eat light:

OK...this chick is awesome. Kaki King. Probably, as usual, I am the last person to find out about her. But day-hum. She's hawt and talented. And she's a Dune nerd!

YouTube linky because embeddy disabley.

so...i realized something today. a few years ago i heard this band interpol on KEXP and was all wet for them. i couldn't put my finger on exactly why i liked them, i just did. immediately.

well today i figured it out. they totally ripped off joy division. why didn't i notice this sooner?

also, i concur with glaucon: radiohead's in rainbows is a brilliant album. also good to grade by. IMO these guys are getting better and better with age. they're one of those bands that i want to hate because they're "bigger than jesus," but i can't because they're so interesting, both musically and lyrically. i am OK with being on this bandwagon, i guess.

when this album is done, i'm going to put on interpol's antics to test my joy division rip-off theory.

ETA: yeah...IMO interpol owes a huge debt to joy division's sound--paul banks, interpol's lead singer, is a vocal dead ringer for ian curtis. but i still like them (where "them" = interpol). they bring enough of their own shit to the table to be interesting. they're no radiohead, but i guess i don't always want the music i'm playing to be that absorbing. i get lost in radiohead's lyrics, harmonies, and chord progressions--not quite as lost as i get in really good classical music, of course, but that's like comparing apple strudel to andy warhol.

i bought a new i-pod yesterday. as i was setting it up and syncing it, i got this weird error message informing me that a bunch of songs were not going to be loaded to my i-pod because i was not authorized to play these songs on this computer. WTF? i investigated further and found that most of the disallowed songs are from a lead belly album i purchased (yes, legitimately) through i-tunes, and as far as i can remember i purchased it on this computer. it's possible i purchased it on my old computer and then firewired it over with the rest of my i-tunes library when i bought this computer last spring. in any case, i distinctly remember going through the steps to authorize this computer to play music that i've purchased through i-tunes; and i have definitely played the lead belly album on this computer before. so i went to the apple i-tunes help site and followed their instructions to (re-)authorize this computer* and it kept giving me an "unknown (-2)" error message. (incidentally, i also got an error message when i tried to register the i-pod through i-tunes, and it asks me to register the i-pod every time i plug it into my computer.) when i look at my account in i-tunes, and try to view the music i have purchased through that account, it erroneously tells me that i have not yet purchased music through that account.

now here's the really weird and infuriating part: not only will i-tunes not let me play the entire lead belly album, it also won't let me play, or import to my i-pod, covers of the lead belly song "jack hardy" that are recorded on two albums that i imported into i-tunes from owned CD's!!! (the gun club covered this song on their miami album; and uncle tupelo covered it on no depression.) oddly, the song "where did you sleep last night," which is on the both lead belly CD and nirvana's "MTV unplugged" CD, presents no problem...

i have written apple a very cool-headed message explaining the problem and requesting that they fix it ASAP, but i haven't heard back yet.

edited to add: i forgot to mention that i was prompted to download a new version of i-tunes when i first started to set up the i-pod. i had to disconnect the i-pod and install the software before i could finish setting up the i-pod.


*you're supposed to be able to simply select one of the "offending" songs, click play, and enter your i-tunes password when prompted. this didn't work for me.

i found my favorite elvis song EVAR on youtube!!!!!! now i'm going to inflict it on you:



(slight back story: i am the youngest kid in my family with 1 older brother and 3--count 'em THREE!--older sisters.)

for glaucon:



my favorite part is where they show people pretending to play real trumpets over vince clarke's trumpet-esque synth.

so i ended up going to bumbershoot yesterday after all. glaucon decided he wanted me to be there, and offered to gift me a ticket for the day. i accepted--and i'm really glad i did. some highlights (not all-inclusive):

the cops: rocked, though i only got to hear a couple of songs. i wish i had gotten to hear more.

magnolia electric company: they were a little "smooth" and neil-young-ish for my taste. i could tell they were really good musicians and stuff, i just wasn't in the right mood, i guess.

the shins: did better than expected in the stadium venue. it was fun bopping along to all of their hits--i know more of their songs than i realized. and they covered pink floyd's "breathe." yes, that's right. it wasn't a typo. they were doing a stadium show, so they covered...pink floyd. why not? if you had asked me to guess what band and what song the shins would cover during their show, i would not have guessed it. but it was a spot-on cover. they pwned it.

the avett brothers: screamy bluegrass, very cool; interesting song structures. glaucon didn't like their lyrics, but i did. 2 of the band's 4 members are actual avett brothers. one of them plays guitar, the other one plays banjo. i lost count of the number of banjo strings he broke during their set. he ended up tapping some rhythm on it, and then just ditched it altogether. their other two players are an upright bass player, and a cellist. the cellist pretty much always used a bow, and the bassist bow-ed it a few times too.

the aggrolites: ska. they were ok. they covered the beatles' "don't let me down," which was interesting--never imagined it with a reggae beat before. i'm not the world's biggest reggae/ska fan, so i'm not the best judge of this one.

bert jansch: i passed up the gourds for this one. about 4 years ago a friend whose taste in music i trust told me i should really check out the gourds, and i never have. i looked at their website once. anyway, so i was reluctant to miss this chance to see them live, but when i read the description of bert jansch in the stranger's bumbershoot guide (pasted below), i decided that i really needed to go see him. i'm very glad i did. i stood in the beer garden (with glaucon and our friend tim--just assume that those two are with me in all of these descriptions, because they were) at the northwest court stage and was mesmerized by this guy's quietly masterful acoustic guitar playing. even just tooling around on it while telling a story...he was amazing. here's what the stranger had to say about him:

At every festival, there are moments when you must choose between performers. But if one of them is reclusive Scottish-born folk legend Bert Jansch, just go. Since the mid-’60s, Jansch has ranked among most influential guitar players in any genre, and his gravelly vocals and well-crafted originals are nothing to dismiss, either, as evidenced by his recent The Black Swan. With disciples including Jimmy Page, Neil Young, and Beth Orton, he is a bona fide living legend, and the odds of getting to enjoy him again in Seattle are slim at best.

rodrigo y gabriela: we tried really hard to watch this show. we made it through a couple of songs. don't get me wrong, they were fabulous--both of them amazing acoustic guitarists--but we couldn't get anywhere near the actual venue (by which i mean the space set aside for viewers to occupy at this stage). we stood on a little mound under a cedar tree, craning our necks to see through the tree branches, over the beer garden fence, and around other viewers' bigfatheads. it really was the best viewing position available to us. so we left.

gogol bordello: i'm glad we left RyG, because these guys were seriously ON. i don't know what else to say about it. there wasn't much room to dance, but we bounced along to the beat. they desribe their own music really well: gypsy punk. every now and then they would break into a reggae beat, which was interesting, but for the most part they pounded us with fast-driving gypsy punk/dance songs. the lead singer is apparently a chernobyl survivor. he's lean and mean, hyper and charismatic. also he can play the guitar like a demon. (ha--someone told me recently that demons are always funny, so i decided to throw that in.) i wanted to try my hand at some russian folk dancing, but the crowd was super tight, so i contented myself with bouncing up and down a lot. my calves will be nice and firm. i got punched in the head a few times by a drunk girl, and body slammed by a kid who looked about 12 (he and his friends had started up a pseudo-mosh pit right behind us...at the back of the crowd...so this marks the second occasion on which i have seen a mosh pit form at the back of a crowd, the first being at an electric six show at neumo's). no permanent injuries. just a bruised brain that can't get the electric violin/accordian trills and swirls out of my head now. (tim said the same thing.) it's incredibly infectious. i don't know if i dare to own a CD from this band.

so yeah, i had a super fun day. i'm so glad i got to go--i've only ever been once before because it happens at a time of year when grad students at my institution are typically living on the fumes of cash, the remembrance of cash past, trying to survive until their first fall quarter paycheck hits on october 10th. i won't be able to go to any more of it this year--both because i can't afford it and because i have a shit ton of work to do before i leave for GR tuesday night. well, i got some serious enjoyment out of my day there, and i'm having a laaaaaazy morning today by way of recovery. i will need coffee soon.... thank you again, glaucon. really a lot.

das ist alles. guten tag.

i picked up a copy of tears for fears' the hurting today.

wow.

i played the crap out of this and songs from the big chair when i was in high school and college--i had them both on vinyl, and made my own tapes to play in the car. i haven't listened to either album since about 1991, when i got rid of my turntable. i've been meaning to buy them again ever since, but haven't gotten around to looking for them until today. i would have bought both albums today, but sonic boom didn't have SFTBC.

listening to these songs is bringing back memories. feelings. angst. loneliness. alienation. mostly loneliness. the pervasive sense of hopelessness that came from growing up in a rust belt state in the 1980's. reminds me of 1985: driving up u.s. 131 to grand rapids junior college every morning from my parents' suburban house, through the industrial district, getting off at the wealthy street exit just before the S-curves, then up division avenue through the red light district (pretty quiet so early in the morning) to the college's parking garage. playing my homemade tapes over and over and over...loud, broadcasting my cliche'd 1980's disaffection to whomever happened to be around. and again late at night...playing these albums (in heavy rotation with a number of others) through headphones so as not to wake my mom and dad. lying in the dark, insomniac, wondering if anything was ever going to change, feeling helpless to change anything myself. waiting...waiting...waiting...

i think one of the reasons i love the movie donnie darko so much is because it has tears for fears songs in it. even if one of them is covered by someone else. (it's a good cover, anyway.)

i can already tell i'm going to play this fucking thing over and over for a few days. welcome to my new obsession.

it's funny to me that music from the various angst-ridden genres was generally written, performed, and recorded by and for young people. the older i get, the more i realize that it's old people who really need it.

so i had to re-load everything onto my new computer today. on saturday when i used the migration assistant to transfer files from my old laptop, it screwed a few things up, and after consulting with a geek guru, i decided a clean re-install of everything was a necessary step. i figured out a better way to transfer my files over, and it's pretty much done now. however...i have 6 "orphan" songs that showed up at the bottom of my i-tunes library. they are called, simply, "Track 01," "Track 01," (yes there are two of those) "Track 02," "Track 03," "Track 04," and "Track 05." Their lengths are 1:57, 3:53, 4:45, 6:17, 1:10, and 3:36, respectively. i have played them and i don't recognize the artists.

any suggestions for how to reunite these orphans with their mother albums?

added later: a second question: what to do about the sad blank space where there was no album artwork available? can i get that album artwork elsewhere? (e.g. no artwork was available for any of my beatles albums; and beck's "one foot in the grave" also remains artless. among others...)

oh, and a third question: why does i-tunes break up some albums, rather than keeping the songs together? this happened particularly with speakerboxx (several of the songs have guest artists, and when i click the "album view" option in i-tunes, it shows each song with a guest artist as its own separate album.