It is so easy to lose track of what actually matters.  Advertisers spend money and time trying to convince us that their clients' goods matter.  Friends and family share their priorities, often in ways that make them sound like everyone's priorities.  Depression and exhaustion can leave one feeling as if nothing matters, or nothing is possible.  ( Read more... )

My favorite music growing up was protest music, but I'm just as guilty as everyone else of forgetting what Labor Day is.  It was the start of the school year (or rather, the Tuesday after was) when I was growing up, and it's a paid holiday for people in government jobs, but it's far more than that.  It celebrates workers everywhere and was part of ( Read more... )

I have been trying to figure out why I can't seem to get into television shows lately (for values of lately that encompass several years).  I realize part of it is the insistence on tragic pasts and angst.  I'm pretty sure I've complained on here before that if The Rockford Files were made to day, Jim would spend the whole series trying to find the ( Read more... )

So...  I need some kind of music management program that works with a Sandisk Sansa and allows me to play music that I own, now that DRM has gone completely overboard.

If I own the damned CD, I ought to be able to put it on my computer and put it on my Sansa.  Especially when the music isn't even bloody available for purchase on line.  But the ( Read more... )

I just thought I'd share some of my favorite recent uses of music as protest.

In San Francisco, San Francisco Pride at Work, One Struggle One Fight, and The Brass Liberation Orchestra put together a flash mob adaptation of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to call attention to workers struggles at local hotels.  For more information about what hotels to stay ( Read more... )

Right then, why not?  According to Billboard, the #1 song that week was Billy, Don't Be A Hero by Paper Lace, which is okay.  But if I'd been born the next week, it would've been Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot, who's on my personal top ten list of musicians*.  And I see John Denver (also on top ten list) and Harry Chapin (maybe not top ten, but ( Read more... )

In honor of the holidays, I present a series on the sometimes very strange (or worse) music of the holidays. And I'm starting with a doozy: The Christmas Shoes. (Or, for the truly brave, YouTube.)

This horrible little thing, which apparently began life as an "internet story" (I would have guessed Chicken Soup for the Soul glurge myself), has ( Read more... )

I went to a concert of sci-fi movie themes tonight with my ex-roomate and her husband.  Once I got my acrophobia under control (we were way up in the balcony, which slants very steeply down), I had a good time.  The selections were good - a lot of Star Trek and Star Wars, of course - and, as the subject says, they were really good. :D

I've never ( Read more... )

In a rare fit of wanting to share things that are important to me (and risk people thinking they're stupid), I decided to share the songs that I find particularly encouraging.  There are other songs that also inspire me, but these are the ones that don't need some context to make sense.  I'm linking to the lyrics and YouTube, if I can find them on ( Read more... )

From
( Read more... )