Archive for the ‘Listening’ Category

Ever experimental in the ways an artist can work with her audience to both make a living and give them something special, geek-songstress Marian Call is selling a new bootleg CD to celebrate her second full-length live-streaming concert at WholeWheatRadio.org . 15 tracks in various stages of polish; some from live performances, some early versions of familiar songs, and some proto-versions of songs from her CD-in-progress "Something Fierce."

But you've only got half a day or so to buy it.

The audio is not perfectly mixed and mastered; the songs are mostly live bootlegs.  The CD label will be nicely handwritten and autographed by me, with your name on it as you please, and the track list & credits will be printed on the printer here at WWR.  If you want a lipstick smooch on it, please specify when you order.  This is homebaked music — as in, burned on my laptop.  This is INDIE MUSIC IN ACTION.  The CD’s come with Marian’s homeburn guarantee — if the disc doesn’t work, I’ll make and ship you a new one from home, cuz I actually care about you since you’re ordering something weird like this.

For SerenityStuff fans who remember the Sing a Song of Saffron contest, her second entry, "Never Did Catch Her Name," is included. Check her blog for a track list and more details.

Head to WholeWheatRadio's Marian Call page and scroll to the bottom. The CDs are $12 plus shipping, and will only be available from 8pm tonight till 10 a.m. tomorrow (Alaska time; that's 9 pm to 11 am PST or midnight to 2 pm EST). (By the way, I love that WWR's page includes a running tally of how many CDs she's sold. Go Marian, go!)

This is an excellent way to support a truly talented and witty musician, and indie music in general. Go check out the live concert tonight, if you need more (free!) encouragement to support Marian.

I am watching Stephen Fry in America, where the celebrated British actor and author drove his black London cab through all 50 states, sampling a bit of each as he went, and I'm finding that as I talk to my wife during breaks that I keep wanting to speak with a British accent.  Not as an affectation or joke, mind you, and I'm not using any obvious British slang.

I just quite naturally begin choosing my words more carefully, pronouncing them more traditionally, enunciating them more precisely. I place emphasis on different sections of the sentence, making observational sentences more of a question than a declaration. Somehow I manage the trick of sounding both self-deprecatingly apologetic and mildly superior at the same time.

As it seems to happen with appalling regularity whenever I watch such programmes, one must assume a genetic source. Somewhere in my history there lies an English gene, ready and willing to leap out out a moment's notice and force me to pronounce "schedule" with a "shed."

"I am going to be speaking to you this evening with a British accent, so do be prepared for the words you hear to come with a little more authority than you're used to. And you could have had this, and that's the real tragedy." — John Oliver

It fades, it fades. A few hours from now I'll once again be dropping my Gs and coarsening my speech. But for now I find myself transported with the challenge of delivering sentences with complex constructions, where clauses leap like playful porpoises around each other, swimming in the same depths as Wodehouse, Chesterton and the Pythons.

Mind you I'm well aware that Americans have whelped their fair share of speechifiers who could give any Brit a run for his money, and there are certainly any number of British accents that are at least as harsh to the ear as any Southern twang. And I perform the same linguistic gymnastics (in much different directions) whenever we watch the Beverly Hillbillies, or anything featuring mobsters (the movie "Oscar" can have us speaking in broken Italian for days).

I'm also painfully aware that to an actual Brit my accent would sound like nothing of the kind. Years of television and movies have instilled in me a sort of conglomeration of tongues from around the island, with some Yorkshire running into my Lancashire, with Black Country vowels trampling all through my Ipswitch and East Anglia and Liverpool mixed together in a hellish brew. Think John Cleese by way of Ringo Starr and Douglas Adams with some Dave Allen sneaking in, all the worse as Dave Allen was most definitely Irish. Or, to put it in more understandable terms to an American, imagine someone making an American accent by using pronunciations from Jersey, Georgia, Boston and Texas all in the same sentence.

But for now in my head I am British, soft-spoken and wryly humorous and calmly amused by everything. And a jolly good day to you all.

It started when Canadian musician Dave Carroll was on a United Airlines flight, waiting at O'Hara in Chicago. People on the flight pointed out the baggage handlers on the ground tossing around guitar cases, which turned out to belong to Carroll and his band Sons of Maxwell. Carroll's pleas fell on deaf ears and he discovered upon arriving at his destination that his custom Taylor guitar, valued at $3,500, was severely damaged. There followed a year of Carroll's attempts at getting United Airlines to even acknowledge the incident, much less pay for the $1,200 of repairs that still didn't quite restore the guitar to its former sound.

Finally Carroll told the last representative, a Ms. Irlweg, that he would write and produce three music videos about his experience and release them into the wild.She may have been less than impressed. That was then.

Read the rest of this entry »

StarShipSofa, the British online audio science fiction anthology magazine, has released a novella by Lawrence Santaro called "Lord Dickens's Declaration." You can listen to it for free — that's what they do, after all; present audio presentations of top science fiction by authors such as Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Michael Bishop, Tad Williams, Charles Stross and many more — but for a limited time you can buy a limited edition ebook and the proceeds will go towards helping Jeanne and Spider Robinson's bills as Jeanne fights off a rare biliary cancer that's taking everything they've got.

I've mentioned here before my love of Jeanne and Spider's work, and any chance to help out (while getting new stuff to read at the same time) is a Good Thing. You can read about her ongoing battle (and her fight to continue producing a Stardancer movie) at http://stardancemovie.blogspot.com.

What's "Lord Dickens's Declaration" about? Think "steampunk/time travel/alternatehistory" and you won't be too far off. There are gentlemen and ladies and intrigue and SCIENCE and steamships and long discourses on the nature of time itself. Also, cavemen. Santaro usually writes horror fiction but he rises to the challenge here. The book is also beautifully designed and illustrated to look like an old and treasured book, which just adds to the steampunk feel. Nicely done.

While you're in the area, check out the StarShipSofa's podcasts. They're free, professionally done, and a welcome addition to your portable library.

Turns out that in the future, we're not limited to just guitar, fiddle, and whatever else was playing in the background. The future will also include punk rock.

Rock and roll, mudder's milk and shindigs. The Browncoats is a rock group that wallows in singing about outer space, flying miscellaneous aircraft, and places and people that just do not exist… yet.

They've had great success with their raucous version of "The Hero of Canton" (see video above) and now they have a whole CD to abuse people with. Captain Paul Moerke, Air Marshall Bailey and Co-Pilot Gary Miller use guitars, drums, cigarettes, and lots and lots of beer to produce hard rockin' mudder goodness.

Register at their website to get a free copy of the CD's title song "Space Age Loser," buy a few tracks from Amazon or iTunes, go check out their upcoming performance at Dragon*Con, or stop out their MySpace page for more videos like this one with SNL actor Bill Chott, "Make Mudder Milkshakes" (not for the squeamish).

Weird Al continues his onslaught of song releases with "Ringtone," and a video made in collaboration with Current TV's "SuperNews":

Next Tuesday he'll be releasing "Internet Leaks," a downloadable mini-album of the five songs he's produced since his last album: his T.I. parody “Whatever You Like,” his Doors pastiche “Craigslist,” his Jungle Cruise homage “Skipper Dan,” his Charles Nelson Reilly tribute “CNR” and "Ringtone." Look for it at iTunes, Amazon, and the usual places. And they'll be on a physical CD when his next album comes out:

The songs on “Internet Leaks” will all show up again on my next full album release, whenever that is (I’m assuming next year sometime, but there’s no way to  be sure). Some people may say, “Why should I buy the ‘Internet Leaks’ tracks now when they’re going to be on your next album anyway?” Well, if all you’re interested in is the physical CD, and you don’t mind waiting a year or so… you probably SHOULDN’T buy the tracks now. Nobody’s forcing you to buy the songs twice – I just wanted to make the tracks available so everybody could enjoy them as early as possible.

By the way, if you DO purchase “Internet Leaks” now, you’ll be able to take advantage of iTunes’ “Complete My Album” function when the full album becomes available. You’ll be able to painlessly add the missing tracks, and the full purchase price of “Internet Leaks” will be deducted from the cost of the album.

The hot new music video from The Guild, written by net-heartthrob Felicia Day and Jed Whedon and performed by Day and the rest of the Guild cast members (with Maurissa Tancharoen dancing and singing backup vocals, I believe), hit the web today and immediately leveled up to #1 in the iTunes Music Videos and held firm. And good, because it's a great pop song in its own right that becomes more addictive the more you listen to it.

Besides, how cool is it that a largely home-made music video by a group of talented geeks pushed Taylor Swift to #2?

Watch it for free above, check out the lyrics here, buy the video at iTunes and get the MP3 from Amazon And get ready for season three of The Guild to start August 25th on Xbox Live and September 1rst on MSN/ZUNE.

Available on iTunes, Amazon and other fine MP3 retailers. Video is also at iTunes.

"Remains," the hauntingly beautiful song from the end of "Epitaph One," the unaired 13th episode of "Dollhouse," is now available for purchase at Amazon and Amazon.uk. It's not at iTunes yet but they usually release new stuff on Tuesdays, so here's hoping.

"Remains" was written and performed by "Dollhouse" writers Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon (who also wrote the script for this episode) and released on their "Nervous Circus" label. And it's gorgeous.

"Epitaph One," which was supposed to premiere at the San Diego Comic-Con next week, was leaked to the torrents last week along with the unaired pilot. You're on your own finding it, but if you do download it please buy it anyway when it comes out on the 28th. You'll also get commentary on two episodes, lots of deleted scenes, and several hefty features. Order it from Amazon for just $31.99!

burn down my home
my memories hardened in the brightest chrome
good times escape
while every mistake seems to be caught on tape…

And if you haven't yet voted for the winner of the Dollhouse Season One DVD set, please do! Ten entries were chosen for you to select from, and one random winner from all the entries will also be chosen. Vote!

The latest in his "Internet Leaks" collection, it's an original this time. Available for download from iTunes and Amazon (DRM-free).