Tuesday, December 13, 2011

2011 Year in Review

One song picked, know the other two artists just need to choose the song.
Thursday December 29th, does that work for everyone?

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Read and Discuss? What is the New 'Adult Contemporary'?

http://www.avclub.com/articles/what-makes-music-boring,65075/

I was listening to the Slate Culture Gabfest, and they were discussing this article, specifically:

The fine music critic Nitsuh Abebe of New York Magazine learned this the hard way when he recently wrote a piece arguing that Wilco and Feist have become modern equivalents of Sting and his “adult-contemporary” peers. Abebe’s essay drew a lot of criticism from those who interpreted “adult-contemporary” and the Sting comparison as cheap shots. “Adult-contemporary,” after all, is really just another way of saying “boring.” It is a descriptor that is now a criticism, just as Sting has gone from being the frontman of The Police to a go-to signifier of “meh.”

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Music Club Meetings down the road

How does Nov 17th work for the "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" theme music club?

Also, how about another "Best of the Year" music club in January when our Gina is in town? 

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Musngs from a music cluber!

 London double decker buses blast The Arctic Monkees and The Libertines from their speakers.  
London buses are cool.
 

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Whatcha all doing on Saturday November 12th?

Who would like to join me for this event?

Nov
12 Sat, 11/12 at 9pm at The Sunset John Wesley Harding & The King Charles Trio and Thee Minus Five

The Sunset presents:

John Wesley Harding & The King Charles Trio + Thee Minus Five featuring (in alphabetical order):

Peter Buck (REM)
Jenny Conlee-Drizos (The Decemberists)
Chris Funk (The Decemberists)
John Wesley Harding (Appearing as Himself)
Scott McCaughey (The Minus Five)
John Moen (The Decemberists)
Nate Query (The Decemberists)

$15 tickets. Doors at 9pm. Show starts at 10pm

Monday, October 24, 2011

Timing

Itunes gift card arrives in mail the same day Tom Waits new album releases.  Hmmm, maybe I don't have to buy EVERY CD he puts out.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Genius?

So I have a question. Is genius really, you know, genius?
I did a test and genius-ized DEATH BY PERFECTION from Music CLub 7 (thanks, Gina).
Does this seem like a thought out playlist worthy of genius, or am I expecting to much? How did Them Crooked Vultures get in there? With How You Like ME Now and Dog & Butterfly?

Friday, October 7, 2011

Speaking of the Final Countdown Dr. T...

Me thinks this has the makings of a totally tubular MC Theme...

"RS Poll names worst songs of the 80s"

1 - Starship - 'We Built This City'
2 - Europe - 'The Final Countdown'
3 - Chris De Burgh - 'Lady In Red'
4 - Wham! - 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go'
5 - Men Without Hats - 'The Safety Dance'
6 - Falco - 'Rock Me Amadeus'
7 - Bobby McFerrin - 'Don't Worry Be Happy'
8 - Toni Basil - 'Mickey'
9 - Taco - 'Puttin' On The Ritz'
10 - Rick Astley - 'Never Gonna Give You Up'

Read More @: http://www.nme.com/news/nme/59655

Thursday, September 29, 2011

We Are The Champions

...voted catchiest pop song of all time. By scientists no less!

I can only assume our dear friend and scholar Dr. Turner can either dismiss or corroborate these findings. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2043089/Queens-We-Are-The-Champions-voted-catchiest-pop-song-time--scientists.html#ixzz1ZNwxVDX2

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

HOF Noms are Out!

Dudes and Dudettes - Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame Noms came out today and it looks like a potentially good class of inductees! I think I know who I'm voting (meaning hoping) for, you?

First time noms:
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Heart
Rufus w/Chaka Khan
G 'n R
Eric B. & Rakim
The Cure
The Spinners
Freddy King

Trying to make it this time since losing out last time noms:
The Beastie Boys
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Donna Summer
Laura Nyro
Donovan
War

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Alison on the radio


So I used to listen to A Prairie Home Companion on Sundays. Mostly it annoyed me, but occasionally something interesting would come up. I always liked the Ketchup skit.
Anyway, I stopped listening a while back, but I happened to turn it on this morning. Nick Lowe was on and he just sang the sweetest version of ALISON. It was so sad.
I probably won't listen to APHC much in the future, but this was a nice goodbye.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

So, the new Wilco record

NPR is streaming it this week.  I listened to it on my ear buds at work while I was doing some bullshit crap for the coffee man and I was like "It's alright."   I've been playing the Stephen Malkmus album non-stop (I'm seeing him in two weeks!!!!!!) so I had to adjust.  
I listened to it again at work today in a better frame of mind and thought "yes, i'm getting Summerteeth AND A Ghost is Born."  And then.
NPR has this handy app for iphones where you can listen to the albums on your phone so now I'm listening to the album LOUD on SPEAKERS in the comfort of my home and I'm really digging it.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Question for the Group

So, by "Music" we must be contained to audio as I'm not seeing any post Video Music Awards banter... what up wit dat?

Friday, August 26, 2011

I'm posting from my phone!
Cool?
Anything but cool?
Excited for music and sun and beergarden'

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

RIP, Nick Ashford

My heart goes out to Valerie Simpson. Their love was solid as a rock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/arts/music/nick-ashford-of-motown-writing-duo-dies-at-70.html?_r=1&ref=music

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/musicians-mourn-ashford-at-his-own-bar/

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

August 26th Concert at The Mural?

http://blog.kexp.org/blog/kexp-seattle-center-presents-concerts-at-the-mural-2011/

I'm in, anyone care to join me?

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The Whole In One

I'm kind of excited about choosing the 1 artist that gets all 3 of my votes.
Who will it be? Someone that everyone says, "Oh yeah. I totally pictured Jim being in to this guy."Or, "Seriously, Fred likes this crap? Now I have three of these songs to immediately delete from my Ipod?" Or, "This band actually has 3 songs! How have they been off my radar this long?"
Which will it be? Even I don't know.

I wake up at 6:00 every morning with an itchy milking hand.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Britney hit me

This has not been a great new music year for me so far. The past two years there was all kinds of new stuff that I loved: Spoon, Titus Andronicus, Broken Social Scene, The Books and so on but the only new release that I can think of this year that I've liked was the new Iron and Wine, and even that isn't the kind of disc that you are playing over and over.

So it's been a year of catching up on stuff I didn't know much of before. The new stuff from the past month:

godspeed you! black emperor -- Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada. It's always so cute to spell a C word with a K. As you might guess I like this quite a bit. It's just two songs that are proggy as hell so I'll be getting more from them.

The Streets -- Original Pirate Radio. I believe I like A Grand Doesn't Come For Free better, but this is still quite good. My one problem with Mike Skinner is that I sort of feel like I'm listening to Karl Pilkington rapping after awhile. Which has an entertainment value of its own.

Flight of the Conchords -- I Told You I Was Freaky. While we were camping this weekend Marcy and I had a singalong to Carol Brown. The stupid song has been in my head ever since.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I almost forgot one: Explosions In The Sky -- The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. Cheery. Actually, I'm not sure what to think of this one yet. It is sort of listening to electronica except it's all done with guitars. So more than anything else it feels like Stevie Ray Vaughan doing Pink Floyd, though that's not quite right either.

EDIT THE SECOND: For some reason, I can create posts from work but when I try to just comment all it shows is anonymous. Weird.

Anyway, two more things I forgot. First, I do also like James Blake and also the Cave Singers discs from this year. So that's three.

Second, I don't know how I missed mentioning: Beirut -- The Gulag Orkestra. This is really just a lovely disc. I'm reminded of Bon Iver singing Devotchka, but I like this better than I would probably like that. Anyway, quite late to that parade but the disc deserves all the praise it got.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Rave On Buddy Holly

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/19/137220161/first-listen-rave-on-buddy-holly

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Time to share your one hit wonders...

Where: Debbie & Pat's
What: One Hit Wonders
Why: Because we love music club and it has been way too long
When: 7:00 p.m. on... June 1,2,15 or 16th

And now a challenge, some new music that I have heard and perhaps you all have as well. I have listed a song chosen specifically for you all, by me, and I would like you to critique my choices. Do not hold back!

Greg- a song for you to seek out-"Codeine" by Jason Isbell & The 400 Units, I would like your thoughts...

Jim- a song I would like your thoughts on- "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)" by Charles Bradley

Marcy- talk to me about- "Funeral Party" by Finale

Gina- A ditty for you to share your thoughts on by the Smith Westerns "Weekend"

Patrick- This guy should ring a bell for you; David Lowery "Raise Em Up On Honey"

And now discuss...

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

It's not time to make a change

Iron and Wine is this decades Cat Stevens. And that is not a slur friends, 'cause I love me some Cat Stevens.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Got two turntables and a microphone

So one of the whole reasons for yesterdays post was that I wanted to give a quick rundown of the new stuff that I've been listening to over the past month. Or more precisely, new to me.

Olivia Tremor Control -- Dusk at Cubist Castle: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of my favorite discs, so I've been wanting to check this out for awhile since Jeff Magnum is heavily featured in both. I usually roll my eyes whenever something is labeled at "Beatle-esque" because I have never actually heard anything of the sort in music so described. Except here, I really kind of do. Which is cool. I like this quite a bit, and thankfully it seems on casual listens to be nowhere as harrowing as ITAOTS.

Tortoise -- Beacons of Ancestorship: I have one other Tortoise disc that I can't remember the title of offhand, but I like it enough to give this a try. But this veers periously close to jazz fusion. And if there is one thing besides Modern Country that I am not a fan of, it is jazz fusion.

Aim -- Flight 602: This on the other hand is just excellent workin' music. Nice beats, clever samples. A couple vocals which are a little weaker than the rest of the disc, but I'm a fan of this guy.

Streets -- A Grand Don't Come for Free: I thank Music Club for turning me on to this even though it took awhile to finally download. This is awesome and I'll be getting the rest soon.

Frank Zappa -- Joe's Garage parts 1-3: Listening to this again after 20-odd years I find the things that tickled my 18 year old brain still do, and though I still think there are too many 8 minute guitar solos I do appreciate the complexity of the music far more now. At least one disc too long though. And it is sort of a shame that the vulgarity sort of obscures the arrangements. Which is an odd feeling for me since prudishness is not really something I relate to.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I want to bite the hand that feeds me

Slow day and I haven't posted for awhile and so for some god-forsaken reason I thought I'd share how I process music these days on the trusty ol' iPod. Ideally I'd just hit random and everything would come up in a perfectly spaced manner and then this post would be over, but of course it has to be much more complicated than that.

You may say "Why, Pat, why must you be so random? Whatever is wrong with listening to entire discs? I don't even know you anymore, man!". Fair. Easy response is that I don't want to have to figure out what to listen to every forty minutes or so. Slightly deeper response is that I love the spontaneity of radio but hate what actually ends up being radio programming. And to get to the core of the matter I have a fascination with the theory of randomness and the ways that it manifests itself, whether through fate, divination or even quantum mechanics; and even more than that the ways that order might be discerned in the midst of randomness. Not having a particular aptitude for mathematics past intermediate algebra and/or Excel formulas I have to rely on more layman and pragmatic ways to indulge this fascination, and putting together the perfect daily random song generation system is about as close as I can regularly get to that.

I do not believe the theories that Apple has any kind of complicated algorithym that determines what comes up when one hits shuffle on their iPod, mainly because I do not see any reason that a company that has the goal of maximizing a profit margin needs to do anything more complicated than assigning each file a number and then generating a random number to play next. That said, boy do the same numbers seem to come up more often than I'd prefer and conversely many numbers I really want to hear come up seldom if ever. Thus, the need to improve on the standard.

First of all I have a master playlist (creatively enough called "A List"). This currently consists of around 6,000 songs (I think there are closer to 10-12K in our entire iTunes library), and is populated in part with: Any new songs over the past few years I've done this, everything by artists I'm still interested in hearing, all music club selections, and generally everything in my library that I don't think will make me groan when it comes on. Mistakes have been made of both inclusion and omission I am sure. That's just too many songs for me to rank in any kind of rating system, so how we choose what gets played out of that list is based on number of plays.

This is where smart playlists come in. I have nine of them, each populating with 20 songs when I sync. They are:
New Music: Songs that have been added in the past 30 days and have not been played in the past 3 days.
0-9 15 days: Songs that have been played up to nine times, and that have not been played in the past 15 days.
0-9 60 days: Songs that have been played up to nine times, and that have not been played in the past 60 days. This is great for catching those songs that you totally forget about.

The songs with zero to nine plays are somewhere around 55% of the master list as a whole. I was surprised to realize that it was that high.

8-19 15 days: You get the general idea by now.
8-19 60 days

Those are probably the least populated, around 15-20% last time I checked.

19-30 30 days
30+: Songs with more than 30 plays that have not been played for 7 days.
These are the classic gold that you never mind having pop up, so the interval isn't as big.

The final two lists are:
Past Year: Songs that have been added in the past year (I forget the interval here). Helps to make the general tone of the station more current.
Random: Any song from the master list (forget this interval too) that are not on any of the other lists.

So all of those lists are combined under a master list called appropriately enough "Radio Radio". My iPod is checked to have that be the only playlist that syncs (though I do have some particular artists/genres checked in case the mood strikes). Every day after work when I charge the songs that played that day drop off the various lists and are replaced by new entries. When I start listening in the morning I just start up "Radio Radio" on shuffle and boom, a new playlist every day.

Now to be sure there are some iPod quirks that come up. For one thing there definitely seem to be "Artists of the Day" where you'll get five or six songs from the same artist, even weirder it almost seems to progress down the artist list roughly alphabetically, so if one day is heavy on Spoon the next is far more likely to be White Stripes or Wilco rather than say Beck. Also there are still some things that the iPod just seems to love (Southern Rock Opera, I'm looking at you. And even new stuff, after adding the Zappa earlier in the month I've had 6 plays of "Dong Work For Yuda" yet there are songs from 2009 with zero plays. The joys of randomness). But all in all it makes my daily drudgery just a little less so.

But now I've got too many songs getting over 30 plays so am going to have to revise and am wondering if play counts are enough anymore. And that begs the question of you, the blog audience: Suggestions? Ideas? Theories?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Is that the sun yonder there?

Hang out with lotus people
Down at the beach
Daydreams and brilliant colours
They're in your reach

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

I think I like songs with shouting in them.

It hit me while driving home tonight. Not screaming; shouting. (Although, I don't mind screaming! Sometime I love it!) Cases in point: Cake, Fred Schneider of the B-52s.

Discuss?

Friday, April 1, 2011

Music Club 17 - Pick a Year





For those that missed last night's meeting, can you guess who picked which year?

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Lyric Time

I love their Mister Blue Sky
Almost my favorite is Turn to Stone
And how about Telephone Line
I love that ELO

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Different Strokin' for Different Folkin'

Boss is out of the office so I decided this was a good day to listen to a mix of The Strokes. In honor of their new album everyone is raving about.
I did a search for Strokes. Figured there would be some repeats, but I can take it. Right after UNDER CONTROL and before WHEN IT STARTED, we got a chance to hear something unexpected, the theme song to DIFFERENT STROKES. Good times.
For those who care about such things, it was written by Alan Thicke in 1978. Do not fear, I will not do 1978 as my year.
When I said good times, I didn't mean the TV show. That was just a coincidence.
If I had only done STROK, I think I would have also heard STROKIN' by Clarence Thomas, THE STROKE by Billy Sqire, and 4-STROKE by the Supersuckers. My iPod rules!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Happy Birthday Bono Junior Brown Axel Jay*Z Cash Money Barrett

I know it's belated, but welcome to the world of music and beauty.
And also Sting. Sorry.

Friday, March 11, 2011

This is a far simpler post than what I had planned

I've tried four times now to put together a post talking about the different phases I've gone through musically, something I've been thinking about with this current theme.

But I've hated what I wrote every time and so instead of forcing something that will make me feel worse about myself than I usually do anyway I'll just get to what was going to be the culmination of those thoughts that I can't get right at the moment.

I've been fascinated this week with a website called youarelisteningtolosangeles.com . That sentence might peak your interest until you realize that what Pat is fascinated by right now isn't quite in sync with what the majority of our fine music club is. It is a blend of two different streams playing simultaneously: one stream random ambient tracks and the other a live feed of LAPD radio traffic.

I find it incredibly moody, chill, sometimes creepy and overall it is fitting my current state of mind. If you feel like something different give it a shot.

And for the record, I've had around five distinct music phases, the post was going to be titled Don't Go Changing To Try And Please Me, and I still don't have a year picked. Maybe someday I'll get it together.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Happy 2 year anniversary music club!!!!

16 themes and 279 songs later and look at us, still going strong! I'm proud of our tenacity and diverse output. Go MC!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

James Murphy seems fun

I don't know if anyone has already seen this. I heard it and then saw that there is video of it also. The video is here:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/135537-watch-james-murphy-of-lcd-soundsystem-on-sound-opinions/

I like the way he approaches his music.
I've listened to podcasts before, but never saw them. They look uncomfortable. It's just a cubicle with microphones in it. Color me disillusioned.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Throwing out a date!

What's better for everyone? The first or second Thursday in February?

Does anyone need any lifelines?

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Colin Meloy might have wrote this song for me

Factured right ankle, dead Gypsy uncle and lazy boyfriends.

This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle bone and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed
And how it whispered, "Oh, adhere to me for we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb"
This is the story of your red right ankle
This is the story of your gypsy uncle
You never knew cause he was dead
And how his face was carved and ripped with wrinkles
In the picture in your head
And remember how you found the key
To his hide-out in the Pyrenees,
But you wanted to keep his secret safe,
So you threw the key away?
This is the story of your gypsy uncle
This is the story of the boys who loved you
Who love you now and loved you then
And some were sweet and some were cold and snuffed you
And some just layed around in bed
And some, they crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some they crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
This is the story of your red right ankle

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

He sang STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU, too

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/amplifier/52198/baker-street-singer-gerry-rafferty-dead-at-63/