"I Feel It All" by Feist

Feist is more than a great songwriter and performer. She makes the best music videos I've seen in years. Seriously. Youtube em up! And the best part, many of her videos are single shot takes with elaborate scenes of dancers and, in this case, fireworks. Watching the above video made me think about the massive amount of time and energy it must have taken to organize.

And if that video wasn't enough, check out this and this. And if you're not sick of that Apple commercial yet, her video for 1234 is amazing.

update: I'm a totally bad blogger in not giving credit where credit is due. Somebody in Germany alerted me to this hot hot video, and it wasn't Chris... it was his mathematical counterpart, Kelly... Happy Year of the Mathematician!

The Quilt, Part 2

The design is complete. I had to determine how to distribute the colors, and last night after pulling my hair out for quite a while, I finally settled on which squares will feature which colors.

But as I finish it, I realize that there's nothing standing between me and construction, or to put it more bluntly (or sharply) nothing between some of my favorite old t-shirts and a rotary cutter.

Being the good anglican-raised boy I am, I know how to bid fair-well to useless objects. (quick: How many episcopalians does it take to replace a light-bulb? 25! 4 on a committee to find a new light-bulb, 3 to procure the replacement bulb, one to hold up the ladder while another one replaces the bulb, 5 to hold a service bidding farewell to the old bulb and welcoming the new one, 1 pastor and 1 deacon to lead that service and 9 to complain about how they always preferred the old bulb anyway)

So! Let's take a quick trip down memory lane!







KWVA Shirts 1 and 2: These were acquired in Eugene, Ore. where I volunteered at the student/community station, spinning records from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. every Friday morning. I actually had a few regular listeners who called in requests. I sported these shirts proudly on campus whenever able.

Red Hook Shirt: Ah yes! That day at the Red Hook Brewery. I have a picture of a certain someone pouncing the trunk of a blue Toyota the day I got my t-shirt and he got an identical one of a different color. The picture is on my fridge if you want to see it.

Tom Waits: So I got this one from a friend who didn't want it. I was astounded that anyone would ever get rid of a good Tom Waits shirt! It's got tons of little visual references to Waits' songs in there, including the name of a pizza place (Napoleon's) he used to work at.

Robin Hitchcock: So the front of the shirt was too big for the quilt, but the back is what always got people's attention. It says the names of the musicians (Robin Hitchcock and the Young Fresh Fellows) and the venue (The Crocodile Cafe) and tour name and what not in a small square, but all the letters are crammed together so you can't read what it actually says. That's what really got the most attention. I found it at a thrift shop near the university.

Flaming Lips: Got this at a tour show. The front and back is in japanese, and I'm told at least one side is a phonetic translation of "The Flaming Lips." Both sides are different panels of a comic strip in which a pink robot destroys itself because it has fallen in love with Yoshimi, who it was ordered to destroy. Ah robot tragedy!

The Floor Is made of Lava: So I saw this on a friend, then went and bought my own. I LOVE that game, though I used to pretend that the floor was hot molten peanut butter and the furniture and other items were giant graham crackers I was trying to traverse.

Andrew Bird: I got this while working one of his shows in Seattle. They were selling out fast, so I grabbed it and stuffed it out of sight while I sold merch to the fans. "What's that? you want a sky-blue Andrew Bird shirt? Sorry! We're all out (mwah ha ha)." then it got bleached in the wash and I got mad and ordered a new one.

Mandarin text: This one I bought in Taiwan, and a friend over there translated it for me and it says something along the lines of "Sex is emptiness, and emptiness is sex." Because of this, when I used to travel around town chinese people would come up to me with a grin on their face and ask me if I knew what it said.

Yo La Tengo: Procured this one from the same person who discarded that great Tom Waits shirt. It's from what might be my favorite Yo La Tengo album "Electr-o-pura." I'm anticipating disagreement on this stated opinion, but that has little to do with the shirt, which I've loved for many years.

And finally, Riyadh:

The story is already told, but it's worth noting that in the time I've had it, the world has seen three presidents (and the beginning campaign of whoever the next will be) and two wars in the mid-east. I've gone from thinking girls are "icky" to being married, and I've lived in three states. The shirt has been with my through every career decision and schooling I've been through since junior high (and seen the campuses of Washington Middle School and Nathan Hale High School in Seattle, North Seattle Community College, University of Washington, Shoreline Community College and University of Oregon) and as a result has endured pottery clay, photography chemicals and an incessant waft of cigarette smoke from concerts.

Goodbye good t-shirts! We knew ye well!

"Listening to" update

So I was looking at my "Listening To" section realizing that I really wasn't listening to what was on there. So I decided to make an update, and seemed worth posting something about the albums. So without further ado! (I put links to videos and tracks from the albums where able)

The Blow - Paper Television This is one of those bands my brother recommended to me, or at least asked "Why aren't you listening to this yet?" His doctor informed me that I'm supposed to keep his frightfully low blood pressure up, and I find there's no better way to do that than ignore his recommendations ("no I will NOT watch The Wire") and make derisive comments about Sonic Youth and Masonna. But the constant crying isn't good for him, so I decided to give this one a ago. The song linked above is why I love this album. It makes me do a little happy dance.

Nellie McKay - Get Away From Me This sample is from a alive show. I heard Ms. McKay on Fresh Air during a best-of week. I was really into her songs about zombies and such, and her satirical allegations that feminists have no sense of humor. So I went and snagged her first album of iTunes. She jumps between conventionally quirky to, well, just plain quirky. I prefer convention when given the choice, which is where the above link lies.

Andrew Bird - Soldier On So I couldn't snag an actual track from this one either. But it's still quite beautiful, and the song does appear on the EP. But the REAL sad thing here is the fact that with three exceptions, I already had every track on this newly released EP. It includes Bird's contributions to a ballet called "My Name Is A Blackbird." I already special ordered the CD that includes THREE OTHER tracks. The Bob Dylan cover has been floating across the net for quite some time, and the two non-album tracks appeared in bonus form on iTunes and eMusic. So... it's got a remix, an early demo (of "Heretics," which is great because I love the demo, but didn't like the album track) and a short instrumental. In short, for fans only. Although I recommend downloading "Oh Sister" if you can find it.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglov - Once It's been scientifically proven that if you dislike this music, you have no heart. I swear I saw this dude try to disrespect the album, and the Grinch was all "damn, that's cold man, real cold." It's just so pretty. Check out the film, but understand it's about 60 to 75 percent straight music. This song is my favorite one.

Kimya Dawson and others - Juno My only problem with the film Juno is the alleged claim that the title character's favorite bands are The Stooges, Patti Smith and the Runaways. All great bands/musicians to be sure. But have a look at that soundtrack. There's more Mo Tucker (of The Velvet Underground) than any ACTUAL punk in there. Add to that Juno's claims that Sonic Youth was "nothing but noise." Anyone who listens to the Stooges should a) know Sonic Youth and b) at least respect something of theirs, at least Goo or something like that. But clearly Juno spent more time listening to K Records bands who listened to VU's "After Hours" on repeat throughout their adolescence. Not that I'm unhappy with the results. Because I myself listened to "After Hours" on repeat throughout my adolescence. This album is much less punk, and much more twee. That said, I love the soundtrack and the film. To put it bluntly, Juno is twee as fuck.

So that's all the new entries on the listening to post. I know you've aall been anxiously awaiting an update there. RAW!

I wrote this last October, and just found it and realized never posted it. I'm tired of seeing Captain Jack Sparrow there, so you get this! Quilting update to come!

We had one of our finest moments at the Port Orchard Independent today. Yes, when Taco Bell announced that they would offer free tacos if someone stole a base during the World Series, we knew we'd be taking advantage.

And today we did, my friends, today we did. Just take in this great shot of me with a full mouth of crispity crunchity Taco Bell brand taco!


And that's not all. We reporters ain't no Holly Golightly taco eaters. We take this s@#t SERIOUS. Because at the Port Orchard Taco Bell, we were the FIRST FOUR to demand our free tacos, followed right behind by a group of Jr. High aged kids and some senior citizens.

Let no one again question the dedication reporters have to the acquisition of free grade-b meat products. And to the little old lady we knocked over whilst racing our way to free taco bliss, we're very sorry, and we hope next time you'll reconsider standing between a bunch of reporters and free handouts.

I am Captain Jack Sparrow! And I dislocated my knee...

So this is pretty much the best thing ever. This dude tried to break into a coffee shop in Lakewood, Wash., and failed miserably. So the owner takes the security camera footage and makes a hilarious video.

I'm told the pirate burglar has turned himself in, and ended up with a dislocated knee, which doesn't sting quite as badly as being broadcast on YouTube for all to see... oh the embarrassment.

Will they make a sequel called "Twice"?

Frames bassist John Carney teams up with bandmate (and bandleader) Glen Hansard to create "Once," a movie about a Dublin vagabond who spends his days and nights running back and forth between his fathers vacuum repair shop and the street corner where he plays sorrow-drenched songs about his ex-girlfriend, who moved to London.

Enter Marketa Irglov (called "The Girl" in the closing credits) who is tenaciously persistent in procuring information from Hansard (called "The Boy") about the source of his poetic inspiration and persuades him to fix her vacuum cleaner.

Insert adorable scenes of the two walking around Dublin with her dragging her broken vacuum cleaner around with her.

What ensues is an odd love story told partly through small bits of dialog and the Hansard's forlorn lyrics. The two never really form any type of romantic relationship, but stick closely together as they both work out their career and love troubles.

In reality, the story could be told in about 30 minutes, were it not for the meandering montages played under Hansard's songs, which are always played in full, beginning to end.

It's not a musical by any stretch, but the music dominates the scene. But the story is as unconventional as the music's presence in the film. Don't be fooled by the Americanized DVD cover, featuring Hansard and Irglov holding hands. Look on the soundtrack album cover and you'll see the original photograph has them standing side by side, not touching, but almost.

That's really the name of this whole story. The romance is confined entirely to fairly unreveiling dialog and overly reveiling (but ultimately symbolic and obscure) lyricism. The viewer starts to wonder if Hansard's songs are more about his ex-lover or this new girl who he barely even touches throughout the film.

What's amazing is the film is heartwrenchingly romantic, and the two share almost no physical contact, proving to American filmmakers that it can in fact be done without a sexual catharsis.

But for me, the real reason to watch the movie is to see the music develop from its form sung on street corners all the way up to a full-band studio recording. My wife's accused me more than once for liking a movie only because it had good music, but at least in this case there's not much I'm overlooking. The music is the main focus of the movie.

Peep the preview here

Also, just read an interview with the director in which the critic compared the film to Noel Coward's Brief Encounter and this is a great comparison. A love story without the stereotypical kiss scene or obligatory sex scene.

The Quilt, Part 1

The story started with a shirt. It's not a particularly stellar shirt, but for many years it's been my very favorite shirt.

This shirt:


No I did not attend the International School in Riyadh, and before you ask (as many have before) I did not find it at Value Village. It was given to me, and one exactly like it to each of my brothers when our friends Sarah and Elizabeth moved to Saudi Arabia just before the Gulf War.

At the time it was our significantly cool mark that we had friends living overseas. Later it was a reminder that we had friends in a war zone. But I have to confess that it slipped out of my life, and when it returned I was a teenager, and it caught my eye because old, beat up t-shirts with unusual designs were in.

But about a year ago, my wife pointed out that one day I was going to open our drier and all our clothes would be covered in an red lint, and my t-shirt would be no more. I realized it was time to let it go. Sort of.

The story continues with a quilt, because even though this shirt has the most historical significance of any article of clothing I own, there are many MANY t-shirts that I love, either outgrown, or overused. Bands I love and loved, and the idea hit me as I was wrapped in one of my wife's quilts, a large throw pieced together with squares from jeans, pockets and inseams included.

Aha! I thought. Now I can have my cake and eat it too! And thus it began. And after a lot of sifting through clothing and determining which was most worthy and most aesthetically pleasing, I came up with the following collection:

Shirts offering what my mother would call "free advertising" for Tom Waits, Andrew Bird, Robin Hitchcock, Yo La Tengo, The Flaming Lips, KWVA Radio in Eugene, Redhook Beer and um... well that black one is just a stick figure standing on a chair saying "The floor is made of lava!"

So this is part one, and to show you I'm not just fooling around, here's my game plan:


It's all measured out. Next steps: Determining what color t-shirt material I'll use for the blank squares (each of the 12 15X15-inch squares will hold one t-shirt design) and attaching a supportive backing to the material so the shirts stay together.

I'll keep you gentle and anxious readers posted on the adventures of quilt-making.

2007 in a nutshell

So I never made a top five, ten or whatever number list for 2006. I'll just sum it up by saying that I received "Begin To Hope" by Regina Spektor for my birthday last January, and I've listened to it consistently since then, with no sign of slowing down in the future. You can hear samples of her tunes at her website or her MySpace.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's dive into THIS year! Starting with my top songs, and if I'm able, a link to where you can hear them, be it YouTube, MySpace or whatever.

1) Feist - 1234 I'm sure most of you are pretty darn sick of this song already, and I pity the fool who works at Starbucks and gets no break of this, but being without much television access and not an employee at Starbucks, I LOVE this song. And the video. The beginning, WHERE DO ALL THOSE PEOPLE COME FROM? And at the end? WHERE'D THEY GO? And best of all, it's all ONE SINGLE CUT! No edits my friends.

2) M.I.A. - Paper Planes M.I.A. gets credit first for making it onto NPR's All Songs Considered just because I think it's funny to hear Bob Boilen play a song that samples gunshots. But it's a booty-shakin' track with a GREAT sample.

3) Lily Allen - Mr. Blue Sky See my full comments a few entries back, but this song is fabulous and the perfect song to pair with her own "LDN" as a sun-shiny song.

4) Blonde Redhead - Mr. Blue Sky Some songs you know you'll love before you hear them, and when our blogging friends in Germany compared this track to the theme from The Neverending Story, I knew all I needed.

5) Petra Haden - Don't Stop Believin' So to hear this track you'll actually have to click on the song title on her my space page linked above. But, from the "Guilt By Association" collection, a compilation that pairs respectable musicians with entirely disreputable songs. I prefer Pitchfork's argument that anymore one person's piece of crap is another person's masterpiece. I prefer the Petra Haden version.

6) Andrew Bird - Scythian Empire Again, requires a click once you open the page, and this track is technically the version from his live collection "Fingerlings 3" But it's still solid. I love the rhythm of this track, and the fact that it moves by quickly even though it's the same riff over and over again throughout the duration of the song.

7) Panda Bear - Comfy In Nautica So take equal parts Brian Wilson-style harmonies and rhythms, mix it with some looping of acoustic instrumentation and ancient-style rhythms, and you've got Panda Bear's newest album.

8) The Pipettes - Guess Who Ran Off With The Milkman I can't promote The Pipettes enough. They're too good for words, and this song is exactly why. Also the only song of theirs that technically came out this year. Yes, the new album came out in its U.S. form this year (the same album that came out in the U.K. the year prior), but this one is honest to goodness new!

9) Beirut - Nantes I'm a big fan of this blog and NPR-darling Beirut. Take your standard run-of-the-mill indie band, have it mate with the film Amelie, and you get Beirut, their forbidden lovechild. Great stuff.

10) Rosie Thomas - Friends of Mine I couldn't find the actual track online for your legal listening pleasure, but you can hear other music from her album on her MySpace page. This is far and away my favorite track on her last not-well-reviewed album. I'm not sure why exactly it wasn't well reviewed, but I really liked it. Thomas' fairly straight forward, albeit somewhat maudlin, songwriting paired with Sufjan Stevens' backup harmonies made it all for me. This song wrapped everything up nicely, with some nice distorted back-up vocals and Rosie's gorgeous voice.

Okay, that under my belt, time for the FIVE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR as determined by ME, Unauthorized and Uncredible Music Blogger EXTRAORDINAIRE!

5) Beirut - Flying Club Cup I think I said it all up there in that track review. Beautiful stuff. We haven't heard uke playing like this since the Magnetic Fields.




4) Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha So, um, I like Andrew Bird. I don't know if I ever shared that before. It feels good to get it off my chest.




3) Blonde Redhead - 23 The worlds greatest band made up of twins and one of the twin’s wife... or the ONLY band... anyway, I've always had a love-hate relationship with Blonde Redhead. We've gone back and forth, very make-up-break-up, mainly because on the Sonic Youth spectrum of music, I fall more on the Yo La Tengo side, and less on the other side, which is where I previously placed Blonde Redhead, albeit unfairly. This album rules, and changes my entire perspective on the crew.

2) Panda Bear - Person Pitch I was a HUGE fan of his first album "Young Prayer," a stark wordless commemoration to Panda Bear's deceased father. This one goes in a completely different direction, and I have to confess it took me a while to really get into it. What I realized is that the Beach Boys (circa 1966 - 1974) are really an autumn affair for me. No really. Look at the cover of "Pet Sounds." Those are jackets, not swimsuits. Well, for me, I couldn't really appreciate this one until the weather got a little cooler and I started busting out the sweaters. These are the breaks.

1) Feist - The Reminder So we'll add this to the list of evidence proving that I'm Starbucks' target demographic, because despite the unfortunate albums from Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchel via your favorite coffee provider, they still push music on me that I like. Feist is no exception, in fact, she might be prime example number one. The whole album is great.

Adorable!

Maybe it's the Buffy fan in me, but whip-smart, sarcastic high schoolers crack me up, especially when they yell "THUNDERCATS ARE GO!" when they realize they're going into labor.

I really can't recommend this movie enough. Ellen Page is a crack up, but for me it's the stellar side performances from J. K. Simmons and Michael Cera (aka George Michael from Arrested Development).

(Side note. Michael Cera, you rule, but you're doomed to playing the same role for the rest of your life.)

My affection for the lad is all about the heart he put into his performance, the fact that he mumbled and stuttered every line, including the best moment in the film when he's had enough of Juno's sarcastic dismissal of their one night stand.

Juno glibly mocks him for assuming they would get married after having sex, to which he replies "I wouldn't want to marry you anyway. You'd be the meanest wife ever."

Classic!

Point is, I've not seen a lot of movies lately, and I'm glad I actually went out to see this one, rather than wait for video like I do with most romantic comedy type movies.

Peep out the trailer here!

edit: I would be remiss if I didn't mention the moment in the film that was clearly lifted from any number of arguments I had with my older brother during our teenage years, in which Juno (playing the role of ME) yells at Jason Bateman (in the roll of Chris) "Oh, and I listened to Sonic Youth and it sucked! It was nothing but noise!"