Suppertime is when I caught up on old episodes of M1-5, known as ‘Spooks’ in the UK. I called a halt to such fare sometime last year when I realized that much of the time was spent, mouth open, fork in air, totally immersed in the incredibly tense, rapid-fire action. Heroes always in peril. Heroes killed off regularly (oh no, not her! oh no, not him!)
But as these things go, I was curious. Last night, after dinner, I got back into it all. They’ve stepped up the pace, I think.
But at the first sound of the music, I remembered. I’d been wanting the soundtrack forever, and last night at iTunes, I found the early one by Jennie Muskett, plus the more recent by Paul Leonard-Morgan. Just what I need today to ramp up the production that I got behind on in the last few days.
It’s not all adrenaline-driven, there are slower tracks as well - remember all those deaths - that are ethereal and transcendent. In other words, perfect work music for me.
For some years now, I mist up whenever I hear the national anthem. The furious blinking, the lump in the throat - public or private, I’m sniffing away. Around lunchtime today, I found this, and now that I’m sufficiently recovered, I can share, unless you knew of this months ago.
I’m a Sarah Vaughn fan, though I tend toward the remixes these days. ‘Round Midnight’, ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon’ and ‘Summertime’ from Verve or Jazz Lounge pop up in my workday playlists.
But I wasn’t familiar with her version of ‘Just a Little Lovin'’ till I read this and did a search. A song that remains powerful after a decade-long hunt is certainly worth looking into.
As usual, go to http://www.bugmenot.com for a path into the NYT.
Today when my iPod quit playing via the stereo speakers, there was an battery icon I hadn’t seen before. After hurriedly checking to make sure it could be revived, I set about recharging. Apparently I had never let it run down to this level before, wherein it ‘is not able to connect with your computer or appear in iTunes’. Well, at least for 30 min. or thereabouts.
We’ve all been to concerts where certain members of the audience should have stayed home in bed due to their severe upper respiratory illnesses. (At least one sitting very close to you.) Now the BBC has revealed their solution to keep the noise down at Radio 3 concert recordings: cough drops.
Even the annoying sounds of unwrapping cellophane have been banished by using waxed paper instead.
It used to be a pain to try and listen to tracks of a CD. I never had the right player, or the right version of the player. In time, I gave up, doing my sample listening elsewhere.
Today, I checked out the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant album Raising Sand (see previous post for one of the tracks), and found that when I clicked on ‘listen to samples’, it took me right to track 1 where I could indeed hear it. Kudos for a much-needed feature!
Listening to Queen Latifah’s version now, also have Nina Simone’s. The song was written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who wasn’t always a screamer. But during a session which turned into a drunken party, the direction of the song changed. Then he discovered that the wilder version got lots more attention. His performances inspired the shock-rock acts of Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson, Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent and others.
Here’s the song, don’t know the origin of the video. Gaze out the window instead, if you have one.
Probably gives away a lot of Fly Away Home if you haven’t seen it yet, but an excellent example of a song that is an important part of a film, instead of just being tacked on in the hope of getting an award nomination. In this video, you don’t see the scene in which it is actually used. For that, you’ll have to find a copy of this 1996 movie.
I put in a few livelier tracks that force me to get up and move around.
I Put a Spell on You - Queen Latifah
Yellow - Coldplay
Happy Ever After - Julia Fordham
Body Heat - Alicia Bridges
Get Me Through December - Alison Krauss
Wild is the Wind - Nicolas Bearde
Gula Matari - Quincy Jones
California Dreamin’ - Bobby Womack
Don’t You Worry, Baby - Melody Gardot
The bug that has me very lightheaded is slowly succumbing to the antibiotic. Meanwhile, I take a look at the info sheet from the HMO that has in all caps, MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS.
Speaking of people stuck in a musical rut, a friend falls in the same category as the relative. The shuffle I got her is only a little bigger than my camera’s memory card. But she has a Mac, newer than mine even.
So I’ll put a bunch of music on CDs and let her son do the loading. Because she’s kinda fearful of computers, even Macs.
After learning recently that a relative has not been exposed to music much past the 60s, I decided to get him a nano 8g. He does not have internet access, and chooses not to sample music through headphones in a record store due to his fastidious nature.
Over the next few days, I will load up the nano with a wide variety of music, the likes of which he has never heard. He’ll probably hate a lot of it, but then there will be happy discoveries.
And because he doesn’t have a computer, I will also have to buy a wall charger.
This promises to be lots more fun than filling up a basket with various foods as I did last year.
Another exceptional bonus to online shopping is the fact that the music coming through the speakers is mine (but not Christmas music just yet, I’m not ready). My misfortune last night was to enter a store with Burl Ives’ Holly Jolly Christmas.
When I don’t concentrate fully on my current playlist, back comes Burl, always in the background for another day or so. Oh, please stop.
Of all the versions of Dindi that I have, this is my favorite. I’m sure I’ve mentioned A Twist of Jobim before, several excellent tracks there.
The mix of talent seems pretty near perfect, and while there are many videos of Debarge singing his better known songs, this is the only full version of Dindi that I can find online, and it’s mostly showing the album cover. But you’ll get the idea, if you’re unfamiliar with the song.
And yes, this is the Art Porter of the Art Porter Law. More on that in a bit.
Over the weekend, we’ve been catching up on the series. A family member looked up cast info, and quickly found too much information, as in who gets bumped off. He listened to the soundtrack, but refused to learn the names of the individual tracks, saying that spoilers were there as well.
I was curious about the use of so many different music influences. The juxtaposition of Celtic sounds and Taiko drums is surprising and dramatic, for example. My search took me here, and if you’ve seen the whole series, you won’t mind reading it. I exited after a few paragraphs. Don’t. Like. Spoilers.
Caught up in airport traffic on the freeway, we listened to this last night as a family member headed back to the city. He thought it would be great field show music for a marching band. Here is a portion of the track:
Being several days ago, I have forgotten the dinner part. The movie is wonderful, the story of an Egyptian police band stranded in a tiny Israeli town. Wariness on all sides, and high awkwardness as a few Israelis extend food and other hospitality to the visitors. But, as all the principals discover, music is a universal language, never more than when seated around a somewhat hostile dinner table, singing ‘Summertime’ in English.
After watching two episodes of State of Play tonight, I went looking for the soundtrack by Nicholas Hooper. Not much luck there, but I did find a blog about the movie, The Girl in the Cafe, starring Bill Nighy and Kelly MacDonald, who also star in State of Play. Hooper did the soundtrack here too. There’s a link at the blog to a free download of this song:
A family member has remarked that attending a concert that consists solely of the performer onstage with his laptop lacks a certain visual excitement.
In the world of classical music, technological advances are moving the usual group-of-musicians-with-conductor scenario into a more futuristic realm. Nowadays, a concert-goer might see the conductor decked out in a specially wired jacket that allows a Wii-minded directing of an orchestra.
This orchestra would include a section that is not visible to the audience, but gleaned from a database of digital sounds that gives an unprecedented depth and range to the listening experience.
When experts listen to samples of computer-generated music embedded in a Beethoven symphony performance, they find it difficult to tell the difference from the real thing.
According to the link, a Queen song also fills the bill - ‘Another One Bites the Dust’. However, some might feel this one might not be as appreciated by patients.
His parents were opera singers, and his singing style has been compared to the sound of a tenor sax. He wrote Solid Air in remembrance of his good friend Nick Drake, another singer and songwriter.
At the height of her career, she took time out to care for her severely-brain damaged child, Valerie, at home. Thirty-one years later, after the death of her daughter, she has an album out, ‘Live’, and is touring once more.
‘You’re My Girl’ is the song she wrote for her mother back in the 80s, and with a few changes, has become a song about Valerie. When you know the context of the song, it is almost unbearable to listen to, but so beautiful.
One of my dinner companions last night was a young man who has spent the last four or five years serving his country in remote areas. He was out biking near the junior high one day when he too became aware of loud music blaring over the playing fields. As far as he could tell, this was meant to serve as motivation for the running of laps.
Since lap running is an integral part of junior high, I expect the bombardment will continue.
For more days than I want to consider, music has been coming from the direction of the junior high. Most of it is hip hop-related, and seems to occur during lunchtime and recess. We neighbors don’t understand.
Today, I’m happy to say that the music of choice is by the Chipmunks, as in Alvin. To hear this blasted over powerful speakers is soul-destroying.
At his site, you can see and hear some of the instruments he’s developed, including the phonoharp, much loved by the Kronos Quartet. There’s a wind-powered turntable, another turntable that can play a composition powered by an earthquake, and many other fascinating devices.
Just as some can see colors while listening to music, others can hear the sounds of a moving image, such as a screen saver. Kind of a crossover of the senses, as it were, called synaesthesia. This article contains a test you can take to see if you have this ability.
Cliff Martinez soundtracks are always excellent accompaniments for a late evening drive to San Francisco. Wicker Park might not be the best for first thing Monday morning after trekking around mountainous trails on Sunday though.
It is surprising how many gentlemen of a certain age are out there climbing the steep grades on a bike.
About mid-morning, the crew brought out the boombox. I didn’t want to listen to it, so I cranked up my Blank & Jones collection, which can get me through most of the day in a productive haze. At some point, the painters turned down their stuff. After lunch maybe. Then they went to work on the beams, which meant they were close to where I was working. They got kinda quiet, although occasionally one would do the falsetto again, a melodic ballad that was nice.
They finished the whole house in a day. Very proud, they walked me around so I could see. As I was writing out the check, the lead guy said, ‘Nice music.’
Actually, the prep work is today. The pressure washing is done (forgot and left a bathroom window open, major mess), the windows all covered over. The workers have been singing, frequently in falsetto, and whistling. The boombox appeared, which is fine with me, my neighbor in back deserves a couple of days of noise favors returned.
The light inside is amazing, but kinda hard to concentrate on photos with all the outside activity. Tomorrow promises more of the same distraction, but at the end of the day, the house will look better than it has for two decades. Here I was thinking the prep would only take a couple of hours.
A small, secluded monastery comes close to topping the UK pop charts. Can one really be isolated if there is internet access? The story of the monks is here, and a video is here.
Are they able to handle the fame and subsequent fortune? Well, the abbot has an MBA, and a CD deal with Universal Music has been signed. Their PR person is on the cell constantly, when he is not dealing with the day-to-day of monastery life. There is perspective.
His advice: Don’t stand around in wet socks, don’t wrap plastic bags around wet socks, don’t sleep in wet socks. If not treated right, amputation is necessary.
