359: Come on and let it snow

My favorite terrible Christmas song comes from the movie Love Actually, and it's the only holiday song I keep on my iPod year-round.  Enjoy the awful, really inappropriate music video for "Christmas is All Around" by Billy Mack (AKA Bill Nighy):

Merry Christmas!

334: The Broken Ones

Dia Frampton was my favorite from the first season of The Voice.  I...don't really know what's going on in this video?  But I like the song, and I'm looking forward to her album.

330: Jingle Bells

Well, it's that time of year.  The day after Thanksgiving is when I put all my Christmas music into rotation, and the first holiday song came up in shuffle today.  It was one of last year's additions, Straight No Chaser's "Twelve Days of Christmas," which everyone should know, because it is hilarious (to me):

304: Witches' Brew

Back in the old days, we used to sing this in music class with Mrs. Ryan every Halloween, and everyone loved it.  So in the name of nostalgia, have some "Witches' Brew."

Also, 20 years ago today, we were buried under three feet of snow and I was dressed up as a princess. In snowpants.  Happy Halloween/Blizzard Anniversary!

288: LP

I'm digitizing LPs for my mom today.  Lots of Leo Kottke, a little of The Carpenters.

Why?  Because vinyl will always sound warmer than anything on iTunes.

276: Grenade

Yeah, I like The Sing-Off.  What of it?

185: Red, white, blue

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans.

181: Won't back down

She may not have won The Voice last night (and congrats to Javier Colon, who is an astonishing singer and whose win is well-deserved), but Dia Frampton will always be first in my heart among Voice contestants.  The song she sang in the finals, "Inventing Shadows," was all right, but the real highlight of the final two episodes was watching her duet with her coach, Blake Shelton, and with Miranda Lambert.  (How cool is that Blues Brothers-esque staging for "I Won't Back Down"?)

I don't really like country music, but I loved that.

172: The Voice

I don't usually watch a lot of reality TV, but summer television is an utter wasteland, so I usually end up catching most of the America's Got Talent auditions.  This summer, though, I've made an effort to see The Voice.  The blind auditions were the best part, but the performances have been consistently good, and we've gotten to see the lovely Dia Frampton come into her own.  If you haven't seen or heard it yet, check out Dia's rendition of Kanye West's "Heartless":

And the awesome Beverly McClellan:

And Vicci Martinez (who expects that huge voice coming out of that tiny woman?).  She did "The Dog Days Are Over" tonight and it was kickass, but until that video goes up tomorrow, here's her last performance, Dolly Parton's "Jolene":

Not to mention the fact that it gives some prominent music stars the chance to prove they know what their stuff; during the blind auditions, Christina Aguilera made some surprisingly astute and fairly technical observations about the singers' voices.  She doesn't sound nearly as intelligent during the live shows, when they can't edit out all of her excess chatter, but all four celebrity coaches (Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton) seem like they're giving their artists helpful pointers and pushing them to move out of their comfort zones.

All things considered, it's good, clean summer entertainment.  The finals are next week, so I'll probably be browsing the full run of episodes on Hulu beforehand, just to make my picks for the top four.

163: Spotlight

Muse, State Theater, Minneapolis, 2006.

It's been ages since I've been to a live show.  This is Muse at the State Theater in 2006, in the days before they were Stephenie Meyer's Favorite Band and Matthew Bellamy impregnated Kate Hudson.  Say what you will about 'em, they do put on a good show.

141: Favorites XVII

There's booming, bass-heavy music coming from the park across the way, so: five favorite soundtracks in my iTunes library this week.

Pirates of the Caribbean
Sure, it gets overused during TV golf coverage (why? I don't know) but don't try to tell me you didn't walk out of the theater humming the now-familiar "He's a Pirate."  There's something very sweeping and adventurous about Hans Zimmer's score for the first Pirates film.  The music in the sequels wasn't quite as good, perhaps because it was very reminiscent of what we heard in the first, but there were some really good pieces to come out of the whole series -- I particularly enjoyed "The Kraken" from Dead Man's Chest.

Beauty & the Beast
Angela Lansbury singing that title song is intrinsic to my childhood.  Also, "Gaston" came on my iPod while I was in the car the other day, and I had forgotten how utterly ridiculous the lyrics are.  Best of all is "Be Our Guest," sung by the late, great Jerry Orbach.

Amélie
The music, like the film, is delicate and pretty and just a little bit odd.  For fans of the piano, it's happy listening.  It was my daydreamy summer driving music for a while, and it's basically the perfect background study/work music. 

North & South
I don't think the BBC ever released the soundtrack for its TV miniseries adaptation of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, but that's okay.  I don't mind having to watch Richard Armitage mope around every time I want to listen to the music.

Star Trek, or anything else by Michael Giacchino
Nothing makes you feel like you're in an iconic film quite like "Enterprising Young Men" from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (enjoy the song and long, slow pans across the Enterprise in the video below).  Michael Giacchino is my favorite film and television composer in recent years, having scored Lost for the full run of the series, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Up (and won an Academy Award for the latter) for Disney/Pixar, and almost everything J.J. Abrams has done since Alias.  There's a fun quality to his compositions, most of which are beautiful, and some utterly inspired (e.g. using bits of plane wreckage as percussion instruments for Lost), and I enjoy his often tongue-in-cheek song titles.  Best of all, it's not music that takes me out of the scene when I'm watching (like, say, some of the more bombastic music from Doctor Who), but something I enjoy going back and paying attention to when I realize I'm humming it hours later.

116: Beg and steal and lie and cheat

The slightly more profane version of this song was stuck in my head all day, which was a little distracting while scoring standardized tests.  I listened to it twice during lunch, to no avail.  And then I watched The Voice, which features Cee Lo as one of the four celebrity coaches, so it's just been a Cee Lo-licious kind of day, I guess.  Which makes up for the end of the workday being a little aggravating.

Anyway.

115: Come as you are

I always listen to Nirvana on Mondays.  I don't know why, but it just seems right.  So have some early '90s grunge for your Monday blues:

088: Out of foolproof ideas

I listen to this song at least once a day. Sara Bareilles FTW.

086: Goldberg

It's been about a year since this video, but it's still great.

078: Favorite things VIII

Late-breaking favorites...

Knitting
And it's a good thing, too, since I'm spending a lot of my time doing it.

via Things Organized Neatly

Organizing
There's nothing quite like reclaiming a closet and some floor space by shoving a whole lot of junk into a trash bag.  That, and putting in neat piles things that were strewn all over.  I spent a couple hours stacking yards and yards of fabric on new shelving units in my grandmother's sewing room.  Anybody in the market for some '70s doubleknits?

Melting
There's been a steady, fast-moving stream down to the storm drain at the end of the street, and most of the snow has melted on the front lawn.  In a related story, we thought someone had stolen our ice chopper, but after a foot or so of snow melted near the front steps, a familiar handle was spotted sticking up out of the snowbank.  Moral of the story: don't leave your snow removal tools out in the path of the snowblower.

via We Heart It

Sleeping
I've been having trouble getting up before 9AM recently, because it's just so much nicer to be asleep.  Zzz.

Listening
Specifically, listening to the Minnesota Orchestra's Beethoven cycle, courtesy of my public library.  Shamefully, I haven't been to see the Orchestra live since I was in elementary school, but the CD releases of the Beethoven cycle (conducted by music director Osmo Vänskä) seem like a good way to get reacquainted with the local band.  Good, clean fun and excellent music.

061: How long is a wink?

From where did the term "forty winks" come? How long is forty winks? How do I know if I've achieved all forty of my allotted winks for a night? (No, I'm not going to Google it.)

I ended up chatting with a friend two time zones away until after midnight, then spent a good chunk of the 4AM hour awake when my grandmother turned on the television and my grandfather got up to supervise whatever it was she was doing in the wee hours. By the time I woke up again at 8:30, my mother was the only one up and about, and she was running on only two hours of sleep (that's what, ten winks?).

In any case, my tried-and-true sleep aid came in handy, both blocking out the television noise and lulling/boring me to sleep.  What's my lights-out secret?  Coldplay.

Seriously, put Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head on shuffle when you're tired, and the utter sameness of every track will lull you into slumber.  Works even better when you're in a moving vehicle.  True story.

045: Mixtape

In the grand tradition of Ben Chang and lovesick teenagers everywhere, I made you a mixtape. Spoiler alert: it ends with The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)," as I think all mixes ought to.  (The videos aren't really important, just the songs.)  Happy Valentine's Day, Internet!




Ain't Love Grand Cake - "Love You Madly"
Erin McKeown - "Queen of Quiet"
The Smashing Pumpkins - "Ava Adore"
The White Stripes - "Fell In Love With A Girl"
Sondre Lerche - "My Hands Are Shaking"
V.V. Brown - "L.O.V.E"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps"
Louise Attaque - "Amours"
Ingrid Michaelson - "Everybody"
The Proclaimers - "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)"

015: And that's not nearly all

This song came up in shuffle last night and it's been stuck in my head ever since, so have a creepy music video this Saturday morning:


Of course, my favorite version will always be this one, from HBO's Generation Kill.

007: All a-Twitter

Offered without comment, except to say that between this and Never Mind the Buzzcocks, I totally have a crush on Josh Groban.