Music | Candied Brain

Jaydiohead

April 21st, 2009 admin

Jay-Z + Radiohead mashup. If you like either of the artists, check it out - it is really good.

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State of the Dave

February 24th, 2008 admin

Got something of a ramble for you today; got several things I would like to mention.

First of all, I broke down and bought an�iPhone.�I figured I would eventually have one when they first went on sale last summer, but I had held off until now. My previous phone, a Moto Razr had been getting progressively flakier; once I started missing calls for no apparent reason, I figured it was time to upgrade. Over all, I like the iPhone, and I would recommend it to others except for a few big caveats:

Mobile Safari crashes. Often. And for no apparent reason.
Don’t believe the commercials, EDGE is painfully slow for web browsing.

The iPhone is wonderful for email. EDGE may be too slow for today’s web pages, but it works very smoothly when it doesn’t need to pull down so much data. Personally, this thing will be a killer device for me once there is a solid RSS reader. Not a monkey-ass web app, but a full application.

Secondly, I bought�Heretic Pride,�the latest from The Mountain Goats, the day it was released (through Amazon’s Digital Download service, which I will talk about momentarily). It is a decent album. Not my favorite TMG, but pretty solid. This album isn’t as quiet as�Get Lonely,�the last one, but it is still a bit subdued in comparison to much of the earlier work. Personally, I like John Darnielle’s singing best when it is at its most manic, like in this album’s first single, Sax Rohmer #1. That said, this album is much more accessible than much of the earlier stuff, and I will be recommending it to just about everyone I know.

Thirdly, I love Amazon’s digital download service. I’ve purchased three albums from them, and honestly, I will probably never buy another song from iTunes. The service is very streamlined for existing Amazon customers, from One-Click buying to importing the songs directly into iTunes. There is a little downloader app that you must use to buy whole albums, but it keeps things nice and simple, and just works (unlike the eMusic downloader, which will no longer work on my machine).

Fourthly and finally, the reason I sat down to write this post: I may have mentioned this before, but I am getting married this June. I (foolishly) volunteered to pick all the reception music, and I am having some difficulties figuring out exactly what to play. So I’m putting out the call: what should I be sure to include in the music. Any standout tracks that worked well at weddings you’ve attended?

Right now, I’m planning on using a lot of the ‘classics’ — Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, maybe some Thelonious Monk (if I can sneak it in) with a few diversions into some modern indie rock. I will be creating a separate�page�for the list of songs.

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Sax Rohmer #1 = New Mountain Goats Hotness

February 4th, 2008 admin

I’ve been a huge fan of the Mountain Goats for the last few years. The first song of theirs that I heard was “Home Again Garden Grove”, from We Shall All Be Healed (I’m not exactly an old-school fan). On the first listen, the song got mocked by all three of us who were in the office at the time. Despite the mocking, I found myself compelled to look up more information on the artist when I got home. I was shocked by sheer size of the back catalog, but not nearly as shocked as when I found myself singing and humming along with most of the groups’ stuff — including the track I ridiculed earlier.

I was hooked.

I quickly grabbed everything on eMusic by the group, which, at the time, only included We Shall All Be Healed, and “Tallahassee”. This was not sufficient. I’m not sure how or why, but this was some of the best music that I had ever heard. Strong words, I know, but I meant them then, and I’m not backing away from them now. John Darnielle is a brilliant lyrist. It is as simple as that.

Anyway, I was terribly excited when I saw that their next release, Heretic Pride, will be released this month. To add to the awesomeness, they released the video and MP3 of Sax Rohmer #1 online. Please take a listen, maybe two. You might laugh at the song at first, but I bet you will be singing along on the second time through.

I originally read about it on Pitchfork, here.

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