Music

Music is a big part of me: Over the years, I’ve sung in choirs, played the violin (never terribly well) and can plunk tunes out on most other instruments, DJ’d alternative/goth/industrial/ebm/electronica clubs, and collected a whole lot of music.

50 Gayest Songs of All Time

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Stupid humor time, folks. Australian website Same Same, preparing for Sydney’s 30th Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, just ran a reader poll to determine the ‘50 Gayest Songs of All Time‘.

…last month we asked you to vote for what songs out of the vast catalogue of musical history you think deserve to be called camp classics. We received thousands of votes, and now that they have all been counted and triple-checked, we’re proud to finally reveal exactly what songs have made it into the final list of the Gayest Songs of All Time.

I figured I’d run down the list and figure out just how many of these camp classics have made it into my music collection over the years. So, under the cut — does my music collection make the grade? How’s my collection of gay anthems?

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Christmas Eve Nostalgia

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Just about everyone has their own favorite Christmas album. Prairie got a copy of her family’s traditional music and started playing it today — Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘A Holiday Celebration’ — and it got me thinking about my own, long-lost personal favorite. For years, there was one particular album that I’d dig out every Christmas and put on the record player…however, it’s been ages since I’ve heard it, and while I would occasionally get snippets of the songs floating through my head, or brief flashes of the cover art, I haven’t been able to pull the actual title of the album out of my brain in years.

Chatting with Prairie tonight about it, though, the word ‘sunshine’ popped out of my head, which seemed to jibe with the hazy memory of a rising sun on the cover, so I tossed ‘sunshine christmas album’ at Google. I wasn’t really expecting to get a useful hit, but lo and behold, the third major link caught my eye — an (apparently unauthorized) bootleg of ‘Sunshine and Snowflakes: 40 Kids Singing at Christmas‘. Bingo — the right title, the right cover art, and the titles of the songs looked right….

This was promising, but it still didn’t let me actually listen to the album. So, one more trip to Google, now that I actually had the official title…and once again, success! A 2004 weblog post by the Mad Philosopher had the entire album posted as .mp3 files, complete with cover art. Immediately I downloaded the files, tossed them into iTunes, and called Prairie into the room to listen.

Sunshine and Snowflakes coverFinally being able to hear this again is great. Prairie’s been enjoying it, and I’m amazed at just how much I’m remembering, almost as if it was just last Christmas that I was pulling the record out of its sleeve, putting it on dad’s record player, and carefully lowering the needle onto the vinyl. And while I’m sure there’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this, the music is fun — a very, very 70’s funk/rock medley of traditional songs on side one, and five original tracks, three of which are nice and pretty, but two of which are the two that I really remember being fond of (“Wise Men Still Adore Him” and “Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus”).

So for me, this is a perfect Christmas Eve present. I get to revisit part of my childhood with some good old music, Prairie’s enjoying hearing the songs (and watching me bounce around as I remember bits and pieces of them), and I get some more good Christmas music to add to our collection.

Now, off to bed. After all, if I don’t go to bed, Santa won’t stop by…and that would be a sad, sad thing indeed!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Solstice…pick your holiday, call it what you will, just have a good one!

Life imitating Satire

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Five years ago, in the Onion:

“It’s criminal,” RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. “Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?”

[…]

RIAA attorney Russell Frackman said the lawsuit is intended to protect the artists.

“If this radio trend continues, it will severely damage a musician’s ability to earn a living off his music,” Frackman said. “[Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich stopped in the other day wondering why his last royalty check was so small, and I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell a man who’s devoted his whole life to his music that someone is able to just give it away for free? That pirates are taking away his right to support himself with his craft?”

Yesterday, in the Los Angeles Times:

With CD sales tumbling, record companies and musicians are looking at a new potential pot of money: royalties from broadcast radio stations.

For years, stations have paid royalties to composers and publishers when they played their songs. But they enjoy a federal exemption when paying the performers and record labels because, they argue, the airplay sells music.

Now, the Recording Industry Assn. of America and several artists’ groups are getting ready to push Congress to repeal the exemption, a move that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in new royalties.

Mary Wilson, who with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard formed the original Supremes, said the exemption was unfair and forced older musicians to continue touring to pay their bills.

“After so many years of not being compensated, it would be nice now at this late date to at least start,” the 63-year-old Las Vegas resident said in Milwaukee, where she was performing at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino. “They’ve gotten 50-some years of free play. Now maybe it’s time to pay up.”

Rather sadly, the Onion is becoming the new Nostradamus — only a lot more accurate.

(via eukarya)

Christina’s Candyman

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Candman Video While Christina Aguilera generally isn’t one of my first choices when it comes to music, one of my co-workers just turned me on to her new single, “Candyman.” Heavily inspired (in a good way) by “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” it’s an incredibly infectious little 40’s swing-style pop tune, and it’s getting a lot of play around the apartment right now.

Apparently Back to Basics, the album that “Candyman” comes off of, has Christina experimenting with a lot of different vocal styles from the past, with Christina describing it as “a throwback to the 20s, 30s, and 40s-style jazz, blues, and feel-good soul music, but with a modern twist.” When I browsed through the album on iTunes, most of the snippets didn’t really grab me — they had a bit too much of a ‘modern’ (hip-hop) twist to them. However, along with “Candyman,” two others ended up finding their way into my collection: “Nasty Naughty Boy” and “I Got Trouble.”

All three songs are together in the second half of the album, and they all concentrate on a very 40’s sound — though each is from a very different musical style. Where “Candyman” draws on the big-band sound, “Nasty Naughty Boy” uses slow, sultry jazz styles (think Jessica Rabbit’s “Why Don’t You Do Right” in Who Framed Roger Rabbit with the vamp amped up — this one is just begging to be used in a burlesque routine), and “I Got Trouble” heads down to play with a very southern blues feel.

Of course, this being late 2000’s pop, and Christina being Christina, the lyrics have a tendency to slip over the line from innuendo into straight-out raunch. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make for a good laugh.

As I said above, the rest of Back to Basics didn’t grab me, but those three? I’d definitely say it’s worth spending the three bucks to snag ’em off of iTunes. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re listening to Christina Aguilera if you don’t want me to. ;)

Gaiman, Webley, and Toasty Tuckuses

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Nifty randomness of the day: seeing Neil Gaiman quote and promote Jason Webley (by way of someone posting the video to Eleven Saints).

Nifty plan for the afternoon: three movies have been rented (Clerks 2, Scoop, and Slither), much warm finger food has been purchased, and the couch has been covered with an electric blanket so we’ve got a warm place to sit as we spend a quiet evening at home.

Conversation

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Conversation

90’s rock group Soul Asylum gave a free show at the Pike Place market on Thursday morning, and Prairie and I headed down to see them. While we were waiting for the show to start I took a few random people shots around the gathering crowd. This shot is by far my favorite of the morning (the rest are here).

iTunes “Comfortably Numb (ATOC Extended Edit)” by Scissor Sisters from the album Comfortably Numb, Pts. 1 & 2 – Single (2003, 5:39).

Don’t Feel Like Dancin’

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My co-worker Nick got me hooked on the new single by the Scissor Sisters, ‘Don’t Feel Like Dancin’‘. It’s incredibly infectious, catchy, and fun — feels like what the Bee Gees would be doing if they were making pop music today, and would fit perfectly coming over the soundtrack of a roller rink. So far, I can’t get enough of it (and Prairie’s getting a laugh out of watching me bounce around in my seat while it’s playing).

iTunes “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ (Radio Edit)” by Scissor Sisters from the album I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ – Single (2006, 4:10).

Hot Tunes

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Goofy idea that I don’t have the programming chops to create:

A plugin for iTunes (originally I was thinking of a separate program, but I think that this could probably all be done through Applescript) that, when activated, polls the weather services on the ‘net for the current temperature and then randomly selects a song from the year that matches the current temperature. A sunny summer day of 85° would produce synthpop from 1985, a cool fall afternoon of 63° would play the rock and roll of 1963.

Options that should be included:

  • Some form of fahrenheit/celsius recognition.
    • Switch between the two systems (85°F/1985 is 29°C/1929).
    • Converting between the two (85°F plays 1929, 29°C plays 1985).
  • Choosing songs from the decade, rather than the year (85° plays songs from 1980-1989, 72° plays from ’70-’79).
  • Applying some alteration (plus or minus X, other transformations) to affect the temperature to year conversion (otherwise, most places would get a lot of songs from the 70’s through the summertime, and many people don’t have a huge collection of 20’s and 30’s tunes to listen to during the winter months).

It’s the kind of silly little one-trick pony that could only be released as freeware, and likely wouldn’t get a ton of usage. It amused me when the idea crossed my mind, however.

(Incidentally, the song I’m listening to at the moment — which will be noted at the bottom of this post — was released in 1979, because according to my ‘puter, it’s 79°F outside. At 11:20pm. Ick. Yes, I’m whining. Yes, Colorado, Arizona, and many other places are hotter than it is here in Seattle. I’m still whining. Candles shouldn’t melt when they’re not lit.)

iTunes “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along” by Kermit the Frog/Rolf the Dog from the album Muppet Movie, The (1979, 3:58).