(Click any pic to enlarge, and just click the “play” button to listen)
I parallel park Homer along a city street just two blocks off McKinney’s downtown square. Alvis and I grab our cameras — similar Nikon DSLR’s — and meander across the road.
As I step onto the opposite sidewalk, I see a dejected clown coming right for me. He is not smoking a cigarette, but he looks like he wants to be. We sidestep Sparkles and stroll along to a street barricaded at one end by a stage.
I bound down the stairs and out the door to my car. I squint against the sun and nearly speed walk to my parking spot. Although it’s 90 degrees outside, after eight hours of air conditioned existence I look forward to the intense and welcoming warmth of my car.
Cardinals chirp in nearby woods while mockingbirds sing their protest songs.
As I turn the key to unlock the driver’s side door, on the passenger’s seat I notice something brand new to me (click any pic to enlarge).
As I turned the screws for the wall-mounted Ikea CD racks, purchased at least a year ago to get our collection out of the closet, I listened to my iPod shuffle (2nd generation, bought as a refurb), loaded mostly with music that I do not own on CD.
Once the three racks were soundly mounted on the wall studs, I took stock of the artists’ names on the CD spines: 10,000 Maniacs, Indigo Girls, Pearl Jam, Prince, Extreme, Big Audio Dynamite, Sarah McLachlan, Erasure, Yaz, King’s X, The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Lightning Seeds, PM Dawn, and many more.
Notice a pattern there?
Okay, it’s Christmas Eve, so below is the link to the songs that I first posted in 2006. They’re sung by a madrigal group my wife was in back in college. If you like the samples, then download the full versions and put them on your favorite music player, or burn them to CD.
http://blog.markwill.com/pages/free-christmas-song-each-day
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. Happy Holidays to those who do not.
I dumped commercial radio several years ago, and this week I was reminded why. It’s the ads, the copycat “artists,” and the wacky morning deejays.
I like news for the drive into work and music on the way home. The former informs me, while the latter helps me unwind. The past couple weeks my usual morning radio station has been holding its fall fundraiser, which interrupts regular programming. Thursday morning, for the morning commute I switched back to commercial radio.
I have concluded that I would rather keep my mp3 player loaded with plenty of music and NPR podcasts than listen to one more minute of morning commercial radio broadcasts.
The station with the music format I like the most, 102.1 KDGE (The Edge), plays the occasional tune by an independent artist. For the most part, however, they play bands that the recording companies try to make sound like Nickelback or some other wildly successful act. When they aren’t playing that new “music,” they’re typically playing decent songs I already have memorized. That isn’t bad as a rule, but when I finally tune back to commercial radio for a while, I hope to hear something new.
I suspect the dissatisfaction with the music is largely a factor of my age. Sadly, I think I’m to the point that nothing sounds new anymore, and I thrive on fresh content.
Then there are the antics of the morning deejay. On Thursday morning, host Billy Madison called and antagonized a man after a listener called in to give her side of a story. Disguising his voice, Madison yelled at the man, peppered his speech with expletives, and demanded to know why he was not doing what he should. The man got agitated and threatened to call the police. Unlike when I listen to NPR, I was glad I had arrived at work so that I was forced to stop listening to the train wreck of a morning program.
Are there people who really enjoy starting their day with this drivel? An occasional cookie-cutter song accompanied by mindless banter and tasteless, baseless gags? Is it my age or my mind that makes it worthless to me? Both?
For my 23-minute commute home, the lame attempts at entertainment are gone, but I’m lucky if I hear two or three songs among all the ads.
Do you still listen to traditional commercial radio? If not, then what has taken its place?
These sound clips should take some of you back to your childhood. Sadly, they may take some of you nowhere because you weren’t born yet. Or, and this might be sadder still, you just aren’t geeky enough.
Naming the clip is encouraged.
I wrote this in anticipation of a movie slated for a 2010 release. For extra phantom bonus points, name it.
It’s been too long since I’ve posted a sound clip out here.
Back in February, Benjamin improvised a song — part gibberish, part sweet, and part nonsensical. In other words, all the parts that make up most popular songs today (except the sweet part, maybe).
Click the “play” button below to listen.
I’m trying something different today — brief comments on What I’m Hearing, What I’m Reading, What I’m Seeing, and What I’m Doing, including sound clips and pictures.
Lately I have been listening to a mix CD made by Moksha Gren (frequent commenter here). High points are artists Sufjan Smith Stephens, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, and The Hold Steady. While cruising home from work with the top down in Texas, I can’t get enough of the opening line, “They got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things,” on The Hold Steady’s “Cattle and the Creeping Things.”
Also, a Jedi with an identity crisis has been hanging around our house. I recorded a bit of my conversation with him.
(Note: The new banner for December, 2008 is from a mall in Frisco, Texas. Our son is the blur. Please force a reload in your browser — Shift-reload — to load it and a slightly different stylesheet.)
For the free songs now without their history, go ahead.
Some of you already enjoyed the Free Christmas Song Each Day that I posted a couple years ago. It seems like a good time to post it again, since the page already is getting search hits and my wife is in a choral group planning a Christmas program.
The difference this time? You get them all at once.
These tracks are from her college days, when she was with a chamber choir. Five mornings a week she hit the snooze bar far too many times before her 8 a.m. rehearsal as I tried to sleep off my night of waiting tables.
Some of the songs are from the larger, less exclusive group, but still are very good. Most are not the typical songs sung around the family’s piano. If you’re looking for Frosty’s theme, you’re in the wrong place.
Each features a 20-second sample and a link for the full download. It’s all free. Enjoy.
P.S. The empty spot in the picture is where my wife would have stood had she not been ill that night. Kind of funny since I was the photographer. Also, I cropped it to fit the page banner dimensions I was using at the time.
My wife is a singer. It does her soul good to be in a group making beautiful music.
Finally, after a long hiatus, she’s back in the fold (can you find her in the picture?).
Shannon auditioned for and was chosen to join a nearby civic chorus. After months of Monday-night rehearsals (and a last-minute barrage including Halloween night), on Saturday they put on their first performance of the Fall 2008 season.
Clips? Did someone say “clips?” You kidding me? Of course I have clips.
