Diamond?

I am making an effort to add to this more. After all, what is the point of having a blog, if you don't update but once a month?

So what to say? A couple of weeks ago I dropped my wife off at school. On the way home the CD I was listening to ended. I switched on the radio and heard "Supper's Ready." Score! So, two big thumbs up to the wonderful folks at Flyer Radio, the UD radio station.

All day I have been thinking about this song and how I haven't heard it in a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql4IiP__5ck

We actually used to make fun of old Neil Diamond when I was younger, but when you hear a song like this, you realize your past mistakes and get on with life. Now I think twice about bashing old Neil.

Plus, the Monkees covered some of his songs. The Monkees rule.

March Madness

My Dayton Flyers won a game in the tournament this year. This makes me very happy. I was in the 5th grade the last time they won a tournament game. God knows what I was listening to back then.

I have slowed a little on my mix making, but I did make two solid ones this past month: Guaranteed Sweetness by Tobin Sprout and Haunted By American Dreams by Neko Case. I also figured out a way transfer my records to sound files. This means I now have a CD copy of Neil Young's long forgotten Time Fades Away.

File this under "Good Things in Life."

The Chunk!

No, not the famous character from The Goonies. I saw today that Superchunk is putting out an EP on April 7. This makes me very, very happy. The timing is strange as I made a Superchunk mix this past weekend. It's called Blue Ribbons and Red Wine. I guess that I will have to make another one soon with some new songs. I guess I could call it A Drummer Called The Gorch.

Probably not.

My brain hurt like a warehouse, there was no room to spare

Yesterday I had the day off and decided to drive my wife to school. This is usually an hour round trip, and I get a great chance to listen to music. I listened to Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. So many fantastic songs on each album, but I think my favorite is "Five Years." I love these lyrics:

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, dont think
You knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, youre beautiful, I want you to walk

I probably looked like an idiot singing along to this song three times in the car yesterday, but who cares.

Tonight we are going to see the Textbook Committee at Canal Street. We saw them over the summer on the patio at Wings, and, though I was confused as to why a lot of people were calling me shitty tigerbomb, it was still a fantastic show. I was sold on them when they opened with a pretty rocking "Bull Spears." Can't wait to see them put on the three hour show tonight. As usual, I'll be the drunk guy singing along.

A Nice Sunday

Today's listening:

Neil Young-S/T
Neil Young-Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
John Coltrane-A Love Supreme
Miles Davis-Birth Of the Cool
Wake Up Mordecai-North To the Nth Degree
The Kinks-Kink Kontroversy
Nick Drake-Pink Moon
Destroyer-Destroyer's Rubies

Then my wife and I slow danced to a bunch of Elton John songs. It was a pretty nice day to be honest.

The Ipod is loaded

I am leaving tomorrow for a week long trip to the Virgin Islands to sit on the beach and listen to a bunch of albums. I am actually working on a couple of different mixes of Simon and Garfunkel, The Kinks, Elton John, and The Doors. Before I leave, though, I was going through iTunes and looking at albums that I could download. I settled on the Bee Gees Odessa (big surprise), but I came across something that really made me laugh.

If you go to the Guided by Voices section of iTunes and find the fantastic album Alien Lanes, you can click on at least two songs and the sample will play you the entire song. This amuses me to no end.

For the record, Alien Lanes is my favorite album of all time. I cannot even begin to explain what the album did for me and what it still means to me to this day.

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Some updates of what I've actually been doing for a month:

I really liked the Stevie Wonder song "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" before. After hearing it last Tuesday, I now love it. Words cannot explain how ecstatic I was at the moment I heard it. The song has new meaning to me, and I will probably smile every time I hear it for the rest of my life.

I have been working on a bunch of new mixes the past month, and have completed two pretty cool ones. The first is a great mix by the Pixies. I've been meaning to do that for awhile, and finally put one together last week. It's a good mix, and it reminded me how great the song "No. 13 Baby" is. I am ready to add it to the Purple Notebook, but I have yet to come up with a name. This shouldn't be too hard considering the wealth of imagery in their songs.

The second mix is in the Purple Notebook, but has yet to be named. It's what I like to call a concept mix. It is a 60 minute mix to an imaginary Wes Anderson movie. One of my favorite things about his movies is the soundtracks full of greats songs and cool instrumentals from Mark Mothersbaugh. For many years I have heard songs and thought that they would fit perfectly in a Wes Anderson film. I picked a bunch of them out, added some of my favorite instrumental tracks from my collection (mostly Brian Eno songs and Portastatic film scores), and threw in a great early Rolling Stones song. The result is pretty cool. You can imagine the movie in your head. The only problem thus far has been coming up with a name, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them.

Finally, the other night my friend was in town and he picked me up to go out to the bar. When I got in the car, I told him I had a song to play for him and then proceeded to play "Rocket Man." Sadly, this isn't the only "Rocket Man" story I have from the last couple of weeks, but it does reveal my main recent listening obsession. Elton John. So, if you hear Madman Across the Water or Tumbleweed Connection blasting in the distance, you know who the guilty party is.