Maybe today will be a good day?

Normally, I would go to playlist.com and give you all a repeat of the soundtrack that put me in this frame of mind, but I'm kind of rushed this morning. (Not too rushed NOT to say something about this, mind you.)

I think the music gods were smiling upon my tired achy body this morning when I started my exerbike ride. The first few tunes just happened magically without me skipping through the random offerings. By the end I had to skip more frequently to find the perfect grove. However, this combination was mostly perfect and uplifting, especially for a dreaded Monday morning:

1. I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor - Arctic Monkeys
   
2. Nugget - Cake
   
3. Lies - Thompson Twins
   
4. Car Wash - Rose Royce
   
5. Slice* - Five for Fighting
   
6. Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant
   
7. It's Not OK - My Chemical Romance
   
8. Paper and Fire - John Mellencamp
   
9. Love Shack** - B52s
   
10. Red Skies at Night - Fixx
    

Happy Monday!


*"Have you read my blog today?"
**"I got my car and it's as big as a whale."

Beware the Mad Scientists

Playing around with playlist.com and went down a thematic road:

Random playlists from this week's workouts

Every morning, I get up around 5 a.m., strap my iPod onto my arm, and stumble down to the exercise bike for 30 minutes (plus or minus) of cardio to start my day. I typically let the iPod offer me tunes on shuffle, some times I skip one, some times more than one. Last week I decided to write down the tunes I let play to see if I could get some insight into my mood for the day. Since I don't feel like I have anything profound to share right now, I thought I'd share this weekend's playlists (45 minute sessions):

Saturday:

1. Aqualung by Jethro Tull


2. Small Things by Blink 182


3. Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde


4. Gangster Tripping by Fat Boy Slim


5. China Girl by David Bowie


6. Never Say Never by Queens of the Stone Age
nice cover

7. You Make My Dreams Come True by Hall and Oates


8. Walking Contradiction by Green Day


9. Dirty White Boy by Foreigner


10. Hot Stuff by Donna Summer


11. The KKK Took My Baby Away by the Ramones

Sunday:

1. Longview by Green Day


2. Murder by Crystal Method


3. Pink by Aerosmith


4. I Don't Want to Dance by Eddy Grant


5. Voodoo by Godsmack


6. Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms


7. Tell Me What to Say by Black Lab


8. Jungle Love by The Time


9. Counting Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers


10. Splish Splash by Bobby Darin


11. Jump by Van Halen

I'm usually faced with musical dilemmas during these shuffle plays. Songs have to be up tempo enough to fit in with my pace. Also, I sometimes skip totally appropriate songs due to over exposure (the iPod likes to give me songs that it knows that I like sometimes too much of the same song).

I'm sure there's a great volume of data/postulation out there on why the iPod offers us some of the stuff that it does during shuffle play. I've noticed that there are some songs that the iPod almost never offers me, while there are other songs that it loves to offer me nearly every session ("Press Darlings" by Adam and the Ants). I was even offered "China Girl" a second time during yesterday's workout.

I'm looking forward to a new download being offered, though it may not be up tempo enough for a workout: "Re: Your Brains" by Jonathan Coulton, recommended by my friend Cobwebs over at Shadowmanor. The song fits in well with the following that she also posted (pardon the blatant thievery):


Other recent music downloads/rips that I'm pretty happy about: the soundtrack from Henry Poole is Here, the soundtrack to Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, the soundtrack to Bones (tv show that I've never watched) and the score to Twilight (the movie). On the Henry Poole soundtrack, I'm particularly fond of the Eels tune "Love of the Loveless". They've appeared on numerous soundtracks now, and never a miss in the lot.

Probably will see Monsters vs Aliens next weekend. Trailer looked great, but we were way too busy this weekend to get around to it.

100Gb's and counting

Since getting my new iMac, back in November, I have been slowly working on ripping much of my music collection to iTunes. I also picked up a 16Gb iPod.

My digital music collection was around 25Gb when I got the iMac. Today, I surpassed the 100Gb mark. Since my musical tastes are so wide and eclectic, I don't find the fact that I have over 15,000 songs that impressive. I've probably only digitized about 40% of my cd collection. In the process of digitizing my collection, I've also become aware of gaps in my music that I have been filling in with purchases.

One of my playlists is for my personal "greatest hits", it includes such artists as the Dave Matthews, Toadies, Concrete Blonde, Queen, Clannad, Animals, Eddie Rabbit, Edvard Grieg, Modest Mussorgsky, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Johnnie Horton, Johnny Cash, Butthole Surfers, Green Day, Death Cab for Cutie, Flobots, They Might Be Giants, Modern English, Cypress Hill, U2, Baha Men, Boomtown Rats, the Cure and Adam Ant. Someday, I hope to post that playlist in total. It currently has about 250 songs on it.

Music was one of the major driving factors for my move to the iMac/iPod environment. Diddling with my music collection is my primary personal computer-oriented time sink. I cannot imagine my life without music.

My mother suffered from major hearing loss. Supposedly there is a genetic predisposition to her particular condition. I had my hearing testing several times in my 30's, since that was the normal age of onset. Fortunately, I think the disease skipped me. Life would lose much of its meaning and pleasure for me if I could no longer enjoy music.

Early Halloween: The Best of Marilyn Manson

I'm not really a true Marilyn Manson fan. However, he has done some intriguing covers of a number of songs. Recently, he contributed to a tribute to the movie "A Nightmare Before Christmas", adding yet another excellent cover to the musical history books. I realized that I finally had collected enough Marilyn Manson songs to make my own 'Best of' album. Not all of the songs are covers. Two are from The Matrix movies, one is in the previews to "Max Payne". Here's the playlist:

1. Down in the Park (cover)
2. This is Halloween (cover)
3. Tainted Love (cover)
4. Personal Jesus (cover)
5. Rock Is Dead (The Matrix)
6. This Is the New Shit (The Matrix Reloaded)
7. If I was your Vampire (Max Payne)
8. Sweet Dreams (cover)
9. The Beautiful People
10. Heart-Shaped Glasses
11. Disposable Teens
12. Use Your Fist

Just in time for Halloween!

More Music-Brief and non-Comprehensive

Due to some unfortunately circumstances (death of a church member), Grendel decided to cut his presentation on the history of modern music a bit tomorrow, to leave time for discussion of the tragedy.

As a result, instead of doing six CDs worth of music history, we ended up with two (plus the CD of covers and parodies previously mentioned). This means we weren't as comprehensive as we hoped to be (and even one CD a decade was in adequate). We decided to pick two or three songs from each 5th year of the span, songs that we felt were representative of or important that year. We took a little license by a year or two when we thought a song needed to be pulled in. Here is the final playlist for our History of Modern Music (super Reader's Digest version):

1950
Rag Mop-The Ames Brothers
Rolling Stone-Muddy Watters

1955
Rock Around the Clock-Bill Haley
Maybellene-Chuck Berry

1960
Cathy's Clown-The Everly Brothers
The Twist-Chubby Checker

1965
Wooly Bully-Sam the Sham and the Pharoes
I Can't Help Myself-The Four Tops

1970
Evil Ways-Santana
I'll Be There-Jackson Five

1975
Get Down Tonight-K.C. and the Sunshine Band
We Will Rock You-Queen

1980
What I Like About You-The Romantics
Rappers Delight-Sugar Hill Gang

1985-86
Material Girl-Madonna
Fight For Your Right (to party)-Beastie Boys
Ride The Lightening-Metalica

1990
Vogue-Madonna
Ice Ice Baby-Vanilla Ice

1995
Jeremy-Pearl Jam
Hey Lover-LL Cool Jay

2000
Smooth-Santana w/Rob Thomas
Lose Yourself-Eminem
It Wasn't Me-Shaggy

2005
Holiday-Green Day
Snow-Red Hot Chili Peppers
Welcome Home-Coheed & Cambria

2008
Paper Planes-M.I.A.
Handlebars-Flobots
Good to be a Geek-Deaf Pedestrians

Overall, the project was a lot of fun. Now I have the Herculean task of putting all the CDs away that we ripped from this week (plus a bunch others that have been stacking up).

More Music-A History Through Covers and Parodies

Part of Grendel's presentation on the history of modern popular music will focus on looking at stylistic history through covers and parodies of songs (since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?). Here's the playlist for that CD. We identified more, but we had to cut it down so it would fit on one CD:

1. Hound Dog-Big Mama Thorton (1952)
2. Hound Dog-Elvis Presley (1957)
3. I Fought the Law-Sonny Curtis (1959)
4. I Fought the Law-The Bobby Fuller Four (1966)
5. I Fought the Law-The Clash (1979)
6. I Fought the Law (and I won)-Dead Kennedys (1987)
7. I Fought the Law-Green Day (2004)
8. Crimson and Clover-Tommy James and the Shondells (1968)
9. Crimson and Clover-Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (1981)
10. Love Hurts-Roy Orbison (1961)
11. Love Hurts-Nazareth (1975)
12. Signs-Five Man Electrical Band (1970)
13. Signs-Tesla (1990)
14. American Woman-The Guess Who (1970)
15. American Woman-Lenny Kravitz (1999)
16. Walk This Way-Aerosmith (1975)
17. Walk This Way-Run-D.M.C. (1986)
18. Rock and Roll Music-Chuck Berry (1957)
19. Rock and Roll Music-The Beach Boys (1976)
20. Rock and Roll Music-The Punkles (2002)
21. Ridin'-Chamillionaire (2005)
22. White & Nerday-Weird Al (2006)
23. Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)-The Offspring (1998)
24. Pretty Fly for a Rabbi-Weird Al (1999)

Music Project: 50s and 60s

Here are the songs that made the cut for our music project for the 1950s and the 1960s CDs:

1950's
Rolling Stone, Muddy Waters
Rag Mop, The Ames Brothers
Kansas City, Wilber Harrison
La Bamba, Richie Valens

Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley
Get a Job, Silhouettes
Yakety Yak, The Coasters
Whole Lot of SHakin' Going On, Jerry Lee Lewis
Rock Around the Clock, Bill Haley
Roll Over Beethoven, Chuck Berry
Tutti-Frutti, Little Richard
Why Do Fools Fall In Love, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
The Wanderer, Dion and the Belmonts
Splish Splash, Bobby Darin
Walkin' After Midnight, Patsy Cline
Lollipop, The Chordettes
Chantilly Lace, Big Bopper
Peggy Sue, Buddy Holly

1960's

The Twist by Chubby Checker (R&B 1960)
Cathy's Clown by the Everly Brothers (Pop 1960)
I Can't Get Next To You by the Temptations (R&B 1969)
Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by the 5th Dimension (Pop 1969)

I Want to Hold Your Hand, the Beatles
Leader of the Pack, The Shangri-Las
I'm Into Something Good, Herman's Hermits
Big Girls Don't Cry, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
Surfin' USA, Beach Boys
19th Nervous Breakdown, Rolling Stones
My Generation, The Who
Respect, Aretha Franklin
Hello, I Love You by the Doors
The Star Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix
Piece of My Heart by Janis Joplin
White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane
Come Together, the Beatles
Dance to the Music, Sly & The Family Stone
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly
The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
To Sir, With Love by Lulu
Mrs Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel


I do not claim to be comprehensive. I do not have an actual degree in Music History or Music Theory. However, I hope that I have hit the stylistic highlights/milestones of each decade. (Note: The second Beatles song really should have been Helter Skelter, but we couldn't get a copy of it!)

Latest music project

My son is thinking of running a meeting of his youth group in the next few weeks. His theme is pretty broad: Music. Grendel appreciates my musical knowledge, so we're having fun working on this together. We've talked a lot about it, and we think we've narrowed it down to a history of popular music in the last 50 years or so. We've had to narrow our focus quite a bit to get something we think that he can fit into a two hour meeting.

Yesterday, we were talking about our need to narrow our focus even more and I said that I could easily put together a syllabus for a full semester college course on the History of Popular Music in the last 60 Years. He smiled and said, in all sincerity, "I know you could." It felt good to hear him say that. Really good.

In my early twenties, a friend commented on my diverse taste in music saying that such breadth meant that I really had NO taste. Bah! Fortunately, I let his commentary roll right off my back. I love music, lots of different kinds of music. I can easily listen to classical, swing, jazz, honky tonk, blue grass, folk, celtic, R&B, classic soul, reggae, rockabily, rock, surf, punk, soft rock, AAA, metal, hip hop, techno, country, and rap. Admittedly, I'm VERY selective in what I like in those genres, being particularly selective when it comes to modern (post 1980) country and rap. Even so, I like listening to music for it's influences, tempo, lyrics, and beat.

Maybe I missed my calling. Maybe I should have majored in Music Theory or Music History. Sadly, a PhD in either might have garnered me a poverty-inspiring teaching position. If income were not an issue, I REALLY think teaching others about the diversity, influences, impacts, and sheer joy of music would be a blast.

Back to our project. Here is our current plan. We hope to compile a CD for each decade from the 1950's through the beginning of the millenium. The first four songs would be the top rock and R&B songs from the beginning of the decade and the end of it. The rest of the CD would include some milestone songs exemplifying the styles of the decade.

We also want to do a CD of influences, covers, and parodies. This would include things like an original blues song from the 40s and the Elvis cover of it in the 50s. (Also, Alien Ant Farm's version of "Smooth Criminal", along with the original) As well as an original song and a Weird Al or Twisted Tunes cover of it (Think Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" verses "Constipated"). As the saying goes, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Or, our point is that a cover (or parody) shows the staying power of a song.

For example, the 1950's would include blue-eyed soul, surf, cruisin', romantic harmonies, greaser rock and sock-hop hits (including both swing and honkytonk inspired early rock). I used to be a big oldies nut, when 'oldies' meant 50's and early 60's. So, this one will be especially fun.

The most difficult aspect of this project is that we only have a week or so to pull it together, and we're limiting ourselves to one CD a decade, all of which can't possibly be played in the two hours alotted.

Strange weekend: Milestones, Food, Music, oh my.

OK. On the entertainment front it has been a surreal weekend: Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes died. And, Madonna turned 50!!!

On the other hand, I had a pleasant weekend of cooking. Yes, cooking. I like to cook. Partially because I like to eat. But also because I like the process of cooking. It relaxes me. This weekend, I made buttermilk biscuits, rattatoui, and whole wheat cinnamon raisin muffins. I also picked a big bag of lettuce from my patio garden just a few hours before a freak hail storm destroyed my plants.

We watched some of the Olympics this weekend too. Men's gymnastics, men's swimming, and women's weightlifting, were the highlights for us. The Chinese really have an edge in the men's gymnastics.

I'm working on converting over my music from Yahoo Unlimited to Rhapsody. It really wasn't my choice. Yahoo sold out to Real Media. It looks like it'll probably work out ok though. I do like that I can access my Rhapsody account on my TiVo box. And, Summer has got me working on my 'top 100' songs of all time, which is currently well over 200!

We watched the season finale of Doctor Who (WOW!). We also watched another episode of the old BBC series Spaced (strange but highly amusing). Then, we watched "Mad Money" with Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes. Highly recommended conspiracy comedy. (Betcha didn't know THAT was a genre.)

Still working on meal planning, with the goal of cleaning out our freezer and pantry. The grocery bill was nearly half this week what it was a few weeks ago. After listening to "The Omnivore's Dilemma" the bill may continue to be lower (or a lot higher ... since the only way I'm eating meat is if it's grass-fed and free range, which is way more expensive).

I'm sure this week will be busy at work. However, last week was one of the most wretched on record. So, I'm looking on the bright side. Statistically speaking, this week will probably be better. If not, I can look back at last week with a nostalgic eye.

Summer playlist

I couldn't find any site that would actually let me easily share my current playlist here, so we'll just have to pretend:

• Hey Man by the Eels


• There Ain't A Girl Alive by Joan Armitrading


• Ashes and Wine by A Fine Frenzy


• Poetry Man by Queen Latifah


• Old Shit/New Shit by the Eels


• Wicked Game by Giant Drag


• Wind Blow by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony


• Rehab by Amy Winehouse


• Sittin' At A Bar by Rehab


• My Way by Los Lonely Boys


• Other Ways by Trevor Hall


• Lucky Man by The Verve


• For You I Will by Teddy Geiger


• This is Your Life by Low vs Diamond


• Fake Emprie by The National


• 1234 by Feist


• Kindly Unspoken by Kate Voegele


• Over You by Daughtry


• I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry


• Dracula From Houston by Butthole Surfers


• Hallelujah by John Cale


• I'm Shipping Up to Boston by the Dropkick Murphys


• Handlebars by Flobots


• Trying to Lose My Mind by Matt Costa


• Apologize by One Republic


• Love Song by Sara Bareilles


• Apologize by Timbaland

Some are a little older, but most are from this calendar year. Not bad for an old lady, huh?

Fascist music services

For many years, I subscribed to Musicmatch Jukebox. Sometimes, I would buy songs through them. Last year, I finally ditched them in favor of Yahoo Jukebox. Yahoo's unlimited music service had the option of downloading "licensed" songs to my mp3 player. As long as I was a subscriber to the service, I could download anything in their catalog to my portable player.

Sometimes, I liked a song enough that I wanted to add it my personal ('permanent') collection. These are songs that I wanted to be able to burn to CD, and have access to beyond my relationship with Yahoo (or MusicMatch). Apparently, I was only half right in my assumptions. Songs purchased from either service have been in WMA format and subject to DRM licensing. This means that anytime that I want to do anything with these songs on my computer (like load them to a portable player or burn them to CD), that the DRM will attempt to contact the 'mother ship' to make sure that I have the rights to do so.

Um ... annoying.

The only way around this is the following scheme that I've concocted. First, once you have a reached a reasonable threshold of purchases (10-25, depending on length of the tracks), burn your most recent purchases to CD for 'archival' purposes. Once the songs are playable on any CD player, put the CD back in your computer and MP3 rip the songs (labeling the tracks yourself, since the CD will not be in any CD database on the Internet, in theory). Then, you have an MP3 digital version of the song you purchased, and can work with it without having to deal with the DRM crud.

Mind you, I am not condoning pirating. I just want to be able to burn mix CD's and transfer music to my portable device without constant third-degree interrogation by the DRM police.

My answer to repetitive winter weather

Winter weather is outdoing itself in New England, and I have grown beyond weary with its machinations. Supposedly, we're about to get hit with another four to six inches of snow over night. While I have several meetings scheduled for tomorrow, I refuse to fight snow and traffic to go into the office. The commute normally takes me an hour. In bad, and I mean ghastly, weather it could take me nearly twice as long. My back issues make it difficult to handle a car ride of much more than an hour. So, if things look gnarly tomorrow morning, I plan to opt out of my work day.

What shall I do on my day off, assuming that I have one tomorrow?

I am seven months behind in reconciling my checking account, so maybe that should take priority? After that, I'd like to make a Valentine card for my husband. Then, well, then I have a boatload of TiVo programs queued up that are simply calling to me.

Yes, yes. I KNOW that the unreconciled checking account is a bit irresponsible. I typically keep a float of a few hundred dollars in my account to cover any overlooked expenses when I update Quicken at the end of each week (which I am quite religious about, thank you). So, it's probably not all THAT bad. Still, it would be good to be more certain of the status of my checking account, rather than relying on a general state of suspected comfort.

Another one of my personal goals has to do with music. I am organizing an 'oldies' party at my church. And, since I have a pretty obscene music collection, I've been enjoying accumulating a playlist for the evening that encompasses hits from the fifties through the eighties. Pulling the music together will probably more fun for me than the actual party, which a number of people are already really stoked for (there will be costume and trivia contests, involving gift certificates to Newbury Comics).

So, I'm trying to look on the 'bright side' of the potential for bad weather tomorrow. Heck, I'm almost rooting for it to suck in the morning.

Getting too old for concerts?

My husband picked up tickets for the Evanescence concert this evening. While I like the band well enough, I have a tough time enjoying a mid-week night out. I typically rise at 5 a.m. So staying out past 10 p.m. is a bit tiresome. On top of that basic math, I do have chronic insomnia, and the last couple of days have been pretty brutal on that front.

The concert was pretty good, though we left before the end by mutual agreement. My back was bothering me a lot, along with being exhausted. The food at the arena was crap. And the music was a wee bit loud (fortunately, I did have ear plugs).

Looking around at the crowd, I was more than a bit amused. A lot of the crowd were Goths. Most of the younger girls who weren't Goths were wearing their pants tight and virtually falling off their butts, which looked unflattering even on the most well proportioned of them. Then there was a whole cadre of girls wearing outlandishly short skirts with obscenely high heels or boots.

Boy do I sound like an old fuddy duddy.

We may go to another concert in March. This one appeals to old people like me: Van Hanlen. Maybe their show will be over by 10. After all, they're old like us.