This is inspired by the music I’m listening to right now, which is the Chance Thomas-composed score to The Lord of the Rings Online‘s latest expansion, The Riders of Rohan. The score is, frankly, gorgeous. I don’t think I really have an ear for the actual quality of music, in terms of whether the orchestra was well-conducted or the score well- ( Read more... )

First, one of my favorite Beastie Boys tunes, and one of my all-time favorite videos:

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I wasn’t blogging last week when MCA (a/k/a Adam Yauch) passed away, and I don’t think I would have said much about him had I been: The Beastie Boys were never a big influence for me, and despite being a teen in the early 90s, I wasn’t their target demographic. ( Read more... )

As usual, right around Christmas (and just after) I wind up with iTunes gift cards and such and pick up some new music. Here’s what’s new to the playlist:

Nursery Cryme & Foxtrot by Genesis - Actually, I got these as part of the big 1970-1975 Genesis box set that my wife gave me for Christmas, and it’s the first time I’ve owned these albums. I’ll ( Read more... )

Went on a bit of a buying spree lately with-regards-to music, so I thought I’d share some of my results:

(Oh, and all of these are recommended, subjective musical taste depending.)

Inception (Music from the Motion Picture) by Hans Zimmer - I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, as did most people I know, and thought the original score to be quite nice as ( Read more... )

Way back when sometime, Soul Asylum of “Runaway Train” fame recorded a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the (a) Wire.” Since then, I’ve been on the verge of believing I hallucinated it, since I can’t find it anywhere. No iTunes, no eMusic, not even in the list of covers acknowledged by the Wikipedia article about the song. I remember hearing it ( Read more... )

1. I’ve seen in myself the tendency to go through phases with things; not with the bright burning intensity of fannish devotion or anything, but with a sort of inertia that gets me moving in one direction or another for a while until something comes along to disrupt it. It’s one of the reasons I think I have a hard time getting into a serious ( Read more... )

After mentioning The Flobots the other day, I went out looking for them and found the EP that “Handle Bars” is from on eMusic. I’ve already got their basic membership, so I downloaded that along with Time to Pretend by MGMT, which I also heard recently and dug quite a bit. The odd thing with The Flobots was that they came up as “Christian/Gospel ( Read more... )

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I think this song must be a couple years ago, based on when the video was posted, but I just heard it for the first time on my local “We play all kinds of weird shit” radio station (which seems to be a Clear Channel station, of all things). Incidentally, I love that station. I gave up the long-running “new rock” station for it, as they had ( Read more... )

I kinda dig new stuff.

Not necessarily in that, “it must be shiny and gadgety” sort of way that most folks think of when they think of the new, but… I like to mix things up. Stay out of ruts. I think a big chunk of what is motivating me to finish the basement (on all kinds of hold for now, mostly due to sick kids) is just the newness of it, of ( Read more... )

It’s Sunday night, and I should be going to bed.

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We had my daughter baptized this afternoon, at a one-month delay on account of her being throwy-uppy sick the night before our first scheduled date. It was a nice little event, with two other babies getting the holy water-and-oil treatment, and afterwards back to the house for a hugemongous Subway ( Read more... )