Archive for the ‘Listening’ Category

Marian Call's "Got to Fly" geek tribute CD, just premiered at Creation Entertainment's Salute to Firefly and Serenity convention last weekend, is now available directly from QMx.

There were only 1,000 CDs pressed and they're signed and numbered by Marian herself. After they're gone you'll be able to buy the songs electronically.

Just $15.95 for a fantastic collection of 'Verse and BSG-inspired tunes. You can find sample tracks here.

And don't forget to check out my interview with Marian from last week.

I like Marian Call. I like Marian Call a lot. And so should you.

Not only does she have an incredible singing voice, not only does she write haunting, intricate, and funny lyrics (yers, it's possible), not only is she a talented musician, but she's a geek, and a proud one.

You remember her from our "Sing a Song of Saffron" when she won, rightfully so, for her smoky song "It Was Good For You, Too." Since then she's been embracing her obsession and writing more geek-friendly songs, and now thanks to QMx she has a whole CD of them debuting just in time for her live performance coming up at Creation Entertainment's Tribute to Firefly and Serenity, November 22-23 in Burbank, CA. And I got to ask her questions!

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So what's a nice girl like you doing in a 'verse like this?

I never meant to be a fan of any show, ever — but enthusiasm sort of caught me by surprise and opened a wormhole in my personal solar system. On the other side was an awesome 'verse full of like-minded folks who were unafraid of enthusiasm and nerdiness.

When did you discover "Firefly"?

Exactly two years ago now, in November 2006. A despondent friend swore she had to watch it as therapy, and so I let her put it on at my house while I worked on my computer. But I gradually got drawn in, and at the end, sheepishly asked, "Can we watch another one?" When I finished watching "Objects in Space" for the first time, I wrote the song "Dark Dark Eyes" in about five minutes. When I watched it with Joss's commentary, something clicked, and I thought, "I can do this. I can be an artist." The next day I booked two weeks in a recording studio in Tacoma, and my first album, Vanilla, was born several months later. The only way I can describe what happened is to say that I finally got brave after watching the show and learning about how it was made.

How did family and friends react to you "coming out" as a geek?

They always knew. You can't fool people close to you — mostly you just fool yourself.

I always wanted to be "normal," so from the time I was very small I would pretend to be bad at reading and deliberately misspell words so that I would not stand out in school. That longing persisted through college, and I learned a certain regiment of self-suppression that never really worked. I feel a lot more free now. Though I still apologize when I bring sentences to a grinding halt by accidentally using phrases like "false yet pertinent dichotomies" in all seriousness. Read the rest of this entry »

I'm sorry I didn't notice this until now, but famed filker Tom Smith ("Waking Up Jedi," "Talk Like a Pirate Day", many many more) had an accident during a concert some time ago and had to have surgery. He's out and home now, but filkers don't generally have really good health insurance and every little bit helps.

Tom has been a regular presence at zillions of cons across the nation, he produces new and hilarious songs every week or so (when he's feeling better), and he even lets you have many of them for free at his site and in his weekly RSS feed. Such as, say, his song "I'm on Firefly."

So some of his friends and fans have put together a tribute CD of covers of his songs, which you can download for any donation at all. There's some great stuff here, not the least of which is Browncoat favorite Michelle Dockrey (and Tony Fabris) performing Tom's award-winning "Rich Fantasy Lives." I strongly urge you to send him anything you can and enjoy some great, funny, touching music.

Thanks to maru1221, I (and everyone else) can now see my wife Teresa at the Bon Jovi concert at the TD BankNorth Garden arena, July 10. She keeps a camera in front of her face during her screentime, but if you look closely, starting around 1:46,  you can see her trying to focus past Richie Sambora (12 feet away from her) to get a better picture of Jon (way the hell across the stage). She does have her preferences, my Teresa. Also, that piercing fangirl scream? That's her.

Teresa has decided to become a full-time groupie.

Not just the type who gushes about her band online, pins posters around her room and writes "Mrs. Bon Jovi" on her notebooks, although she does that too (not the Mrs. part, she said she has no interest in leaving our marriage or breaking his; I believe she has in mind more of a sophisticated arrangement, like a time-share). No, she plans to be the one who follows her band, concert to concert, city to city, country to country, becoming friends and confidant to the road crew. The fact that we're broke has no bearing on this. You can't deny your calling. She has already begun looking into which countries allow you to sell your children.

Yesterday, on an extended and carefully planned last minute whim, she flew to Boston to see Bon Jovi in concert. She's even now in the air on her way back, possibly without waiting for the plane. With her are the well-wishes, advice, and (in some cases) open envy of the other ladies on the Bon Jovi forum she frequents. They have kept up on her doings from other forum members at the concert who are calling in song-by-song updates, and from me, as I've been hearing from Teresa and posting on her behalf with her account. (I am, apparently, "Mr. Teresa.")

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Remember the "Sing a Song of Saffron" contest last year? It was won by Marian Call with her wonderful "It was Good For You Too."

Last year she also released a CD of her work called "Vanilla," with a special Browncoat edition that included the winning Saffron song along with her other amazing music.

And now QMx has declared her their "QMx Artist of the Month" in their latest Insider newsletter. Way to go Marian! And if you haven't gotten her CD yet, there's only about 30 left of the Browncoat version. E-mail her at mariancall@mac.com to get one, and ask about autographs. You can also visit her site at www.mariancall.com, or listen to her music at www.myspace.com/mariancall . And really, you should. She'll be big soon, and you'll want to get the CD now before it's going for hundreds on eBay.

While the Sing a Song of Saffron contest was going on, I didn't link to the entrants' web pages so you guys wouldn't be biased one way or another. But hey, contest is over! There are some great CDs out there, so let's check 'em out. First up: Marian Call's Vanilla.

Marian won the contest with "It Was Good For You Too" with unanimous praise from the judges, and with damn good reason. She has the voice of an angel: pure, clear, strong, and capable of wiping out a city. Talent, great song-writing ability, and a sense of humor: Marian Call is the anti-Britney.

There's a strong Firefly feel here. "Dark Dark Eyes" is about River, the stray "gorram" pops up, and these songs have a goal we identify with: there's a strong female character here. A lot of them, really. There's the one who's afraid she doesn't love enough, and the one that surrenders her heart completely. There's the one who rather wistfully wishes she was sexy and the one who delivers a verbal smackdown to a phony. My favorite songs are "Vanilla (I'm Not Sexy)" which describes my wife's self-image perfectly, and "Flying Feels Like" which should be riding the Top 40 if Billboard had any taste left. And you will be unable to not sing along with her cover of Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning." Just give in, you'll get a headache trying to hold out. Head to her MySpace page for some samples, and more will be available at her web page soon.

(A quick description for Buffy fans: if she had been doing this 10 years ago, Marian would have been on stage at the Bronz, with the kind of lyrical songs that would have continued to play even as focus moved to Buffy and friends wrestling with personal issues. Also, she rocks.)

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Britney, Britney, Britney.

By now you’ve heard all the blowback from your… spectacular… comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, and I’m guessing you haven’t been pleased. When the preponderance of critical articles, even the positive ones, include the word “trainwreck” in the first paragraph, things are not looking good.

And there are many elements of blame that led inexorably to you stumping around the stage in a leather bikini lip-syncing very nearly all of the words to your new hit song, “Gimme More.” The New York Times has reported you were rushed into doing the show by your management. There were problems with your hair. You may have had relationship issues with Criss Angel weighing on your mind. One fan has gone all Zapruder and produced a slo-mo video to prove that your heel was broken throughout the show (although the possibility of a second broken heel working with the CIA has yet to be documented).

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On Aug. 17, 1982, our relationship with our music changed forever. The compact disc was born.

It’s hard to explain, for those of you who weren’t around then, how big a change this was. You just popped a CD into your player, and it played. That was it. No longer did we have to go through the rituals of cleaning and wiping our vinyl albums to reduce (but rarely eliminate) the hisses and pops. No longer did we have to wince as our 8-tracks clunked to the next track. No longer did we have to fast-forward our cassettes when they started making that straining, whining sound. Music appreciation was not for the faint-hearted.

CDs changed the way we stored our music, too. Records had to be kept in the sleeves, upright, away from damp areas, or we’d find we had a wonderful collection of big taco shells. 8-tracks never stacked well and quickly filled up your car’s passenger side floor, and eventually they’d wear out and play the same four songs over and over and over, driving your mom insane when you left one running all night. We all became amateur splicers and learned how to get spilled Coke of our cassettes, and I remember the panic when the sound would suddenly stop and I’d have to scramble to pop it out before the tape erupted like the stereo was throwing up.

For the most part CDs just… worked.

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And about time, too. Actually I have to confess, I've known the winners for two weeks now, but while I knew which songs were chosen by Christina Hendricks, Cedric of The Bedlam Bards, and myself, I was really hoping to include Ms. Hendricks' actual notes. She gushed over them all (sample quote: "God, these people are amazing! I was telling Morena about it, it's just fantastic. I want a CD of this!") but wanted time to flesh out her notes since she had jotted them down whenever she had time. However, her new show "Mad Men" (Thursday nights at 10 on AMC) is getting huge reviews and record-breaking ratings — and richly deserves both – and she's been a bit swamped, so rather than keep everyone hanging I'm going to announce the winners and add the rest of her comments whenever they come in. 

First off I want to say that I'd have been happy with any of the songs winning, they were that good. I know, everyone running a contest says something schmaltzy like that, but come on. These were way beyond what I was hoping for, and I had pretty high hopes. I got exactly what I wanted out of this contest: some great songs about a lady who definitely deserved them. So… Read the rest of this entry »