There's something about discovering a new band that is really rejuvenating. My sudden obsession with Assembly of Dust is taking me both forward and back. Back to the sounds of Little Feat, and the feel of a mellow, optimistic L.A. summer afternoon, and forward into a new world of a new band. They're a jam band, and I didn't think I liked that kind of music (although Ryan Adams, who I love, has ...
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OK, time to Mog more. (I know, I always say that, but this time I mean it, blah, blah, blah.) So, I've mentioned that I stream music at work a lot, and it's how I discover lots of new stuff. My latest find on Spinner is Blue Roses, which is actually a woman named Laura Groves. She is very cute and British, and there is a lovely picture of a lighthouse on the cover of her self-titled debut CD....
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Last night some friends were coming over, and I said, "What should I put on?" S. said, "Let's just listen to all the CDs alphabetically." It was a joke, but then I said, "That's actually a good idea." It seemed like a good recession-era task, and fun given all the different music we've collected together and separately. Plus a way to find out what to recycle (especially since we're about to bri...
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For a Jewish gal, I really like holiday music. I think it comes from singing in choruses for years and years. I know the words to many carols. Chanukah songs are trickier. One day I'd like to write a classic Chanukah song, one that maybe even Merv Griffin could sing (see below) that isn't in a minor key, as they tend to unerringly be. My holiday music collection isn't vast, but among my favorit...
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I'm always impressed by the ability to pull off a long song. Mostly because I usually don't like them, so when I do, it's exciting. The new Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue, is very 60s and 70s, more accessible to me than her first solo album, but with a wacky, Hollywood-girl edge (intensified by a lot of Zooey Deschanel on backing vocals). My favorite song is "The Next Messiah." It appears to be about...
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My anxiety/sadness is hardly ever an overall/blanket kind of thing but usually focuses on specific events that I fear, dread, regret. My mind can hardly ever relax as it has to run up to the next "bad thing" it can find and worry over it...whether it's in the past or future (Living in the moment? Not my specialty.) Sometimes these issues are valid; sometimes they're irrational. In any case, yes...
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I got my own iPod for Xmas, and I'm now back in a mode that for me, previously reached its zenith in around 1988, and then around 10 years later, two time periods in which I walked around the city glued to my Walkman. (Some Walkmen faves: Sweet Honey in the Rock, a Ray Charles/Betty Carter tape DeeDee lent me, The Rooks, The Roches Keep on Doing album and now on the iPod, Suzzy and Maggie's Zer...
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Over the years I'd heard bits and pieces of Goldfrapp and thought, gee, for newfangly electronic music, that's kind of nice! But then I found their new album, Seventh Tree, streaming on AOL Music...and now it's gone, and I'm seriously missing it. (So, I just bought it, which means their evil plan worked!) The album opens with a nylon-string guitar and then Alison Goldfrapp's voice comes in -- a...
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Coming home on the train this evening, looking at the cold sparkle of NJ, I was listening to Aretha Franklin's "Somewhere," produced by Quincy Jones, from 1973. Could there be a more perfect day for this track? A quick look around shows that plenty of other people find this track a wonder. But forgive me for taking you on a brief tour. It starts with triumphantly simple piano chords, with which...
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I've long been known as a hyperbolic person, so forgive me, but I'm Not There is the best movie I've ever seen in my life.1. There are movies that I love almost as much and maybe in some ways more, but this one seemed somehow on a higher plane due to its non-linearity; I don't see super-arty movies a lot, so maybe its artiness was a new thing to me, but the fact that it was arty and I understo...
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