Hey, it’s the First of May y’all! And you know what that means…
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First of May, by Jonathan Coulton (4:10, 4.8 MB) |
Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
First of May, y’all
Thursday, May 1st, 2008My First Love in Bluegrass
Saturday, June 10th, 2006I’ve been listening to Prairie Pickin’—a bluegrass radio show from my hometown—all day today. It airs every Thursday night (local time) and there’s an Internet stream available, so I’ve got a cron job set up that “records” the stream for me so I can listen to the show whenever I get around to it.
“Prairie Pickin’” was my first introduction to Bluegrass music, and I’ve got recordings going back to May of 2001 when I started listening to the show. At the time, it was hosted by the insane Rob Baker and sweet Anna Somerville, and I credit the two of them for my love of Bluegrass today. Rob still does the show, but now the wise Doug Ritchie is his co-host.
Well, last month, Doug surprised Rob with a track going back to those early days. It was a recording of Rob Baker and the great David Ward performing live in Edmonton, opening for Lynn Morris.
The song is “Hold Whatcha Got”, and David and Rob call themselves “The Lonesome Brothers”, which is derived from the meta-band Lonesome and Then Some. This band was my first love in Bluegrass. I followed them everywhere. So hearing a part of their music today brought back all those good memories. I love David’s vocals and Rob’s harmony. Totally in the pocket.
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Hold Whatcha Got, by David Ward and Rob Baker (2:36, 2.4 MB) |
Midnight at the Liberty
Saturday, January 7th, 2006I’ve been listening to this song by the 5 Chinese Brothers (no relation to China) over and over this week. The lyrics tell a good story, even though I can’t identify a single one of the cultural references. Maybe it’s not my culture, or maybe I’m not supposed to. But I’m hooked on the song.
This is now the third 5 Chinese Brothers song I’ve fallen in love with. Time to buy some albums, I think.
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“Midnight at the Liberty” by the 5 Chinese Brothers (1.3 MB) |
Same deal as before. To hear this song, copy the URL below into your browser, but replace the X with the number 686. Then you can download it.
http://madphilosopher.ca/darren106/X/midnight_at_the_liberty64.mp3
Update: A few days after making this post, I was talking to my mom on the phone and she asked me what I would like for my birthday. I was about to say “nothing really” when I remembered this band. Well, my birthday has come and gone and now I’m the proud owner of their album Let’s Kill Saturday Night, which features this song plus two others that I really like. Thanks, mom! 
Home Free
Saturday, November 26th, 2005My Tchou Tchou has been away for several weeks, caring for her Mom in the hospital in Urumqi. I just heard from her this evening that her Mom died in the early morning today.
I’m so sorry, Tchou Tchou. I remember this feeling well…
So I sit alone in my apartment, crying tears for a woman I never got to meet. Some comfort comes from the words to a song from my Christian past, “Home Free”, by Wayne Watson:
I’m trying hard not to think you unkind, but Heavenly Father,
If you know my heart, surely you can read my mind.
Good people underneath the sea of grief,
Some get up and walk away, some will find Ultimate Relief.Home free, eventually,
At the Ultimate Healing, we will be home free.
Home free, oh, I’ve got a feeling,
At the Ultimate Healing, we will be home free.Out in the corridors, we pray for life;
A mother for her baby, a husband for his wife.
Oh, sometimes the good die young, it’s sad but true.
And while we pray for one more heartbeat, the real comfort is with You.You know, pain has little mercy, and suffering’s no respecter of age, of race, or position,
I know every prayer gets answered, but the hardest one to pray is slow to come, “Oh Lord, not mine, but Your will be done.”Oh let it be.
Home free, eventually.
At the Ultimate Healing, we will be home free.
Home free, oh I’ve got a feeling.
At the Ultimate Healing, we will be Home free.
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Home Free, by Wayne Watson (4:45, 2.1 MB) |
A quick synopsis of the last few days
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005Here’s a quick synopsis of the last few days of my life:
- In trying to create a page for a new project idea, I discovered that my WordPress installation was now broken. WordPress is the thing that runs this site.
- In creating a new WordPress installation for my Tchou Tchou’s new website, I found that it was broken too. Out of the box. No final solution yet.
- I successfully started a mailing list for my extended family. My first use of the list was to wish my Grandparents a happy 65th wedding anniversary today. (Wow!)
- I bought a new 250-GB hard drive to house my growing media collection.
- I managed to decimate my computer’s hard drive at work and I lost everything. And I mean everything. Fortunately there was no important data there. I keep it all online or at home, surprisingly enough. I don’t know if it was my fault, though. A 7+ hour transfer from a USB hard drive locked up my Ubuntu and left the ext3 partition in an unmountable state. Bye bye data.
- In lieu of a working hard drive at work, I’m using Damn Small Linux as a life-raft “Live” operating system. At 50 MB, it’s awesomely powerful.
- I absolutely fell in love with Jonathan Coulton’s music when I heard his song “Shop Vac”. (Go download it. You know you want to.) Some of my money will be flying his way very soon.
- I reconnected with my friend Juraj from Calgary. We haven’t seen each other or talked since about 1999 or 2000, I think. I’m glad he uses the same email address, anyway. I’m still waiting to hear back from another lost friend, Matt, though.
- This week (and the next two) I’m helping my Tchou Tchou work on her research project for a course she’s taking. She’ll be surveying art students at the college level to get their opinions on curriculum and teaching style.
So, all in all, I’m quite busy, and I’m having mixed high and low experiences with computer technology. But the lows are pretty low right now. I wish things would stop breaking. <sigh> Yet, life is going well.
Eric Idle’s FCC Song
Friday, August 5th, 2005If you haven’t heard it already, have a listen to Eric Idle’s protest song against the FCC and their ilk. Hilariously funny. And, er, with strong language.
AccuRadio’s “Swingin’ Pop Standards”
Friday, April 1st, 2005Cool. This latest I Love Radio .org post turned me on to AccuRadio, an internet radio station with some specialized feeds. Of course I went straight to the one with “Swing” in the title. Check ‘em out. They even have a Chinese page!
CBC Radio available in Ogg Vorbis format
Tuesday, January 11th, 2005This is cool. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is offering CBC Radio 1 (like AM talk radio) and CBC Radio 2 (like FM music shows) feeds on the Internet in Ogg Vorbis format. What’s that?, you ask, and Why should I care? Ogg is an audio compression format, like MP3 but better quality, and it is completely free, open, and unpatented. This means developers of audio players (both hardware and software) do not need to pay royalties to be able to use this format. It also means you can listen to CBC Radio on older hardware or on machines not running Windows (like Linux and FreeBSD).
Many Internet radio feeds force their users to use proprietary formats like Real Audio or Windows Media, so it is refreshing to find that CBC is also offering Ogg Vorbis. And it sounds great. I’m listening right now, and the feed is 32 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo Ogg. Happy Listening!
Party On, and other thoughts
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004Party On
Well, I’m having too much fun. I’ve been really busy these days. A little bit of work, a bit of play, and a whole hell of a lot of socializing. I was at a birthday party/get-together for my friend Allena last night. There must be live music at The Big Easy (a Cajun-style restaurant/bar in Beijing) every night because there was a live band there last night and we got up and danced Lindy Hop to a few numbers. They were playing blues, of course, but it worked well.
Right before that party, I was hosting two fellow Canadians who had just arrived in Beijing. Last week, at the Annual Canadian Charity Ball, I met and talked with the guest speaker, Canadian Astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason. We talked about the possibilities of space science research collaboration between Canada and China and getting Canadian payloads on Chinese recoverable satellites and manned missions. So he passed my name on to two of his colleagues (the two I met last night, Marcus and Catherine) so that they could hook up with me on their visit to Beijing. So this week, they’re visiting various institutes belonging to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (my employer). We had a great time last night, as they were very excited about being in China and experiencing everything they could in their week-long visit. I took them to a Guizhou-style restaurant, introduced them to whatever I could about the food, the beer, the culture. And I filled them in on things to do, things to avoid, and how to tell the difference between a 1.6 RMB and a 1.2 RMB taxi. Just so you know, the cheaper of the two taxis is smaller, especially the back seat, they don’t always have suspension, and they quite often carry a strong smell of gasoline in the interior. But hey, they’re cheaper, right? You will run the risk of a driver with bad B.O. and completely unbearable halitosis in either type of taxi. Welcome to China.
Why I haven’t written lately
I also have been avoiding computing tasks, including writing this blog. You see, I developed some extreme pain in the joints in my hand recently, and it seems to be related to typing at the computer. It was mostly aggravated by a recent assignment which involved editing on the computer for an entire week. I normally do my editing work on paper with a red and a black pen. That, and the weather changed extremely recently, with lots of low pressure and humidity. So I’ve been trying to rest my hands.
But that’s just a small excuse. I’ve also had lots of ideas of things to write about but I haven’t explored any of them, so none of them fully developed. My friend Jodi, a professional writer, suggested that I write out these ideas anyway so that I don’t lose them. Cause, yeah, she’s right. I’ve already lost them. My nighttime dreams overwhelm my daytime thoughts so much, and that’s another blockage to being able to think (and write) clearly.
SomaFM revisited
SomaFM kicks ass. I’m still listening. You’ll remember that I wrote about SomaFM in a previous entry. I’ve been listening a few times a week (for about an hour at a time) so I decided that I should send them a donation. So last month, I sent them $25 USD via PayPal. I think it’s well worth it. You should too. Or at least start listening first.
I’ve explored some of their other channels only a little bit, but by far I listen to “Boot Liquor” the most. American Roots music, lots of songs about drinking, some really funny shit sometimes, and a few token bluegrass songs. Keeps me happy. When I first started listening, Boot Liquor was offered as a 96-kbit MP3 feed, but now it’s 128-kbit MP3 and that’s pretty much CD quality. Sometimes the feed is choppy, so I switch to the 32-kbit mono feed, and it works well. Plus my sound card came with some DSP software that can enhance the mono to a pseudo-stereo image, and that makes it better.
SomaFM: Like a Koala Bear Crapped a Rainbow in my Brain
Tuesday, March 16th, 2004This is great! I discovered a new radio station yesterday, and I love it. It’s called SomaFM, and they are internet-only, commercial free, and listener supported. They seem to be playing the same kind of music that I get on CJSR Edmonton, which really pleases me. Their main website says that there are currently 3043 people listening to SomaFM now. That’s cool.
While it’s one “station”, they actually offer 7 different channels of music at various audio quality levels, the best being 128 kbps stereo MP3. This is impressive. The channels are:
- Groove Salad
- Secret Agent
- Drone Zone
- indie pop rocks
- cliqhop idm
- Beat Blender
- Boot Liquor
You’ll have to visit the SomaFM website to read the channel descriptions. So far, I’ve been listening mostly to “Boot Liquor”, which is described as American Roots music, looking for (and getting) some bluegrass and Johnny Cash. I’ve also listened to “Groove Salad” for a while. I have yet to check out the other channels, but you can be sure that I will.
This sure makes up for the terrible broadcast radio that’s available here in Beijing. I’ll soon be listening enough to SomaFM that I’ll want to contribute (which is voluntary). It’s a good deal.
By the way, the title for today’s post comes from one of their station IDs, in answer to the question, “What does SomaFM feel like to you?.” Cute. Not exactly the answer I would have come up with, though.
