last.fm

Now that I have a non-satellite Internet hook-up, one of my great joys is to be able to have last.fm in the house...at last. I'd only been able to access it when I was in town (one of the disadvantages to country livin'). Really glad I can use my account now! In fact I have it playing right now.

last.fm is a music service that helps you find music you might like in a kind of fractial fashion...you list some artists or albums you like, and it suggests others from a database of other users who like similar things and also liked the artist or album in question. So you say you like Chad & Jeremy, it'll suggest 5 or 6 other similar artists, like the Beau Brummels or the Vogues...you either say "yeah" or "nah", and it'll adjust its suggestions accordingly. As you go on you can find some really interesting and obscure music that you'd never find otherwise, as well as old stuff you knew but forgot about.

And the lovely thing is that you can have a library of this music and just access it to play on your computer while you blog or whatever! Or follow links to purchase a CD. Good mojo for both listener and musician. Hey, wait, now they're playing Roky Erikson...fantastic...anyhow, hop over and check it out at http://www.last.fm/home for lots of great music...

Here's the Wiki folks again to explain the mechanics much better than I can...

Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed over 40 million active users based in more than 200 countries.[1] On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).[2]

Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the songs the user listens to, either from Internet radio stations, or the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") either via the music player itself (Spotify, Amarok) or via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user's profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

English Electric

For me any new album release by Martin Newell is a cause for rejoicing, but his newest (released under his old Cleaners From Venus moniker) is especially so. I'd have to say this is his most amazing offering in years...perhaps even since his classic Greatest Living Englishman. Tracks full of jangly goodness, fantastic melody, extremely dry British humor, and Newell's trademark lyric sense of Autumnal loneliness and longing are all brought to the fore, in a tour-de-force of beautiful music that in a much better world would be lauded by critics shouting his praises from the rooftops.

So you can tell I like this a little, eh? And you may too...it's available for download only right now offa his website at http://www.martinnewell.co.uk/ at only five measly British pounds. The price of a couple of pints in a poncy pub. I highly recommend it.

The Arrival

An illustrated book by Shaun Tan, with no written dialog. Seems marketed to children, but actually very adult in its themes and storytelling. Beautiful. Fantastic (in all senses of the word). Inspiring. Oh, just go check it out. You won't regret it. I loved it, there should be a lot more of this in the world.

A review from School Library Journal:

Tan captures the displacement and awe with which immigrants respond to their new surroundings in this wordless graphic novel. It depicts the journey of one man, threatened by dark shapes that cast shadows on his family's life, to a new country. The only writing is in an invented alphabet, which creates the sensation immigrants must feel when they encounter a strange new language and way of life. A wide variety of ethnicities is represented in Tan's hyper-realistic style, and the sense of warmth and caring for others, regardless of race, age, or background, is present on nearly every page. Young readers will be fascinated by the strange new world the artist creates, complete with floating elevators and unusual creatures, but may not realize the depth of meaning or understand what the man's journey symbolizes. More sophisticated readers, however, will grasp the sense of strangeness and find themselves participating in the man's experiences. They will linger over the details in the beautiful sepia pictures and will likely pick up the book to pore over it again and again.

And a review from Booklist:

*Starred Review* Recipient of numerous awards and nominations in Australia, The Arrival proves a beautiful, compelling piece of art, in both content and form. Tan (The Lost Thing, 2004) has previously produced a small body of off-kilter, frequently haunting stories of children trapped in surreal industrial landscapes. Here, he has distilled his themes and aesthetic into a silent, fantastical masterpiece. A lone immigrant leaves his family and journeys to a new world, both bizarre and awesome, finding struggle and dehumanizing industry but also friendship and a new life. Tan infuses this simple, universal narrative with vibrant, resonating life through confident mastery of sequential art forms and conventions. Strong visual metaphors convey personal longing, political suppression, and totalitarian control; imaginative use of panel size and shape powerfully depicts sensations and ideas as diverse as interminable waiting, awe-inspiring majesty, and forlorn memories; delicate alterations in light and color saturate the pages with a sense of time and place. Soft brushstrokes and grand Art Deco–style architecture evoke a time long ago, but the story's immediacy and fantasy elements will appeal even to readers younger than the target audience, though they may miss many of the complexities. Filled with subtlety and grandeur, the book is a unique work that not only fulfills but also expands the potential of its form.

Mary Renault

Really, hands-down some of the best historical fiction ever written sprang from the pen of Mary Renault. Excellent characters, interesting plots, brilliant writing and scholarly period accuracy are all right there...and you get free lessons in the lives and histories of the ancient Greeks as well. HIGHLY recommended. If you're looking for moving, humorous, fascinating fiction that very convincingly takes you out of your time into another, this is the mother lode. I'd have to say The Praise Singer is perhaps my favorite, with Renault's protagonist really giving a wonderful insight of what it's like to be a musician and songwriter (go figure), but The Mask Of Apollo does much the same with its note-perfect reading of the character of an actor. And The Persian Boy is an amazing book too, telling the story of Alexander The Great from the viewpoint of his slave and lover. Really hard to miss with this writer...give 'em a shot.

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Do not pass Go, do not collect $200...instead, hit that link and laugh your butt off with Foamy The Squirrel, Germaine and their pals. Foamy is a talking squirrel with a really bad attitude (beware his "squirrely wrath), and Germaine is a punky girl (with somewhat of an attitude problem herself) who lives with him. These are NOT cartoons for the kids...well, at least watch 'em yourself first and then figure that out. I love Foamy myself. Ill-Will Press is smokin' funny with this stuff!

Music In The Key Of Oscar

Watching the documentary movie Music In The Key Of Oscar, which has footage of Oscar Peterson and his classic jazz trio with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis. I'm taken with how each of these musicians helped shape my life...Oscar's "Sound Of The Trio" was the first album I owned that made me really want to play jazz; Ray Brown was the guy that made me want to play upright bass; and Herb Ellis' method book was the one that opened up the swing guitar thing for me. Strange that they all played together in the quintessential jazz trio.

Another wonderful thing in this movie is the interviews, which show that these are not only some of the greatest musicians in the world, but that they're intelligent, well-spoken and super nice guys. The obvious affection and respect that they have for each other is incredibly charming, and says a lot about the bonds that form with the right musicians working together. Their reminiscences about traveling as an interracial trio in the deep south, and in the 50s and 60s, are very moving.

Plus, this movie has both vintage and more recent clips of the trio playing, and playing REALLY well! If you have any love of jazz (or even just a bit of curiosity about the genre) this is a treat. If I gave stars for stuff this would have a good-sized galaxy.

Here's a bit of the trio playing in 1958...amazing...

The Merrymakers

It's been said by others before me, in a perfect world The Merrymakers would be a household name, and big stars too...alas, "Bubblegun" was their only American release. It's well worth seeking out though...pure Pop Rock heaven, songs that stay in your head forever (in a good way). The Merrymakers are a musical duo composed of Anders Hellgren and David Myhr, from Sweden, where they must put something in the water I guess to have the kind of Pop songwriting that comes outta there. The melodic content is just so strong, and the production is fantastic...I'm still trying to figure out how they've managed to get their choruses to sound so darn big!
Hellgren and Myhr are still working together, writing and producing for others in the studio (most notably for Puffy AmiYumi), and threatening periodically to make another Merrymakers CD. I'm still waiting, guys!

Here's a great song and very silly video from the "Bubblegun" CD: