serene’s posterous

The often covered Bob Dylan's song. Bob Dylan has really good songs,
but I think his gravelly voice sometimes doesn't do his songs justice.
 I guess the most heard cover is by Garth Brooks. But I really like
the version by Adele:
 

 
There is also a newish version out by Ronan Keating that I like. It
is found in his Songs for my Mother album of covers, dedicated to his
mother who died in 1998.
 

Time waster alert: http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

It is a:

Simple sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map, which makes it more cute.

I had always wanted to see Morrissey live.  When I found out that he's going to be performing at Paramount Theatre, Oakland, on Apr 18, as a last minute addition to his tour, I was quite excited.  It is going to be close enough to drive to! Tickets came on sale on Mar 27 at 12.00pm PDT.  I went onto the ticketmaster website in the afternoon on Mar 27- maybe 4pm - to check what seats were available.

It was pretty ridiculous.  The tickets were about $85 + $12 convenience charge, or alternatively $47 + $10 for really sucky seats way back in the balcony.  I would almost be willing to pay for the tickets, but all the pit tickets, and first 20 or so rows of seats in the orchestra area were gone.  I can't really justify paying about $100 for far back and to the side of the orchestra area (it seems most of the center seats, even those far back are gone).  And it would be $200 for the both of us, because I would want Eu-Jin to go too. 

It seems somewhat fishy, particularly when I noticed tickets for sale on stubhub.com for $200-250 each for the first few rows center orchestra seats.  And I noticed someone complaining in the forums that the best seats he could get at noon on the 27th were in row O of the orchestra.  Oh well, maybe next time...and I liked the new album too.

There has been recent rash of reuniting boy bands.  New Kids on the Block, or the now preferred NKOTB (I guess you can't call yourself a kid when you are pushing 40), was probably the first boy band to blaze the trail for the other singing/dancing pop all-male groups.  They all have similar characteristics - young, mostly cute, sing passably, dance well and appeal to teen and pre-teen girls.

I was listening to that stuff back when I was a lot younger.  But I only own one CD that could be considered from a boy band, and that was only because my roommate got it for me years ago.  I had the strange urge to listen to it again yesterday. 

Boyzone never made it big in the US, probably because they can't dance, and their songs were mostly on the cheesy side.  They were supposed to be Ireland's answer to Take That (which coincidentally, also didn't make it big in the US).  Colin Farrell auditioned but failed to make it to the band!  Their first TV appearance back in 1993 was a big debacle.  They essentially pranced around the studio to some dance music, and faced with a hilariously patronizing host, Gay Byrne:



They got better over the years - as long as they don't dance...



And this is first single from their comeback.  They still dance terribly.

I splurged on 2 new album downloads from Amazon yesterday.  The 2 albums have very little in common, other than that both singers hail from England. 

Adele's 19 is a bluesy/jazzy album.  I first heard the song Hometown Glory, on SYTYCD, and now she's getting more attention in the US from her Grammy wins.  Hometown Glory is still my favorite song off the album.  She has a brilliant voice, with interesting phrasing and great tone.  But her lyrics suffer a bit from her young age/inexperience.

I have somewhat the opposite problem with Morrissey's latest album, Years of Refusal (only $3.99 to download from Amazon!).  His lyrics, as expected, are great.  But sometimes I didn't like the music - perhaps a little too unsubtle?  Nevertheless, Morrissey is as charismatic as ever.  Currently, I like his first single, "I'm throwing my arms around Paris".

I am finally jumping on the digital download bandwagon...The $3.99 price for Years of Refusal and the instant gratification is a little hard to resist.  I have been buying the physical CD if I wanted the full album, mainly because I am a completist and like having something physical to keep and be a packrat about.

   

This song played on my creaky old creative mp3 player while I was running today.  This is probably the only song that I like by Kate Nash.  She's a young singer from London (just like Adele). The video for this song is pretty cool too.   
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I was in that kind of a mood so I ended up rewatching bits of The Lake House, a preposterous romantic movie starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves.  The thing about these romantic movies, they sometimes have great music.  The Clientele's (I Can't Seem To) Make You Mine opens the movie.  It is a lovely ballad, off their Strange Geometry album.

This is a fan made video of the song using scenes from The Lake House - so it starts with cheesy audio from the movie, and has cheesier scenes from the movie.  The song starts from 0:25.

From a recent Pushing Daisies episode, sung by Kristin Chenoweth (as Olive Snook).  She is a talented singer, making the even the extreme cheesiness of Eternal Flame (by the Bangles - the love song of choice when I was a tween) sound great.  Oh why did ABC cancel Pushing Daisies?

I guess this song by Travis (off The Man Who album) is appropriate in light of the rainy weather.  I haven't followed the career of Travis in a while (since I bought 12 Memories maybe 5 years ago), but they had recently released a new album, Ode To J. Smith, which is apparently louder than their previous albums.  I have not listened to the album other than the one song that can be downloaded free from amazon, so I can't really comment on the album.

I had gone to a double-billed concert with Travis and Coldplay in 2001, back when Coldplay just had their first few hits.  I was far from the thick of the action at the mosh pit in front of the stage, but back then I thought that Travis was significantly than Coldplay live.  Their music was better and they had established a good rapport with the crowd.  Chris Martin, with his newly shaved head, was shy, almost nervous in the crowd.  How things have changed....Coldplay is now one of the biggest bands in the world, while Travis trudges along in relative obscurity.

Cocteau twins is yet another band that my brother suggested that I
would like. Heaven or Las Vegas is probably my favorite album in
their catalog. I would say that their music is quite distinctive,
with Elizabeth Fraser's ethereal vocal styling and indecipherable
lyrics.

This is the title track off that album: