Just a quick recommendation for anyone who likes “traditional” music–while I was at the Shelter Valley Folk Festival this year (I got to see The Sojourners perform live!) I was introduced to the singing of Matthew Byrne. Byrne was performing with his group The Dardanelles, but had a couple of chances to show off his solo singing, and it was hella impressive. (I also loved bandmate Tom Power‘s introduction for Byrne, where he explained that in Newfoundland “best singer in the town” is a position much more important than mere temporal authority, like mayors or members of the legislature.) Check out some streaming tunes on Byrnes’ site, and buy some tunes if you like them as much as I did.
Tag: Music
Keep Hitting Play
I like to think of myself as pretty musically eclectic: it’s not so much that I like one category of music or another, but rather that I like the good stuff. Which leads to lots of pockets of music that appeal to me throughout the entire space of music. There are areas I’ve kind of shied away from for one… Read more →
Aside
Yes, I would buy a generic metal album, if the vocals (and narration?) were done by Christopher Lee. I find it quite warming to see yet another affirmation that (and I mean this in the most inclusive and positive sense possible) Lee is just a big ol’ geek.
The Unholy Tab Closing
OK, my open tab situation has got to the point where I was forced to research new Firefox plugins. I might talk about that soon, since that old “favourite plugins” post is waaaay out of date, and due for an updating. Right now, though, I want to run through a bunch of these things, attaching short, and hopefully pithy, comments… Read more →
“Without music life would be a mistake”
(photo credit: www.iliaphotography.com) In the weeks (well, at this point I guess I could say “months” although it doesn’t feel like it) that I’ve been back in Ontario, I’ve had a number of encounters with things that were once regular parts of my life before my near-decade out East, and some have been shocking and jarring, others kind of like… Read more →
More music from the archives…
It’s been a couple of months now since I finished the pre-move project of ripping all the CDs that hadn’t yet made it into digital form. I’ve been slowly cleaning up the metadata on them and moving them into the main collection, and then doing a lot of listening to things I haven’t listened to in ages. In celebration of… Read more →
What’s a “bricht chaulmer”?
Since moving to Ontario, I’ve been buying my comics at The Beguiling. This, obviously, means that from time to time I have to take a run into Toronto to actually, you know, pick up the comics. So far I’ve managed to work these trips either into other shopping outings I’m taking to the city, or to pick up a beer… Read more →
A flurry of quick things
Am I the only one uncomfortable with “too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release” apparently being a legit category? Doesn’t that pretty much read as “we can’t prove you did shit, but we’re going to keep you in jail anyway”? I officially call bullshit on that. Of course it should come as no surprise given that the current… Read more →
A Happy New Year present from Eric Kleptone
Yes, that’s right, a new Kleptones album was made available yesterday as a New Year’s present for us all. I’ve been a fan since A Night At The Hip-Hopera (and have mentioned The Kleptones several times here over the years) so you can imagine that this is very welcome news to me. Having listened to the new double(!!) album, Uptime/Downtime,… Read more →
CD Ripping: Done
I have finishedI in no way claim to have done this alone–Dr. Wife did a lot of the ripping on her machine, while I kept one of my work machines more or less in continuous ripping mode in my office. the ridiculous project of ripping all my previously unripped CDs before the move. This has resulted in the addition of… Read more →
Why Old Men Cry At Night
Tom Wilson, doing one of the songs from the Lee Harvey Osmond project. ’nuff said. Read more →
Friday Night Links
Collected from here and there about the networks, for your amusement or edification, I would really like to believe the story of Denny & Peach is a vignette that accurately captures a bit of the wonder of the world. But even if it’s a fiction, it’s a lovely little one. Also, SWORD CANE! Same thing with this “big catch” story.… Read more →
A Reflection On Pleasant Punk Blasphemy
As part of the process of getting ready for our impending move, I’ve been engaged in a process of ripping all my audio CDs that hadn’t previously been ripped. This keeps leading to my having that “Oh, I haven’t though about you in a while” experience. I had that recently with Crass. Since I was single-digits old when the whole… Read more →
Quaero mihi similes, et adiungor pravis.
I spent a lot of time last night looking at translations of Latin and Middle High German poetry. Oh, and listening to what I can only refer to as operatic renditions of the pieces. How did this happen? Well, actually, like many times when I start following a trail of weird connections, it all comes back to James Burke–usually just… Read more →
Book Porn
Yesterday was a marvelous mail day at the McLaren household. Through a confluence of mail karma–or possibly because our mailman seems to be skipping a day whenever he gets bored with the route–I had several books arrive from several different publishers. This will consequently be one long post full of book porn. If you’re not interested in small presses and… Read more →
