The W00t Rant

Another Amazing Remix of the Doctor Who Theme

Yet another amazing remix of the Doctor Who theme song.

Arranged and performed by Orbital for their last live performance ever.

Making of the Doctor Who Theme Song (80s Version)

Awesome video that gives the arranger's insight and secrets to the making of the Doctor Who Theme song (80s version).  Yes, it's the greatest TV theme song ever.

Beyond being geek love material, it's definitely interesting stuff for any music enthusiast.

The Lascivious Biddies

Ok, I admit it.  I have a fetish for female vocalists.  I've noticed in the past few years I've been completely drawn to female singers.  Whether it's the "well aged scotch" voice of Diana Krall to the erousal inducing voice of Liz Phair, female singers "do it" for me.

"The Lascivious Biddies" are no exception.  I first ran across them while listening to Adam Curry's "The Daily Source Code" podcast and was immediately enamored.  They had this glorious neo-retro sound that just made me grin.  Soothing and peaceful, sexy and sassy, "The Lascivious Biddies" just tickle every part of me that loves music.   Lee Ann Westover (lead vocalist) has a strong confidence and maturity that playfully mingles in Peggy Lee and dabbles in Rosemary Clooney.  She doesn't quite have the depth of Ella Fitzgerald, nor the pain and hurt of Nina Simone, but who does?  It doesn't matter that's not her style - nor the rest of the "Lascivious Biddies."  Ultimately, it's their playful exhuberance that draws you to them the most.  They seem to be having fun and trying to "invite you to their party."  However, perhaps it's "The Biddies" themselves that best describes them: "neo-cabaret."  I don't think anything better describes them.

"Get Lucky" is the latest "Biddies'" album with a good mixture of jazz/show standards, covers, and own pieces.  One of the more fascinating pieces for me was their cover of "The Smiths" classic "Ask."  Here's a song that I couldn't imagine anyone doing except Morrissey, yet in some silly way they make "Ask" their own.  It has a completely different vibe to the Smiths' original.  Instead of the typical Morrissey depression and sinister tone, "The Biddies" bring a teasing exuberance to the track.  "Famous," written by Lee Ann Westover, brings a twisted Broadway styled song to the album.  The song brings a "detached look at the idiosyncrasies of New York life:"

I wanna be famous
Tabloids will print what I eat
I wanna be famous
Who I do will be news on the street

My favorite track on the album is perhaps "Neighbor."  This song just makes me want to call all my friends and go swing dancing.  Great swing rhythm, perfect stop times, and the perfect "upbeat" lindy hop tune -  I have to remember to bring this album with me the next time I go swing dancing.

Me hearts "The Lascivious Biddies."

How Do You Listen to Music?

With my growing music library (I'm almost up to 20 gigs), I've discovered that I'm intolerably anal about organizing my music.  To those who know me, this probably sounds incredibly funny because I am not the most organized person in the world.  Someday, I'll have to take a picture of my work area, and you'll get some idea.  Seriously, I think I have a problem.  Perhaps there needs to be some sort of Obsessively Compulsive Music Organizers Anonymous (OCMOA. hmmm yeah...  LAME, I'll work on that joke some other time).  I have practically every song with album art.  Practically every field from artist to song name to album to genre has been entered in with religious fervor.  Yes, I'm nuts.  I honestly spent 2 hours looking for a particular album cover, just so my collection would be complete.

Because I use iTunes, I have gone even a step further.  A little used but extremely useful field in iTunes is the "Comments" field.  What can you use this for?  Well nothing really, unless you use it in conjection with a great feature in iTunes called "Smart Playlists."  Essentially, smart playlists is simply a database query which automatically updates as you update your iTunes library.  In simplest terms, you can create a smart playlist for "The Beatles" by simply asking iTunes to populate the playlist with any song that contains "The Beatles" in it.  Sounds blah right?  Well, it goes further.  If you later on add more Beatles songs/albums, you don't have to manually update the smart playlist.  Because it's really a database query, it updates everything "live."

This is where the "Comments" field comes in.  You can use "Smart playlists" to query the comments field.  This essentially means, you have an unending amount of fields to create playlists from.  Want to create a smart playlist of Soundtracks but only movie soundtracks?  With "Comments" you can do this.  Want to create smartlists for certain mood, speed of song, etc?  Now you can do it, but it takes a ton of work.

Am I anal?  Yeah, I'm discovering that I am... just in bizarre arenas.

Despite my obsessive compulsiveness, sometimes I just don't know what to listen to, yet I want to listen to something.  After I read this article from Wired.com, I've truly discovered the joy of the "shuffle."  There are days, I just set my entire music library to shuffle and just let it run.  Honestly, it completely changes your music listening experience.  You sort of "rediscover" your music and find music that you never knew that you had:

Stuffy old listening habits -- like listening to albums from beginning to end -- are being thrown out in favor of allowing machines to choose songs at random, which often leads to unexpected, and magical, juxtapositions of music.

I definitely agree.  At times, it even gets downright eerie:

Their music collection becomes a treasure trove full of hidden delights which the magic of the machine throws up at them. Some users feel that the machine intuitively understands them by giving them just the type of music they want to listen to when they want it.

Though I intuitively know that this is all in my head and I'm simply projecting myself to the music, the music does feel like it comes alive and knows what I am feeling.

Perhaps my obsessiveness is going to my head now.

J-Pop and the Weird

No, I don't mean "J-Lo" pop.   I'm talkin' about "Japanese" pop.  Perhaps it's my ecclectic side coming out, but recently I've been really getting into J-Pop.  If you glance over to the right, you'll see one of my "new on da pod" picks: "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex."  "Ghost in the Shell" is the soundtrack to the recent anime series.  All of the music was composed and arranged by one woman: Yoko Kanno.  As you can tell, I'm simply enamored with her work.  She is absolutely brilliant.

Yoko Kanno's shining achievement in my mind is her work on the music to the "Cowboy Bebop" anime series which has an enormous cult following here in America.  For those of you interested, you can see the series on Cartoon Network on Sundays at 1:30 AM EST.  Yes, that's right 1:30 in the MORNING, time for y'all to get a Tivo.  Anyway, Yoko Kanno has this uncanning ability to jump from music genre to music genre.  One moment, she's doing jazz bebop.  Another moment, she's playing trance.  Again, she'll jump over to twangy, beer drinkin' country.  It's truly an aural delight listening to her work.

That being said, I recently picked up an utterly bizarre Japanese video game called "Katamari Damacy."  The game is essentially about the King of All Cosmos who accidentally destroys all the stars in the sky, he orders you (his son) to restore all the stars in the heavens.  How?  By "rolling everything and anything on Earth into clumps, so he can replace what's missing in space."  *phew*  Yeah, it's strange.  But that's the Japanese for you, they are the masters of the strange.  Strange though the game is, it's a masterpiece.  All I can say is that it is (as IGN says): "Happiness in a box."  No doubt about it.  Then again, the creators of the games were probably doing some serious 'shrooms/acid/pot (or any combination).

But I'm rambling (again).  This post isn't about the videogame or about "Ghost in the Shell" or Yoko Kanno (that was all just filler).  It's about the music of "Katamari Damacy."  What???   Who cares about videogame music?  Well, all I can tell you is the music of the game is "happiness in a box."  Delightful, funny, joyous, eclectic, and yet (at times) wonderfully familiar.   The first track on the album, "Sasasan Katamari" (no idea what that means), starts off with a soothing a cappella riff.  Eventually, a layer of light electronic keyboard (reminiscent of old school videogame music) begins accompanying the a cappella riff.  At first, it's rather jarring hearing sharp pointed notes of the keyboard pairing up with a flowing vocal track, yet with the continual loop of the two "dueting" together they somehow meld together into a cohesive unit.  "The Moon and the Prince" is another fun piece that all should hear.  If you've ever wondered what Japanese rap sounds like "The Moon and the Prince" is a great choice.  Just don't ask me to translate, I'm Korean not Japanese.  And yes, we all do look alike.

Another piece on the soundtrack is "Que Sera Sera."  This title may sound familiar to many, however it is not the same song made popular by Doris Day in the 1950s.  Although not the same piece, Katamari's "Que Sera Sera" definitely pays tribute to that era.  It has a retro feel to it with a 50's / 60's era style sound with a quick waltz rhythm in the background.  I can almost hear a jazz flutist soloing in the background.

"Katamari Damacy" the soundtrack is a joy to listen to.  If you're ever in a bad or down mood, and you need a good "pick-me up."  This album should be on the top of your list.

Old Blue Eyes

I sometimes believe that I should have been born in the 40s or 50s.  Not because of the politics of the time or the "Leave It to Beaver"-esque mentality of the era, rather it was because of the music.  The 40s and 50s was a landmark era with Count Basie and Duke Ellington, "The Birth of Cool," and Sinatra.

I haven't always been a fan of Sinatra.  When I was 9 years old, I remember my father listening to an eight-track tape of "My Kind of Broadway."  Being a kid, I remember telling my father to "turn that crap off."  I'm sure that many of us have memories of a similar nature, some of us even to this day still despise their parent's music.  Sinatra was an exception.  What began as disgust evolved to vague interest.  This vague interest probably came about through my bizarre cheesy obsession with holiday music.  I remember listening to old Time-Life music Christmas records hearing Sinatra sing "Silver Bells" or "The Christmas Song."   Eventually, vague interest gave way to mild fascination in part due to my depression of attending an all boy's high school.  I got over it and started dating a Catholic schoolgirl  (Oh, how I love plaid skirts) and used Sinatra's music to woo her.  (How pathetic is that?  And no, the woo did not come from here, that's ANOTHER story.)   However, my passion for Sinatra's music really began when I started swing dancing towards my senior year in high school.  It's through dancing did I really begin to hear Sinatra's unique delivery, his cadence, and the way he could take a song and make it his own.

Now for me, Sinatra eclipses all other music performers.  He defines American music.  Much of my love for his music came from growing up with listening to him.  However, it's through my own personal experiences in life:  moments of intense pain; moments of unadulterated passion; moments when I wanted pull out my hair and scream; moments of unrequited love; moments of total joy and happiness - did I really truly understand and relate to his work.

What's my favorite Sinatra song?  Boy, that's a tough one, but if I had to say one it would have to be "One for My Baby."  Yeah, many performers have done it, but no one quite like Sinatra:

                            It's quarter to three,
                            There's no one in the place 'cept you and me
                            So set 'em' up Joe
                            I got a little story I think you oughtta know

                            We're drinking my friend
                            to the end of a brief episode
                            So Make it one for my baby
                            And one more for the road

Sad and touching, when you listen to Sinatra sing Johnny Mercer's words, you can hear intense  loss and longing.

Ok, I've rambled too much.  Gots to go to bed.