Blogging, Books, Cats, Music, Mayhem
I’ve done a terrible job keeping up with my reading over the past few years, but have been trying to remedy that recently with some success. In the past few weeks I’ve been getting back into science fiction and fantasy, with The Obelisk Gate, The Kaiju Preservation Society, and All Systems Red. Continue reading “Recent books: The Obelisk Gate, Kaiju Preservation Society, All Systems Red”
It’s been a year to the day since I said goodbye to one of the best cats that’s ever walked the planet.
When I first got Laney, I put her in a separate room (like you’re supposed to) to acclimate to the new surroundings and before introducing her to Lilah. She managed to bust out of the room by the second night and found her way up to my pillow, settled down and slept right next to my head. That was that. She decided it was her place, and if Lilah happened to wander too close she’d get a swat.
Mind you, Laney had been declawed before I got her and had no business starting a cat fight with a younger, fully equipped, Murder Cat. But she did, and Lilah backed off. All the cats respected her territory and mighty, if clawless, paws.
It still doesn’t seem quite right without Laney around, nor going to bed and not having Laney settled next to me on the pillow and providing purrs.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Laney, or miss having her demanding pets or attention. We’re fortunate to have plenty of wonderful cats (and two great dogs, too), but there’s always going to be a Laney-sized hole in my life without her here. I like to think she’s still out there, somewhere, and maybe we’ll meet again. Give your fuzzy friends extra pets and snuggles while you can. Miss you, Laney.
We have, it’s true, a ridiculous number of cats. With six to choose from you might think that I’d have a favorite or two, but I love ’em all equally. However, Sir Wobbles might just be our most photogenic cat. He’s always happy to strike a pose and the camera loves him.
Here, Sir gives us his dignified, “I’m ready for a cat food sponsorship” pose.
And then, we get another side of Sir Wobbles.
Not so dignified. But still adorable.
Happy Caturday, enjoy your weekend and give all your furry friends a little extra attention today.
It’s the last Bandcamp Friday of the year, which means Bandcamp forgoes its cut and artists get the entire price (minus some processing fees). Not sure what to get? Check these out!
The band describes this album thusly: “Access Denied is an avalanche of wildstyle jungle punk, orchestral drum’n’bass, Indo-ragga dub and militant-lyrical soundclashing confronting themes surrounding Brexit, hostile border policies and the climate crisis.” Sounds about right.
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Instrumental album, very chill in a guitar-heavy way. Kind of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” meets trance or something. Great to work to.
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Single track from one of my favorites, Eliza Rickman. Cover of “I Put A Spell On You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, with Rickman’s unique voice. How can you go wrong there? You can’t. Go grab it.
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Two fantastic “mixtapes” of “field recordings” of Mdou Moctar playing live all over the place, house concerts, weddings, rehearsals. Sounds like something a band might put out on a “deluxe edition” to pad it out, but it’s all 100% worth listening to, start to finish. Oddly, Vol. 1 doesn’t have a share/embed link, but you can still check out it out online. Recommend both EPs, and the entire catalog.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=456071327 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]
Need more ideas? Check out my collection and wishlist.
Update: Sam actually likes his sweater. Or, at least, it chills him out. He’s an anxious cat and gets really anxious when we have a lot of company over (as one does when it’s holiday season).
He has a “thunder shirt” that chills him out substantially but it’s been misplaced. Meg knitted this for fun a while back and we found that Sam will happily wear it pretty much all day. He’s also very good at slithering out of it when he feels like it.
Is Shakespeare mandatory for a well-rounded secondary education? After more than 400 years, it’s reasonable to ask whether the canon is due for an overhaul, or to be chucked out of the window entirely. Continue reading “Shakespeare, yea or nay?”
We got a bird feeder a few months ago. Dollar for dollar it provides maximum return on entertainment budget.
The past few months have been a little less productive in terms of finding new music, but there’ve been a few gems I’ve been wanting to blog about.
Steve Lawson is a prolific solo bassist out of the UK who has an enormous back catalog on Bandcamp. I picked up a subscription to the “Steve Lawson Listening Club” a while ago and still haven’t quite made it through everything. Recently Steve was diagnosed with a low-grade lymphoma and has been undergoing chemo and promoting the subscription more actively to help with costs and engage with fans while dealing with cancer.
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As mentioned, his catalog can be a bit daunting so he’s put together a few “Best of Steve Lawson” compilations to help spark discussion and serve as an intro to his music. I think they’re fantastic and a great place to start if you enjoy melodic, bass-heavy, often instrumental tunes. Don’t know Steve personally, but he also comes across as a person I’d quite enjoy hanging out with given the opportunity. Maybe I’ll get the opportunity someday, but in the meantime I feel like I’ve gotten a good glimpse of his soul via his music – and there’s a lot of beauty there.
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Encourage you to check it out and spring for the digital albums or yearly subscription if it appeals to you.
Not too long ago I stumbled on Mdou Moctar via Bandcamp and have had an ear out for more music in that vein. A friend on Twitter happened to mention Etran de L’Aïr, which gives me much the same vibe.
Their Agadez release from February this year is full of bright, joyous songs with infectious melodies. According to the Bandcamp description “Etran de L’Aïr play in a pan-African style that is emblematic of their hometown, citing a myriad of cultural influences, from Northern Malian blues, Hausa bar bands, to Congolese Soukous… Agadez retains all the energy of a party.” Sounds about right!
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Brian Jackson is probably best known for his work with Gil Scott-Heron, which might have something to do with the fact that 1) that work was fantastic, and 2) he’s not exactly a prolific solo artist. Case in point, he released This is Brian Jackson in May this year, which is his first solo album in more than 20 years.
To the extent any album is worth a 20-year wait, I suppose this one is. It’s a nice blend of jazz, funk, soul and more that sounds contemporary and classic at the same time. You could’ve released “Little Orphan Boy” in the 80s and it would’ve sounded right at home. Sounds great today, too. Let’s hope we don’t need to wait until 2042 for the next album…
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Automatic‘s Signal (2019) caught my ear a while back with the track “Suicide in Texas.” That record’s been in rotation since, so I was pleased to find that they’d released a new album last month Excess. It’s full of sparse, synth-y goodness with deadpan vocals, but strangely engaging energy. Like an old person, I ordered the CD and actually popped it into my car’s CD player immediately for the round-trips driving our resident teen to driver’s ed. It’s a great commute album, and I keep summoning it for workday music too.
If you’re a Gen X’er with a love of 80s minor key, unrushed synth-pop this will scratch that itch without sounding derivative or repetitive.
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Happy Sunday listening. Got a recommendation for me? Hit me up in the comments. I’m always on the hunt for new or new-to-me music.
I’ve got a few bones to pick with Spotify, but “fake artists” isn’t one of them. Since I’ve been critical of Spotify’s business model of late, I figured I should be fair and give a counter-point to the “Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize” post making the rounds.
The basic complaint is this: Spotify apparently pays for “fake” artists to create tracks for its service that it can seed into playlists. Why? Because these “fake artists” presumably work for hire, so Spotify doesn’t have to pay out royalties.
Sounds kinda sleazy, right?
I would agree, except for one thing: Users don’t seem to care.
A lot of Spotify users seem to use the service for background music or aren’t very picky about what they listen to. They’re not trying to listen to Ella Fitzgerald or Soundgarden or XTC and getting served up “fake” artists.
They’re asking Siri or Alexa to “play some jazz” or just searching for a playlist and taking what’s served up.
If you’re a subscriber and you ask Spotify to play XTC’s Skylarking, then you get Skylarking. (Assuming, of course, that Spotify has it in their catalog.)
Spotify is just taking advantage of the fact that a lot of its user base isn’t very discerning about music. Or its “fake artists” are cranking out some decent music, or both.
I care a lot about supporting artists and seeing to it they can make more art. If you love Aimee Mann’s music, or Eliza Rickman’s, or Robyn Hitchcock’s, etc., then it’s in your best interest to figure out how to slide them some money for their work.
But… a lot of people just aren’t that picky about music. I don’t understand it myself, but there are actually humans aren’t fanatic about music. Or maybe they really just love any kind of music and it doesn’t matter to them if it’s Miles Davis or Bob’s Royalty Free Band churning out a music-like substance in a basement for $50 an hour.
If that music-like substance is good enough for users, if they’re not too discerning and are happy to slap on a Spotify generated playlist that is seeded with royalty free music, it’s hard for me to be too upset with Spotify.
That’s not to say Spotify is on the side of angels. When users specifically choose music on the service, Spotify should be paying better royalties. (And labels should be paying up, too.)
If the “fake artists” situation really sticks in your craw, then… curate your own playlists on Spotify. Or stop using the service if it really galls you, but what Spotify has done here is take advantage of the fact that lots of users simply don’t care.
Spotify isn’t obligated to set its system to offer the most expensive stuff by default. It’s there if you search for it and (as far as I know) Spotify isn’t playing any dirty tricks like the old compilation CDs that had popular songs… as played by some studio band to sound like the songs but weren’t the ones you heard on radio. I’m sure lots of GenXers can relate to that one.
There’s a lot of royalty free music produced for use in radio spots, television and movie production, DJ sets, sampling… and on and on.
If you ran an all-you-can-eat restaurant, you’d probably advertise something spendy to bring people in – and then try to get them to fill up on breadsticks and salad to keep costs down. If they don’t eat that and ask for the spendy stuff, you serve it. But trying to keep costs down is reasonable as long as you’re not telling the customer they’re getting one thing and actually giving them another. So if you’re advertising crab puffs made with real crab, and serve Krab Meat(TM) “made from real ocean creatures,” that’s not cool.
When Spotify starts serving up “Miles Davvis” studio band when users search for “Miles Davis,” that’s a legit bone to pick. The “fake artists” thing, not so much.
A question popped up yesterday on Ask Metafilter for recommendations of instrumental rock, pop, electro, whatever “just no vocals” from the past 5 years. Highly recommend checking out the entire thread, but I thought I’d post my own responses here for posterity. Continue reading “Instrumental throwdown: Check these out”