music

Weep No More

December 10, 2012
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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that He Who Will Not Be Ignored is named after Miles Davis. What you may not know is that I’m named after Dave Brubeck. As friends sent me condolence emails after his passing last week, I was reminded that my family has its own Brubeck story. When [...]

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80,000

October 15, 2010
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Today, while loading the remaster of David Bowie’s Station to Station (the three-CD box that includes the complete 1976 Nassau Coliseum concert), I noticed that “TVC15″ was song number 80,000. The decrease in the intervals between 70, 75, and 80 thousand is due to my adding a more than a few boxed sets (complete Mahler, [...]

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Rock That Font (Slight Return)

June 12, 2010
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After writing yesterday’s post about the remarkable Rock That Font blog, I sent them a one-sentence email: “Submitted for your approval, my homage to your remarkable blog,” along with the link. Less than ten hours later I had a reply from Shawn O’Keefe, one of the founders, asking if he could publish my Joy Division [...]

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Rock That Font

June 11, 2010
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A friend and reader of this blog sent me this email about a month ago: About the typography of rock album covers: http://rockthatfont.com/ I have never seen a website that seems more precisely designed for [you] — except that there are no recipes, alas. A visit to the site confirmed his description; it was as [...]

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The Delian Mode

April 8, 2010
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Many of my friends have their knickers in a twist about the “New Doctor,” i.e., the actor playing the newest incarnation of Doctor Who, the perennial British science fiction TV series. Having seen a few episodes over the years, and being completely underwhelmed by the show’s low-budget cheesiness (blame the BBC), I have steadfastly refused [...]

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75,000 and Counting

February 25, 2010
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Last January my iTunes library hit the 70,000 song mark. This month I exceeded 75,000. My latest music listening experiment has been the service provided by lala. I used their MusicMover software to match the contents of my library to songs already present in their own archives. Much to my surprise, they were able to [...]

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More Mellodrama

February 5, 2010
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I received a few replies following the Melodrama post, in which you attempted to guess all 24 of the songs used in this clip, “Mash-Mello”: As promised, here is the list of clips, in Artist, Album, “Song” format: King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King, “In the Court of the Crimson King” U2, [...]

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Mellodrama

February 3, 2010
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The flutes that open “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Stairway to Heaven,” the strings in”Nights in White Satin” — these are sounds you know by heart. What you may not know is that they were played on a keyboard instrument called the Mellotron. When I was a high school prog music geek with a crappy band, [...]

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New Toy

January 6, 2010
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I have been playing with my shiny new Bliptronic 500o, which I received for Xmas. Rather than try to describe it, I can show it to you in action. Straight out of the box it’s a bit limited. It only plays in C major (and A minor, har har har), there are only eight instrument [...]

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Can I Get an Amen?

December 11, 2009
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It began as a conversation about that awful Tommy Seebach video (which I refuse to embed here – you have been warned). I told a friend that it was a cover of The Incredible Bongo Band’s cover of “Apache” by The Shadows. The IBB version has been called “hip-hop’s anthem” due to the frequency with [...]

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