Andrew Peterson's New Album
“Resurrection Letters, Vol. II” isn’t due in stores until October 21, but it can be streamed in its entirety from this page on the Centricity record label’s site. Awesome. Is there anything that isn’t streaming on the internet? (Don’t answer that…)
By the way, I found this through the Rabbit Room site, which I’ve started to frequent. Notice that you can pre-order 2 copies of the CD there for only $15…
Worth Watching on Pitchfork.tv
For those of you interested in music, and especially traditional American music, the recent documentary, “Awake, My Soul: The Story Of The Sacred Harp” is streaming online at pitchfork.tv here.
It’s only up until the end of the week, though, so watch it soon…
New Music Player...
So, over my lunch hour today I tidied up the sidebar a little bit and added a music player in the upper right hand corner over there.
I don’t know how often we’ll update or add music, but for now there’s one song by Fleet Foxes for your enjoyment. Their MySpace page has more, and they’re all worth a listen.
FAWM 2008
Just a quick note: Ryan Miller and I are doing February Album Writing Month (FAWM) again this year under the name Halfpenny Orchestra. If you’re interested in the songs we’ve been recording, you can find them on our page here.
It’s a lot of fun and a good excuse to step up the creative output…I know several of you out there are musically-inclined and have at least crude recording capabilities. If not this year, you really should sign up next year. I’m looking at you, Jim, Greg, Flo, Jimmy Sue, Bobby Will, Fishy Bob…
(Flo, I know you’re releasing another album so I guess you’re off the hook regarding creative output, but it would still be awesome if you wanted to do it…)
Share Your 2007 Music Mix
Continuing in the tradition of this post from last year, I’m posting my/our personal 2007 music mix and asking for yours.
The rules (slightly modified from last year):
- You can only include songs that you purchased or that were purchased for you in 2007 (or since your list from last year, if you made one then). No free downloads or songs from magazine samplers or anything like that… Yes, you can only list Radiohead’s In Rainbows album if you paid for it.
- You cannot include more than one song from any album.
- Your list of songs must be able to conceivably fit on a standard-length CD, 80 minutes maximum.
- List like this to make it clear: Artist – Song Name – Album Title.
- Feel free to leave a brief comment after each choice if you want.
- Track sequencing is extra credit.
Alas, there is no time for sequencing this year either, and there are fewer links to be found, but here is our list in alphabetical order…
- Ryan Adams – To Be Young (Is To Be Sad Is To Be High) – Heartbreaker : Tough choice between this and Come Pick Me Up
- Arcade Fire – (Antichrist Television Blues) – Neon Bible : I love these guys
- Billy Bragg & Wilco – California Stars – Mermaid Avenue
- Califone – A Chinese Actor – Roots & Crowns
- Alela Diane – The Rifle – The Pirate’s Gospel
- Feist – 1 2 3 4 – The Reminder : Great album
- Iron and Wine – The Devil Never Sleeps – The Shepherd’s Dog : I love Iron & Wine, but this one has taken some time to grow on me
- Loney, Dear – I Am John – Loney, Noir
- The Long Winters – Teaspoon – Putting The Days To Bed
- Margot and the Nuclear So And So’s – Skeleton Key – The Dust of Retreat : I just got this one recently, and I’m still deciding how much I like it…
- Over The Rhine – Faithfully Dangerous – Good Dog Bad Dog : One of the best purchases of this past year
- Over The Rhine – Trouble – The Trumpet Child : A fun song, but the album was a bit of a disappointment
- REM – Pretty Persuasion – And I Feel Fine (Best of the IRS Years 1982-1987)
- Radiohead – Jigsaw Falling Into Place – In Rainbows
- The Replacements – Alex Chilton – Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was?
- Josh Ritter – The Temptation Of Adam – The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
- Snow Patrol – Tiny Little Fractures – Final Straw : Thanks, Wyatt!
- Spoon – Fitted Shirt – Girls Can Tell : I like their later albums better…
- Spoon – The Way We Get By – Kill The Moonlight : You can stream this song and others on their Songs page
- Spoon – Don’t You Evah – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
- White Stripes – Little Cream Soda – Icky Thump : Another hard choice…several good ones on this album
- Yo La Tengo – You Can Have It All – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
Total play time: 79:58 (pretty good, huh?)
A few songs that didn’t make the cut for various reasons:
- Bob Dylan – Not Dark Yet – Time Out Of Mind : Ended up being too long for this mixtape…
- Stereolab – Brakhage – Serene Velocity : A great song, but Stereolab didn’t really fit in with the rest of the songs here…
- Wilco – Airline To Heaven – Kicking Television : Also on the long side…just too many other songs to fit in
I’m just now noticing that the theme seems to be songs with religious-sounding titles by non-religious artists…interesting. Anyway, share your lists below…I’d love to see what you’ve been listening to this year!
—Bret (accidentally logged in as Andrea…)
Jarring iPod Transition of the Day
The hazards of listening to a large music collection on random shuffle…
“The Sun Is Burning” by Simon & Garfunkel
“Hey Mickey” by Toni Basil
Songs So Good, I Wish I Had Written Them
I think you musicians out there will probably get this, but I’m not sure how well it generally translates. I guess we’ll see…
Do you ever hear a song that makes you wish that you had written it? I’m not just talking about favorite songs here—there are a lot of songs that I like quite a bit that don’t fall under this category for me, and bands I love that don’t have a song that does this for me.
I’m talking about songs that you would be proud to put your name on, had you written them first. There are songs that don’t just make you think, “Wow, I really like this song.” These, though, are songs that make you think, “Wow, this song is so (poignant/gorgeous/fun/poetic/whatever) that it seems like it’s always been there, fully formed and waiting to be found, and I wish I had been the one to find it.”
Most of the songs that make me respond this way do so because of great lyrics coupled with a killer melody, and I thought it would be fun to start a list, which I’ll update from time to time. Hopefully some of you will leave comments with your lists too.
I’m going to try to be really picky, keeping myself to one or two songs per artist and not artificially adding (or removing) songs to make me look cool, but there aren’t any hard and fast rules. So, without further ado:
Some Songs Bret Didn’t Write, But Wishes He Did:
- David Bowie – Space Oddity
- Harry Chapin – Cat’s in the Cradle
- Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah (but Jeff Buckley’s version)
- Counting Crows – A Long December (among others)
- The Decemberists – Eli, the Barrow Boy
- Bob Dylan – Tangled Up In Blue (also among others)
- Feist – Mushaboom
- Iron and Wine – Lion’s Mane
- Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger
- Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees (and most of OK Computer)
- Simon & Garfunkel – America / Song for the Asking (among others…obviously)
- James Taylor – Fire and Rain (stolen from Trevor)
- Toad the Wet Sprocket – Windmills
- U2 – Running to Stand Still
Internet Radio May Disappear...
Everyone knows that 99% of the radio is crap, with behemoths like Clear Channel controlling way too many stations and the major labels dominating the airwaves by buying airplay for lame mass-manufactured singles. Add to that all the commercials and morning shows, and it’s surprising that anyone listens at all anymore.
On the occasions that I do listen to the radio, it’s over the internet. Sites like Pandora (my favorite) and last.fm have come up with clever ways to deliver customized radio stations, and other stations like KEXP and WOXY provide options for listening to great independent music that you’d never ever hear on mass market radio.
The Copyright Royalty Board decided in March to increase the amount of royalties internet radio stations pay by 300% to 1200%, enough to put the vast majority of internet radio stations out of business. (By the way, broadcast radio stations do not pay these royalties and satellite radio stations only pay about half the amount of the old internet rate…)
There is an appeal period going on, and if this is something that interests you, I’d encourage you to click the link below and send a petition to your congresspersons. There’s plenty more information at that site also, if you’re interested in reading up on what’s going on.
Fight the man…
The Other New Baby
After 8 1/2 years of playing a not-bad-for-a-beginner guitar, I’ve finally upgraded.
Two days ago, the new guitar arrived, an Eastman AC615 that I ordered from the same folks in Tennessee that I bought my mandolin from a year ago. The Eastman distributor is having supply/demand problems, so that took a little work, but Steve Perry at Gypsy Jazz Guitars/Gianna Violins was great.
A few details for the interested: Eastman guitars are all handcrafted in China near Beijing, and their jazz models have gotten rave reviews in recent years. Conventional flat-top guitars are a very recent addition to their lineup (mine is serial number #0006 for this model), and based on my experience with their mandolin, I hoped that I could get one at some point. Based on some research, I picked a 16” jumbo with a maple body, and asked them to custom install a Schatten HFN Artist active pickup.
I took a few highly unprofessional photos this morning…please excuse the lighting:
The guitar’s body
From the headstock
The rosette & soundhole
As you can see, it’s beautiful. The photos don’t really do justice to the flames in the maple of the back and sides. And most importantly, it sounds fantastic—it’s one of the nicest-sounding guitars I’ve had the pleasure to play, and by far better than anything I’ve ever heard in its price range. Good tone, balance, harmonics, sustain, everything…I’m very happy with it.
The only small problem: some minor finish “checking” (cracking) where the fingerboard meets the body. This is a somewhat common problem with guitars which isn’t critical to the structure or sound. I can’t say I’m surprised, since: 1) Eastman guitar finishes seem to be prone to this problem, 2) It was delivered on a cold day while it was raining (temperature and moisture fluctuations exacerbate this problem), and 3) I probably didn’t let it acclimatize long enough before stringing up and trying it out.
This photo makes it look as bad as possible—you don’t really notice it unless the lighting is right. Oh well, now it’s got extra character.
I have to say a special thank-you to Trinity, since their policy of subsidizing musical purchases for worship team members made it possible. As you can tell, I’m excited, and I hope that it pays dividends as I start playing for the worship team again…
Share Your 2006 Music Mix
So, I’ve come up with an idea for making a mix CD and am in process of doing so. But I like the idea of this mix so much that I wanted to throw it out there and invite you to leave comments with your own personal mixes, just to see what everybody comes up with.
The general idea is that each mix is based on music that you’re acquired in the last year, sort of an individual music history of what you’ve listened to in 2006. Here are the rules:
- You can only include songs from albums that you’ve purchased or that have been purchased for you in 2006. No free downloads and no songs from magazine samplers or anything like that…it’s gotta be something that you (or someone else) specifically decided to invest in.
- You cannot include more than one song from any album.
- Your list of songs must be able to conceivably fit on a standard-length CD, so no more than 15-20, depending on length.
- List like this to make it clear: Artist – Song Name – Album Title.
- If you want, you can add a one-sentence description/plug/comment/alternate choice/whatever.
- Thinking about track sequencing is extra credit.
Below is our first stab at a list. It’s unsequenced at this point and some songs might be changed, but maybe it’ll get things going. I’ll update it as Andrea and I figure it out, and maybe as I find links to some songs. And yes, I know that some of these are probably old songs that you might be sick of but hey, it’s our list.
Anyway, without further ado, I present to you in alphabetical order…
Bret and Andrea’s 2006 Retrospective Mix
- Air – La Femme d’Argent – Moon Safari
- Badly Drawn Boy – Stone on the Water – The Hour of Bewilderbeast (or possibly Disillusion)
- Ben Folds – Still Fighting It – Rockin’ the Suburbs
- Counting Crows – Long December – Recovering the Satellites (yep, finally just bought it this year)
- The Decemberists – Yankee Bayonet – The Crane Wife
- John Lee Hooker – Tupelo – The Best of John Lee Hooker
- The Innocence Mission – Bright as Yellow – Glow
- Iron and Wine – Lion’s Mane – The Creek Drank the Cradle
- Kings of Convenience – I’d Rather Dance With You – Riot on an Empty Street
- Pinback – Concrete Seconds – Blue Screen Life
- REM – Superman – Life’s Rich Pageant
- Tom Waits – Hang on St. Christopher – The Island Years
- M Ward – Bad Dreams – End of Amnesia
- M Ward – Chinese Translation – Post-War
- White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button – Elephant
Albums I might add but haven’t picked a song from yet:
- Beck – Sea Change
- Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism
- The Smiths – Singles
- Uncle Tupelo – 89/93: An Anthology
So there’s ours…now share yours :)
