There’s something wonderfully surreal about listening to my iPod on the way to work, and going directly from Coolio’s “Ugly Bitches” to “American Wake (the Nova Scotia Set)” off of Bill Whelan’s ‘Riverdance’ soundtrack.
Music
Music is a necessity. Though I focus mostly on alternative/industrial/EBM/electronic styles, my tastes are eclectic and wide-ranging.
About that homework
Here’s what I was thinking about yesterday with my Homework post. Marilyn Monroe’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” reminded me strongly of a Björk song, but I couldn’t think of which one. I’ve tracked it down — ~~have a listen, and compare and contrast~~. I’m quite curious as to whether Björk may have had this in mind when she recorded “It’s Oh So Quiet”.
Homework
Bring Marilyn Monroe’s “I Belong to Daddy” in to work tomorrow so I can let Bethany hear it and compare with some of Björk’s work (there’s a specific Björk song I’m thinking of, but for the life of me, I can’t remember which one off the top of my head).
Kickshaw grumbles
Last year at the Bite of Seattle, I discovered an incredible local acapella group called Kickshaw that blew me away when I walked up in time to hear a flawless acapella performance of one of my all-time favorite songs, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”.
After their version of “Dance to the Music” came up in iTunes today, I hit their website on a whim and discovered that they’re going to be performing at the Bite of Seattle food festival next weekend. Got all excited, started planning to go to see them again — and then realized that they’re playing at 6pm on Friday. I’ll be at work. Grrr. Not thrilled with whoever scheduled that. Didn’t they know that they should have consulted with me first?
Uh, yeah. Right. Anyway.
On the bright side, come early August, they’ll be performing at the Taste of Edmonds food festival, which is just about half an hour by car from here. Prairie’s expressed interest in going, so hopefully we’ll be able to head out that way and catch them there. Would be very cool to get to see them again.
Not Britney!
Britney Spears admitted today that she isn’t a virgin.
In other news, the Pope is still Polish.
(via MeFi)
iTMS Exclusive: LXG Soundtrack
Looks like Apple’s iTunes Music Store is catching on (or, at the very least, getting enough interest to warrant an interesting experiment): in the US market, the soundtrack for the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will only be available through the iTMS — no CD’s will be pressed.
I’ve got mixed feelings on this, personally. One of the things that has kept me from jumping full-bore into the iTMS for my music is the paucity of full ID3 tags in the purchased files. As I’ve been importing my CD collection, I’ve been working on being very thorough with the metadata included with each song: Artist, Title, Album, Year of release, and Composer are all information that I want available in my collection. Unfortunately, with the tracks I’ve purchased from the iTMS so far, Artist, Title, and Album seem to be all you get.
With a soundtrack release that (at least in the US market) has no physical media, how easy is it going to be for me to track down the rest of the metadata that I want included for search and organizational purposes? Not very, would be my guess, which concerns me. I like the idea, concept, and execution of the iTMS a lot, and I do support this experiment — just gimme my metadata!
(via MacRumors)
Guilty pleasures
It’s a silly, stupid, overplayed song — but I’ve gotta admit, I still enjoy it, and I’d love to hear The Rednex ‘Cotton-Eye Joe’ performed live, with a real band (banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and all).
Just a random thought for the day. ;)
Streaming update
Just a quick note that I’ve updated my ‘About DJ Wüdi’ page to replace the download links for my mixes with streaming audio links instead. Everything’s still there, just less chance of running afoul of rabid copyright lawyers (on the exceedingly rare chance that they should decide to pay any attention to my little corner of the ‘net).
Poems for Laila
I wanted to do two things with this post — test a new feature for the site, and promote one of my favorite bands, Poems for Laila.
I discovered PfL when I was in Germany in the summer of 1991. I saw a display stand advertising the release of their second album, and gave it a listen. What I heard was enough to peak my interest, so I bought their first two albums — ‘Another Poem for the 20th Century’ and ‘La Fillete Triste’ — on the spot.
Unfortunately, I bought them on cassette tape, and over the next few years, I listened to them enough to wear them out. Thanks to the magic of the ‘net, though, a few months ago I was lucky enough to track down not just the two albums I used to own, but three more. Eventually I’ll order as many as their albums as I can, but as they’re not available here in the states, for now I’ll just have to live with the .mp3s I downloaded (one of the very few times I’ve actively searched music out on the file trading networks).
In the meantime, though, you can browse through my PfL catalog, and listen to just what has captured my interest for so long. It’s a little difficult to narrow down just a few ‘recommended tracks’, but here’s a few good ones from the two albums I know the best:
- From ‘Another Poem for the 20th Century’:
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- Intro to the Morning After
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- The Morning After
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- Lewd
- From ‘La Fillete Triste’:
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- Round Round Round (The Gentleman’s Fear)
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- Willy Poor Boy
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- I Hold A Prince
Enjoy!
Apple woos indie labels for iTMS
After the iTunes Music Store opened, there were two recurring comments from much of the Mac world: why was it US only, and what about independent labels? It’s commonly accepted that the intricacies of international copyright law are most likely what’s restricting the iTMS to the US for now, but aside from a few rumors, the question of whether the store would open up to more than just the major labels was still unanswered.
Yesterday, however, Apple hosted a special invitation only event for independent and smaller music labels, giving them information on how they could join with the iTMS. A representative from CDBaby was at the event, and has posted an extremely interesting rundown of Apple’s offer to indy labels, mixed in with a lot of information about the iTMS system.
Interesting reading, even just for the peeks into how Apple is handling all the behind-the-scenes details of the iTMS. From what I can see, I think this is just going to keep getting better and better.