Tuesday, 26 Sep 2006

“Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by The Stars

   Set Yourself on Fire

Friday, 22 Sep 2006

listening/watching/soaking in an achingly beautiful Regina Spektor performance

making a wide range of goofy balloon-noisemaker sounds with my kids on my birthday. and seeing v’s peter-frampton-cellphone-ringtone-performance.

Friday, 22 Sep 2006

Went to see Regina Spektor last night. wow. it’s not often i hear/see a musician perform and think “wow, what a great person”. she appears to be one of those rare pure-spirit people - free thinking, genuine, good-hearted - who has the ability to channel that spirit through music. i’ve liked her music since i first heard it a few months back, but it seemed like extended exposure could have gone either way - either towards rapt appreciation or annoyance at the ‘quirkiness’ or increased perception of gimmick rather than sincerity. seeing her perform live, every quirk intact - her passion and intensity giving the sometimes seemingly nonsensical.random lyrics a feel/meaning of their own, I found myself liking songs and imagining I was understanding the overall feel of songs I had semi dismissed as not as/very meaningful when I heard them on the radio(uh oh). A beautiful and gentle spirit, who musically and personality-wise is not much at all like, but the closest performer I could come up with whose performances leave the listener with a similar positive feeling about ourselves, our fellow humans and the world in general is Jonathan Richman. In another culture, in another time these people would be the holy people who others would pilgrimage to just to spend time in their presence to hopefully absorb through osmosis some of their goodness and positive energy. Then again, I guess that’s what we do now. Beautiful music, beautiful spirit.

Go pilgrimage to her site and click the ‘music’ button, and absorb some positive vibes.

Thursday, 21 Sep 2006

After several months of browsing internet music offerings from internet only ‘radio’ stations, to podcasts, to downloaded music blogs, to online streams of real world stations, to customized streaming services like Pandora, I finally found what might be the perfect music station for me. KCRW is an internet streaming mirror of an actual real-world FM station that just plays the most awesome music. Even though their format changes during the day and they have the most confusing website I have ever seen - from the website program list I THINK I should be hearing something completely different than what I am actually hearing, and when I look at the “what is currently playing” it lists a song from a program that plays on Saturday California-time afternoons, and it’s Thursday East-coast-time afternoon right now, but I am not complaining - the music is just amazing! After months of listening to djs and computer programs that think ‘eclectic’ means ‘random’ I had almost forgotten what real good eclectic music sounds like. Music that is very different from song to song yet conveys something - a certain mood? No, a feel? Not really? Maybe a sensibility? I really don’t have the words, but there is something linking the music - maybe it’s just that I actually like it all. This is just so good.

Thursday, 21 Sep 2006

“Muzika Dlya Fil’ma” from the album From The Underworld