This Jools Holland show just gets awesomer and awesomer every time I watch it. New Order is on this episode and they’re playing “Transmission.” OMG.
That reminds me, has that movie about Joy Division come out yet? I don’t know anyone in New Jersey who would want to go see it with me. In fact, the only person on earth I know of who would be interested is Terri, and she’s in Ohio with a brand-new baby-person.
Maybe I should start getting Entertainment Weekly again. As craptacular as that rag sometimes is, at least it was a way to stay in the loop with movies and stuff. Nowadays, I don’t even realize a movie has come out until it shows up in Redbox. Hee.
Category Archives: Music
See? See what I mean?
Culture shock
When we moved, we found ourselves under the umbrella of a new cable system. Although the new cable company is much bigger, it sucks a whole lot more than I would have expected it to. The interactive channel guide is tres primitive, and WE DON’T GET BBC AMERICA ANYMORE.
On the other hand, we get this new HD channel, call Rave. It basically shows non-stop music, especially Glastonbury highlights and my new favorite show: Later… with Jools Holland.
Why don’t we have shows like this on regular American TV? OH, that’s right… Americans have shitty taste in television shows. And music. It’s okay, as long as this channel sticks around. I’ll just send the cable company people a letter a day until they add BBC America. After all, we get almost one hundred Spanish-language channels that I don’t want and can’t opt-out of, so why can’t I get one channel with accents and more Gordon Ramsay? Is that too much to ask? I don’t think it is.
Rock of ages, still rollin’
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my psychic CD player. It’s true. The thing is totally tuned to my subconscious and is guaranteed to play the one song I really don’t need to hear. Fun!
For Hanukkah, I asked for some kind of gadget that would allow me to listen to my iPod through the regular stereo speakers or whatever. I was thinking about the Bose iPod dock thingie like the one Chuck has, but we found something EVEN BETTER.
Turns out Monster makes a cable that plugs into the back of the receiver and into the top of the iPod! Genius! All I had to do was get the charging dock set up to stick the iPod in and now I’m ROCKIN’ OUT. For $40, compared to the $400 the Bose thing costs. Look at me, all frugal and shit.
Anyway, I’ve been neglecting my iPod lately – hearing aids and earbuds just don’t mix. Plus, when do I ever GO ANYWHERE that I am in need of it? Never, that’s when. So I haven’t been managing my playlists much. Instead, I just hit “shuffle” and let it go.
What’s the first song my iPod decided to play? Let’s think a bit. There are 4111 songs loaded onto it at the present time. Roughly 300 of them are U2 songs, so that’s a pretty hefty percentage. REM, James, Phish, The Cure, and The Smiths make up another pretty hefty chunk.
The iPod decides to rock us out to Def Leppard. Aw yeah. It seems that no matter how I try to reinvent myself, I always come back to the World’s Most Hapless Band.
Possessed
I know I wrote about this years ago on the old blog, but…
My CD player is possessed. We bought it years ago, I want to say it was maybe 1999 or so? It’s a Sony 200-CD changer and it’s possessed. By what, exactly, I do not know.
See, here’s the thing. I have way way way more than 200 CDs. I think, at last count, it was more like 800. So choosing 200 CDs to put in the changer is a bigger job than I am up for most of the time. Plus, with the acquisition of iPods and satellite radio, the CD collection has been pretty stagnant and ignored lo these past three or four years.
For real – the last actual, physical CD I bought was the Beastie Boys. It’s been that long.
But, we moved. Which meant I had to pack up the CDs that were in the player and start anew. We also haven’t hooked up the satellite antenna yet, nor do I have a way to play the contents of my iPod through normal-sized speakers (HANUKKAH GIFT ALERT).
So I’ve been revisiting my CD collection. When we first moved in, I put all the U2 CDs in, in chronological order, and listened to them all. It took a few days, but I did it, and it was well worth it to see Jillian boogie down with my favorite band. In that spirit, I put in all the James CDs as well, along with a few that I haven’t heard in a while. I’m about halfway done filling the thing up – it takes time, which I have very little of these days. Jillian likes to “help” me by taking CDs out of the changer 4 or 5 at a time and licking them.
Let’s say I have 100 CDs in there. Fully half of them are U2, James, and REM. The other half are this and that, randoms and whatnot.
For fun, I hit “Shuffle All” which will make the changer play random songs from random discs. However, as has been documented in the past, the “random” is VERY NOT when it comes to this stupid CD changer.
Out of 100 CDs, two of them are Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits. TWO.
Over the past couple of hours, I have heard about 25 songs or so. How many Neil Diamond songs, statistically, should I have heard? One? Maybe?
TRY SEVEN. Seven Neil Diamond songs.
Now, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the musical stylings of Mr. Diamond. I do. But the songs that are coming up are Very Certain Specific Songs that make me think about Very Certain Specific Things and this, coupled with the Day-Quil high I am currently experiencing, is messing with me.
Hee.
I have a feeling I could take the Neil Diamond CDs out completely and that CD player would find a way to play “Forever in Blue Jeans.”
Comments Off on Possessed
Filed under Music
Out of it
I knew that having a baby would put a cramp on my ability to know what’s going on in the outside world, but I didn’t think I would miss the news that ONE OF MY FAVORITE BANDS, EVER reunited.
Color me gobsmacked.
This is… this is great! Fantastic! How did I miss this? I suppose it’s only to be expected – I have been living under a rock for the past year or so. I need to plug back in somehow, but my free time is going to be more or less non-existent starting ohhhh, now. Even now I only have so much time in which to keep up with my friends (both IRL and IIF)!
I guess I’m going to have to figure out how to pimp out my Google homepage to get me news and stuff in bite-size bits so I don’t have to sift through pages and pages of ick!
James! Reunited (however temporarily)! I am starting the week off on the right foot, definitely.
Filed under Music
Hope
I’m a parent.
I’m an R.E.M. fan.
We watch Sesame Street.
R.E.M. is on Sesame Street right now.
Jillian is ROCKING OUT.
My work here is done.
I don’t even pretend to be hip anymore
I am not hip. I am not cool. I might have been hip and/or cool for about ten minutes in 1992, but I think that might have been the only time.
So while other people my age might be checking out the Village Voice for some unknown band playing in a dank basement bar on the Lower East Side, Christine and I are going to see Def Leppard.
Completely irony-free.
Ten years ago, I still would have gone, but I would have been rolling my eyes the whole time.
This time, I plan to RAWK OUUUT!
This won’t be my first 21st century foray into The Good Old Days of Hair Metal because Christine and I saw Def Leppard in 2003. Only about 50% ironically, I think. We’ve now outgrown the need to be hip and/or cool and are going to see them again. Why not? It’s FUN to re-live seventh grade! Plus, neither she nor I will be pregnant so we can get a little bit shitty before we go in and have an extra-rockin’ time.
Too bad I don’t have any acid-wash laying around, and too bad I cut my hair or I would bust out the curling iron and make it big. We’re talking Tawny-Kitaen-Whitesnake-video big. I can barely comb my hair these days, but I was in middle school in the late 80’s so I know my way around a curling iron and a can of Aqua-Net.