You can almost see the flyer in the stairwell at the Canadian food co-op where a young Jane Siberry advertised her desire to put together a New Wave band to execute her proggy/coffee house aesthetic. Or that's how it looks in my most reductionist moments. In reality, I dig this stuff just as shamelessly as I do Kate Bush . This is the nerdy version of that more flamboyant allure. And I am especially loyal to it, since I refuse to follow the muse of Siberry's late career. But this is squarely in that [...]
Twenty years ago this fall my wife-to-be and I broke into a deserted chapel at our college to sit by the piano and make this song our own, staking our claim for the future and for each other through natural harmony and a shared sense of adventure. And now, if we have a song, it is this: a traditional English ballad which we knew before we met, that jumped out at us from the page that sunny afternoon, and, in doing so, guided us to forge ourselves as something more than the sum of our parts. [...]
I would be in my teens before cable television was available and, thus, my first experiences and earliest memories of the medium were limited to a handful of channels. There were the three major networks, PBS, and two independent channels. Of those two independent channels, our reception for one was so poor that most of the time it was just possible to make out shapes that might have been people. Or possibly trees. The station - from across the river in Northern Kentucky - taunted me when I'd leaf through the [...]
Winter Wonderland - Hellogoodbye [mp3] (myspace)In Excelsis Deo - There Will Be Fireworks [mp3] (myspace)The Lights And Buzz - Jack's Mannequin [mp3] (iTunes)Christmas All Over Again - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers [mp3] (iTunes)Sleigh Ride - Relient K [mp3] (iTunes)Mrs. Christmas - Jessie Baylin [mp3] (iTunes)Silent Night/ A Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis - Tom Waits [mp3] (iTunes)
I explained my loathing of Christmas last year , and all I can say is how happy I am not to be working retail (it was getting pretty close as the resumés kept going out to no avail last year). I'm already feeling the funk creep in (not the Parliament kind) as I avoid the shopping centres and try my hardest to block out my mother's moaning about not having enough extended family for holiday occasions (the dig at my singleness is duly noted - if only she could understand what pure joy I have in my own company...she'd [...]
Time's whipping by so fast that I have to start planning out these last weeks of 2009 on CTRR. Last year, there were several festive year-end features on the old yuletide blog (groan if you must), including my Year-End Round-Up weekly mixes , the countdown of my Top 40 albums of the year , the Christmas weekly mix , and the New Year's Eve party mix . And I still have to work in my Day of 200 songs before all of this kicks off. This week's mix will be a winter one despite [...]
Unlike some of my fellow Star Makers, I do not have a collection of rarities to draw upon. So I have had to approach this theme differently. But just as rarities have their stories, so, sometimes, do first albums. Before we leave our early theme, let's hear some of those stories. Michelle Shocked : (Don't You Mess Around With) My Little Sister [ purchase ] Michelle Shocked made her recording debut, quite by accident, in 1987. She never knew she was making an album until [...]
Kathleen Edwards: Hockey Skates [ purchase ] Jane Siberry: Hockey [ purchase ] Although I had plenty of songs I could have chosen for this theme (lots of baseball, and even a boxer... no, not the Simon and Garfunkel one), I'm not really a sports person - of course, at the eleventh hour, I remembered a tune I'd love to cover... and then discovered BoyHowdy already had ... So... since it's been a [...]
This week I'm going to feature some of my favourite female artists. This is significant because for a long time during my teens and even a bit after, I didn't listen to music by very many female artists. There was absolutely no real reason for this - I just found myself inherently drawn to music produced by males, much in the same way I've usually gravitated towards books by male authors. In my teen years, the mainstream and alternative scenes seemed to be dominated by either pop tart music (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc.) or whiny/angry chick music (Alanis Morrissette, [...]
Jane Siberry : The White Tent The Raft [ purchase ] So far this week, my fellow Star Makers and I have done a good job of covering the black part of our theme. The white songs that have appeared so far have been linked to black musical counterparts. But there are many fine songs with white titles, that are not linked to anything. The White Tent The Raft is one of these. You could be forgiven for thinking that Jane Siberry's songs are always straightforward and sweet, based [...]
I've spent the whole weekend writing a sermon about the Unitarian Universalist hymnbook for this weekend's lay service at our church. Now I've got hymnal on the brain, and the thought of switching over to folk music makes my head hurt. Which would be a problem, if it were not for the fact that the modern Unitarian Universalist hymnal is about as folk-oriented as a hymnbook gets. It wasn't always that way. The UU hymnal has gone through several incarnations since the first one was published in 1937. [...]
Look, we're a music site through and through. However, that doesn't mean we're not film enthusiasts. Therefore, we came to an agreement, one that makes total sense. We're going to focus on film soundtracks. Personally, I feel that in the wake of file sharing and digital downloads, film's soundtracks are swept under. That wasn't always the case. The truth is, a film's soundtrack is a sacred, sacred thing, and it's something that still exists today (e.g. this year's Adventureland). Therefore, we're going to give them back the much deserved spotlight. We're calling it Cinema Sounds and each week, god willing, [...]
What brings you comfort? Say you were feeling really down and lonely, felt like nobody really gave a shit about you, what would make you feel better? I used to like to talk to my mom. Even if she started in ragging and complaining about something, she always made me feel better just by being there. Of course, I haven't been able to do that for a long time. Singing along to music helps most times, although it can also serve to deepen the pain, [...]
I would love to have time for three more posts this week, but I don't. Each of these songs and their albums are worthy of a full post of their own. But I certainly didn't want to leave any of them out. Kate Bush : The Sensual World [ purchase ] Mmmmm... yes! I have mentioned elsewhere that Kate Bush's work with Peter Gabriel inspired her to become more creative, freeing her to incorporate various elements that she had never before considered into [...]
I think this will be the start of an intermittent series here at CTRNR - many other bloggers do it, so I don't know why I didn't bother with it before. Of course all series but the weekly mix one will be intermittent, but that's just because I'm lazy and easily distracted (in a rather embarrassing eight-hour binge last evening, I watched a fantasy film marathon on a movie channel, including Legend , The Clash of the Titans , Excalibur , and Ladyhawke ). Anyhow, this series, entitled Secondhand Daylight, will be about albums I happen [...]
Holly Cole, Rebecca Jenkins, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Jane Siberry, Victoria Williams: Carol of the Bells [ purchase ] George Winston: Carol of the Bells [ purchase ] The Nylons: Carol of the Bells [ purchase ] From Wikipedia: "Carol of the Bells" (also known as the "Ukrainian Bell Carol") is a choral miniature work originally composed by the [...]
Hokay. Back in the day, both Em and I watched the television show Roswell, (the show that made Katherine Heigl an Isabel who fell for an Alex and was frequently visited by the ghost of a past love way before Grey's Anatomy ever did), and of course, right around the holidays they would come up with an episode full of cheer, holiday warmth and tear-felt moments. Because of this scene right here,
When I first joined Starmaker, I was a guest poster for quite some time. The procedure at first was that I would send my text, along with the mp3, to Paul, Dean or Boyhowdy. They would add the coding, find the image, host the file, in short do a lot of work on my behalf that I knew nothing about. So I would like to thank these three fine gentlemen again, now that I can appreciate just how much you did for me. Double thanks to Paul, who handled this all by himself at first, and also to Boyhowdy, who [...]
13) Lundstroms-The Joys of Christmas Day From their 1981 release "Best of Christmas." They actually have quite a few Christmas releases under their belt. There is one more LP I have to transfer to MP3 to share later on in the year, and I hope to come across more as my collection grows. I can't say I think their music is the best...it capably written and enjoyable and at times it hits a good mark. However, what I appreciate most about this family's music is that Lowell Lundstrom managed to [...]
bob dylan quinn the eskimo (live at the isle of wight festival 1969) hot chip i can't wake up bettye lavette joy josh rouse sad eyes the redwalls modern diet sunparlour players if the creeks don't rise jane siberry bound by the beauty track a tiger [...]
Now you're at Songblague!
Cover Lay Down
Barely Awake In Frog Pajamas
Guilt Free Pleasures
Condemned to Rock 'N Roll
Star Maker Machine
Consequence Of Sound
lost in your inbox
Twelve Months of Christmas
*SIXEYES
Out This Week 2/14
Diplo - "Climax" (MP3 Stream)
Jackback Feat. David Guetta & Nicky Romero – Wild One Two
Skrillex Uses Satanic and Homosexual Influence to Win Grammys
[listen] Diplo ft. Usher - Climax
