Alone and Unobserved » music

Stamping My Feet in Anticipation – Now with a Post-Concert Update!

Sean — Mon, 03 May 2010 01:11:29 +0000

I’m writing this from the lobby of The State Room, a venue in downtown Salt Lake City, waiting to hear one of my favorite bands ever, Shearwater. Never heard them, you say? Never heard *of* them?? Oh my lord, you are missing out. Go FORTHWITH to Shearwater’s website and take a moment to discover some if the most haunting, evocative music you’ll ever encounter.

Here’s hoping their live show lives up to my expectations…

Also: SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!

UPDATED:

The concert was so much more than I hoped for. I discovered a new band—Wye Oak (new to me, I mean; not *new* new)—and several amazing musicians. I saw lots of awesome local people. I screamed so long and loud that I may never be able to speak again. I was blown away by Shearwater. Completely blown away.

Also I got pretty drunk, for the second night in a row. Oops.

25 Song Shuffle – Updated with Playlist!

Sean — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:57:30 +0000

Another meme! I know you are so excited. The rules:

Once you’ve been tagged…

1) turn on your mp3 player
2) go to Shuffle songs mode
3)Write down the first 25 songs that come up…song title and artist– NO editing/cheating, please.
4) Choose 25 people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you.

And here is the list of tracks my iPhone spit out. (Try clicking the links and listening! Some of these are really good songs.)

SkyMall, Jonathan Coulton
Cowboy, Oh! Wild Birds
Mamma Mia, A*Teens
Blue Suede Shoes, Chris Garneau
Ring Ring, Mika
The Bridge of Khazad Dûm, Howard Shore
A Laptop Like You, Jonathan Coulton
Long Past Gone, Jami Sieber
Chiron Beta Prime, Jonathan Coulton
Teeth in the Grass, Iron & Wine
Girl, The Beatles
Johnny Viola, Shearwater
Pieces, Dinosaur Jr.
Adrienne, Isabelle Boulay
Fingers, Pink
You’re the Coliseum, Shearwater
Polar Nettles, Neko Case
Music for Girls, Baxendale
Genie in a Bottle/No Scrubs/Slave 4 U, Dan Finnerty and the Dan Band
There’s No Here, Dinosaur Jr.
Una furtiva lagrima, Luciano Pavarotti
18 Wheeler, Pink
California, Rufus Wainwright
“You have a good third husband, Joanne.”, Raúl Esparza and Barbara Walsh
Peace beneath the City, Iron & Wine

This was kind of a bizarre exercise, because it uncovered some music on my iPhone that I’ve never listened to, ever. (And no, I’m not talking about the Pink songs.)

Uh, once again, I probably won’t be tagging anyone explicitly here, but feel free to consider yourself tagged anyway. Post a link to your list in the comments!

Update:
I made this into a playlist on Grooveshark (all except tracks 2, 8, 14 and 18), which you can listen to below.

Photo by el patojo on Flickr.

Tim Minchin: “If You Open Your Mind Too Much, Your Brain Will Fall Out”

Sean — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:01:32 +0000

Subtitle: “Take My Wife!”

Via RichardDawkins.net

Storm: A Beat Poem by Tim Minchin

Make Your Life Richer and More Fulfilling with Yet Another Online Distraction

Sean — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:22:43 +0000

In my feverish quest to put off the final projects in my classes until there is LITERALLY NO TIME TO COMPLETE THEM, I’ve finally caved in and created a Blip.fm account where I post whatever song is currently stuck in my head so that it can infect your brain as well. You should try it out! It is addictive and will keep you from accomplishing anything worthwhile for hours at a time! If that doesn’t recommend it to you then you are far too demanding and also impossible to please.

Music Dump

Sean — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:55:15 +0000

If you’re in or around downtown Salt Lake on Mondays, check out Local Night at Slowtrain Records. Tonight was Cub Country and Indian Headset, and Oh! Wild Birds is at the end of the month. Next week is a special treat: Portland musician Laura Gibson will be doing a free, all-ages set before her concert at The Urban Lounge. (view the full Slowtrain Local Night Calendar)

I was watching Neil Gaiman perform “Creepy Doll” on YouTube with Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm and I realized that I only had six Jonathan Coulton songs in my iTunes. I know! Crazy, right? So I went immediately to jonathancoulton.com and downloaded everything available. I’ve been listening to Jonathan Coulton for the past two days and wow, his music never gets old. Check. Him. Out.

Also new to my music library:

Asa (Asa)
Fire on the Mountain

It’s Not Me, It’s You (Lily Allen)
The Fear

Rooks (Shearwater)
Rooks

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand (Franz Ferdinand)
No You Girls + Send Him Away

Slacktivism! (plus Neko Case)

Sean — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:34:31 +0000

According to the ANTI- Label Blog, for every blog that reposts the link to Neko Case’s new single, “People Have a Lot of Nerve,” ANTI- and Neko will donate five dollars to Best Friends Animal Society.

You can either listen to the single on the ANTI- Label Blog or download it directly from ANTI-.

Listen on antilabelblog.com

Download the single

If you like Neko Case, if you like animals, or if you like both!!!!, go to antilabelblog.com to find out how you can participate.

Guess What I’m Doing!

Sean — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:26:44 +0000

@ Sam Weller’s, in Heaven

I’m sitting in the Sam Weller’s Coffee Garden, reading my new book, listening to music on my newly Genius-enhanced iPhone, drinking a skinny iced vanilla latte and eating a decidedly un-skinny slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream. And let me tell you: I’m already in love with Cryptonomicon. Neal Stephenson is MARVELOUS.

Later: now I’m on my way to the gym to work off the un-skinny. Laterz!

What I Missed Most While I Was Away:

Sean — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:01:56 +0000

Rufus Wainwright. I am so, so in love with him and his voice right now. So y’all get to suffer along with me!

Between My Legs
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b83WpEExtUs&hl=en&fs=1]

Going to a Town

California

Music for Girls

Sean — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:07:04 +0000

Sometimes when I’m listening to my favorite music—like “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone, or “Urge for Going” by Joni Mitchell, or anything by Neko Case—I get so overwhelmed with how amazing the artist is, how much I luuuurve the song OMG OMG, how profoundly the lyrics SPEAK TO ME, that I get a bit frustrated. Once I’ve shared a song with my friends and casual acquaintances, once I’ve given it a 5-out-of-5 rating in iTunes, sung it to myself every morning in the shower and happily listened to it hundreds if not thousands of times, what else is there to do???

There’s a special feeling of desperation that overcomes me in such moments: I gasp with ecstatic joy when I hear the piano sample start up on Lily Allen’s “Knock Em Out,” and I feel I must declare my undying devotion to it, but what act could be meaningful enough to convey such a dizzying height of unselfish love? My first impulse in these cases is usually to write a blog post, like I would for a book or movie that had changed my life (SEE: Atonement; Brokeback Mountain; Sunshine; etc.), but I can’t imagine a better way to make sure my blog really was alone and unobserved than to swamp it with incoherent gushings about how I want to have Sufjan Stevens‘s babies.

So just imagine that I said something profound here about the coded ur-gender manifestations in Jonathan Coulton’s “Skullcrusher Mountain,” and we’ll leave it at that. And you can check out what I’m listening in the sidebar, or listen to my Last.fm radio station, and maybe sometimes I’ll mention an album I’ve particularly enjoyed, and we’ll pretend that I’m not hopeless at disguising the fact that I am a crazy person.

New Life Goal: I Want to Be a Seventeen-Year-Old Hacker

Sean — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:27:40 +0000

It’s been some time since I read anything that I have found as viscerally terrifying, and yet also verisimilar, as Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. This is the story of Marcus, AKA w1n5ton, a cocky seventeen-year-old student cum hacker whose life changes forever when terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge—and he and his friends are arrested by the Department of Homeland Security as terror suspects. Doctorow does a good job of making the reader feel humiliated, powerless and angry as Marcus begins to fight back, first in small ways and then in large, while always keeping within the bounds of a possible scenario. And that’s what’s terrifying: the kind of picture Doctorow paints is stomach-turning, and yet it seems utterly plausible, given what we know our government has already done and continues to do.

Another frightening book in a similiar but more scholarly vein is Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians, an online, six-chapter introduction to the Right-Wing Authoritarian personality and its current influence on American politics that explains a lot about why the idiots running this country were elected, why the religious right has managed to steal so much power and what can—nay, must!—be done about it before Cory Doctorow’s fantasy comes to life right here on American soil. [Thanks to Dave Barber of The Great Whatsit for posting about Altemeyer and his book.]

I’m also reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which is turning out to be at least as good (or even better—is this possible?) than the movie, and earlier I was listening to the movie soundtrack, which is stunning, gorgeous, unbelievable, sheer genius. Especially the incorporation of typewriter sounds into the music. [TRUST ME.]