Hyper Gumbo » music

Ozzie’s Karaoke?

Don — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:39:34 +0000

Much like a friend posted on his facebook, my high school era song-memory turns out to be pretty strong, making me think I’ve been missing out on karaoke possibilities, not looking for Phil Colins/Genesis songs. And of course, it’s off-weekend at Claire’s karaoke, so I’m thinking I might give Ozzie’s a first try. The only thing holding me back is the thought of how long a walk home it would be, at a later hour than seems safe for the route required, which means a taxi. Other people take taxi’s all the time, I suppose I could too.

A Kickstarter Christmas

Don — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:54:46 +0000

After months of silence from most of the projects I backed, suddenly several of them are shipping out rewards, in time for Christmas. I got my cool Pogo bunny USB stick and T-shirt just the other day, the T-shirt, CD and poster from Haley Harris and Ben Nippes, and woke this morning to a shipping notice from the pack light peeps.

We could soon break 50% on the percentage of projects actually seen through to completion =)

Pogo Tours USA take 2 cancelled =(

Don — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:13:35 +0000

Due to some shenanigans oh so typical in the music biz, it looks like Pogo is stuck in some sort of immigration mess, and the rest of the tour has been canceled. Sucks, but could be worse. I really wish he’d finish the remix project already though.

The Fratellis – Costello Music

Don — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:41:12 +0000

I think the album title caught my eye in a is-this-an-album-of-elvis-costello-covers-i-see sort of way, and on Rhapsody, all the music is ‘free’, so download I did, without bothering to look beyond the track titles enough to see they weren’t Elvis songs. Turns out to be a fairly decent rock album, very peppy and energetic, without a single song skipped so far, and every one a toe-tapper even on first listen.

Recommended – Costello Music

2nd Kickstarter completion

Don — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:02:14 +0000

Haley Harris & Ben Nippes just sent out the link for the album I helped fund, Whirlwind. It turned out really nice, a short simple affair full of passion, reminding me of summer loves I’ve never even had, sometimes hopeful, sometimes sad, but always quite tuneful. Still waiting to find out which song they end up covering.

Now THAT is cool

Don — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:14:36 +0000

One of the “identify this song” apps, soundhound, added a new feature to the latest release that displays the lyrics to songs it identifies…IN TIME to the song, a sort of personal karaoke machine. As someone with a long standing history of loudly singing the completely wrong lyrics, or worse, completely inappropriate but accurate lyrics without realizing the actual words, I look forward to integrating this into my daily life.

New Joys

Don — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:46:52 +0000

Got some snail-mail spam today, 2 different attempts to sell me mortgage insurance, both with clear if tiny denials of association with the actual lender, and a 3rd party bi-weekly program, which is funny since my lender already provides the service for free. I’m sure more junk is on the way.

And it turns out I can hear my neighbors stereo perfectly well, both from a reflection of the treble range off his deck wall and into my bedroom window, and of the bass range through the walls. In hiser defense, it was at midday with construction noise going on outside. They haven’t kept me up at night yet.

Still between this and the hardwood floor above, whenever I do end up looking for the next place, there’s got to be some way to spend a couple nights at the place before anything is committed to.

WTF George Lucas?!?

Don — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:21:25 +0000

Back when I worked at the music company, I got access to the Star Wars music box set and was annoyed by how it was missing Yub Nub. Today on random, I discover that they did include an all new song, Jedi Rocks.

Really? I can’t get my cuteness-overload of Ewok celebration, but I can get a cheesetastic 80′s rock revisioning?

The tension of opposing ideals

Don — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:09:49 +0000

On the one hand, I want everything scrobbled accurately to last.fm.
On the other hand, I want iTunes to properly group albums by different artists that happen to have the same title.

Similar Voices, Different Choices

Don — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:36:11 +0000

I happened to catch the end credits of some flick yesterday, and hearing the voice, I thought it must be an artist I’m already aware of. Somewhere on the clear yet nasal scale, around the same location as the lead singers of Lightning Seeds, Lincoln, and Size 14, but I’m not quite able to say for certain which one it is.
Off I go in search of the truth, and when I get to Amazon’s page for the soundtrack album, the song with the right title is first track, but at first glance, it looks like they screwed up the artist name, and are giving some in-movie-band-name. See the flick was “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole“, and the artist for the track is listed as “Owl City“. You can understand my assumption and hopefully forgive my surprise when I find out the guy has been around long enough to get some net-hate. He turns out to be a decent enough modern balladeer in the twee-electro-pop style that some of the kids like these days.

So far, none of his regular work has quite the catch-me-quality of To The Sky, at least for me.