Thursday April 02, 2009

Tunes I can't stop listening to

So this has been a very musical week for me (more on that later), a time for discovering new favorites and enjoying the old gems. I've been getting into "zones", quite unintentionally. I put my iPod on random, and just listen to song after song of the nearly 6000 tunes that come up (and I *still* haven't finished ripping all my CDs...), and then I'll hear something from an artist and I'll have to go and listen to the entire album right then, at least once. This happened a few times recently, and it kind of surprised me. The first time it was Carter USM's 101 Damnations.  I heard "Every Time a Churchbell Rings" and I had to listen to the rest of the album. Three times.

Then I discovered NPR Live Music Series - and they don't just cover old people's music, either! I downloaded a bunch of concerts (all for free, legitimately!) in podcast form - Liz Phair, Death Cab for Cutie, Tom Waits, Rilo Kiley and Leonard Cohen - just to name a few. I've listened to the Leonard Cohen concert twice already. I can't believe he still sounds so magnificent at 74 years old!   And since Liz Phair is another one of those artist that I love listening to the entire album of, I am sure I will love the concert material as well. The two recordings I've heard so far have been very high quality - much better than what you would've gotten on a live album just 15 years ago.

Onto the new music - at Adam Carolla's urging, I got The Pretender's latest, Breaking up the Concrete. Wow! It's everything I've ever loved about their sound, but current and relevant.  I also just got the new EP from Dirty Little Rabbits, a new band out of Ames, Iowa. I met their vocalist, Stella Katsoudas, back when I was working for Amoco (now BP) in Chicago many years ago when she was fronting Sister Soleil. This album does not disappoint, with Stella's light vocals swelling over the heavy guitar riffs.  The drummer is Shawn Crahan from Slipknot, so I guess the band has to take breaks from recording and touring whenever Slipknot is active.

Finally, my other musical addiction is this fan made video for Turn Around by They Might Be Giants. This cracks me up every time I watch it - it's such a perfectly literal translation!

Riding my bike again!

The weather has warmed, the time change has gone into effect, and it's really spring here in the SF Bay Area!  That means getting back on my bicycle!  I'm coming off of a nasty cold (seems like everyone has had it), so it feels good to be breathing in the fresh morning air. I managed to commute into Menlo Park twice this week - my hubby is well on his way of biking in every day for a month... What is really cool about this ride in is just being so close to nature as we ride along the bay shore, through Shoreline park and the Palo Alto wetlands.  This week, we were surrounded by butterflies who are apparently in the area as they migrate from Mexico to Washington. We spotted many egrets, nesting geese, and crows.  Last night while riding home, a large hawk was pacing us, riding the wind just feet from our heads (in fact, he nearly accidentally swooped right into Mark's head at one point!) It was very cool and definitely something we could not have experienced from the car.

Oh, yes, the cars... we're actually getting problems starting these cars, just due to lack of driving. I had heard that there are supposed to be car insurance discounts if you commute by bicycle, I'll have to look into that to see if I can somehow cover the extra tune-ups we'll need to do due to lack of use ;-)

Now a side note on blogging - I'm going to update my blog roll tonight, as I realize that I haven't been very good with updating it with the blogs that I actually read every day.  Some are quite funny and others very interesting.  Speaking of blogs that I read, I met a friend of mine in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago that I hadn't seen in months - and we realized that since we both follow each other's blogs, that we didn't have to update each other on the big things in life - just the details and things we never got around to blogging. Very cool, if only a tiny bit nerdy. :-)

Now I'm going to try to get up all the entries that have been running through my head all week....