I posted a wedding music poll over at my wedding blog. I know some of you have already responded to this question, but if you haven’t, come on over and tell me what you think! 🙂
Music poll
Reply
Category Archives: music
Listening
BufBloPoFo Topic for Day 8: What are you listening to these days? New stuff? Old stuff? This isn’t a hipster competition; I just want to know what’s in everyone’s ears out there. Playlist me. Or, if you don’t feel like making suggestions, open up your ipod on shuffle and just jot down the first ten songs that pop out.
Well, since I haven’t done my reading, watching, listening thing in quite a while, it’s been some time since I’ve blogged about what I’m listening to.
Bon Jovi–Lost Highway. Samantha recently gifted me with a copy of this CD. Awesome. I’ve only listened to it once, but I like what I heard.
A copy of the “Cleaning my Room Mix” sent to me by Miss Shortskirt (Jessica). Again, only listened to once, but lots of fun. 🙂
The soundtracks from Once and Juno.
In general, I frequently list to the “erin’s favorites” list on my ipod. Here’s a sample:
- Super Trouper-ABBA
- I Will-The Beatles
- The Longest Time-Billy Joel
- What About Everything-Carbon Leaf
- On the Verge-Collin Raye
- Here on Earth (I’ll Have My Cake)-Crash Test Dummies
- Cowboy Take Me Away-Dixie Chicks
- Solar Circle Girl-Einstein’s Sister
- The Girl That’s Never Been-Escape Key
- I’m a Rover-Great Big Sea
- Striptease-Hawksley Workman
- Molly-Jackdaw
- Several Thousand-Jim Boggia
- The Future Soon-Jonathan Coulton
- Black Horse and the Cherry Tree-KT Tunstall
- Cowboy Secret Space Detective-Ookla the Mok
- Steady, As She Goes-The Raconteurs
- Crackstatic (Acoustic)-Ron Hawkins and the Rusty Nails
That’s it for me. Happy weekend!
Weekend wrap-up
Again, I neglected to post photos yesterday…but this post will have many photos to make up. 😉
We had a lovely time Friday night at Kelly’s goodbye concert. It was very, very kind of Jenn and Scott to open up their house for the party…see, originally, the concert was going to be at Madame Mocha’s, that cool little coffee shop on Lovejoy.
Unfortunately, about a week and a half before the show, Madame Mocha’s shut down. 🙁
Panic! But fortunately, it all worked out in the end.
The guys did two sets, and let Kelly choose the second set. The second set consisted primarily of rarely (or never!) performed Ookla songs, some dating WAY back. The Lemon-Ohs song, for example. This gave Rand and Adam a chance to tell some entertaining stories and do some seriously silly stuff.
For example, they did a super-speeded-up version of (oh no…I’ve forgotten which song it was. Rand?). The above photo is of Wolfram during that song.
Everyone seemed to have a great time. I was especially happy to see Thomas make it out, because we so seldom get to hang out!
Rand and Adam presented Kelly with a big ol’ pile of set lists and other memorabilia. Kelly collects their set lists, and she apparently said that if she ever got to 100, she was getting an Ookla tattoo. The pile of set lists included a certificate promising that the band would pay for her tattoo. 😉
Jenn also made a really cool card (with photos!) for Kelly and had everyone sign it for her.
Kelly has been a great friend to the band, and I know she will be dearly missed.
And the rest of the weekend? Nothing that terribly exciting. Maybe later. 😉
Hey, it’s a photo of a person!
Friday photos (soon)
I do have photos to post, but some of them are still on my camera. Here are a couple of videos I took last weekend at Madame Mocha’s.
Go to Bed:
Hockey Monkey:
(Hockey Monkey does not start at the beginning of the song. Sorry!)
Reading, watching, listening (Christmas eve edition)
It’s been a very busy few days, and will continue to be busy. I expect posting will be sparse this week. In the meantime, here’s the reading, watching, listening post I actually started on Friday.
Reading: Starman (ongoing). Just Listen, by Sara Dessen. I love, love, loved this book. I may write an extended review for my book blog, where I have not posted in months.
Watching: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (original TV special, NOT the movie), Elf (with my kids at school, so I essentially watched it four times. I had never seen it before. Really, really funny…), more Season 5 Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rand and I have begun watching the DVDs. I’ve seen most of them. He has not…), Mystery Men.
Listening: Greg Klyma and Ookla the Mok (the show at Madame Mocha’s was tons of fun, really.); Christmas music; Hawksley Workman; Larry Miller: Spoiled Rotten America.
And that’s all I have time for right now…enjoy your day!
Reading, watching, listening
We now interrupt the relentless snow for a report of what Erin’s been up to:
Reading: Essays, journals, portfolios. A little bit of Starman by James Robinson, art by Tony Harris. More essays. 8th grade research paper outlines. It’ll break soon…
Watching: Bits of season 5 of The Simpsons. It’s funny…I’ll often grumble about watching The Simpsons (again), but I always laugh. I especially love watching the physical Homer stuff. For whatever reason, Homer getting injured is funny.
We also watched the last new episode of 30 Rock. Rand and I are both busy grading right now, so we’ll just take short breaks to watch something funny, then go back to it.
We have a mile-long list of movies we want to watch once we make it through the end of the semester. Here are some of them, in no particular order (some are more important to him, and others are more important to me):
Juno, The Darjeeling Limited, Sweeney Todd, The Mist, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Enchanted, Charlie Wilson’s War, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Into the Wild.
Also, some things I want to see on DVD: Once, Waitress, Hairspray…uh, I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t remember right now.
And one more–I am excited beyond words for the film version of Mamma Mia! It doesn’t open until next July, but I just watched the trailer and nearly wept with joy. (I saw the stage version–twice!)
Listening: Almost a Full Moon, Hawksley Workman. Currently hearing in the background: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Friday Photo
Plus Weekend Wrap-up, Part 2…
That is, sadly enough, the best photo I got at the Lowest of the Low concert last weekend. Rand, John and I got to Club Infinity early (before the doors opened) so that we could secure a spot at one of the “tables” along the walls. Unfortunately for us, the stools had been removed so as to pack more people into the space. Sigh.
I decided to stand behind Rand and John–between the “tables” and the wall–because the floor was about six inches higher there. That didn’t last. As more and more people began to crowd into the club, I felt more uncomfortable where I was standing. “Concert” and “Personal space” are not words that seem to go together.
There were two opening acts. The first was a local band that didn’t impress me all that much. The second was the Marble Index, a three-piece from Hamilton, Ontario, whom I’ve seen open for the Low before. I enjoyed them more last Saturday than I have in the past. They did a great job of setting the crowd up for the main act, and didn’t overstay their welcome.
As the concert began, this became my view:
Sigh. Soon after, I decided to sit up on the wood half-countertop thing that edged the “table” area. I figured there were too many people there for anyone to come and yell at me.
They opened with “A Casual Overdose” from Sordid Fiction, which I thought was an odd choice. A little while later in the set, they played “The Last Recidivist,” which I thought would have been a better opener.
I really don’t have the set list memorized, but I can say they played many favorites from Shakespeare My Butt. In addition to other songs from Hallucigenia and Sordid Fiction, they played several songs from Stephen Stanley’s upcoming solo album, and several from Ron Hawkins’ current solo album (which was NOT being sold at the show. Grr.).
For their second encore, the guys played “Letter from Bilbao” and then finished up with “Rosy and Grey,” both of which brought a little tear to my eye. (People were yelling for “Rosy and Grey” WAY too early on in the evening. I wanted to shout, “People, you don’t really think they’ll leave without playing it, do you? DO YOU?”)
I feel like I’ve sort of come full-circle with my Lowest of the Low experience…I was there for their reunion show at the Tralf (with Jen, Rachel, and another friend with whom we’ve sadly lost touch) in 2000, and there for their farewell show. It was strange being there without Jen…as many times as I’ve seen the Low over the years (I’ve lost count), I think this is the first one I went to without her. (she couldn’t be there because of other commitments…) Jen, I missed you!
And while this will be the last we see of Lowest of the Low (forever? who knows…), I’m sure it won’t be the last we see of Ron Hawkins, Stephen Stanley, Lawrence Nichols, David Alexander, and Dylan Parker. At any rate, I’ll bid a fond farewell to the band that’s been the source of many happy memories for me over the past seven years–the good times with friends, the road trips to Hamilton and Toronto and Fredonia, meeting the band at Spot Coffee, the great music, and at least in a small way, bringing Rand and me together.
Thanks for everything guys.
“And I’ll say, “goodbye, I love you.
‘Cause it’s time that I should go…”
Server problems
Hey everyone…there were some problems with the server earlier today, so I didn’t get to write the post that I wanted to write about the Lowest of the Low concert.
I did manage to post a short video clip from the show at YouTube. Rand shot this with my camera. The video isn’t all that great (it’s clear, but pretty far back), but the audio is pretty good.
This is the end of the song “Rosy and Grey,” which was the last song they played. I got a little teary-eyed at the show, and again when watching the video.
The rest of my post about the show will be forthcoming. Enjoy!
Friday Photo(s)
This sign was on the counter at Madame Mocha’s coffee shop. It made me laugh, and so a photo!
I never did do part two of the weekend wrap-up post, so here are some photos:
Greg…I think this was actually while he was warming up/tuning.
As he often does, Rand joined Greg and Tom for a performance of Greg’s song “Bean Bag Chair,” which appears on his “Not a Complicated Guy” CD. Ookla did backing vocals on the recording. I liked the way this photo looked like Rand and Tom were plotting something.
Greg and Tom played both together and separately. Tom’s eyes look kind of spooky in this one!
Greg and Tom are both very talented musicians and all around great people. As I mentioned last week, Greg will be at Madame Mocha’s every Saturday this month, starting at 8 p.m. On the 22nd, right before Christmas, Ookla will join him for a show. It’s a great little place, and I can promise you that both the drinks and the music will be worth the trip!