1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
This, and with the amount of corruption in the legal system there’s a chance they might very well get away with it. I know this is just an addition to the case, but it brought it to mind again for me.
What this amounts to is: “We don’t like the law, so let’s just ignore it and sue anyways.” You’ve got you’re takedown notices, use (and don’t abuse) them. It’s the law, you know - the one you guys constructed. Yeah, that law.
Actually, better advice for the mainstream music industry - you’re dead! Get over it, and leave us alone. Suing will not bring back your obsolete business, nothing will.
Many of the muffins are rapidly losing faith in Emilie Autumn. Maybe this has something to do with it. Tracks on the upcoming Girls Just Wanna Have Fun/Bohemian Rhapsody EP (alphabetical, not real order):
Asleep (Live)
Bohemian Rhapsody
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Asylum Edit)
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Teatime Edit)
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Harpsichord Rendezvous)
Girls Just Wanna have Fun (Inkydust Edit)
Mad Girl (Live)
What the heck is that? Five versions of a cover song, another cover, a live version of a frigging B-side, and one random live track? That’s your idea of an EP? Coming from the same person who gave us the glorious Liar/Dead Is The New Alive EP and the solid 4 o’Clock EP? You expect us to buy this crap and wonder why we’re growing resentful?
And, from what I’ve seen in live videos, her version of Girls Just Wanna Have fun is just OK, not great. Bohemian Rhapsody should be interesting, but really this is just absolute garbage - just another in a long running train of attempts to unfairly capitalize upon her dedicated fanbase. The worst part is, I’ll probably still buy it - but I’m getting incredibly fed up, too much more of this and your money tree will dry up and die.
The other two releases scheduled for this year are much more promising, a live DVD and The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls. And both had better be as good as I’m hoping, otherwise my already rapidly vanishing faith in EA will completely dissappear.
And any EA fans should really check out Helen Trevillion’sInside Myself once more copies are available. She’s like Emilie used to be in the Enchant-era and, unlike some people, she still apreciates her fans. And, while Emilie still has her beat in songwriting, she’s a better singer and a better musician. I wouldn’t be surprised if, given time, she caught up in the songwriting department as well - and it’s already brilliant, it’s just tough to beat the absolute perfection EA consistently presents. Yes, I actually said someone is better than Emilie - I never thought it would happen either.
I was very excited to hear that Angelspit had a new album coming out this year. Not so much because I’d been really impressed by the band in the past, but simply because 2008 looks to be a really lackluster year for releases - so any addition to that list is very welcome. Don’t get me wrong, I like some songs from Krankhaus and Nurse Grenade - but no more than a few from each. So, I was kind of surprised going listening to Blood Death Ivory to find that there’s not one bad song on the entire CD. I’d go as far as to say there’s not one less than pretty darn great song on the entire CD.
So what’s different this time? Well first off, the lyrics are so much better this time around. The band has obviously matured a lot and, while they still show off the band’s trademark lewdness and sarcasm, the songs really benefit. Also, to me anyways, the album seems a lot lighter and more melodic than Krankhaus. It’s still an electronics festival in full form, but used to create a much more musical effect compared to the sometimes irritating noise on previous releases. Some hardcore industrial fans mind find this to be objectionable, but for me it’s a huge improvement. The vocals also go in a lighter direction, with more real melodies and the female vocals coming to the forefront of the album. It’s a huge improvement, making the songs much more listenable.
Blood Death Ivory takes all my favorite parts of Angelspit’s music and makes them even better, while simultaneous dropping everything I didn’t like. The result is just amazing, I really couldn’t think of anything that needs to be improved on this album. It is just a bit short, but with all the songs being this good it’s still a much better value than most albums that are half filler. Highlights are Devilicious, Skinny Little Bitch, Kill Kitty, and Girl Poison - but the entire album has made it’s way to my normal shuffle playlist. Any complaints of “selling out” are completely unjustified, Blood Death Ivory creates a perfect balance of innovative electronics and traditional sensibilities, witty lyrics and catchy melodies, all without losing everything that made this band unique. Though it hasn’t had a lot of strong competition, this is easily the best album of 2008 so far. 10/10
Free MP3 of Skinny Little Bitch available here on last.fm.
Yes, it’s a funny title. It wasn’t intentional, but I’ll go with it. The short version: should an album have to be absolutely jaw dropping to earn a score of 10/10, or just excellent throughout - but maybe not as good as my absolute favorite albums? And did I give Nightwish’s Dark Passion Play too high of a score, given that there seem to be many albums that fall above that level of quality (I gave it a 9.5) but really don’t seem to necessarily deserve a ten. There’s enough good but not great track per OMG tracks that I might have gone half a point high on that one, though I’m still standing by my review.
Happy now, wall of text complainers? It’s not like I expect you to read that much, that often - geez. Clicky the link for the full version, meaning long paragraphs amounting to the same basic point. But you also get to see a preview of the score for my next review if you read it…ooh. Except I think the one person who cares about album in question already has.
After Jay pointed it out to me, I noticed that the last two posts were showing up as having been written by Codeman. While it would be cool to actually see Codeman around here again, he’s not writing at the moment - those two posts are both by me (Pacdan). I was logged into the admin account when I wrote them, which, as I mentioned before (a while ago), doesn’t count as a post author causing the author of the post to default to Codeman since, alphabetically, he’s first. And I was too stupid to remember that until now. So yeah, that was all me and I have now manually overridden the post author to be correct.
That Windows usability is an epic failure. And that’s why I don’t get all this anti-Vista BS. In my experiences, Vista is more stable (not saying much), more compatible, and much easier to use than XP ever was. Why anyone would insist on staying with XP when, although it has it’s issues, Vista works far better is just beyond me. Anti-Vista is just bad hype from the Mac camp. It’s not perfect, but it sure is better, and I’m running the 64-bit version - which one would think would be even more likely to mess up and, still, no major problems other than Audacity being somewhat unstable, which is a known issue for the program. Oh, I mean it’s a bit of a memory hog - but this is Windows, what would you expect.
OK, so Rapidshare seem to have decided to drop the absolutely ridiculous cat vs. dog CAPTCHA’s. Good, right? Not with what they’ve come up with for a replacement:
What the heck is that? Pseudo-3D landscape CAPTCHA? Why do they expect us to put up with this crap when there’s many better services out there, some without any CAPTCHA’s at all. If it wasn’t for their huge base of already existing files due to being the first really popular free file service out there, these guys would be out of business. This is just absurd! And bear in mind, for those of you who’ve never used the service, not only do you have to decipher these ridiculous CAPTCHA’s, you have to wait 2.5 minutes just for the privaledge of doing it. Not only that, you have to wait one minute for every megabyte you download before having the privaledge of downloading another file (up to 100 MB). Of course, this is why they invented the dynamic IP address - but for anyone without one it’s virtually unusable.
And keep in mind, competing service Mediafire offers up to 100MB files for unlimited download, no CAPTCHA’s and only a few seconds of wait time. The only restriction is no password protected archives. Megaupload offers up to 500MB files with a 45 second wait and easy three letter CAPTCHA (though they have annoying pop-ups). Both much better services, and yet Rapidshare is still on top. Why? They have an established user base. Thing like that can change very quickly, however, and if they want to keep up with their competition they’re going to have to do much, much better.
Happy hours, with no waits and no CAPTCHA’s, just don’t make up for the fact that during normal hours their service just plain sucks. And even during happy hours, you still have the waits between downloads. It’s just absurd the measures they go to trying to protect their bandwidth, especially since their service is basically based around being free bandwidth. Don’t you guys think someday your market is going to get smart enough to move to someone else?
And even if they weren’t absurdly overpriced, no one’s going to buy premium accounts - the entire point of the service is to be free. If we wanted to pay for bandwidth, we’d buy some webspace of our own, not pay to download files from some ghetto service that’s probably going to be sued out of business by the end of the year anyways.
I never thought I’d have the minister leaving me nagging blog comments. She’s really getting up to date with this computer stuff. I don’t mind, I just found it kind of surprising.
But…that’s not why I was originally here to post. What I was going to say is that the good new is that I’ve finished the lyrics to the first song of my (sort of) rock opera (I’ve been listening to way too much Ayreon lately - I blame EternalDemise, who kind of got me started on this. The bad news is, it’s just a little prologue - and even at that I’m not happy with it. Geez my writing sucks. Only infinity many more to go.
Welcome to the land of my projects that never get finished. Here you’ll find: Commander Keen fangame (lost in hard drive destruction, wasn’t going anywhere anyways), Sonic the Hedgehog fangame (also lost in hard drive destruction), Commander Keen 1 mod (do I still have that?), NiGHTS-style flying game (never got past planning and a few graphics), random RPG (just the start of an engine in Game Maker, which really sucks for something like that), two make that three serious length stories, one short story, a script for a homemade movie, Deus Ex French Revolution enhancement mod (this is still technically a WIP but I haven’t touched it in months, and most of what I’d done was add bathrooms - I’ve got some serious game level bathroom design skills), 3 Seconds of Life (a random band conceived by my brother and I at like midnight in a hotel room - if you know how well the two of us get along you can probably guess how far this got), and probably other stuff that I’m not remembering off-hand.
And I’m working on an Emilie Autumn themed table for Future Pinball, but I think that one might actually get finished…maybe.
Update: Three songs, take that! The second one’s short-ish again, but there’s actually some substance to the third and I think it came out pretty decent as well. That’s what you get when there’s thunderstorms, meaning not much else to do.
In addition to adding no real features of note and not delivering on the improvements in resource consumption that were promised (it may be better, but it’s still a memory hog), Firefox 3 broke my sidebar - apparantly over an objection to the h2 tag. I’ve got it more or less fixed, at least for me, by using font instead. Let me know if it looks wrong for anyone else now. Yes, I know that’s technically the wrong way to do it, but it was a quick fix and for the moment it works.
Well, as some of you may have heard, nine tracks from the exponentially delayed Guns n’ Roses album Chinese Democracy have leaked and, here and there (meaning on now DMCA’d YouTube videos), I’ve heard them. Well, I guess the first question would be: Is it worth the wait? Well the sad answer is that no, it’s not at all worth the wait. I was never really a fan of anything but three or so of their hits, so take that into consideration, but for me not one of those songs was even worth the time I spent listening to it. The songs range from average to bad, mostly staying closer to the “bad” side, and Axl Roses’ vocals never get above bad. Seriously, I mean he wasn’t great to begin with - but the years haven’t done him any favors. He’s gone from a lousy singer who worked well in the context of the band to and abysmal singer that, even in the best band in the world, wouldn’t be able to make good music. And speaking of the band, they just sound pretty average. Not horrendous, just completely blands and just there. I get the impression that they’re going for a more “modern” sound, but the end result is bland compositions that completely lack the energy that made the classic GnR songs worth listening to. In the end, it’s just plain dull with mediocre compositions and flat out bad vocals. The band will sell copies just on the hype surrounding this release, but unless the final album is much, much better than these leaked versions, it’s going to be a total dissappointment.
I guess I’m kind of obligated (blogligated?) to write about music stuff, even when I’ve got nothing good to say about it. Yes, contrary to the way my previous posts would seem, I don’t like every scrap of music I listen to, I’m just infinitely more apt to write about the ones that I actually do. Partly because it’s more enjoyable, partly because I hope people would be more willing to give me their music voluntarily to listen to (no takers on this yet) if they don’t think I’m going to trash it. But the good must come with the bad as well, and in all fairness to my (few) readers I need to encompass both sides. OK, enough of my rant - here we go.
All Ends is a band which I think I’d heard a couple of tracks from somewhere a while ago, but since I didn’t actually have any clear memories of those I was going in with no expectations - other than that I knew they are a female fronted metal band. The opening track, Still Believe, isn’t bad. Not mind blowing, but decent enough. Rather than the traditional mellow symphonic sound that generally tends to go along with female fronted metal (or alternatively the extreme style of In This Moment or Arch Enemy that exists as it’s exact opposite), the band basically falls into traditional heavy metal. The guitars are blazing, the vocals are powerful rather than angelic. They’re almost like a modern day Girlschool, except with a modern rather than 80’s sound. Unfortunately, almost every song on the CD is dull and repetitive. The guitars are loud, but ultimately simplistic and uninteresting. The drumming isn’t noticeably bad, but it’s not noticeably good either - just falling into the background. The only highlight of the album is Within Temptation reject song Just A Friend. Mostly made up of piano and orchestration, with a heavy chorus part that they would have been better off leaving out. It’s still a good song, though, and, while the singer is no Sharon Den Adel, it’s the best vocal performance of the album. Just A Friend might be worth grabbing off iTunes if you’re a lover of female fronted metal and have already heard Within Temptation and Nightwish’s entire discographies. The rest of the album, however just sounds like the same uninspired track playing over and over again. Disappointing and generic - not recommended. 3.5/10
Would ever attempt something like this. Prepare to behold the horror of Nightwish’s song Dead to the World played on accordion. I don’t know why either.
Suggestions from one person for a topic that was basically “If You Could Make A Law, What Would It Be?” on the Emilie Autumn forum and my responses. Do note that this wasn’t intended to be offensive to the person in question, and this isn’t the first one of these posts I’ve criticized, I just spent a longer time on this one and felt like putting it up because I spent way too much time on it. Click the “more” link to read, just to keep this neat. It made more sense with the original BBcode quoting, but I think you can figure it out. And try not to be too offended, there’s no bad language but I’m sure the ideas of it are going to get me in hot water. Read the rest of this entry »
So, today I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (long enough name?) and it was good. Not a fantastic, jaw dropping film - but more than good enough that you probably won’t be disappointed. Sure, it’s a little far-fetched (OK, occasionally very much so) but, I mean, this is Indiana Jones - no one’s expecting realism. Despite the switch from Nazis to communists, it’s still the same basic idea as ever - Indy gets captured by the bad guys, escapes, gets captured again, escapes again, follows the clues, finds the treasure, the bad guy tries to take it, the bad guy dies - but there’s enough variety and crazy action sequences to make it as interesting as…well as interesting as an Indiana Jones movie (and by that I mean one of the better two). It’s everything you’d expect, and maybe even just a little bit more. Certainly a good movie and a very welcome return (that’s obviously setting itself up for another sequel) and the ending is really good. It’s as exciting and adventure filled as ever and is certainly worth seeing, at least as a matinée, though it’s nothing you’ll die without seeing before the DVD release.
Oh, and the trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army looks really good.
A hit list of four people on a piece of paper does not a plot to commit murder make. Seriously, try finding a high school student who doesn’t hate four people in their school - I guarantee you can’t. Just because someone was (a) stupid enough to write down the people they hate on a piece of paper and (b) stupid enough to throw that piece of paper out on school property (which would be damn hard to prove anyways, unless you’ve got the whole business on camera) doesn’t mean they have a plot to commit murder. It means the person in question is an idiot, but for better or worse that’s not a crime…yet. Taking threats seriously is all well and good…when there’s an actual threat, but without any further evidence of intent this all seems like a massive overreaction. Not saying they shouldn’t have done something, just that actually bringing charges against the person for the content of a carelessly discarded not is a little ridiculous. More than a little. Of course, I suppose we should expect no better of those darned slum kids over at Silver Lake . Just kidding guys.
I guess Warren Spector really did have a good idea of the future. Just how long until we see this in our daily paper?
Bootcamp for Betty
APR - Portland
Madison High School junior Betty Souza will spend the semester at the Canyon
City Bootcamp, say school officials. The crime? “We have verified that she
told another student that she knows how to make a bomb,” said Principal Martin
Gordly.
What makes this case notable is that the parents have filed a lawsuit against
the school district. “Our daughter wears black,” said father Brandon Souza
in a prepared statement. “She has an occipital jack and we let her use it to
play games. We allowed her to get a tattoo when she turned 16, but none of
this makes her a criminal.”
The parents claim that Betty was discussing a novel by Tom Robbins taught at
Madison High when the mention of explosives occurred.
Betty Souza will not be alone in Canyon City. Last year 15,234 young people
served sentences in the state’s FBI-run “good behavior” camps, a legacy of
the Northwest War.
Don’t laugh, he inadvertently predicted September 11th more than a year before it happened*.
*OK, now you can laugh - but the parallels are surprising.
Points if you got my references on your own, for those of you who didn’t - Deus Ex! Game of the year 2000 and IMO the single best game ever made. Warren Spector is lead designer of the game and that whole quoted article appeared in a newspaper in it. As far as the whole September 11th thing, the twin towers didn’t appear in the game’s (this being set around 2052) New York skyline because they wouldn’t fit into texture memory - not out of any real sense of impending disaster. Still, a little bit of an odd coincidence isn’t it?
That is all, you can now yell at me and tell me to “think of the children” and all that stuff.
Listening to the first track of this album, I was already dismissing it as another generic pop folk album. You see, Fantasy Escape violates my first rule of music production: Always start with one of your best songs. Always! No exceptions to this one. You see, the first track - Reality of You - is one of only two weak tracks on the album, but having that one lousy (it’s actually not too bad, just not nearly as good as most of the rest) could completely lose the average listener. Fortunately, I have an obligation to listen to the entire album before passing judgement - otherwise I might very well have missed out on one of the best albums I’ve heard any time recently. After mediocre, overly twangy opener comes a series of brilliant guitar-based tracks which seem to do everything right. I love her lyrics, they’re nothing short of incredible. She first started writing the songs while working on a fantasy novel and it definitely shows - dealing with dreams, escapism, and still believing in fairy tales, among other things. The guitar and voice combination immediately brings to mind Ani DiFranco, although not nearly as harsh in voice or guitar playing style. Her voice is a bit floaty, but pleasant enough. The sixth track, The World Is Gone, comes in with about the last thing I would have expected - a piano ballad. In addition to being a great change of pace for the album, it’s a very nice track in itself. After that comes another three brilliant guitar based tracks leading up to Matthew’s Mind, a very Tori Amos sounding track (and I mean that as a compliment). While the rest of the album basically goes through the same basic cycles of guitar and piano based tracks, with the exception of the upbeat and percussion heavy Evil Eye which sounds just a bit out of place and is my personal least favorite track from the album, but never once sounds repetitive or recycled. The album ends with on a humorous note with Tinkerbell a song about trying to find what will make one man all powerful (keep wishing, have a good sense of humor, and don’t forget to write your thank you notes, for the record ). I love just how Fantasy Escape feels very personal without being like someone else trying to drop their problems on you. It’s enthralling, uplifting, and just generally enjoyable music. Highly recommended for fans of Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco, and anyone who’s curious can check out samples on her MySpace.
Windows Media Player (11) takes 14 seconds to add a song to my playlist. 14 full seconds (I really timed it). Isn’t that just a little bit ridiculous? Add it to my long list of complaints with the program, it’s still not going to stop me from using it (at least not yet). Still seems totally ridiculous, though. Of course, it worked better when I was using a WPL playlist (rather than M3U), but when I let it use it’s own format it acquired this annoying tendency of switching tracks on my external hard drive for the identical tracks on my C drive. This didn’t cause a problem on the laptop, but when hooking the hard drive up to another computer the playlist was no longer pointing to the correct files - pain in my…
Of course, it’s worth noting that it’s partially my fault for having more than 1600 songs on one playlist, but even on smaller ones it takes way too long - especially given that this is a fast-ish computer.
Guy Fieri doesn’t know what American chop suey is! This is an outrage. Well, at least he didn’t until having it at a New Hampshire restaurant (no, I don’t remember off hand - give me a break). Of course, I can’t say as I actually like the stuff - it’s one of those meals I always hated (and still do) when it’s served for Sunday lunch at Grandma’s, but still…
If you don’t know, Guy Fieri is the host of Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and Guy’s Big Bite - as well as being the winner of the second season of Who Will Be The Next Food Network Star, which sadly I did actually watch (though I haven’t watched any of them since).
Don’t worry folks, I shouldn’t be making a habit of this - but this video is actually worth your time. Why? Well, for one this it’s the first good video of Nightwish’s career. For another, it’s one of their best songs, though completely untraditional for them - sounding more like a Jethro Tull tune in some ways. And…I got embedding code that doesn’t break everything over here, which is very nice. If this looks terrible at your resolution, let me know and I’ll make it smaller.
So, today I was listening to the debut album or Allison Stayer, a singer-songwriter from Montana, and I was fairly impressed. She sings beautifully, which is always a good start with me since while I’ll consider most anything - if you’re singing sucks it’s going to be a lot harder to impress me. Not one of those immediately memorable voices or particularly unique, but very pretty and more than enough to carry the music. The music itself is primarily piano driven pop folk, ala Tori Amos or Rachael Sage, but more down tempo than many of her contemporaries, even getting a bit bluesy at times. Nothing about the instrumentals ever gets particularly complicated, it’s obviously intended to be lyrics driven. This is, of course, about what I’d expect for the style, but I really wouldn’t mind seeing just a little more complexity. The biggest complaint I have with the album, however, is that she never really establishes herself in your mind particularly well. I liked about 3/4 of the songs on the CD, but none of them were immediately unforgettable and, listening to them again, I’d never be able to immediately recognize who it was. Everything works well together, but at times just seems completely derivative. Not that there’s anything wrong with the songs themselves, just that she never does anything incredible unique, sticking to the standards of the style. While there’s obviously something to be said for not messing with a good thing, one of the most important parts of establishing yourself as a musician is taking what has been done and adding your own unique contribution to it. The Latest hour really lacks that unique something to make it new and memorable. As it stands, The Latest Hour is a solid release from a talented musician, it’s just not going to revolutionize anything. And, while the songwriting is solid, it lacks anything that will make a huge lasting impression - at least for me. Still, fans of Tori Amos and company will probably enjoy this.
Is nothing sacred anymore? Why did the History channel feel the need to get so damned political??? Is there no escape from this madness? I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to be able to watch while there’s nothing on without it being actually involving, basically as background noise. This is absurd!
Who would have thought of doing an electronic cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now”? Well apparently those crazy members of The Birthday Massacre would. The weirdest part is, it’s actually good - really good.
Another one of the stranger errors I’ve seen: “An expected exception has occurred.” If you’re expecting the exception, couldn’t you put in an error catcher or something. Or are you just trying to make me nutty?
So, I just found some free (yay) MP3’s of very old Emilie Autumn songs on a section of her website that is ridiculously old and probably shouldn’t still exist but, since it does, I’ll exploit it to it’s full potential. So…go over here. You can just stream the files, or right click - save target as to download them, whatever your preference.
I demand you listen to: Epilogue: What If, Remember
I recommend you listen to: Chambermaid, Rose Red, Castle Down, Heard It All, By the Sword
If you’re still interested, listen to: How Strange, Hollow Like My Soul, I Don’t Care Much, What If (Blackbird Remix)
Do not listen to: Either one of the Chambermaid remixes. They’re bad…trust me.
If you want some classical violin: Listen to everything under “On A Day”. They are worth listening to also, I just didn’t want to lump them in with all the other songs. And, as we all know, Bach’s Largo is the sexiest classical piece ever written.
Have fun with that! And do note that while Enchant is actually my favorite of her albums, her newer music sounds very different from this.
