This song never fails to put a smile on my face. Coming at you from 1945, here’s June Christy singing with Stan Kenton and his orchestra on the song Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy.
It’s full of jazzy soul. Enjoy.
[audio:061023ShooFlyPie.mp3]
Month: October 2006
Happy Birthday iPod
Well, today is the 5th birthday of the iPod. Hooray! Time to pack the little guy a lunch and send him to kindergarten. Seems like only yesterday he was a mere 5 gigabytes tall. Now look at him: about 80!
And he’s much more talented now. I remember being smilingly proud the day he shuffled his first playlist, lo those years ago. And now he’s out there playing games and showing off his pictures and movies to people and making new friends everyday. Brings a tear to my eye.
Yep. iPod is all grow’d up. Happy Birthday iPod.
Frances Farmer: The Nirvana song that fell through the cracks
For some reason over the years, Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Here we have one of those songs that no one ever talks about. It sits around being under-appreciated, despite all the hard work it does at being one of Nirvana’s true great masterpieces. For some reason, it’s constantly overshadowed by its bigger brothers. Come on! It is nearly last place (tied with Radio Friendly Unit Shifter) on the Last.fm In Utero chart.
But no longer! Listen now and behold its glory!
[audio:061022FrancesFarmer.mp3]Tortoise, Star Trek, and Orbital (with more Star Trek): Song of the Day Triple Feature
I spent a good seven+plus hours burning through some iTunes today to make up for yesterday’s somewhat disappointing performance a shortened day at the office will do that. With about 100 songs to choose from, I had a very hard time narrowing down the song of the day, so lucky you, here’s three songs to choose from. Choose wisely.
Orbital: Time Becomes
[audio:061021OrbitalTimeBecomes.mp3]Constructed from a single line spoken by Worf from the 2nd season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Time Squared which I happened to see just the other day—it’s almost unwatchably bad, this song is more of an experiment in recording technique than actual music. But it’s fun to have your own personal Moebius.
Time Squared of course, is not to be confused with the 5th season episode Cause and Effect, where the Enterprise is destroyed every 11 minutes or so.
Tortoise: Swung From The Gutters
[audio:061021TortoiseSwungfromtheGutters.mp3]From TNT, this song is just great; not quite as good as The Equator, but still one of my faves from the band. .
Boston Pops conducted by John Williams performing the theme to Star Trek
[audio:061021BostonPopsStarTrek.mp3]A very unusual and extended take on the classic and well-known theme to the original Star Trek television program, performed live in concert by the Boston Pops.
Flickr, Bootlegs, Live Recordings and iTunes Album Art
Whereas my previous iPod, a 3rd generation model, could not display album art, my new one, of course can. So I spent a portion of my morning going through my library, searching for albums that were missing their covers. During the process, I ran into a couple live shows that, since they aren’t formally-released albums, obviously don’t have album covers.
Specifically, I had a Tortoise show in San Francisco from October 2005 and a Mouse on Mars show in Toronto from October 2004.
Most music clubs I’ve been to in recent years seem to have a laid-back “we-don’t-care” policy toward shooting photos of the acts that roll through, so it is not uncommon to see folks with digital cameras snapping away. Heck, I even saw someone with a video camera (or possibly 8mm) at a recent Ratatat show.
Even if a venue does prohibit recordings and photography, the rise of cell phone cameras and pocket point-and-shoots almost ensures that some clandestine pictures will escape.
Knowing this, I went over to Flickr, where a good portion of the world’s digital pictures eventually end up. I hoped to find, if not pics from the specific shows, something close enough for displaying on my iPod.
The mission was a success. A couple searches later, I found a really nice shot from the exact Tortoise show at The Independent shown above. I did not, however, track down anything from Mouse on Mars’ performance at Lee’s Palace. But I did get a nice one from the show in Montreal the day before and that’s close enough for rock and roll.
Those two shows now have some nice iTunes artwork.
Viva Flickr.
Nobukazu Takemura – sign acappella
Today’s song is the unaccompanied robot/computer vocalist for Nobukazu Takemura’s single Sign (vinyl 12″ version) from his 2001 album Hoshi no Koe.
I first heard the original version of this song at a show in New Orleans in 2001. That show was my first real exposure to glitch music (a form of electronic music that has intentional “errors” in it or is entirely composed of error-like sounds, such as a CD skipping) and it completely blew my mind. I still get chills listening to the vocal part of Sign that starts at the 1:09 mark.
Takemura has since become a kind of legendary figure as far as my iTunes is concerned. And while Sign is a fantastic track, without its attendant beeps and boops, however, it suffers from some unpleasant and awkwardly-long breaks of silence, which cost it some of its gravitas. Still, these artificial vocals manage to convey a kind of staccato emotion, like a robot throwing down some slam poetry.
[audio:061020sign_acappella.mp3]New Tunequest Feature: Song of the Day
I probably should have thought of this sooner, but I didn’t have this nifty new WordPress plugin that let’s me easily embed audio files into my posts until the other day. Of course, the primary premise of Tunequest is that I’m spending the year listening to all 14,000+ songs in my iTunes library. Until recently, I didn’t really have a way to share some of that music.
So, starting today I will be including a song from each day’s playlist in a post to the site. There’s 73 days left in the year, so expect about 73 songs (though probably fewer; there are some days where I don’t get the chance to listen to anything).
The debut song is Kind Hearted Woman Blues by Robert Johnson.
[audio:061018kindhearted-woman-blues.mp3]I’m not much of a blues fan. Nothing against it; in fact I respect the blues and blues musicians a great deal. I just can’t listen to much of it at a time the exception being blues bars. Live blues is something to behold.
It’s probably fitting then, that I’ve gone to the source with Johnson’s Complete Recordings. It’s undeniably classic and quite moving. And come to think of it, I probably don’t need any other blues records. It’s all right here.
Find it on