Suzanne Calling

Today, Ed and I took Chef to see Wes's 'Disconnect' release party at Daddy Kool records in St. Pete. I did a little shakedown of the GoPro. Video is good, not as great as I'd like, but we went and picked up a Touch Back for it on the way home, because not seeing any output to frame the shot was not working for me. Audio is better than I'd expect for a camera of this type. Still want to get a decent hi-fidelity microphone to use for future recordings, but it works well for now. Here's the title track. Nice to see Wes with a label that supports him and the progressive rock genre.

In preparation for 5 nights of progressive rock music, some performed by acts I can sing along with most of their catalog and others whom I'm not as well acquainted, I started a Pandora station for progressive rock. Then, I was pointed to Aural Moon. The headphones have a lot of good music filling my ears, though I find that Pandora's music genome works TOO well. It often pulls from other genres that are on my other Pandora channels. Um, no, Depeche Mode does not belong with Genesis and ELP! Some of my favorites from the acts performing on the cruise: Marillion (the number one reason we are booked on this cruise...), The Great Escape from 'Brave' A little bit of background. Marillion has had two lead singers, and I became familiar with them when 'Misplaced Childhood' was released, with Fish (Derek Dick) was the leading vocalist/song writer. He was a great front man for the band, so I wasn't excited about Steve Hogarth (aka 'H') replace...

With the holidays around the corner, I am drawn to things like Messiah Sing Ins and other songs of the season, or songs that to me, are part of the season by virtue of singing them for a winter concert or two (or five) as a teen. One of the great things about that choir reunion I attended back in September is that various alumni shared their recordings of concerts with everyone else via Dropbox. Each year, the members of the choir chose whether they wanted to record the Winter or Spring Concert, as it was not an inexpensive proposition. I remember one year, getting two votes, because I'd sold double the quota of fruit in the recent fundraiser. I chose Winter. Alas, it didn't make it to vinyl like years past, we got cassette tapes. Mine was lost years ago. However, the archives restored the concert to me, and the memory holds musical scores much better than anything else. Still, I would like to have the sheet music for favorites we didn't record-and that's wh...

Chef likes to play Little Big Planet 2. When he plays against other players in the Playstation Network, there are a lot of things that people can embed into games, as well as use their headsets. This is because players can build levels into the game. This means that for a while, my son was Rickrolling people, because he may be one of the rare people on the planet who actually likes the song "Never Gonna Give You Up". I don't know where he gets it, maybe it's a gene mutation? However, thanks to that game, I think we'll call the summer of '12 "Banana Song Summer", because of this: You're welcome. And if you need to get rid of it, may I suggest Unhear It? http://unhearit.com/

Things change in a year. Last spring, Chef's chorus concert involved wearing a school chorus tee shirt, a pair of khaki and lots of disorganization. This year, new director and new rules. Still an excessive amount of disorganization (coming in to tell the audience in one section "You can't sit here, the chorus needs these seats five minutes before the performance? Not good), but the new director has some good ideas. First up, the students wore concert dress: white dress shirts, black bottoms and black shoes. She provided ties for the boys. I'm thinking he looks pretty sharp, don't you think?

Regarding yesterday's post, I installed QuickTime 7 Pro to do two assignments. $30.00 for software I may never use again. One of those assignments requires an unknown plug in for me to download a scrambled MP3 to edit, then send the new file back to the Prof. Easy peasy stuff for me to do, provided I can download the file! The other item was a six word memoir. We had to use a musical bed, fade in and out and add an audio track. My six words have been heard by many of my friends over the years, though I had to take a word out. Now it's "Life Happens When Making Other Plans" Alas, I need to find a host for audio tracks, so it won't be added today, but soon.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie Ferris Bueller is one that originally wasn't well received, the Art Institute of Chicago segment where they show some wonderful works of art. The instrumental that played during the segment was lovely. I knew it was from the Dream Academy, but the lack of a movie soundtrack release meant I really didn't find out the name of the track. Until tonight's showing of a documentary about the making of the movie on Biography. Curious, I looked it up, and found it's a cover of a Smith's song. When heard with the lyrics, it is clear that it's a Smiths song-but the Dream Academy version is so pretty, I had to share it.

At 11:11pm on 11/11/11, Chef concluded his premiere viewing of "This is Spıṅal Tap", and as we'd hoped, he found the movie very funny. However, one of the funniest scenes, the infamous 'but these go to eleven' that inspired naming today as Nigel Tufnel day produced something else: my list of eleven songs that I like to play at eleven. *Disclaimer-I could probably use about 50 songs, so take this list as eleven for this moment in time.* Baba O'Riley, The Who Red Barchetta, Rush (though to be honest, Camera Eye is the one that gets played at 11 most often) All Star, Smashmouth Rock Lobster, B52's Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen What I Like About You, The Romantics It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine), R.E.M. Don't Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult Dream Weaver, Gary Wright Saturday in the Park, Chicago Life's Been Good, Joe Walsh How about you? Which songs do you thing MUST be played at 11?

Chef has a knack for repurposing songs. No, he won't take Weird Al's undisputed title as the King of Parodies, but he does tend to do it in such a way that Ed and I are amused often. Until he messes with a Ramones song. Son, you don't mess with the Ramones, they are not to be considered parody fodder. It just isn't done. Then we realized that our rock-loving child had not been exposed to music perfect for his early-arrival teen angst: punk rock. So, we started with Blizkrieg Bop, then went to TV Party and added a few more classics from the mosh pit standards. He appears to fit right in, and if he'd had a lighter, he would have been burning his fingertips in appropriate respect by holding that Bic lighter aloft. I see further introductions to groups like the Dead Kennedys. On the other hand, Scamp was utterly terrified by the music. I guess that's the down side of inheriting an animal: I think he cut his milk teeth on Michael Crawford. Now, that music, I...

I recently won a gift certificate to an excellent Cuban restaurant, and today, I enjoyed a nice lunch with that prize (Chimichurri beef, which is really Argentinian, but the sides were most definitely Cuban). It's nice, I get to speak a little español and listen to latin pop music. Today, though, a melody sounded very familiar, so I listened to the lyrics and realized that I was hearing in Spanish (and translating into English) was a song from an album I played to death in high school. Solo Ti, or Only You, by Yaz. The original: There was an awesome a capella cover about a year later from the Flying Pickets: But today, Enriqué Iglesias had a turn with a favorite, and now I can sing those harmonies en español! I should see if Enriqué covered some other 80's favorites.

Bonus Tracks Do you remember back before our cars had CD players, we had iPods and adapters to use them in multiple locations, how we used to tape our favorite music onto cassettes to listen to on the daily commute? I had dozens of them. Even my dad got a few (Basia and Grayson Hugh on one, until he confessed that he fast forwarded it to hear Basia, so I made a new one with the same album on both sides.) Anyway, I made a tape with the two October Project CDs that got played over and over, to the point that both boys can sing along with them. The limitations of a 45 minute cassette required me to shave a song off each album to fit the format. So, now when I hear those two songs, as I haven't heard them nearly as much as the rest of the album, I think "Hey, an October Project bonus track!" The two tunes that are my 'bonus tracks' Be My Hero from October Project One Dream from Falling Farther In How about you? Do you have tracks that got shaved from the cassette ...

At work, I'm at a desk that was previously occupied by an employee who has been moved to our other location downtown. Who that was, I'm not sure, as fifty people moved there, but her mark has been left. (While not a receptionist, my desk is in a reception area and I do check in some people.) All day long, I'll get requests for the things she did before, like "where's the candy bowl?" and "what happened to the music?" I take them in stride, and explain that my superiors haven't provided the former and well, my computer couldn't help me provide the latter. Not with 1 meg of ram and no Senuti to transfer my iPod library, that is. Last week, tech support upgraded me to 4 gig, so I could actually open my Outlook email and not wait ten minutes for it to load. This mean that perhaps I could actually have other windows open-you know, like the product name implies? Yesterday, I finally got around to creating a Pandora account to use on the job b...

Considering that it's past 6pm in Australia, Japan and New Zealand, I'd say the doomsday people are wrong. Just in case, I made a really good dinner of stuffed clams tonight. (I wonder if the people who haven't paid for the auctions they won earlier today are hedging their bets before paying tomorrow-after 6pm)

I know, I know. Long time readers are scratching their heads, figuring I was done with the Sunday music posts. It's time to resurrect this topic, because I like being able to prepare what I'll write about. Especially now that there will be three classes and a job to occupy most of my time! A friend started doing the 30 Day Song Challenge on Facebook last month and well, I had to do it. It was a meme with a twist, asking participants to name a song that reminded them of an event, a song that made them happy, guilty, or a song that they listened to when angry. It inspired a lot of thought. Some of the selections were tough. I really couldn't come up with one for guilty until Ed told me what his was (he took the challenge, too). In this space, I'd mentioned that we had three songs with the designation "Our Song." I posted one, he posted another. (We selected the same song to be played at our funeral) Some of the choices might not have been so difficult...

Suzanne, you've finished one huge project, wrote a paper and are about to do someone else's taxes and five assignments for one class. What are you going to do for a blog post? Shuffle my iPod and see how disparate the ten selections may be and add brief commentary. Yes, I've done it before. Shoot me. Mother Nature's Son -The Beatles, White Album. It reminds me a little bit of several other McCartney songs, like Venus and Mars and a little bit of chord progression like Mamunia. Who Can it Be Now? -Men At Work, Business As Usual. Good song, good album and a good song to play on a sunny day like today. Magic -Stimulator, Ella Enchanted. This Jeff Lynne penned, Olivia Newton-John sung hit from Xanadu got the Justin Bieber treatment for another movie soundtrack. Hooks in You -Marillion, Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other. The first Hogarth song I heard from Marillion and I wasn't sure I liked this vocalist. That was in the early 90's and I think this song w...

Ed has several guitars. Among them: an unbadged Martin six string acoustic(that sounds incredible), an Ibenez (a/k/a Ibeenhad), a Dean bass that has a minor blem on the back and this Fender Jazz bass. He got it for a great price from the Sam Ash in Huntington because it was an odd color, Razzberry. His mom took one look at it and gave him grief. Meanwhile, he had a vision, and it included some Volkswagen flower decals. He made modifications. The first time I saw this, I expressed delight at how freaking cool this thing looked. I suspect the Daisy guitar people saw Ed at a random gig of one of his small town Long Island band gigs and were inspired. It is still pretty darn cool.

There are quite a few boxes that have been moved with us from Maryland that have not been opened. Many of those are just because we didn't have any place to put them. However, today a friend was looking for sheet music for "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" that included the obligato part that our high school choir performed along with the four part harmonies. It's a very pretty addition to a wonderful advent song. I had noticed that one of the boxes was labeled music and set about opening it to see if it was sheet music from the piano bench (regrettably, the bench fell apart many years ago). I did find the dittos of the old standards we performed, and as I suspected, the descant was not written in. There was a holiday treasure trove, 'Christmas in Song' and I filched one of those my senior year, because it was the most comprehensive sheet music of Christmas carols you could find (and it is small, too) Opening that box, I found many goodies: sheet music, concert p...

I think not. It's after Thanksgiving, everywhere you go, you hear Christmas carols on the Muzak. That means it's time for my favorite modern-era Christmas song: Of course, this means I'm listening to it instead of studying Spanish. What can I say, the horn section is too good not to enjoy at least once tonight.

Ahhhhh. Do you hear it? Silence. Complete and utter silence. No tv, no bickering, no humming, no one calling "Mooooom, he won't let me...". Granted, no Ed and no kids after a summer of cacophony means I'm singing to myself. Singing to myself means that I have to go hit up iTunes for songs I don't have in my Cd library. If I was the average person, that would probably mean I was hitting up the latest from a favorite artist or a current hit. Not me. I'm trolling iTunes and buying choral music. Some observations: If a composer has a popular title, like say 'Movin' On', unless you know who performed it, it will not be found. Choral masterworks performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir ALWAYS are the most popular version of the choices available. My apologies to the esteemed Mr. Jessup, but I HATE his interpretations of many works I have performed. If there isn't specific notation for dynamic, he leans towards staccato phrasing-even in a s...

Thank God for iPod Ed noticed it first. "Your car radio is broken." My response was "No it's not. I get my stations just fine." It wasn't until I wanted to find the local NPR affiliate that I realized that he was right. The combination of the funky Beetle antenna and the unforgiving Florida sun have conspired against us listening to more than the three stations I prefer. The offending article. I think I've mentioned before that my car is what VW called the Satellite Blue special edition. It came with a year's subscription to XM and something very unusual for the time, an iPod jack in the dash. No dopey adapter setups for me-my car has a plug! The rarely seen factory installed 2004 in-dash iPod plug A plug that for a long time did not work. It took a year for me to discover this, as Ed bought me an iPod for Christmas 2005. VW probably has since corrected the issue, but it was my complaint for four or five visits to the dealer that the thing ST...