Brief Musical Interlude

Currently obsessed with nectarines, good, strong green tea and:

Sigur Rós - Sæglópur

Adele - Setting Fire to the Rain

Florence and the Machine - The Dog Days are Over

Bright Eyes - The Arc of Time (Time Code 3)






We Are Animal - Luminous Nights

Pogo - Living Island (H.R. Pufnstuf Remix)

Unkle - Burn My Shadow

Frightened Rabbit - Swim Till You Can't See Land

Music of Ireland

While my parents are on WNHU today playing Irish music, I thought I would share some of my favorite Irish musicians with you.  Growing up in an Irish household, you are surrounded by music and "talk" and develop a love of both music and language.

Clannad - Nín Sé In Lá (It is not yet day - an old Irish drinking song)


Clannad - Two Sisters


Mary Black - A Song for Ireland



Sinéad O'Connor - She Moved Through the Fair


Declan O'Rourke - No Place to Hide


Iarla Ó Lionáird - Caoineadh na dtri Mhuire (Lament for the Three Marys)


Luka Bloom - Sunny Sailor Boy


Kieran Goss - Out of My Head


Paddy Casey - Lucky One


and Fear (thanks Alan!)


Pierce Turner - The Sky and the Ground


The Waterboys - The Whole of the Moon


Van Morrison - Did Ye Get Healed?

Some of my favorite musicians are releasing new music very soon (or have released music news of which never made it to me, sigh) so I thought a music post would be nice.

Peter Gabriel's version of David Bowie's Heroes from his album of cover tunes, Scratch My Back & http://www.musicforrelief.org/ for Haiti:

Sade's Solider of Love (which I didn't like at first but it has grown on me considerably).

I wasn't a fan of her early work, but man o man did I wear grooves into the cds of Lover's Rock and Love Deluxe!

The very creative, but delightfully odd, Joanna Newsom The Sprout & the Bean

The indescribable Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds funky Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

Have A Happy New Year!

Ten years ago tonight, my thoughts were of Millennium and disaster. I knew the year 2000 neither began the 21^st century nor the 3^rd Millennium, but it always excites me to see the odometer slip into multiple zeros.

I had decided to see in 2000 alone, thoughtfully and quietly. I bought bottled water – my only acquiescence to Y2K fears that had people hording food and money and guns – and planned an evening of reflection and reserved celebration. Around 11:00 p.m., I turned off the tv and listened to music while my New Haven apartment was lit only by candle light.

For the last half hour of 1999, I blew out a candle every 5 minutes until only one remained to be blown out at midnight. Then I sat in my quiet dark apartment and heard the sound of the year 2000 beginning: cold quiet broken by the sound of some idiot firing a gun into the night off in the distance.

And thus began my own annus horribilis, the beginning of one of the worst periods in my life. More on that another time. I'm here to wish you well.

I wish you all, a Happy and Wonderful 2010. I am planning on having a great one too. It's on my "To Do" list.

Here. Some music to start your New Year:

("I'm still very obsessed with this song)

And a Magnetic Field's song by Tracey Thorn & Jens Lenkman

Have a Happy!

Songs stuck in my head

Since the art of the mix tape is lost to us all...