parlando

a moment extracted from the crush of work

Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.

I don't have a hell of a lot to say about it, but I'm among the many (it seems) who think the new Portishead album is terrific. I'm only a moderate fan of their old work -- like but not love -- so the departure from their old sound doesn't bother me. And I think the extent of the departure has been exaggerated. Still, it doesn't surprise me that a lot of old fans are down on it -- see the reviews at Rate Your Music, for example* -- and I'd expect that you, Donald, might not go for it.

0 comments.

name that tune today

Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

Name That Tune game seventeen goes live at Popdose today at 12:30 PM Eastern. Come over and play!

0 comments.

ex matters

Posted on May 11th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.

ESPN's website has a headline on their front page right now that reads:

Ex-O.J. friend: Simpson admitted killing his wife

Leaving aside the small matter that the source would be better described as "O.J. ex-friend":

It is irritating that ESPN regularly refers to "his wife" rather than "his ex-wife". The distinction isn't trivial, and muddying that distinction has been one of the ways that some of Simpson's more repellent defenders have sought to manipulate emotional response to the case.

But it is doubly irritating when ESPN takes care to refer to the source as an ex-friend, yet still refers to Simpson's victim as his wife.

1 comment.

name that tune again again

Posted on May 9th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Elsewhere.

My weekly Name That Tune game is up at Popdose. It's fun! It's challenging! It's educational! It's free! And it's 98.4% guaranteed!

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a pleasant work environment

Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.

Working at home on weekends is difficult. I can't combat the frequent outbreaks of bass-heavy music and piercing television from apartments on both sides of us with loud music of my own, because Velma doesn't like the music that loud and it just makes the problem worse for her; but I can't concentrate on my work. When I must get paying work done, as I must this weekend, sometimes the solution is to go in to my office. I've done so today, and the office is blessedly empty but for me, which means I can crank my own music, not bother anyone and not be bothered. And being away from the distractions of home helps me focus. The only downside is not being able to share space with Velma, a constant low-level nice thing we both like.

I knew I might need to come in to the office, so I prepared. I have twenty-two beloved Mingus albums digitized to my mp3 player, and I'm playing them all on shuffle now. This makes me very very happy.

3 comments.

r. kelly: creepier than you think

Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Badness.

Bill Wyman -- the music journalist, not the musician -- has been doing a lot of good work at his weblog Hitsville. The most important and disturbing piece he's written, one that ought to be more widely disseminated, is his extraordinary compilation of facts and allegations concerning R. Kelly's sexual history with minors leading up to his trial on one of the allegations.

I knew that he was in trouble for taping himself having sex with a minor. I knew that he married Aaliyah when she was fifteen. But I hadn't any notion of the documented extent of Kelly's history with teenagers. Eleven separate allegations of sex with minors have been reported. Some of the details, as Wyman notes, are "a little bit barfy". For example, a year after he'd settled out of court for $250,000 with a fifteen year old girl, the first sex tape emerged:

...showing Kelly having sex with a young girl. The girl’s aunt identified her, and Kelly. In the tape, the singer called her by her first name; she called him “Daddy.” Besides a variety of sex acts, the girl urinates on the floor at “Daddy’s” direction. “Daddy” then urinates into her mouth.

The girl was fourteen at the time. In the reporting surrounding the case, it emerged that Kelly had settled out of court with two other teenage girls.

Th details surrounding the marriage to fifteen year old Aaliyah are creepy, too:

...she was a singer and a protege of Kelly’s with whom, associates have said, he was having an affair. Without telling her what was going on, Kelly arranged an impromptu wedding at a suburban Chicago hotel and then swept her toward a plane. Fortunately, the girl called her parents. They came and got her and, articles have said, the pair never saw each other again. As rumors surfaced about the union, Kelly lied about it. But then Vibe magazine found a marriage certificate, on which Haughton’s age was listed as 18. The union was annulled a short time later.

There are several more allegations. I'll just mention one more:

Many of Kelly’s associates have been quoted saying they thought he was sick, or had an uncontrollable compulsion to have sex with young girls. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that, while already under indictment for filming himself having sex with a child, he was found to have in one of his houses a digital camera with new photos of him having sex with an underaged girl. ... The search that produced the camera was later disallowed by a judge, so Kelly was never prosecuted for those photos.

R. Kelly has been subject to a certain amount of mockery for what has been generally seen, so far as I can tell, as celebrity peccadilloes, maybe a little further over the line than most. I think the record Wyman has compiled makes a compelling case that Kelly is a genuine sociopath. Why he has not been held more accountable by the media and the entertainment industry, I don't understand. Read the whole thing and see if you don't agree.

0 comments.

my favorite sitcom has been canceled

Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Sports.

Isiah Thomas has been fired* as the coach of the New York Knicks, ending the most inexplicably protracted reign of incompetence and absurdity I can remember in all my time following sports. I'll miss him.

* Actually, he still hasn't exactly been fired; he's been relieved of his coaching duties, but is still being kept with the organization in an undefined capacity.

2 comments.

name that tune day

Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

My weekly game of Name That Tune is now up at Popdose.

0 comments.

two limericks for felix hernandez

Posted on April 16th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Sports.

Seattle Mariners Venezuelan phenom Felix Hernandez is much celebrated at USS Mariner; in fact, they gave him the nickname King Felix by which he is nationally known. Every day he pitches is "Happy Felix Day" at USS Mariner. Today limericks broke out. I contributed two:

All hail the young King from Caracas.
His eminence never should shock us.
When he mixes his pitches
He leaves batters in twitches
And our cheers can be heard in Secaucus.

But then I discovered he's actually from Valencia. You can't rhyme much with Valencia (or Venezuela) in English, so I came at it from a different angle:

A Valencian monarch named Felix
Has an extra-high-powered double helix.
Hitters flail at his flings
And their once-mighty swings
Are reduced to limp, impotent wee licks.

Happy Felix Day!

0 comments.

name that tune day

Posted on April 11th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

My latest Name That Tune game goes up over at Popdose in ten minutes.

0 comments.

speaking the same language

Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.

In an mild argument at another web site I've been told I'm "kind of mincing words in the sense".

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greatest living guitarist stung in hand by scorpion

Posted on April 8th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

No, really: Richard Thompson is having to postpone tour dates because he was stung in the right hand by a scorpion while vacationing in Mexico.

You can't beat that for a cancellation excuse. Also: ouch.

1 comment.

bob dylan awarded special music pulitzer

Posted on April 8th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.

My dislike of Dylan and annoyance at the perpetual exaggeration of his (admitted) virtues and ignoring of his (near-constant) flaws aside, I can't argue with the award, which is obviously deserved. My main reaction is to be grateful it isn't a special poetry Pulitzer, which would have ground my teeth to stubs.

2 comments.

"despite (or perhaps because of)" watch

Posted on April 1st, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stock Phrases.

Jason Crock's review of the new Raconteurs album in today's Pitchfork. (In this instance "even" substitutes for "perhaps".)

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hey that sounds kinda like (with digressions)

Posted on April 1st, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.

Our piano-bar-playing friend Greg Schlotthauer is fluent in Spanish, and loves Latin American pop music. He turned us on to Soda Stereo/Gustavo Cerati and Los Tres; in return we turned him on to Cafe Tacuba and Babasonicos. He's playing tonight at the Duplex and he has a bunch of Soda Stereo on his song list, so I've been listening to some with an ear toward making a specific request, and I settled on "De Música Ligera" from 1990's superb Canción Animal. It turns out to be possibly their best-known song, and is the song they chose to end their 1997 farewell concert.

"De Música Ligera" on YouTube.

Pretty excellent power pop, eh? The lyrics aren't hard to find online, but damned if I can find an English translation. AltaVista tries valiantly:

She slept, to the heat of the masses, and I woke up, wanting to dream it. Some time back I thought about writing to him that I never drew for the traps of the love. Of that love of slight music nothing frees nothing to us but it is. I will not send ashes to him of roses nor I think to avoid secret rubbing. Of that love of slight music nothing frees nothing to us but it is. . . . Of that love of slight music nothing frees nothing to us but it is left nothing but nothing but is left nothing but it is left nothing but it is left nothing but it is

That first sentence is great and I hope it's accurate. "Avoid secret rubbing," on the other hand, sounds like the small type that might have resulted if Dr Bronner had branched out into hand creams.

Anyway, I'd never noticed till today that "De Música Ligera" bears some resemblance to "Smells Like Teen Spirit". But more than that, I swear it sounds like some classic power pop song that I can't put my finger on. It's going to make me crazy till I figure it out.

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today's work headphone music

Posted on April 1st, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.

Motorhead, Ace of Spades
Pinback, Autumn of the Seraphs
Aterciopelados, Caribe Atomico

All solid toe-tapping albums. The Pinback has moved back into my near-daily rotation, and retains its grip on my Favorite Album of 2007 spot. I only stopped listening to it for a while out of fear of overplaying it. I say again, if you have a taste for lots of catchy, intricate parts strung together into hypnotically memorable songs, combining great musical instincts with an obsessive attention to detail, you should check out Autumn of the Seraphs. It's hard to compare Rob Crow's distinctive songwriting styles with anyone else, but if you imagine a somewhat cooler, more rounded and smooth-sounding Spoon, you wouldn't be far off from Pinback. It's also one of those albums that is gratifyingly, almost frustratingly consistent: nothing to skip, no letdowns, but also nothing so clearly outstanding from the rest that it would be the obvious choice to play for someone. Which also means it may not be immediately arresting, but if you keep playing it, it creeps into your nervous system and makes a home there. (Like Spoon.)

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name that tune notes

Posted on March 28th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

I try to include a variety of styles in the Name That Tune games, and I try to include a reasonable amount of recent stuff. I've been finding it difficult to include much hip-hop, though: first, I try not to have clips with verbal vocals, because they're too easy to guess, and hip-hop is heavy on vocals and light on instrumental breaks; second, a lot of hip-hop is built on samples, and that's confusing for the players.

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