1. **Kate Bush, "Pi"**. I've been waiting for this to show up in my shuffle for the FRT! Kate Bush, singing the digits of π!
2. **Suzanne Vega, "Knight Moves"**. This is an old favorite of mine. The lyrics have some
personal significance, but it's a lovely song.
3. **Explosions in the Sky, "Have You Passed Through This Night?"**. Post rock, very much in the
vein of "Godspeed You Black Emperor". Not as good as Godspeed, but still pretty good.
4. **New Grange, "Weetabix"**. Very nice bluegrass tune performed by a supergroup of sorts. For the
anniversary of the founding of Compass Records, they put together this band of the top Compass
artists. It's quite a lineup. Allison Brown on banjo (of course; AB is the founder of Compass);
Tim O'Brien playing a guitar-style Bouzouki (a bouzouki is strung like a mandolin - four pairs of strings tuned in fifths), but it's much lower, in the same range as the guitar); Mike Marshall
playing Mandolin; Darol Anger playing fiddle; Todd Phillips on bass; and Phillip Aaberg playing piano.
5. **Rachel's, "Artemisia"**. Yet more post-rock, this time from the more classical side. Rachel's is one of my favorite groups, just overall amazing, wonderful composers and performers. Listening to
Rachel's is a little slice of heaven.
6. **Hugh Blumenfeld, "Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew"**. The only gospel song that I like! Hugh is a great singer/songwriter and english professor. This is a hysterically funny song. To give you a sense of what it's like, here's the first verse: "Well, Jesus was a homeless lad/With an unwed mother and an absent dad/And I really don't think he would have gotten that far/If Newt, Pat and Jesse had followed that star/So let's all sing out praises to/That longhaired radical socialist Jew."
7. **Solas, "The Wiggly Jigs"**. Solas is a great traditional Irish band, led by an unbelievable multi-instrumentalist named Seamus Egan.
8. **Flook, "Asturian Way"**. A great tune from my favorite trad Irish band.
9. **Dirty Three, "Stellar"**. Another really wonderful classical-leaning post-rock band.
10. **King Crimson, "Eyes Wide Open"**. A brilliant piece off of Crimson's latest.
Friday Random Ten, Nov 24
Due to work stuff, I'm very busy this week, and I don't have time to write a detailed
pathological language post, so I chose something that doesn't take a lot of explanation, but
While browser over at programming.reddit.com, I came across something simultaneously hideous and amazing.
I saw it at Julie's.
"American Music," the Violent Femmes
"California Stars," Billy Bragg and Wilco
"The City of New Orleans," Arlo Guthrie
"Song to Woody," Bob Dylan
"The Body of an American," the Pogues
I hear that she misses a digit somewhere in Pi.
Song #1 is my excuse to link to the following:
Hard N Phirm's "Pi", courtesy Google Video. It probably speaks exceedingly well/poorly of us that most of my better friends know this song all the way through.
Oh, man, thanks for the tip on the Kate Bush! :)
(My Christmas shopping just got a little easier....)
The path of love is never smooth...
Off-topic, I'm looking for input about using Powerpoint slides in math lectures, which if you ask me is impossible.