Author: Karel Kerezman

  • Summer Music Project 2008: Week Three

    This one practically assembled itself, folks. Let’s see: It’s the 4th of July, and I happen to have a song which includes the lyrics, “I just flipped off President George.” Never mind that the song is from 1992 and is about George The First, Dada’s “Dizz Knee Land” fits the modern time very well, thank you.

    Let’s go back to the early ’90s for a moment, though. If it wasn’t for the format switch at KGON then I might not be a Dada fan at all today. When Loren Steveson and I threw out all of the “non-classic” discs during the great purge, I snagged a copy Dada’s Puzzle album on general principle (I liked the single well enough but wasn’t sure if the band had blown their creativity on the one track), took it home, and fell in like. No, it wasn’t love, but there’s something about their jangly, trippy California rock sound that works for me when I’m in the right mood.

    Picking from the other two Dada albums in my collection, American Highway Flower and their self-titled 1998 release, I follow up their original big hit with “All I Am” and “Spinning My Wheels.”

    Enjoy, and we’ll meet again in a week for something a bit more… foreign.

  • Birthday Wishes From Coast To Coast

    Not that she’s likely to notice this post, but I’m going to wish my sister a Happy Birthday anyway. She’s… well, let’s say “a handful of years” younger than I am, so I’ll always get to call her my “kid” sister. Ah, the joys of being the big brother!

    Her only online presence is, of all things, a MySpace page. Sorry, but I’m not going to dignify that wretched hive of scum and villainy by making a direct link. If you’re familiar with those environs, her username is ‘goddesskiriel’. Feel free to send her birthday wishes and remind her that she should try to stay in touch with her family on occasion…

  • And knowing is half the write-up.

    Things you may find interesting:

    • When writing about popular music, album titles should be in italics and song titles should be surrounded by double-quotes. Apparently I’ve been doing it wrong for… oh, let’s not go into how many years. The important thing is that I know this now so I can lend some stylistic validity to the written version of the Summer Music Project commentary.
    • The terms “flat” and “sharp,” when referring to musical notes, are apparently known as “accidentals.” I have not yet been able to discern the etymology for this usage; it seems an odd choice of terminology. An “accidental” is something you play deliberately in almost any piece of music, after all.
    • If you want a hint about what I might be prepping for the upcoming SMP mix, it may be worth perusing my Last.fm profile. (Of course, as soon as I post this I plan to muddy the waters considerably by listening to a whole bunch of different artists.)

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have been awake for an awfully long time and I’d like to soothe my brain with notes both natural and accidental before I seek my slumber.

  • Summer Music Project 2008: Week Two

    I only ask fifteen minutes of your time, this go-around. The music is modern, innovative and toe-tappingly good. As a bonus, there’s a whole lot less of my aimless yammering to suffer through. What more could you ask?

    By next week I’ll probably have the A/C unit in the window. That’s probably going to put a halt to the voice work for the duration of the project, I’m afraid. I had a hard enough time eliminating the outside noise with all of my windows shut, and the air conditioner is altogether too good at letting the outside world into my bedroom. How’s that for planning, eh?

    That’s okay, though. I spent half of my time tonight just trying to hunt down the worst of the clicks and pops. Future weeks will be orders of magnitude easier to assemble if all I have to do is mix tracks and write up some color commentary…

  • Five days later, only one has listened.

    I’m not even certain that the only download of the Genesis mix from Friday actually involved a live human being, given that the hostname in the logs doesn’t look particularly legitimate. My only problem with this theory is that I’m not sure how a robot would click on the audio player widget. I could be wrong, of course, and the sole listener is certainly welcome to chime in.

    So. Do I bother cranking out the other thirteen if nobody at all gives a damn?

  • Touched By An Atheist

    Taking up a worthy challenge, I present George Carlin on Mad TV in, “Touched By An Atheist.”

    (The Python-esque disclaimers are just icing on the cake.)