The balm of new music

I’ve just finished filing our taxes, whew.

It was unusually difficult this year, as I discovered yesterday that DH had somehow lost, shredded or otherwise disposed of all the 1099s I’d been saving since January. Sigh.

Then this morning a virus somehow got past McAfee and crashed his computer’s hard drive. Karma, you think?

Definitely a challenging day.

So now I’m rewarding myself by not working, instead just piddling around listening to music, auditioning new aural input.

First up, I fell in love with this music video, a compilation of artists all around the world playing “Stand By Me”. It truly brought tears to my eyes, not only triggered by tax stress.

The video is a project from the Playing for Change Foundation, BTW, “building and connecting music & art schools around the world”; worth a look-see.

Then I stopped by Pandora Radio to update my artist list. (I’m listening to it now; you can listen in too on my MaggieBelize “radio station”.)

I heard a good cut from Jardin Interior by Las Malas Amistades - “the bad friends” – a Colombian “psych folk D-I-Y punk” band made up of non-musicians who spontaneously record without first writing or rehearsing.

“Psych folk”?? I might not buy it, but I had fun hearing it.

While I was at it, I added my longtime favorites Julieta Venegas, David Byrne, Juana Molina and Leo Kottke to Radio MaggieBelize.

Then I moved on to David Dye’s World Cafe NPR show.

I love the World Cafe show. I listened faithfully when I lived in Houston, and through it discovered all sorts of wonderful then-new music: Raul Malo’s Every Little Thing About You and Billy Bragg’s Accident Waiting to Happen, for example, just off the top of my head. When I lived in Belize, well out of radio range, I bought World Cafe’s annual compilation CDs to tide me over.

So one of my biggest disappointments in moving back to the States was to discover the show isn’t aired in New Mexico! But now I can subscribe to the show podcast, which gives me the featured artists at least, if not the whole show playlist.

Anyway, I was on the site looking for Bajofondo Tango Club, an Argentinian-Uruguayan tango band featured on World Cafe last August.

(I found my months-old note-to-self about Bajofondo when I cleaned off my desk, looking for those darned 1099s.)

I realize how unlikely “electro-tango” sounds as a music genre, but their sound is so inventive and unusual: “a sensual soundscape of tango, trip-hop, drum & bass and pop elements that redefine the essence of tango for the 21st century.” 

The band’s producer / guitarist / vocalist is Gustavo Santaolalla, two-time Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning composer of Brokeback Mountain and Babel.

Their latest studio CD, Mar Dulce, was recorded in real time in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and Madrid … and includes vocals from Elvis Costello, Nellie Furtado, and Julieta Venegas.

Based on the cuts I heard on World Cafe, this one’s a definite must-buy. And I’ve just treated myself to it! What with our tax refunds coming, and all.

Ahh, new music …  I feel better already.

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM

More Fun & Games: Instant Random Band

Found this on the Make-zine blog recently: instructions for creating an instant, random band, complete with cover art, band name & album title!

1. Go to Wikipedia and hit “random article” and the first article you get is the name of your band.

2. Go to “Random Quotations”. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page will be the title of your album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Here’s what I got:

1. Band name from Wikipedia random article …

Okay, first try: That 1 Guy.

Hey! That’s already a band name!

“Mike Silverman, better known as That 1 Guy, is an American musician based out of Berkeley, California. He frequently performs and records as a one-man band, using a slew of homemade instruments and singing, often with rhyming, nonsensical lyrics.”

Should I go back and try again?

Oh wow, I got another musician! This time, it’s Amity Dry.

“Amity Renae Dry is an Australian singer/songwriter, and a former reality show contestant.”

I guess either name would for my mythical band, but for today I’m going with Amity Dry. (Neither’s as good as one my Galveston friend Jim Kelly suggested, “Baitcamp Splinterboard”!)

2. Album title from Random Quotation …

On my first draw, I got this bit from Carl Sagan:

“I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.”

Hmmm, by the rules that would make my album title “Inconsiderable One Of Being True”, rawther dry. If I weren’t playing by the rules, “Wonder in Science” would be good, or closer to the rules, “The Additional Virtue of Being True”.

Let’s try again.

Oh, much better! This time I got this:

“When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats.” Claude Swanson (1862 - 1939)

That means my album title can be “Follow The Rats”! I love it!

3. Random album art from Flickr …

Oh, I am a lucky girl! Look at the picture I got, from Flickr’s last 7 days, third picture displayed:

Shadow Dog
From Raymond Larose

Isn’t it great?

Now it’s off to PhotoPaint to work out my new random band album.

 

 

 

And here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What fun!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM

New Words & Music to Knit By

This week I suffered a tragedy: my trusty (old, very old, and cheap) MP3 player bit the dust. It’s tragic because I absolutely must have something to listen to while I do my day job – I’m currently under-employed as a public library page.

(Note: A library “page” is the lowest form of library life, I put books on the shelves all day long. Some days I take books off the shelf, too. For this I got a master’s degree? Yes. So you can see why I need audio input.)

Anyway, my husband gallantly gave up his iPod <insert sound of celestial choir here> to get me through what would otherwise have been a horrifying week. Wow! It’s a whole new world! Now I’ve finally, belatedly, at long last, discovered podcasts.

I started at the iTunes Store in the Podcast department, and just for grins, entered the word “knit” as a search term. Lo and behold, more than 100 entries! And interestingly, some are identified as “clean” and others “explicit”. Hmmm.

Next day on the job, I listened to Knit-Pick’s “To The Point” podcast (clean), and the Knitters Uncensored podcast (explicit). Enjoyed both, and now understand why a knitting podcast might be labeled explicit!

Knit-Pick’s podcaster, Kelley, is planning to work her way through Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac: a full year of knitting with a different, distinctly “Elizabeth-an” project each month. You can knit along with her, if you like. I have since ordered the book from Amazon as there is not a single copy in the entire Bernalillo County library system, but I’m a little nervous as an Amazon reviewer suggests that these are projects for intermediate to advanced knitters – which I am not … yet.

Knitters Uncensored are three ex-pat pals living in Munich, an American gal, a Canadian gal who only knits scarves in garter stitch, and a guy from Thailand who speaks 7 languages including, he says, Elvish and Esperanto. The ex-pat perspective really interests me after my years living & working in Belize.

While I can’t say that I learned much about knitting, exactly, from Knitters Uncensored, other than a couple of German words for yarn and color, I discovered new music, which is almost as important and sometimes more so.

At the end of their podcast, the uncensored knitters played The Bridesmaid Dress song by Deidre Flint, from her album The Shuffleboard Queens. It’s wonderful! I had to have it! And I can’t wait to hear one of her other songs called “The Boob Fairy”.

Here’s Amazon’s album review, as I’m not feeling especially articulate at the moment:

This Philadelphia singer is in love with language. Verbiage spews out of Deirdre Flint as if she were a caffeine-addled linguist. Unable to resist good fun and the choice pun, Flint trips and traipses through life's little indignities with unabashed zest, addressing everything from cheerleaders to footwear to large bosoms (or the lack thereof). One particularly delightful couplet: "I'm well-bred and you're, well...not." Seven words, seven syllables...devastating. --Steven Stolder

Hurray for new music!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Website,www.LocalGringos.com
Sandia Park, NM