Scratching two of my itches in one shot: Colin Moulding of XTC discusses the creation and recording of King for A Day, one of my all-time favorite songs. (YouTube link)There’s a wealth of information in interviews with the band about other recordings, people, and history. My one gripe with the MySpace weblog format is that there’s no way to search (that I can see) or list things in any sort of scannable format.
Wow, this is an incredible find: a Japanese site featuring a huge collection of Blue Note album covers in order of their catalog number. It’s like a virtual school in excellent graphic design from the late 40’s up through the 80’s. Ten years ago there was a website selling large blowups of famous Blue Note album covers, but they’re long gone now.
I have really, really been thinking about playing my bass again lately. I’d be doing it at night after Finn is asleep, but I couldn’t plug into an amp and play along with anything without waking her up. So I started looking around for an inexpensive amp that will take an iPod input along with a headphone jack (my little 15 watt Crate amp has no aux input), and I found the Acoustic B20 1×12 Bass Combo Amplifier at Musician’s Friend for $150. This is waaaay back burner right now, but when I’m ready to buy one, I’ll venture down the street and see if Bill’s Music has one for a competitive price.
This is possibly the funniest, most transparently stupid thing I’ve read all year: Rep. Joe Barton Apologizes to BP’s Tony Hayward. A brief sample:
“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown.”
Given that he is, more or less, a paid employee of Big Oil, I’m not surprised. The frightening thing is that if the GOP takes the House this fall, he’s the guy in line to be the chair of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
Here’s your daily awesome: stuffnoonetoldme.blogspot.com. This is the kind of thing I see and I wish I’d been smart/motivated/talented enough to do.
Yet another album I’ve been listening to on heavy repeat is XX, by The XX. I can’t honestly say I’ve heard anything that sounds like this before, but damn, I like it.
Some more good music I just found this morning while listening to Morning Edition: Kodomo’s Still Life. Nice melodic electronica, nothing too intense, but enough melody to be background/working music. Very nice.
File this under Future Projects: a video podcast on iPod Music Link Installation in the CR-V. Looks like it might be the next gen model from the screenshot, but the general info looks pretty good.
After an inexcusable delay, the fucknut off-duty Baltimore police officer who shot a guy outside a nightclub last week is now in custody. He’s claiming the guy he shot was threatening him, and “did what he had to do”, which apparently means “empty your service revolver into an unarmed man.” For the record, I’m pro-police. But every gun-happy jerk like this makes the whole force look bad. My reasoning:
documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun under a public information act request show that Tshamba was also disciplined in 2005 after he shot and wounded a man after getting into an altercation while driving drunk.
Uh-huh. Why am I not surprised? Kick his ass off the force. It should have been done in 2005.
I spend a lot of time on the computer each day, and I’m always looking for something interesting to listen to. This American Life has been a staple of my iTunes podcast list for two years now. I highly recommend it, and this morning I donated money to keep it online. I encourage you to listen (if you don’t already) and give a little money, if you have it, so that it will continue.