Music
drorzel | June 18, 2012So, anyway, as of today, I'm apparently the same age as the Reverend D. Wayne Love in 1998 or thereabouts.
And the sound makes its way outta the window
Minglin' with the traffic noises outside, you know and
All of a sudden I'm overcome by a feelin' of brief mortality
'Cause I'm gettin' on in the world
Comin' up on forty-one years
Forty-one stony gray steps towards the grave
You know the box, awaits its grisly load
Now, I'm gonna be food for worms
(I'm not really that depressed about this birthday, but it's such a random age to be mentioned in a song, and it sticks in my head. And it's a…
drorzel | April 6, 2012I'm killing time waiting for something I can't talk about yet, so here's a silly poll to pass the time, brought to you by a couple of songs served up on the radio this morning while I was running errands:
Which of these awkward song lyrics is the worst lyrical crime against English grammar?
I thought about including "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight," but since it's a deliberate spoof, I don't think it should count.
drorzel | March 26, 2012The title says it all: an animated video of Heisenberg singing about the Uncertainty Principle:
So, you know, there's that. It's pretty good, but he's no Feynman:
And that's your silly musical break for the day.
drorzel | March 8, 2012Yesterday was a really grueling day, and I'm home with The Pip today, so no substantive blogging. But here's a song about the universe, written and performed by one of my colleagues:
If this becomes the next LHC Rap, remember you heard it here first.
By a weird coincidence, we've been watching our Animaniacs DVD's with SteelyKid, and just a couple of days ago got to this one:
So that's not one, but two songs about the universe. Which ought to be enough to keep you entertained for the day.
drorzel | December 14, 2011A predictably stupid discussion of this xkcd cartoon in a place I can't link to reminded me that I haven't posted the list of Christmas songs that don't suck yet this year. This has expanded somewhat since last year, thanks to some recommendations from readers, so it's worth posting again to see if there's anything else I ought to add.
These are the 49 songs in my "Good Christmas" playlist that are rated 4 or 5 stars on iTunes. The full playlist is 129 songs, but most of those are three-star "it's ok in December, but I wouldn't want to hear it the rest of the year" songs. These ones, I won't…
drorzel | July 30, 2011SteelyKid's third birthday is next week, but we're going to Kate's mother's for the day itself, so we're having a birthday party today for her and her friends from day care. So, even though all the news is depressing, it's a day to be happy. So here's a happy song:
(OK, I don't quite know what to make of the final bit with the flower, but the tune is relentlessly cheery, and never fails to raise a smile when it comes up on iTunes. It's the signature Friday tune of one of the DJ's on KEXP, otherwise I wouldn't ever have heard of it.)
drorzel | July 19, 2011I've been going through the manuscript for the book making up a list of glossary words (a frighteningly long list), and also noting miscellaneous pop-cultural references-- quotes, direct mentions, paraphrases, etc. I'm sure I've missed a few-- many of them occur in section titles, which my eyes tend to slide right over as I read (in the previous book, one section was titled "Clever Section Title Here" until distressingly late in the process)-- but for your amusement, here's what I have at the moment, in approximately the order in which they appear in the book:
Star Wars
The Adventures of…
drorzel | June 22, 2011A lot of people who rail against popular music (hipsters, classical music snobs, etc.) will cite the mere presence of one or more saxophones in a song as evidence that it sucks, as if saxophones are inherently evil. I've never really understood this attitude, and wonder how widespread it is. Thus, a poll:
Saxophone solos in popular music are:Market Research
(The proximate cause of this was some clueless ranting on a pseudonymous LiveJournal, and the recent death of Clarence Clemons, but it's something I've wondered about for a long while, and been keeping in reserve for a day when I needed…
drorzel | April 17, 2011A very silly musical poll question, brought to you by the local classic rock station's music selection this morning:
Which of these makes more sense:online surveys
On an unrelated note, it's deeply unfair that sleeping really late puts SteelyKid into a worse mood than not getting enough sleep does.
drorzel | March 25, 2011I can see the oncoming train at the end of the book-in-progress, so I'm going off the grid to try to finish a draft of the final chapter and introduction. Here's something to think about while I'm away from the Internet:
Choose one:online surveys
For bonus points, defend your choice in the comments using only lyrics from their songs.
drorzel | March 16, 2011I got home very late last night after my talk in New Paltz, the cold that I've been developing for the last week has hit full strength, and I'm giving an exam this morning. So here's something completely silly:
Which sister do you prefer?Market Research
For bonus points, guess which of these songs I have on my iPod.
drorzel | March 8, 2011It's the last week of the winter term here, so here is a totally serious and important music-related poll question:
Which do you prefer?survey software
(OK, maybe the end-of-term craziness is making me just a tiny bit punchy...)
drorzel | March 4, 2011As has been mentioned numerous other places, ESPN is backing a new Bill Simmons project, which basically sounds like a pop-culture blog network kind of thing, headlined by Simmons and Chuck Klosterman. I saw this a while ago (I think I may have tagged a press release for a Links Dump), but was reminded of it yesterday when listening to Simmons's podcast fro ESPN, which was a monster two-part thing with Klosterman as the guest (part 1, part 2).
I'm not much of a podcast guy-- I listen to Simmons and Klosterman, and that's about it-- but this is right in my wheelhouse. It's two guys, both of…
drorzel | February 13, 2011I picked up a few albums off "Best of 2010" list a few weeks ago, and have been listening to them on shuffle play a lot. These included Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Which is kind of a rough one for shuffle play with SteelyKid in the house-- I keep having to skip tracks when she comes into the room. And I eventually deleted whatever the track is with the interminable Chris Rock bit at the end, because, really, I don't need that.
Anyway, the observation promised in the title is this: Kanye West is a really good producer. As music, most of these tracks are really impressive--…
drorzel | January 28, 2011A somewhat surprising number of people asked for a return of the guess-the-lyrics posts in the who are you? thread, and it seems like a good Friday activity. So, as with the previous rounds, each of the following gives a pair of rhyming (or at least intended-to-rhyme) phrases from a pop music song in my collection. Some of these are very recent, some go back a ways; some are pretty obvious, others kind of obscure. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guess the song from which I took the rhyming phrase.
1) mountain of rocks/ Cracker Jack box
2) by the wrist/ amethyst
3) CD…
drorzel | December 30, 2010I've shifted the iTunes shuffle from the Christmas-music playlist over to the top-rated songs of the year playlist because, well, it's the time of year when anybody with any pretension of writing about pop culture does some sort of Top N list to wrap up the year. And, since I've got "pop culture" right up there in the masthead, that means I should do one as well.
The following list is all the five-star rated songs that iTunes has a "2010" date for, with a bunch of remastered Rolling Stones tracks deleted, because really, while "Sweet Virginia" is a fantastic song, it's not remotely a 2010…
drorzel | December 22, 2010As is often noted, most modern recordings of Christmas songs range from utterly bland to excruciatingly awful. There are some that sorta-kinda work, though, and a bare few that are brilliant:
In the interest of promoting, you know, music that doesn't suck, it's perhaps worth taking a look at what makes the good songs work.
The key element is really an accurate assessment of the strengths of the artist in question. For example, the Pogues crafted an enduring classic by going with what worked for them in every other song they did: drunkenness, sordid relationships, and soaring music. It's a…
drorzel | December 12, 2010As you can see from the picture at right, we've got our Christmas tree up, waiting to surprise SteelyKid when she comes home in a couple of hours. This also means it's getting toward the time when I switch over to the holiday music playlist on iTunes.
Christmas music is, of course, a problematic genre. I spent half an hour in a toy store the other day, looking for stuff for SteelyKid, and the entire time that I was there, the only song that played was "The Christmas Song." After six different versions of that, I was more than ready to roast somebody's chestnuts.
So, it's time for the annual…
drorzel | December 4, 2010It feels a little weird not to be doing a Short Story Club entry, so here's a different sort of pop culture item: Over at EphBlog, my classmate Derek Catsam has decided to break up the carnival of reactionary politics by commenting on great albums, jumping off from Spin's Top 125 of the Last 25 Years. Which is always a fun game, so let's roll with that.
25 years goes back to 1985, which is right around the time I started buying albums, so this covers most of my pop music lifetime. Which is convenient, because pretty much anything I can remember buying new is eligible...
In making their list,…
drorzel | November 22, 2010I don't think this one requires any explanation:
Hello:customer surveys
Staying up watching the Giants game last night was not conducive to getting anything useful done this morning.