Playing with Flock

Flock is new a Gecko based geared at blogging. And you know what it is? Neat-o! Talk about an ingenious way to inspire one to start blogging again. But not tonight. I have to sleep.

Technorati Tags: Flock

Twenty Songs I've Been Diggin'

I could never say that I have one favourite song or even twenty, but it's not too much work to list off twenty songs that lately have been tickling my fancy. There's been a lot of them and it shows pretty well what my taste in music is at the moment.

1. Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
2. With God on Our Side - Bob Dylan
3. I'm Looking Through You - Beatles
4. Death of Emmett Till - Bob Dylan
5. Knock Yourself Out - Jon Brion
6. I Have Forgiven You Jesus - Morrissey
7. April She Will Come - Simon and Garfunkel
8. Shake the Sheets - Ted Leo and the pharmacists
9. Hummingbird - Wiclo
10. 16 Military Wives - The Decemberists
11. All My Trials - Joan Baez
12. Jezebel - Iron and Wine
13. Mother Mary - Eel
14. Brand New Colony - Postal Service
15. Breathe Me - Sia
16. What a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong
17. Tomorrow is a Highway - Pete Seeger
18. Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan
19. Do Re Mi - Woody Guthry
20. Come on! Feel the Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens
21. Jenny Wren - Paul McCartney

In other news, as of yesterday, I am now a loud to go to the store and buy packs of cigarettes. But smoking isn't really my thing. Nor is chew or porn or strip clubs but cigars, voting, and Google adsense are. Now just three more years until I'm insured all the rights a citizen of the US can have (well, sort of).

On quoting without analysis

Scrivs and Bryan have put a vendetta out for rebloggers. Reblogging as copying full post is unethical. But people need to make sure not to confuse this with solely quoting. Anyone who's taken a ninth grade English course knows that quoting is different from copying. I'm sure Bryan and Scrivs would agree with that premise. But there are always nay-sayers so I'll explain further.

The other day I found a spiffy Jon Brion interview so I copied one of my favourite quotes from it and then published it. Why? It was something my readers would be interested in. I didn't take the whole article; I just took enough so that people would want a little more. And there was a definitive reason I didn't comment on it: right now, with my lackluster knowledge of music history, theory, philosophy and psychology, any further elaboration would've sounded sophomoric. In more practical terms, nothing I could've said would've furthered the discourse on that subject. But just because I didn't have anything worth while to say about the quote, doesn't mean that I shouldn't point the quote out to other people.

There is a danger in going over board on quotes. Reading a blog that solely tells me what other people are saying is boring. But worse than that is those bloggers who rephrases the whole concept in his own words in a way that doesn't add extra substance, but people choose not to ostracize them. It is done all the time. I understand it is what you're supposed to do in journalism class but come on! If it is necessary, re-explain an issue: use more clever analogies, clearer diction and hell throw a chart or diagram in there. But don't just change the verbs, adjectives, sentence structure and then say, "This is original content." You're just wasting your time doing that, and it takes just as little talent as quoting and often time is less useful.

If someone has summarized an issue better than you can, don't screw it up by needlessly affirming your agreement. Sometimes the best way of agreeing is to say what's already been said and nothing more. Give the quotes a chance to have life of their own. It's just another way of keeping writing simple.

They were together

Two of my idols were together tonight, and it was wonderful. On the Daily Show, Jon Stuart Stewart [did I actually do that] just interviewed (is that what you call his mocking of celebrities?) George Clooney. It was absolutely orgasmic (the non-sexual orgasm). Apparently Clooney has a movie named Good Night, and Good Luck coming out mid-October which looks quite excellent. If you care to view Jon sexually harassing George Clooney, it will be on The Daily Show’s website in a couple days.

Not so random, unidentified quote: "We'd all be hero's if we stopped using petroleum."

Jon Brion on Music

At the Huckabees premier I met a guy whose been one of the main conspirators on The Simpsons since its inception. And he was sort of saying to me 'Oh, it's so intimidating what you do just musically.' And he was talking about musicians in general and sort of saying 'I always wanted to be a musician, but you guys just have these crazy brains to be able to do that.' And I was just trying to explain to him 'No, music is easy. It's got 12 characters. That's about half of what we deal with in the English language. The English language is a hundred times harder than music. And there's so many absolutely genius musicians who are incredibly stupid people that will back my theory up.' We went our separate ways at the party and I realized that I was finally able to relate it for him. So I said 'Hey, you know how you turn on the TV and you see these 5-year old kids who can play violin like a virtuoso? You might complain that they could be a little more seasoned or emotional, but they're doing it, right? How many 5-year old comedians have you seen that can knock it out of the park? None.' And he looked at me and said 'Wow, that's really reassuring.' And I said 'Man, I'm not being self-deprecating. It's just the truth.' Music looks very formidable to people outside of it and it looks like it's this realm of spooky genius. And it's not. It's this very, very simple language that is capable of creating very complex human response and abstract thought and emotion and in terms of architectural thought, it does really cool things.

via Ign

A Relaxation/Depression Mix

Leohnard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is one of the all-time greatest songs as is "Creep" by Radiohead. Last night the two songs met in their similar forms (Jeff Buckley's rendition of "Hallelujah" and Radiohead's acoustic version of "Creep") thanks to iTunes' shuffle. I must say it was a beautiful thing. It was a meeting so compelling that it forced (my self-control was completely lost) me to construct a mix revolving around the two songs. After a short while of sorting through my currently abridged music library, the mix came to life and it was more than stellar. In fact it was so good that I though I'd share the track listing with you:

1. "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley
2. "Svo Hljott" by Sigur Ros
3. "Tremoloa Debut" by Broken Social Scene (off their upcoming CD)
4. "Creep (acoustic)" by Radio Head
5. "To the Workers of Rockford" by Sufjan Stevens
6. "Wheels on Fire"by The Magic Numbers
7. "Dreamng of . . ." by Earlimart
8. "Man is the Baby" by Antony and the Johnsons
9. "Exta Ordinary Thin" by Aqualung
10. "BWV 244 - Erbarme Dich" by Yo-Yo Ma
11. "Lilac Wine" by Jeff Buckley
12. "Andvari" by Sigur Ros
13. "Soft Black Stars " by Antony and the Johnsons
14. "Reservations" by Wilco
15. "Corpus Christi Carol (For Roy)" by Jeff Buckley
16. "A Glow" by Okkervil River
17. "Stable Song" by Death Cab for Cutie

As I said, it was made with an abridge version of my music library so there is an unhealthy amount of artists with multiple songs, but they all end up working nicely together. At some point I'd like to go through and refine and add to the mix so I'd love to hear your relaxation/depression song recommendations. Or maybe you're more inclined to complain about certain songs that don't fit in the mix, please do.

Gap Favourites

Go to Gap right now, spend sixty dollar, and get the Gap Favourites CD. Or you could just download it from TorrentSpy. It's worth at least one listen. Who can resist the most talented people in pop music on one CD? Even the Keith Urban song is good!

1. Alanis Morissette - "Crazy" (Seal)
2. Brandon Boyd - "Alison" (Elvis Costello)
3. Jason Mraz - "One Love" (Bob Marley)
4. John Legend - "Hello, It's Me" (The Isley Brothers)
5. Joss Stone - "God Only Knows" (The Beach Boys)
6. Keith Urban - "Most People I Know Think I'm Crazy" (Billy Thorpe)
7. Michelle Branch - "Life on Mars" (David Bowie)
8. Michelle Williams - "Let's Stay Together" (Al Green)