Posts Tagged ‘music’

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.

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.

Our own Big Damn Chef Julesong has been pumping out 'versy music over the Cortex for some time now, and if you're missing it you're missing a lot more than you realize. You get music from Firefly and Serenity, of course, but there's also filks, folk music, Asian works, some of the Saffron songs from our recent contest, songs that might not have been in the 'verse but should have been, and even the original pieces that songs like River's Dance and the music from "Shindig" were based on/derived from.

And many of the tracks can be bought and downloaded right there and then.

Head over to Can't Take the Sky and give it a listen.

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.)

Read the rest of this entry »

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).

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

The time is now! You've got one week to choose your favorite Saffron songs from the amazing entries  to see who gets the coveted Browncoats Choice award.

Over the next week or so all of the entries are being judged by myself, the Bedlam Bards, and Christina Hendricks, and there will be prizes for Best Original and Best Filk. But you folks can pick any song you want to win a separate prize. Just head here to check 'em all out, listen to 'em, download 'em, and vote for up to three of your favorites. You've got till midnight Saturday, June 14. So git! (Updated: I changed the settings so now you'll see the results after you vote. Go see how your pick is doing!)

Frankly I'm happy no matter what happens. I got what I wanted: great songs about my favorite conniving redhead. Life is good.

The songs are all in, Ms. Hendricks and the Bards have been given the heads-up to start a'judgin, and the voting shall commence.

Just not as quickly as I expected. Ran into some glitches — my server is more restrictive on scripts than I expected, none of the polls I tried worked, and none of the free flash polls can handle 37 different answers. Also found out today that three of the original songs weren't actually playing on the site, only providing clips (they worked for me, since I uploaded them, so I hadn't noticed).

So. I'm in the process of setting up the songs on a different host so everyone can hear all the songs, and by Saturday I'll have the new poll set up for voting.

In the meantime I've got all the songs on a CD I've been listening to since the weekend and I'm loving it. Just what I was hoping for when I started this: a wide range of great sogns about my favorite conniving redhead. Sigh. Headaches or not, I'm doing more of these contests…

"Queen of Pain"
(to the tune of "King of Pain" by The Police)
by Benjamin Kuhner

There's a little speck crossing the sun today
And I called it my ship until yesterday
There's a barren rock outside of Alpha Three
Population: one fool, and that fool is me

Chorus:
And my beacon calls out into the endless space
Hoping someone might find me, take me from this place
Sending curses out to she of a thousand names
Though I'll know her forever as the queen of pain…

Read the rest of this entry »