What are you listening to?

A question I pose and am posed often. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts but I already did a podcast blog post way back in the old "skinny" blog days but here's a quick run down anyway.

I'm listening to Keith and the Girl, Radiolab (two excellent podcasts Tim turned me onto), This American Life, Quirks & Quarks, Old Time Radio Network (old radio shows but only the ones about Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe), The Moth (true stories told onstage with no notes), Furled Sails (sailing podcast), Alan Watts (excerpts from his recorded lectures), The Bugle (British Humour from The Daily Show's John Oliver), The Preparedness Podcast and a few others.

As for music, I've been listening to YouTube a lot lately.

The first two are from a young Australian who calls himself Pogo. He takes sounds from Disney flicks and turns them into songs:





Here is a mind blowing pair from "Kutiman". He takes clips from YouTube and makes music from them. If you click on the video it will take you to the YouTube page with the same song on it. If you click on the right "more info" tab you can see the source of the sounds in his songs. Just amazing!





As for non-YouTube-remix artists, I've been hooked on Fleet Foxes a lot lately. Beautiful stuff.



If you're interested here is the background of this piece of video:



Here's Wilco doing Impossible Germany. I'm mostly paying attention to Nels Cline. He's the madman with the beat up Jazzmaster. Great solo in this tune. Starts at about the 3 minute mark



And finally, some light-hearted fun. Here's Vince with Slap Chop remixed. An ear worm for sure.




Oh and I'm always listening to the Books. "Smells Like Content", my favourite song from their last album, "Lost and Safe"



So what are you listening to?

Friday, July 27th at the Bottom's Up Lounge


GDH is playing with the Road Rockets. We'll probably tone it down a bit so as not to bring the walls down. It's kinda small so we'll bust out the acoustic and banjo for some tunes.

(p.s. New pickguards!!!)

YES!



I have received the "new" Books recording. It's an odd little thing called "Music for a French Elevator and other Short Format Oddities by The Books". It's only 15 minutes long but it is wicked awesome! Here is their website description:

"In early 2004 we were asked by the Ministry of Culture in Paris, France to compose four short tracks for their new elevator. No joke! It also includes several 'classic' spoken word tracks culled from our sample libraries."

for joyous beauty press play.
for jaw-dropping fireworks skip to 7:13.

on second thought just watch the whole thing.

The Canadian Review

Friday night was a great turnout with many friends and family home for the holidays. Thanks to everyone who came out. Saturday was good too!

The Road Rockets started things off in fine form with a solid set of almost all new material. Here's Carl with his new strat:
(click pics to enlarge)

Our set (GDH) was very enjoyable (what with my rowdy relatives whooping it up and all). We recruited Carl to play bass for us so I could play my lovely guitars more. He did an admirable job.

Love those pics of my guitars!:

I also got the chance to play the banjo live for the first time:


The Woody Sims Tree-o ended the night with a stellar set:


Both nights we had special guests. Laura lent her trumpet talents to "Holland, 1945":

And Adam F. sat in on lap steel and guitar both nights with GDH, the RRs and SHED. He sounded freakin' amazing! His band, People For Audio(based in Montreal) just completed their second (?) album and should be releasing it soon:






SHED closed out the show Saturday night. We sounded pretty good for having Eddie arrive in town that day. The manager offered us a monthly gig there. All in all an excellent weekend. Thanks again to everyone who came out!

A New Addition

Allow me to introduce you to the newest member of the family...she's the sweetie in the middle of the couch between Laura's classical and my steel string. I bought her at a magical store in Soo Mich. for A THIRD of what they're going for on eBay! A THIRD!!! Shane picked up a beautiful 12 string too. We declared them both at customs and since they cost so little the guy didn't even make us pay duty! Laura was mad 'cause now she has to think of a new Christmas present for me but I just couldn't pass this deal up.

(like all pics on this site, click to enlarge)
It sounds pretty good. I'm still getting used to that high thin string being the top one instead of a fatty mcfat fat one and the fact of one less string. But I'm learning a ton of Sufjan Stevens songs now. Oh...watch this. It's beautiful:

"For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti":



Anyway, the Uke is from my sister Mary and the electrics you've been introduced to already. This post has brought to my attention the fact that none of my guit-boxes have names. Should I name them? Is that lame? I'm almost 30 now so my ability to determine cool from lame is in severe decline. (What ability?...you ask...haha ya gigbag!) What should I name them? I'll have to sleep on it and get back to you.

p.s. Big news coming up!

Bad Timing

You should always have a backup of your tunes on your computer, right? I cleared my ipod intending to create just such a backup. As soon as I cleared my ipod my computer crashed! Clockwork held it for a month. They couldn't get my music off it. So I lost 3,000 songs. Luckily I had 9,000 stored on an external drive and emusic lets you download as many times as you like bringing my total up to 11,000. But I did lose a lot of homemade songs transferred from tape to computer. Damn that took a long time to do. Ah well.

Anyway, by request here's another youtube video:





p.s. Clockwork's customer service sucks big floppy donkey dick.

The Speak Easy Review




The Woody Sims Trio kicked things off with a great set in front of a large crowd. The Trio can really pack 'em in and everyone seemed to be having a good time. It's good to see that Tim has found a perfect band for his guitar stylings. John, the singer, has a really good voice and the rest of the guys are a lot of fun to hang around and very tasteful musicians. They closed their set with a screaming rendition of "Amazing Grace" featuring Jeff Jack on the bagpips.



We played next under the name GDH. Playing gigs is always a ton of fun for me but this one seemed to be extra-super enjoyable. Our originals were all very well received.
The highlight for me was pulling off Neutral Milk Hotel's "Holland, 1945" after only one (real) jam. Shane was hilarious shouting "I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" throughout the song, proud of having tamed the wild beast. We brought up some guests to help us out; Laura playing the trumpet and trombone lines and the Animal and Chad doubling on tambourine. This pic is a good visual representation of the song:



It was sort of like riding a shopping cart downhill - intense vibrations, chaotic direction, lots of screaming, could turn out to be a disaster but when the cart rolls safely to a stop you're left with a feeling of exhiliration and want to do it again. And we even got an encore! haha We played "Stupid Girl" - a Neil Young song (of course). Weirdest encore song ever!




The Road Rockets ended the night with a strong (albeit slightly intoxicated set). Playing last presents some challenges: some people don't stay the whole night and the free bar tab can be a tempting over-indulgence while you're waiting to go on. The RR's didn't disapoint though, filling the dance floor during their "Gypsy Queen", Wilco's "$1000 Car" and The Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly". Carl's guitars sounded really sweet.

Talk of another shared bill ended the night.


Totally unrelated:

I have one credit left on my audible.com account. What book should I download? Preferably life changing ficiton or continously surprising and interesting non-fiction please. Oh yeah and it must be at least 10 hours long. Thanks!