Archive for the ‘Listening’ Category

"It Was Good For You Too" by Marian Call
(Listen to it here)

Don't you cry now, sweetie
Just you put that gun away
All I did was play the part
you wanted me to play

You thought that you were handsome
and strong, and good in bed
I just agreed with you
and you swallowed every word I said

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I can't play a note on anything more complicated than a kazoo but I wanted this anyway, and I'll bet you do too. It's "Firefly: Music from the Original Television Soundtrack," a folio of 12 arrangements for piano from show composer Greg Edmonson. 40 pages, no extras or intro, unfortunately. But you get 11 of his playful, haunting compositions in the combinations he created for the official soundtrack CD, scored for piano solo, along with Joss' theme song:

– Firefly Main Title
– Cows/New Dress/My Crew
– Dying Ship/Naked Mal
– The Funeral
– Inara's Suite
– Inside the Tam House
– Leaving/Caper/Spaceball
– Out of Gas/Empty Derelict
– River Tricks Early
– River's Dance
– River's Perception/Saffron
– Tears/River's Eyes

There's a great interview with Greg Edmonson at TrackSounds from a few years back, by the way. And a new one with Firefly Talk that mentions the sheet music, along with the Backup Bash and more.

Order it at Amazon or bug your local music store to get it. Request it for your school's band class!

You've got a month.

That's how long you have to complete an album of 10 original songs or 35 minutes of original music, according to the RPM Challenge. Whip your band into shape and crank up the tunes. Better hurry, it's a short month and most decent stage explosives have a 10-day waiting period.

If you're not ready to record quite that quickly, hop over to February Album Writing Month and write the songs this year for next year's album challenge. And then in June you can write a screenplay about your whacky experiences for ScriptFrenzy, or wait till November to write a novel about it for NaNoWriMo.

The whole point of these insanely deadlined events is to get your creative juices boiling and spilling out over the sides. Stop thinking about doing something and do it! Don't worry about how good it is. No one else will be. Just do it, to prove to yourself you can do it after all.

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"American Idol" is back and it's bigger and better than ever! Simon is meaner, Paula is more… whatever Paula is, and that other guy is good, too! Come watch the drama as… yawn… as contestants fight to reach their, you know, dream, and… Nope, sorry, I can't do it.

I have never seen an entire episode of "American Idol." Never seen more than 5 minutes of an episode, for that matter (although I have met William Hung). Just isn't my thing. I have friends who are intensely interested and follow every nuance with baited breath so they can update complicated charts on how each Idolator is doing at any given moment, but I could never get into it. Partly because for me, this kind of competition peaked with "The Gong Show," which had just as much talent and a faster elimination process.

No, what I want to see is "American Agent."

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Those of you who tune in regularly probably already know this, but WHTQ 96.5 FM recently dropped the long running syndicated morning show "The Big Show" to bring in some local DJing, namely the Birmingham, Alabama imports Richard Dixon and J. Willoughby. Dixon and Willoughby will be starting on January 2, bright and early. But for the time being, mornings on 96.5 have been just music.

Well, along with traffic reports — so vital in Orlando and on I-4 in the a.m. — and the obnoxious car dealer and appliance ads that make you want to renounce all electronic media forever and just hum to yourself, sure, but otherwise it's been nuthin' but tunes. No commentary. No call-ins. No cute skits or parody songs. No contests or trivia. No banter. No personalities. No one talking over the opening and closing of the songs they do manage to fit in.

I like it.

It wouldn't attract the listeners or the advertising dollars that a morning show does, and I'll admit that even though I tend to prefer Scott and Erica at MIX 105.1 part of me misses The Big Show already (ever have those days when you thought you were Billy and the rest of the world was John Boy?). But I've been arriving at work very relaxed these last few days, driving in circles around the parking lot to finish singing along with that last song before I have to bring my mobile concert to a close. Just music. Intact, not talked over, relatively uninterrupted music, one song after another.

Sigh. It'll never catch on.

This week The Signal podcast went all-music and, like the utterly cool people they are, they're offering free downloads of all the songs for all you lucky Browncoats. Head to the show notes for the episode and just gaze at all the ways you can get the tunes. You can download the entire podcast, or get the songs as a podcast feed, or download them all individually. Whichever one you pick, you'll enjoy this.

The Ballad. Instrumental pieces. Reworked songs from the show, and songs inspired by the 'verse. Adam's "Hero of Canton" put to music. Some of these you've heard, whether during previous podcasts or elsewhere on the cortex. Some of them have never been released before. And they've included PDFs of CD cover art, should you be so inclined to burn copies.

Big thanks to The Signal for doing this!

He was a driving force for peace and all that is Good. He was magical, angelic, demonic, a conscience in the wilderness, a tireless utopianist, and, to listen to some of his more enthusiastic fans, a young god among men.

Actually he was a good guitar player, a decent pianist, a wizard songwriter, a committed family man (eventually), an insightful philosopher, and that rarist of things, a social activist with a sense of humor. I think he'd have been shocked to learn how many people still consider him a role model, but the world become a bit less fun when John Lennon was shot to death 26 years ago today.

His widow, Yoko Ono, has asked that fans commemorate the anniversary of his death this year with a Day of Forgiveness, but I'll spend it as I always have: with hours and hours of music. Are you doing anything to honor Lennon today?

The first election irregularities have appeared! Kanye West, furious at being named only the Best Hip Hop Artist at the MTV Europe Music Awards, stormed the stage and launched a rant after not winning Best Video even though his video "Touch the Sky" "cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons." Best Video instead went to Justice and Simian for "We Are Your Friends." No word yet on whether Diebold machines were involved.

Drivl.com

The Seven Stages of Owning an iPod. I've never actually owned one myself, but it turns out owning a puppy works exactly the same way.

And if you ever appear as a guest on The Colbert Report, Slate.com has a how-to guide to help you avoid looking stupid. Or more stupid than you need to, anyway.

According to an article in this week's Rolling Stone, "First Hype, Then Kill: How the geeks who control the music blogosphere destroy the bands they love," my constant bloglove for Weird Al Yankovic will surely result in a record deal for him, which is, apparently, creative death. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm eager to get on with it, so…

His latest CD, "Straight Outta Lynwood," entered the Billboard charts at #10, making that his highest charting yet. Good reviews, although everyone seems to have their own favorite and most-hated songs. And starting sometime today you can submit your own fan-created "White and nerdy" video for Yahoo Music's "Get Your Freak On":

"Beginning October 11th, users will have the opportunity to submit video clips of themselves showing off the special characteristics that have gotten them shoved in lockers or dunked in toilets…from D&D and Star Trek to pocket protectors and calculator watches. The best performances will be selected and featured in the special fans-only video for the new track, premiering on Yahoo! Music October 30."

Right now the page features Beyonce, so unless this Weird Al video is weirder than usual, I'm guessing it's not up yet. But, to help you kill time till then, check out his interviews at Yahoo Music and IGN, his iTunes picks at The Onion, and, pretty much for the heck of it here's an interview I did with the Weird One a few years back for his "Poodle Hat" tour.

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It's also the day to pick up "Weird Al" Yankovic's new CD, "Straight Outta Lynwood." You'll want to hurry.

It's been three years since his last CD, and he hasn't slowed down any. 12 songs, including parodies of Chamillioniare, Green Day, The Beach Boys, Usher, Cake, Taylor Hicks, R. Kelly, and more. After this you'll wonder why 50 Cent doesn't record all of his work with polka-style accordion. My favorites were "White and Nerdy" (a parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'"), "Virus Alert," which has a sort of 80's rock opera feel (Queenish, Styxish), "I'll Sue Ya" (a Rage Against the Machine style parody) (Why the Affleck hate, Al? You ripped on him twice this album…), "Confessions Part III" (a parody of Usher's "Confessions Part II" that will make it impossible to ever take the original seriously again, assuming you could) and "Don't Download This Song," a We-Are-The-World type parody that slams music pirates, the RIAA, and the artists more or less equally. That one, interestingly enough, is available for free download from his MySpace page or from www.dontdownloadthissong.com .

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