Category Archives: music
Synthesizing Schizophrenia or Who Is Billy the Kid?
A Review of I'm Not There
Last night, I finally watched I’m Not There, the rather surreal take on Bob Dylan, with 6 different actors portraying him.
It was surprisingly good. Surreal and confusing, but good.
First of all, I didn’t realize that none of the characters play Bob Dylan, per se–they all play ASPECTS of him, a Woody Guthrie-idolizing kid, a superstar unable to [...]
Ear Training
Something I'd Like to Try
Nathan posted a few days ago about a bunch of stuff he wants to do better including doing more ear trainging.
Honestly, that site is pretty awesome–they play intervals and you’re supposed to guess which one it is.
I played it for a while and sucked at it. But it’s something I think I could really work [...]
10 Free Christmas Albums
for your holiday pleasure
To kick off the holidays, I’m posting a list of free Christmas albums, all of which are free or ‘pay what you want’. Most of these are courtesy of Noisetrade, which offers you the option of telling 5 friends or paying what you want for an album.
With my apologies to your 5 friends you’ll be [...]
How Art Can Be Challenging
I just read an interview with Jeff Tweedy where he says:
People really think narrowly when it comes to those types of challenges, and the idea that something has to be aggressive or avant grade, or atonal, even, to be a challenge. I’ve found it to be the exact opposite. We literally put 15 minutes of noise on [...]
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Singing Together
Yesterday, I caught this article, another one about not making worship a concert. He writes:
The local church must … break down the concert mentality of the church and empower worship that is beyond the concert: worship that is an outpouring of the community. [It must] empower the musicians to not be re-creators of radio hits but [...]
Waterdeep Live at the Union
On Friday, I drove up to Naperville to see Waterdeep play at the Union.
As usual, it was a great show, with both Don and Lori playing mostly stuff from Pink and Blue. The Union’s a great venue in the first place, very small and intimate, and they really took advantage of it, playing at least one [...]
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Remix Derek Webb: He Wants You To
Ok, this is pretty cool. If you buy the deluxe version of Derek Webb’s new album, you get the tracks. And he’s looking for remixes of the album.
I can’t remix anything to save my life, but I still think that’d be a cool project to try.
If nothing else, it’s really cool that he’s selling the tracks as an added [...]
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The White Stripes on Conan — Flippin’ Awesome
A couple years ago, I caught the White Stripes on Conan. It blew my mind: awesome, raw blues.
This video has the awesomest part of it about 7:55, where Jack walks to Conan’s desk to play slide, then throws down his guitar when the cord jerks loose.
Bizarrely, he closes with a bit from ‘John the Revelator’, a close cousin of arguably [...]
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A Review of Ryan J. Lane’s Conversations of The Leisured
I downloaded Ryan J. Lane’s new album Conversations of The Leisured (or at least the part of it that he posted on noisetrade) recently.
It’s really good.
It’s backed with catchy beats with this obscure lo-fi folksy thing on top of it, giving it a sort of Sufjan Stevens feel.
Bizarrely, there’s some They Might Be Giants in here, [...]
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Music Composed by A Computer
or Where Does Art Get Its Meaning