day blog. Maybe he should post a little video of himself drawing a picture. Like that landscape painter with the happy little trees, but not educational. Spectator art!

My desert island would probably be annoying

Ukelele torture/party

I’m with Mark Frauenfelder— a live ukelele weirdo beats the pants off any radio. Who watches that ad and wants to hang out with Mr. Grouchypants?

This reminds me of the Most Wanted/Unwanted Songs project, where researchers attempted to create the most agreeable and disagreeable songs in the history of the world. The disagreeable one was a 25-minute, bagpipe-Opera-rap with clip-clop noises and a chorus of children, and it was awesome. I’ll take that over a bland, romantic, R’n‘B duet any day. Marketing focus groups don’t see things that way, I guess.

I can’t stop watching the ukelele ad. The little white socks!

Data slob

My friend and erstwhile coworker Justin just found 1.3GB of my old MP3s in the dark recesses of his work hard drive, from last December when I was briefly stationed on his machine. He was happy to have “Common People.” Thinking about it, I believe I deposited that song on at least 3 workstations on that campus, and possibly also on a network drive.

Fangirl/pirate/slob/nomad.

Leftovers (almost left behinds)

It is really easy to stop writing. I think of ideas or stories I want to write down every day, but if I don’t act on the seed within a certain window, the urge just sort of passes.

  1. My ideas are not worth writing down for posterity, or they’d be worth writing down the next day.
  2. I should write more often, if I’m going to write at all.

Urges that have passed in the last few days:

  • Telling you about Antony and the Johnsons playing in a cathedral in Vancouver. Especially about how overwhelming and fantastic it was after about the fourth song, when the sound man finally turned up the volume just enough to resonate in the architecture. And about the comfort of seeing a genderqueer sensation sing in a church, along with a varied crowd of freaks and families and plainer sorts. I really like it when things don’t have to be burdened by being a radical act.
  • Writing out the caffeinated explanation I came up with for why I laugh so much. I don’t think of myself as a giggly person, but somebody probably does. Once the caffeine wore off, this train of thought seemed highly drug-induced: self-absorbed and overly sincere. The jist of it was that I laugh at the paradox of everything being absurd, yet perfect. Am I in my ninth grade mystical phase all over again? I did not know caffeine held this potential for unselfconscious declaration. Maybe it’s a better vision quest drug than I initially thought.