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.

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.

hooray

Lots of stuff happening recently. First of all there are some really good concerts coming up. Of Montreal is coming December 5th, and that show should be completely crazy. Their new album Skeletal Lamping is coming out soon, so there will probably be a lot of new things at the concert. And they're crazy anyways, so a good show can be expected. Also Murder By Death is coming sometime near the end of October, I don't really remember when.

I heard it first in Lauren's car and thought it was pretty good. I didn't do anything about it for a few weeks, then suddenly became inspired and got some of the albums. Mainly I listen to Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them (a mouthful, anyone?), since it's pretty much epic. I really like Murder By Death because of the instrumentation. They have good keyboards and include a cellist, which is fucking awesome, since their tracks sound amazing. Just listen to Killbot 2000 and you'll be forced to agree. You can even download it for free there. The whole album is great, so I think it'll definitely be worth going to that concert.

Also I forgot to mention last post that I got my Stars shirt and poster. I didn't have anything to hang the poster with for a few days, until I went to the poster shop near the Union and got some sticky stuff. It's on the wall opposite my pillow so I can look at it as it glows at night I guess. And now I have the new EP. From what I've heard (it's currently on the first play through) it's really chill and quite good. I've always liked the chill Stars material (On Peak Hill, Don't Be Afraid To Sing, Calendar Girl, etc), so now I can listen to this EP when I'm in the mood. I'm quite happy I got the CD, because now I can make high quality rips (about 900 kbps lossless yay!) and listen to it with my good headphones.

Oh and two nights ago I went to a concert with Calvin. There were a bunch of local (meaning Florida, I guess) bands playing. They were all decent, though only the last band, The Dead Songwriters, really stood out. I got a shirt and CD for $10, cause it was pretty fucking cheap and pretty good.