where I need to be

on March 6, 7, 8:

Yep yep.

mmm

Revisiting the Canadians. I've got to say I'm pretty impressed. When I first became interested in music, I started with Stars, and found awesome stuff like BSS and Metric. Then I sorta lost focus from Canada, and started exploring stuff in the US as well.

Dear lord Canada produces good music. The US has got to be full of stupids to think that Canada is backwards. Oh wait the US *IS* full of stupids. I think I'll end up in Canada eventually because the music is awesome and I loved Canada from what I saw of it.

Anyways I've listened to a few new bands recently. Of course, I ended up listening to a bunch of Stars again, go figure. I've now got >5000 plays recorded. New Stuff: Apostle of Hustle and Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Both are pretty closely connected with Broken Social Scene, since Andrew Whiteman and Emily Haines are at least part time members. The Emily Haines is mostly solo stuff which is much more toned down from Metric and involves a lot of piano, which is nice. I'm still in my initial listen to AoH, so I'll keep you guys updated. All I know is that it's pretty damn good.

bands to see live

I've been to a lot of shows that I really liked in the past semester, and some of us have been thinking about which other bands we would like to see.

So here's my list:
Metric
Okkervil River
Portugal. The Man
Sigur Rós
The National
Fleet Foxes
The Decemberists

These are the ones I would definitely go see. Okkervil River has been disappointing in their newer albums, but I think I would still go see them in case they play any of their awesome old stuff. I think Modest Mouse has moved beyond playing anything from Lonesome Crowded West, so I doubt I'd see them.

I am definitely going to see Stars again. Hopefully they'll come close though, so I won't have to be traveling or anything. All the bands I've seen this semester I would see again (Broken Social Scene, Of Montreal, Murder By Death).

Also I'm learning to bend notes on the harmonica. It's not an easy process unfortunately, but it's a necessary one if I'm supposed to become at all proficient.

wow

I'm listening to some Sigur Rós. It's pretty depressing. I shouldn't be listening to All Alright in the middle of the night.

Anyways I have pictures and videos from BSS and Of Montreal. One day I'll actually post things about them, maybe.

I still can't bend notes on the harmonica. Also I want a banjo.

well

I guess this is the long overdue blog post I've been procrastinating. Now there's just so much stuff idk what to start with. So I'll start where I left off.

The Murder By Death concert. Holy fuck that was a good concert. It was also on my birthday, so that just made it more enjoyable. It's been a long time so the details are a bit hazy, but there were 2 bands that opened for them. One was a rock group with the singer on a piano, that was pretty cool. The other was William Elliot Whitmore I believe, who was also drunk, and kept saying "Fucking A". Anyways Murder By Death was fucking awesome. They've got this amazing cellist who has the coolest cello I've ever seen.
Her cello is just a narrow piece of wood. I guess it's an electric cello, so it doesn't need a resonating chamber. They played a lot of good songs, including Brother and most of the ones I like on Who Will Survive, but they DIDN'T play Killbot 2000. While I was disappointed by that, it was still a very good show. I got myself a Murder By Death shirt and poster, which has a flying turtle on it. It's pretty fucking awesome. (Fucking A!)

What have I been listening to recently? I've listened to quite a bit of Stars, as usual, but I can't really say I've branched out much. Hopefully I'm not getting old. I've also listened to a good deal of The Submarines. I really like the emotional quality of their music: wistful yet upbeat.

On November 20 I traveled back to Tallahassee for the Broken Social Scene concert at The Moon. I'll leave that for another post because I have a lot of picture and video that I want to add in, so I'll have to figure that out first. I found out that Land Of Talk is a very good band, and I've also listened to a lot of that. I'll also talk about them in the next post.


Most recently I've been fiddling with music software. I've previously tried using Songbird for a variety of tasks, such as searching for music or trying to listen to my library, but it was in a beta phase and didn't work for me. They recently released 1.0, and I must say it's worked much better. One of my previous gripes was that all my metadata tags were messed up because Windows Media Player decided to try to fix everything once. Then Songbird decided to freeze while reading the metadata, so my library didn't get organized at all.

I still use Foobar for organization and tagging, because it's just much better at it, but Songbird has nice playlists and it also boasts nice web integration. It has the core of Firefox, so it can browse the web pretty well. Also, it's completely open source, so there should be a lively community building up for it. I've already gotten some extensions for Last.fm support and safer web browsing. It's still in its early stages so we'll see how much I decide to use Songbird in the future. First of all they should implement some of the perks of Foobar, such as the ability to organize the library, and more comprehensive metadata support.

Just very recently I've been listening to a lot of Okkervil River. They're my second most played artist, but I don't listen to them regularly like I do Stars. I listen to them in very large bursts, usually when I've got something bothering me. I love folk music because of the darker content, the wistful feel, and I really do love the banjo. I've already given my views on the banjo, but hell it's such a beautiful instrument.
I'm pretty sure Okkervil River was the first "folky" music that I fell in love with, so I guess they sort of define good Indie Folk for me. Also a lot of their music is written in A major, so I can play along on my harmonica, which complements the music very well. I just need to get better and learn more techniques.

Oh yes and Of Montreal concert on friday. I'm so excited.

Yeah. Broken Social Scene report with pictures and video to come later.

omg

I haven't posted in a really long time (I haven't even had a chance to talk about Murder By Death), but I've been really busy and shit.

I just got back from a Broken Social Scene concert in Tally. It's 4 am right now so I'm not going to actually say much about it except that it was probably almost on par with Stars, and the fact is that I'm simply not going to compare anything with Stars, because I'm so heavily in favor of Stars. Anyways Broken Social Scene was FUCKING AMAZING. I've got some nice videos and pictures that I'll upload tomorrow. The bass isn't that great in the vids, but the vocals are excellent, and probably better than the album version cause it's live.

upcoming concerts

Murder By Death at Common Grounds Oct 25 (my birthday!)
HEALTH at Club Downunder Oct 27
Broken Social Scene at The Moon Nov 20
Of Montreal at The Venue Dec 5
yay!
much better bands than the beginning of the year. I was going to be very disappointed if there weren't better bands. Broken Social Scene should be amazing, even if they play mostly new material. I'll try to get them to play Almost Crimes. I might also be going to A Place To Bury Strangers, since it's at CDU and Ethan is offering me a ride, so it's free.

Still listening to much of the same folk stuff. listened to specifically The Mountain Goats for a while and now Murder By Death. I've got a music listening test coming up so I'm going to be listening to a lot of "classical" music. Actually it's not classical, it's Baroque and Medieval, but the classification is colloquially classical (alliteration much?), so that's what I'll call it.
I've got to identify a bunch of stuff about the composition and composer, so I'll be studying a lot this coming week.

updateish

Listening mostly to older things like The National and BSS, and some instrumental stuff like Sigur Rós. My roommate and I are going to share music, so I put a lot of cool stuff on a hard drive. I think his stuff is also pretty cool, though the stuff we listen to is pretty exclusive.
So I added:
Okkervil River
Animal Collective
Beulah
BSS
Handsome Furs
Metric
PTM
Of Montreal
Neutral Milk Hotel
Stars
The National
Wolf Parade
Sigur Rós

If anyone thinks of anything I should add feel free to add suggestions

hmmm...

So I don't think I've been listening to much that is new recently. I listened to a lot of Stars and Broken Social Scene, especially Swimmers and Almost Crimes, which are excellent songs. The Almost Crimes video is matched perfectly with the song, so go watch it!

basically you can just Youtube the video or the download link (from the Arts&Crafts website) is here.