Now Playing: The Only Living Boy In New York
Sometimes getting a song stuck in your head can be a good thing.
Every now and then I get a song so stuck in my head that there’s nothing I can do, so I just run with it. Lately that song is Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy In New York.”
Elliott Smith — “Angeles”
A guy and a guitar. Shit.
Girls: Lust For Life
So mnik turned me onto this album, and it’s really great. Now that I’m reading about it, I remember hearing a bit of the story here a while ago, but I didn’t place it with the band. I love the look of the video too.
Also, the review on Pitchfork is the first one I can remember reading in a while that I actually liked.
Elliott Smith - “Waltz #2 (XO)”
Love seeing him play and sing this confidently. Chills.
The recorded version on XO has one of my favorite bridges ever ever. Gorgeous arrangement and heavenly vocals. Twelve perfect bars.
What Merlin said. I’m reading the 33 ⅓ book on XO right now, and it’s great so far.
Phish’s Trey Anastasio’s Most Amazing Show: Big Cypress Midnight Dawn
“You’ve been through an adventure.”
I was there. That’s an understatement.
And Your Bird Can Sing
Thanks for posting this. I absolutely love this song. It played a role at our wedding. I never got John’s “throwaway” comment.
“And Your Bird Can Sing” (Take 2 w/Overdubs)
What I love:
- Without the (albeit insanely amazing) leads from Paul1 and George playing from the top, you get to hear George’s (unused) gorgeous 12-string Rick arpeggios. Jesus, what a boner that gives me. Big Rick boner. LOVE that sound.
- The chatter and clowning.
I’m not a deep Beatles scholar, but I think this (Apr 1966) wasn’t too long before things started to well and truly unravel internally.
I wonder how many times after this John and Paul would have this much fun in the same room at the same time. Makes me kinda weepy actually. Sucks that the two guys responsible for giving the world so much joy ended up enjoying so little of it for themselves.
John calls this one “a throwaway,” but it’s categorically one of my favorite Beatles songs and has to be regarded as one of the quintessential inspirations for every power pop song since.
Final version (stereo):
Fact: Paul was arguably the best guitar player in the band. “The End?” Bunch of that is Paul. Yep. ↩
I can not stop playing this. The thing is, I’ve never really cared for Alica Keys, but she kills it here.
tlvx:
Empire State of Mind, Jay-Z. 2009.
“The lights will inspire you.” This has been my jam for like the past week.
Phish’s “Backwards Down The Number Line” is now available on iTunes. I can’t get enough of this song. I absolutely love the sentiment here, especially considering the past few years in their lives. I also dig the look of the art for the single.
4334 Sunset
A few words I wrote about music and Elliott Smith and other stuff over at Selectism.
Wilco: The Stream
The stream of the album of one of the best bands in the world. Cheers to them for jumping on the shitty, but seemingly inevitable leak, of their album (which comes out June 30). To my ears, it doesn’t get much better than Wilco.
The Great CD Import of Spring 2009
About a week into my project of importing all of my music into Apple lossless, this this is how much I have gotten done.
That’s about 200 CDs, which is a bit over 70 GB. The problem is, those are just the random CDs that were stacked next to my desk. I have about 3,000 or so more in storage in my basement.
Setting up a dedicated machine and hard drive to do this has helped. I have the MacBook sitting on the side of my desk, and I’m basically just loading discs into it all day (there is no doubt the disc drive has gotten more work in the past week than during the entire life of the machine). Setting iTunes to automatically start importing when a CD is inserted is a big help. I don’t need to even touch the keyboard. Just pop the disc in and it imports, and them ejects it when it’s done.
Still, 200 down, 3,000 to go. I’m clearly going to need to start being more selective about what I import. The idea is to keep anything that there is a remote chance I may want to listen to or reference at some point in the future, but that should still leave a decent chunk of stuff that doesn’t fall within those perimeters.
The idea is that when it’s all done, the music will live on one drive, and be backed up to the Drobo as well. After that’s all done, at some point I’ll have to tackle how it integrates with my primary iTunes library. Right now it’s separate, and I want to keep it that way for now. Wish me luck, I’m curious if and when I’ll finally finish this all.
Jerry Garcia with an old, black Nikon F2. Grabbed from the fantastic Egypt 1978 release.
Digg Dialog with Trent Reznor. Really impressive and worth watching. Makes me kinda wish I liked NIN music more, but I have never really gotten into it.
