Brazilian Girls
although itunes eats up memory for no good reason, has a very annoying user interface, is terrible with playlists, and takes forever to load up a large media library, it does have two distinct advantages to anything else.
1. sharing. listening to music from random people in my building has been great. That's how I found out about this band Brazilian Girls. They're considered "electronica," I guess, but in the way that Bjork or Stereolab or Portishead might be called electronica. Their website says, "Imagine grace jones, blondie, the sugar cubes, and astrud gilberto having a wild party and you are only half-way there." I think this is an overstatement, but it's not entirely inaccurate. The singer reminds me of Stereolab's, and they cover many different genres. Their lyrics are not only in four different languages, including some hybrid phrases ("...ignite mein leibe"), but quite entertaining. e.g., the profound and delicate turn of phrase in the chorus "pussy pussy pussy marijuana..." I've listened to their self-titled album twice, and I do hope to find more from them. Enough about them. The point is, sharing on a server via itunes is pretty damn sweet. Let's not forget college, and the beauty of "ourtunes."
2. podcasts: I've learned more in the past year or so from podcasts than probably all of my classes combined. This is partly because I am a terrible student and I only retain things just long enough to do well on the test, but it's also because most podcasts are designed for entertainment, not pure learning. In some ways, this can be a hindrance. For instance, Science Friday, a podcast from NPR, hosted by Ira Flatow, is one of the most reliable and interesting podcasts available. However, sometimes in the interest of entertainment and broad listenership, they skip or skim the actual science and focus more on the pop aspects of new technology and research. I still think it's one of the best science podcasts. NPR also has great podcasts available for many of their shows, including truncated versions of Piano Jazz w/ Marian McPartland. The most recent one I heard was her with Elvis Costello. Classic. anyway, there are a million other really interesting podcasts.
NPR.org also tends to have lots of good music available (e.g. right now all of the Beethoven Symphonies performed by, I think Wiener Philharmoniker (however they spell it) is available). You just have to peruse the site and have windows media player. I'm sure mplayer or something could play the streams too, but i'm not going out of my way to find out.
Tomorrow I get to see Badly Drawn Boy in concert. This should be interesting, considering how important strings, samples, and other production-room antics are to his music. So, I'll update on that ASAP.
food:
----
it's official. even though a chocolatey oatmeal stout would be the hypothetical ideal accompaniment to chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, coffee is still a million times better. i guess beer's not omnipotent.
and homemade cookies rock. except for the fact that you have to see all the ingredients (sugar + fat = cookies), and you can't eat the dough.
1. sharing. listening to music from random people in my building has been great. That's how I found out about this band Brazilian Girls. They're considered "electronica," I guess, but in the way that Bjork or Stereolab or Portishead might be called electronica. Their website says, "Imagine grace jones, blondie, the sugar cubes, and astrud gilberto having a wild party and you are only half-way there." I think this is an overstatement, but it's not entirely inaccurate. The singer reminds me of Stereolab's, and they cover many different genres. Their lyrics are not only in four different languages, including some hybrid phrases ("...ignite mein leibe"), but quite entertaining. e.g., the profound and delicate turn of phrase in the chorus "pussy pussy pussy marijuana..." I've listened to their self-titled album twice, and I do hope to find more from them. Enough about them. The point is, sharing on a server via itunes is pretty damn sweet. Let's not forget college, and the beauty of "ourtunes."
2. podcasts: I've learned more in the past year or so from podcasts than probably all of my classes combined. This is partly because I am a terrible student and I only retain things just long enough to do well on the test, but it's also because most podcasts are designed for entertainment, not pure learning. In some ways, this can be a hindrance. For instance, Science Friday, a podcast from NPR, hosted by Ira Flatow, is one of the most reliable and interesting podcasts available. However, sometimes in the interest of entertainment and broad listenership, they skip or skim the actual science and focus more on the pop aspects of new technology and research. I still think it's one of the best science podcasts. NPR also has great podcasts available for many of their shows, including truncated versions of Piano Jazz w/ Marian McPartland. The most recent one I heard was her with Elvis Costello. Classic. anyway, there are a million other really interesting podcasts.
NPR.org also tends to have lots of good music available (e.g. right now all of the Beethoven Symphonies performed by, I think Wiener Philharmoniker (however they spell it) is available). You just have to peruse the site and have windows media player. I'm sure mplayer or something could play the streams too, but i'm not going out of my way to find out.
Tomorrow I get to see Badly Drawn Boy in concert. This should be interesting, considering how important strings, samples, and other production-room antics are to his music. So, I'll update on that ASAP.
food:
----
it's official. even though a chocolatey oatmeal stout would be the hypothetical ideal accompaniment to chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, coffee is still a million times better. i guess beer's not omnipotent.
and homemade cookies rock. except for the fact that you have to see all the ingredients (sugar + fat = cookies), and you can't eat the dough.
posted by FretlessC at 10/09/2006 12:33:00 PM
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