The ubiquitous "what i'm listening to now" page

Line O' Contents (newest stuff is at the top):
Back in 1998! | Introduction | Pete | Alice | Shawn Colvin | Poi Dog Pondering | Salt-N-Pepa | Stevie Ray Vaughn | Ben Folds Five | Old Carp

[New!]12/7/98. Whoa. It's back. Yeah. Maybe because it has something to do with barely getting 5 hours of sleep last night, but i got home today, grabbed three CDs from the front right of the cabinet, plopped down, and here's what ended up in the player:

Queen Ida - Mardi Gras, Shawn Colvin - Live '88, and Salt-N-Pepa - very necessary.

And for some reason, i felt it necessary to make this stupid page. Duh! i already reviewed those CDs! (Well ok, the Salt-N-Pepa review was of the cassette, but still!).

So... something actually [New!]: ©1998, even! It's In Their Eyes: '90s Teen Bands vs. '80s Teen Movies! And... it's pretty cool. No, really.

It's '90s teen bands (The Donnas were the only one i'd heard of) covering (or butchering, depending on what you think of these young whippersnappers) your favorite songs from such great movies as "Pretty In Pink" (title track), "The Breakfast Club" (Don't You Forget About Me), "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" (A Million Miles Away), and on and on. Hit the link above for the full listing (and samples, too!)

So, how is it? i actually like quite a bit of it. i think "In Your Eyes" is a little disappointing, as covered by Simon Stinky Puff (who?), but Peter Gabriel's version is hard to top. By the way, you know the scene it's from, in "Say Anything..."? Well, check out the cover art. It's by Jamie Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame, and it's just brilliant.

All in all, i think i'll keep it. Makes me feel old (all these kids saw the movies on video, for crissakes!), but oh well. :-P

[Old!] Well, ok, i _guess_ i'll do a music page (6/10/97)

i've always thought it was kind of presumptuous, if not a little silly, for people to put up their entire CD collections, or "what's in my CD player right _now_", or just reviews of CD's they like. Cause i mean, who cares?

But one of my favorite things about my new car is the in-dash CD player. Now it's not as slick as a 6-CD changer in the trunk with a remote control, yadda yadda yadda, but i mean, really, i'd hate to have to choose only _six_ CD's to listen to. And what about when you drop by Tower to pick up something, and you're so anxious to check it out, you unwrap it right when you get in the car. i mean, you'd have to get back out of the car, pop the trunk, pop the caddy, and put it in there. Yuck.

So anyways, yah, i've been buying a few more CD's than i used to. i used to buy lots of cassettes, and even LP's. Yah, you know, records. Heh. In fact, i want to pick up the Jimi Hendrix releases that his estate recently put out. They're on LP, which i think is the way you're _supposed_ to listen to Hendrix.

Yah, so, back to the CD's i'm listening to now, cause i know you really want to know. Well, one particularly overplayed CD in the free "Platinum" (they make database management tools...) CD case in my car would have to be Ben Folds Five's "Whatever and Ever Amen."

[New!] Let My Love Open the Door (12/8/97)

Rainy day. Incredibly short commute to work. Late, as usual. And as i pull into a space, we get the E. Cola (heh) mix of Pete Townsend's amazing "Let My Love Open the Door." (It's track #12 off of the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack that i borrowed from Rosa, (which is really Adam's) and it's pretty cool in its own right.) And i don't want to go to work. But damnit, i'm late, and i can't even finish the song. *Sigh*

Sometimes, i actually wish i still had a long commute by bus, or car, or whatever, because i *could* listen to the radio or a CD. i used to ride the bus into the City with my dad, and i'd tune into Alex Bennett and be cracking up while everybody else was still trying to wake up. But now Alex is gone.

If i could get in late enough, i'd listen to "My Three Songs" on KFOG. Dave Morey actually still gets to be a *real* DJ: At 9am he chooses three songs that have a common link (and if you guess correctly, you win prizes!) Then at 10am (oh how i long for a job where i can listen to this) he gets to choose "Ten great songs from one great year." (i'm talking about 10 @ 10.) So for those two glorious hours (give or take 30 minutes), it's playlist-free radio. i do so *hate* it that DJ's are _required_ to play certain songs that are in a "rotation." (Rotisserie?) Grr... i thought all this payola stuff ended in the 60s.

[New!] Aack!! i listen to Adult Contemporary Music! (12/7/97)

*Update* Wait, according to these charts, it's *not* Adult Contemporary, but rather, A3, which is kind of like Adult Contemporary, only without the Michael Bolton-like crap. Interestingly enough, the same site has some insight into the silly Alice name. It's all about image. So much for the Sprite "Image is Nothing" commercials.

So there's this radio station called Alice. Yes, like the name. Anyways, it's gaining popularity with a lot of rock-edged pop.

We've actually won a lot of stuff from them, if that's any indication of how much we (roommates) listen to them.

One of the things we won was two free tickets to a CD-release party. "This is Alice Music Volume 1" was a benefit CD for breast cancer. The party was at a swanky restaurant called Eleven. Kami Lyle ("Polka Dots"), a squeaky speaking jazzy pop singer was the featured performer. Cute, decent singing voice, and plays a mean trumpet, but dangit if she doesn't sound like Minnie Mouse.

_Anyways_, good stuff, so i went and bought both Kami Lyle's, _and_ the aforementioned compilation disc. So here's what i mean by Adult Contemporary Music: Sarah McLachlan, Third Eye Blind, 10,000 Maniacs, Dave Matthews Band, Leah Andreone, Duncan Sheik, Meredith Brooks, and the aforementioned Kami Lyle.

See? Nothing decidedly offensive, or lame, but all pretty "safe." And i think it bugs me that i listen to "safe" music.

But on the other hand, in the new Visa "what's in your wallet" ads?, they've got Abra Moore ("Four Leaf Clover"), and as it turns out, she used to be in Poi Dog Pondering. Cool!

Shawn Colvin (6/18/97)

Cool! i got a nice plump padded envelope in the mail yesterday, and it was the CD i had ordered last week: Shawn Colvin, Live '88. i had forgotten about it, so it was a pleasant surprise. Great stuff. And it came with a free t-shirt from her "Cover Girl" tour (but it's one of those shirts that you can only wear when you're at a Shawn Colvin concert because you'll look like a complete freak otherwise, since the back looks a cover of Vogue magazine), and a cassingle (oy, it's their phrase, not mine) of "Someday," which was off of the same album (Cover Girl). So i've been listening to the cassingle (since my Miata with a CD player is up in Alameda at my folks' place because i left it there when my dad drove me to SFO so i could fly down to SB to pick up V) over and over, and the B-side is what really rocks a cover of "Ol' 55." The credits list it as Tom Waits, but i swear that i've heard the Eagles sing it. Especially the line, "And now the sun's comin' up, I'm ridin' with Lady Luck, freeway cars and trucks. Stars beginning to fade and I lead the parade just a wishin' I'd stayed a little longer." Ah, correct words were found on an Eagles lyrics page.

AltaVista search are pending, as are more critical details about why Shawn Colvin rocks so much. Of course here's as good an explanation as any.

Turns out "Ol' 55" is a popular cover tune. On a tribute album of sorts to Tom Waits, it was covered by Dave Alvin. A lot of hits came back with links to Sarah McLachlan's discography, since she did a version of it, and since her rabid fans are all over the Internet. Kinda cool.

Poi, anyone?

"And if I should die in a car wreck, may I have Van Morrison in my tape deck."
--U Li La Lu, by Poi Dog Pondering
Great line from a great tape by Poi Dog Pondering. (i really need to replace it with a CD though, it's completely worn out.) Made me think of starting some kind of interactive page about what _you_ would want on your tape deck (or CD player) if you got in a car wreck. Sure it's morbid. But it's fun!

Anyways, prior to that Shawn Colvin cassingle (c'mon, say it, it's fun!), i had Poi's "Wishing Like a Mountain and Thinking Like The Sea" in my deck. It's funny, i think i saw them singing "U Li La Lu" on something like Friday Night Videos, back when they had to play videos that were by odd artists because they couldn't pay the big money to play things by Michael Jackson or, god forbid, Def Leppard. It was all part of that 80's attempt by broadcast TV (ABC/NBC/CBS) to jump on the MTV market. Of course that's all over now, thank goodness. Well, i mean, MTV is crap now, as is broadcast TV. Nowadays one of the only shows where you can _sometimes_ see bands that are still kind of "undiscovered" is Conan O'Brien, of all places.

At any rate, if you hit that Poi link up above, you'll see that they've got a pretty rabid fan base of their own. A lot of it perpetuated by their mailing list, i suspect.

More old tapes! (6/12/97)

Oh, before i share more of my exciting music collection with you, i have to say that Salt-N-Pepa was still in my tape deck as of yesterday, and while looking for the correct spelling of their name on the web, i was reminded to flip the tape and listen to the classic "Whatta Man," which featured En Vogue on background. (Apparently they're down to 3 women right now. But they still rocked on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago.) Great grooves on that song.

The Sky Is Crying

It always bums me out that i never got the opportunity to see Stevie Ray Vaughn in person, before he passed away. i "discovered" him when i was in high school (circa 1986-87) having dubbed a couple of albums from a friend at church. On tape had Texas Flood on one side, and on the flip was Stanley Jordan (a two-handed tapping jazz guitarist). Another tape had Soul to Soul on it, with i forget what was on the back. (Can't find the tape.) i can't remember which tape it was, but i was at a church summer camp, and had just gotten an auto-reverse Walkman. Well, i ended up falling asleep to one of these tapes _all_ night long, so i guess SRV was etched into my subconscious.

So tonight i was listening to The Sky Is Crying, released posthumously in 1991, after his untimely death in August of 1990. i'm one of those people that if a song is playing on the radio, or heck on the tape or CD, i'll stay in the car after i've parked, just to finish it off.

Tonight it was Stevie Ray Vaughn's cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing". And my god, sometimes it just makes my heart ache to hear someone playing so well, so beautifully, so...amazingly. (Heart ache? Well, maybe it's like a big *sigh*, or a swoon, or something.)

And i suppose part of the heartache is that i'll never get to see the man perform live.

Ben Folds Five (6/10/97)

You know, it bums me out when i actually end up liking bands that i've read about in Details, but more often than not, i do. What does this mean? i mean, it's not like i wear a lot of fashionable clothes, that's for damn sure.

But yah, they interviewed Ben Folds of Ben Folds Five, who plays piano and sings lead. And i was thinking, "Hm, piano." But that was before i heard them. Their first single, "Battle of Who Could Care Less," was getting some airplay on Live 105 (you know, "Alternative Rawk"), and it was definitely catchy (or is that catching?). Especially the lines: "I've got this great idea. Why don't we pitch it to the Franklin (Fuckin') Mint. Fine pewter portraits, of General Apathy, and, Major Boredom singing, Whatever and Ever, Amen." And that song doesn't even _begin_ to showcase Fold's amazing piano-playing, which is what _really_ makes the CD one of my faves. Ranges from boogie-woogie, to Jerry Lee Lewis, to i dunno what. He's extremely versatile, and you've gotta hear the CD to believe or understand what i'm talking about.

Oh, so, is that a long enough of a ramble? Yah, i think so, and if you read this far, you deserve a cookie or something. So walk over to your vending machine and buy yourself one. :-P

Really old carp (6/10/97)

And oh, all those old cassettes and LP's? Well, i finally threw them along with my CD's into a couple of cabinets that i'm calling my "Home Entertainment Center" (Ha! It's an old microwave stand and an old TV/VCR cart). Anyways, the most recent tape i've resurrected from the pile is Salt-N-Pepa's "Very Necessary" (1993). Fast-foward, and flip to side two, the big hit, "Shoop," and one of my other favorites, "Heaven and Hell," which strangely enough, was featured prominently in an odd British art film, "Shopping." (Which i liked better than "Trainspotting": *more* cool stealing expensive cars and driving them fast; and "shopping" (crashing into the windows of big stores and stealing everything inside)--*less* (or actually no) heroin shooting. The subtitle of the film? "Crash & Carry")


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