cooltunes

Etta James sings Born to Be Wild, You Can Leave Your Hat On, Love & Happiness, Take Me to the River and My Funny Valentine on this live album.

Chris’ company threw a bash here last night. Met his boss, several of Jeff’s coworkers, sampled the refreshments. Could not make my way to see the art up close due to the crowd.

My internal organs are still resonating from the bass. My hair, so carefully blown dry earlier, frizzed up again. Could have been the damp SF air, but I like to think it was the electric atmosphere of the club.

A drummer, a harpist, a keyboardist, a guitarist, and a bassist discuss reasons why they prefer certain instruments.

His new CD ‘Uncovered’ just out this month has some fine duets with the likes of Eric Clapton, Michael McDonald, J.J. Cale, and Waylon Jennings. My favorite so far is his rendition of Rainy Night in Georgia, which he wrote.

If I Ever Say I’m Over You - Art Garfunkel
Take Me to the River - Talking Heads
China Girl - David Bowie
Shake it Up - The Cars
Goin’ Out of My Head - Luther Vandross
Night Flight - Joe Sample
Nature Boy - David Bowie
We Will Rock You - Queen
I Feel Like a Bullet in the Gun of Robert Ford - Elton John
Let the Good Times Roll - The Cars

Nothing is working today, maybe I’ll close my eyes for . . . just a . . . minute. . . . .

From the very first line, I got it wrong. I thought it was ‘So you’re dancing out the ocean.’ It’s ‘I saw you dancing out the ocean.’ Next verse, ‘In the second that the hammer hits’, I heard ‘in the second that you have a hit’. Next verse, ‘Like freedom fields where wild horses run/When stars collide like you and I/No shadows block the sun.’

All these years (and thank god no one heard me), ‘Like freedom feels where wild horses run/Wind starts to glide like you and I/Though shadows block the sun.’ No wonder it never made sense. Because then it gets dark.

Fourth verse: it goes ‘Drunken nights in dark hotels.’ I sang, ‘Guns and knives in dark hotels.’ And then the grammar seemed to go bad in the last verse, ‘For each man in his time is cain’. I thought of it as either ‘is king’ or ‘is came’.

How long has this song been around? My bathroom tiles are terminally embarrassed.

According to a new study out of Canada, kids who take music lessons do better on memory tests than their nonmusical peers. The research was performed on children ages four to six, duration of the lessons was one year.

A writer from The Observer gets enthusiastic about the group from Atlanta.

I saw Tool and Isis this month with my brother at the Oakland Colliseum.

Not a big fan of Isis’ vocalist but they put in a good 30-minute warmup. From what I can remember most of what they played was from Panopticon, although if I’m wrong Chris will probably pipe in and correct me. They started with the first track on the album, So Did We.

Tool managed to put a huge smile on my face by opening with the track that made me buy Ænima 10 years ago (!), Stinkfist. Rather than heavily favoring tracks from their new album, they played a pretty even distribution of songs from all of their last 3 albums, including Sober from Undertow. Encores were Vicarious and Ænima.

Maynard James Keenan has a pretty bizarre stage presence. He was shirtless and had a spiked mohawk. He was also wearing a cowboy hat at times, and I’m not exactly sure how that managed to not crush his ‘hawk.

He kept to the back of the stage mostly, and all I can say about his movements was that he… undulated a lot. That’s the only way I can describe it. Oh, and there was a lot of pelvic thrusting during Ænima, for some reason.

Maynard quote of the night, directed at the moshers in the general admissions area:

“What are y’all doin down there? Rugby? Football?

… or do you just like grinding up against other guys?

It’s just fucking rock songs people, don’t hurt each other.”

In a new report, researchers find that iPod users seldom buy from iTunes. Where does all that music come from then?

According to the study, most of it hails from the owner’s CD collection or from file-sharing. File-sharing?

More on this later.

Sometimes I wake up with songs in my head, this time the old Moody Blues song, which I liked much better the way I first perceived it: Knights in White Satin, never reaching the end. It made for a memorable image. Interesting to note the other mondegreens associated with the song.

The Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra by Nigel Hess from the Ladies in Lavender soundtrack.

Actually, I’ve been trying to stay awake all day, having lots of fatigue due to a wrenched knee. The Lipton green tea I’ve been guzzling must not have much caffeine.

Discussions regarding copyright issues are not going well, and lawsuits are being readied. Via Briefing.com.

Experimental underground composer Rhys Chatham performed works influenced by drone metal at a recent concert.

Good work music, even with a coworker who knows all the dialogue bits. Although this is only tolerable if I’m mostly photoshopping and not trying to write.

Perhaps the only one around, actually. SFGate talks to Matisyahu.

Is MySpace going to be iTunes biggest rival? Did you see this coming?

And many other ways in which to pamper your music player.

Tony Joe White is still performing the blues, and singing this song. Some say it’s ‘Polk’ Salad Annie, others say it’s ‘Poke’.