This is officially Ghostland Observatory week. My roommate Amy and I went to see Ghostland Observatory play at the House of Blues in Boston on Thursday. I recently introduced her to the way frontman Aaron Behrens MOVES HIS BODY (at which time she became instantly hooked). The show was incredible. We got beer poured all over us, were forced to smell super stinky dreadlocks, and I got molested (some dude started kissing my neck), but yes. Incredible. Ever since the show, Amy and I have been listening to Ghostland non-stop. We even stole away from our multiple ward campout over the weekend to rock out in my car. Click that MOVES HIS BODY link and you'll understand. I saw GLO for the first time in 2005 (I believe?) at Gallery Lombardi in Austin. It was a private party at a tiny venue and I don't remember how my friends and I ended up there (one of your boyfriends had work in the gallery? some random work friend? car died right in that spot?). Whatever it was, it was the greatest luck of all time. I've been a (non-slutty) groupie ever since. Today's sixty seconds of sound does not resemble their music, but I composed it from super manipulated snippets of Ghostland Observatory's best songs. THE SUNDAY SOUND: September 18, Observing Ghostland Observatory. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece.
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Have any of you read Cupcake Brown's memoir A Piece of Cake? My roommate Amy recommended it. Anita, my other roommate, recently downloaded the audio book. Among umpteen other personal traumas, Cupcake's biological father threw her to the wolves as a tot. She turned to prostitution and drugs amidst years of abuse from the strangers she was forced to live with. Cupcake finally catches a break and inherits $25k. Papa Dearest decides this is a good time to reconnect with his beloved daughter. Of course. Enter the greatest audio book recording I've ever heard. As I listened to Cupcake absolutely RIPPING into her father, it struck me: "You know, if I took out some of this personal narrative and the few mentions of the word 'father', I could easily create the most heroic telling-off-your-ex piece ever!" Without further ado, I present today's sixty seconds of sound: a cathartic berating of all crappy exes. Though the angry curse words did add a lovely element, I used a signal generator to bleep out the worst of it. Oh, and an apt karaoke tune. THE SUNDAY SOUND: September 11, (Don't Want to Be) Close to You. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. Irene less than expected, but still a bruiser for many. Hurricane Irene: Wall Street planning to open Monday. U.S. Authorities: At least 19 killed as a result of Hurricane Irene. Irene Adds to a Bad Year for Insurance Industry. I'm so grateful the news headlines aren't what they could have been, and Boston's experience of Hurricane Irene was not nearly what it was for North Carolina. Or Virginia. Or Pennsylvania. Despite our less intense version of the storm, there were numerous reports of downed electrical wires and uprooted trees in and around Somerville (and Boston proper). So far, this is the only reported damage in my area due to Irene's wrath. My roommate Anita and I spent some time watching the driving rain and quaking trees from the relative safety of our enclosed front balcony. The sounds of the storm were absolutely fascinating. There were these wonderful moments when the wind sounded like a supersonic stalling engine. Here's sixty seconds of what we experienced. THE SUNDAY SOUND: August 28, The Roar of Hurricane Irene. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. I never know how to artistically deal with the topic of slavery. I often feel compelled to comment on it in some meaningful way, but what can I really say? My difficulty with it isn't a white guilt thing. Not that I don't recognize white privilege. No. My reaction is more of a "how the hell did that even happen?" thing. Same goes for the Holocaust. And Apartheid. My brain cannot even process how one group of people somehow gets (takes?) enough power to keep another group completely powerless. HOW. DOES. IT. HAPPEN. This commentary feels trite. I don't know. I can't even begin to analyze it. Today's sixty seconds of sound features snippets from a recording made in 1941. An 85-year-old man named Isom Mosely is interviewed after a lifetime of being a slave in Gee's Bend, Alabama. THE SUNDAY SOUND: August 21, Isom Mosely. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. The National Poetry Slam was held in Boston this year. I was blessed (yes, I am using the word blessed here, people!) to attend the Finals at the Berklee Performance Center. Over 80 slam teams from all over the country competed for the top spot. The final four were from Denver, New York City, Columbus, and Providence. I heard twenty original poems last night. I love spoken word performances of all kinds (I'm assuming you know that by now considering my body of work), but three of the performances really stood out for me. I related, I was moved, I was nearly brought to tears. One. About being a soft woman. "Is it so much easier to make us monsters than to simply make us dresses?" Two. About being the child of divorce. "You watch the sunset too often, it just becomes 6pm." Three. About being a determined believer despite it all. "Never asking is easier to deal with than never being answered." You'll really just have to listen for yourself. THE SUNDAY SOUND: August 14, The 2011 National Poetry Slam. A special thanks to my dear friends Rori and Amy for making this post possible. I needed this bit of raw inspiration. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. I had the privilege of seeing Bon Iver play at Boston's House of Blues on Friday night. Justin Vernon, the main musical brains behind the Bon Iver outfit, is easily my favorite emergent artist of the last couple years. I was absolutely thrilled to be at the sold-out show. My friend (and hopefully new show partner) Kristy purchased SRO tickets for the upper mezzanine. We were pretty well set for the evening. Had I known our bags would not be checked, I would have brought my big girl field recorder. I wanted to capture every. single. song. But Kristy and I only had our perma-gear on us: our trusty cell phones (hers much more technologically advanced than mine). While I was trying to capture all the audio I could, she successfully captured the picture to your right. Throughout Bon Iver's set, there were nine musicians on stage. NINE. And all were playing at least three different instruments each. EACH. The amount of talent shoved onto that stage was overwhelming. The best performance of the night was a sped up / more drum-filled version of "Blood Bank" (click through for a rad fan-made video featuring the studio version for comparison). Already one of my very favorite songs, this performance thrilled me to no end. As Kristy said, it was a spiritual experience. Today's sixty seconds of sound is a bit more than sixty seconds. Forgive me. I could only cut so much! Still, this sampling will never do it justice. THE SUNDAY SOUND: August 7, Bon Iver via cell phone. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. I found myself at the Charles Playhouse lounge on Friday night for some serious karaoke, accompanied by my roommate and darling clique of co-workers. I can describe this evening only as "out of control." Take from that what you will. My performance of choice was La Isla Bonita by Madonna, and the song has been cycling through my head ever since (along with Because the Night by 10,000 Maniacs. Did someone sing that? I can't recall. Even though I only drank water, I was drunk). Karaoke is a blessing for all involved. The worst singers boldly rock the free nation, and the best singers can get a few moments of glory (otherwise lost due to lack of fame). With this in mind, I trolled the interwebs for any and every amateur cover of La Isla Bonita I could find. Turns out all sorts of interesting characters love this tune:
THE SUNDAY SOUND: July 31, La Isla Asustadiza. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. My Sherpa* Rachel Coon is in town from Seattle! She rules. We've been all over the place: shopping, eating, swimming, repeat. We're heading to Burlington, Vermont tonight to celebrate her birthday (where we will shop, eat, and swim). We were taking a Sunday nap this afternoon (best pastime ever?), and I awoke with a start (internal dialogue: "CRAP! I HAVE TO DO A SUNDAY SOUND POST BEFORE I LEAVE!!!!"). So I sneaked out of bed, grabbed my trusty Tascam DR-100, and crawled back to our napping lair. Today's sixty seconds is what then ensued. * We've called each other "Sherpa" for years now. Ask why. It is a great tale. THE SUNDAY SOUND: July 24, Waking up Sherpa with a Field Recorder. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. ... and she's back! Folks, my vacation was the jam. My family was electric. My friends were electric. My pilgrimage to Mormon Mecca was electric. A bit about Mormon Mecca: Soooooo many of my people (my people! I have a "my people!") live in Utah as it was the place we all traveled to when it suddenly became legal to kill us off in the 1800's. Pretty much every Mormon person I know has lived there at some point. Tons go to the Church-owned school BYU. So I decided, after 27 years of being Mormon, I needed to make the pilgrimage (and a reunion with my best gal pals was the perfect motivation). One of the attractions on Temple Square is the Tabernacle. You may have heard of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir...? This is their home. It is a dome-shaped auditorium built for church meetings between 1864 and 1867. It is so acoustically sensitive that a pin dropped at the pulpit can be heard all the way at the back (roughly 170 feet away). Before the days of the gadgets I love most (microphones! electronics! amplifiers!), the construction of the building allowed for an audience of 5,000 to hear every last word. For those of you who can't make the pilgrimage, I bring you sixty seconds of the official acoustic demonstration. And for your visual entertainment, a slideshow of photos from my premiere Utah adventure. THE SUNDAY SOUND: July 17, An Acoustic Demontration. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. MY MOST RECENT COVERT OPS MISSION: Sneak an audio recorder into the choir loft. A little over two years ago, the church building I had attended for three years was destroyed by fire. It was an intense day. And ever since that happened, I have missed that building. I missed the beautiful windows. I missed the steeple. I missed seeing Longfellow's house every week. I even missed the satisfaction I felt after scoring a decent parking place in the mayhem that is Harvard Square. UNTIL TODAY! Our beautiful building in Cambridge, Massachusetts was completed! The re-dedication was today and I had the amazing opportunity to sing in the choir that rang in the occasion. It was a pretty big event for us folks in the Mormon world. Henry B. Eyring and Boyd K. Packer spoke to us and ol' Henry offered the dedicatory prayer. I felt so privileged to be a mere five people away from these sensational dudes (mega inspirers in my spiritual world). To mark the day, today's Sunday Sound is five times longer than usual. I successfully hid my Tascam DR-100 in my purse and recorded our performance of Brahms' "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place." We sang this particular song because it was also performed at the original dedication of the building in 1956. The recording is far from perfect due to the whole "not quite sure if I was allowed to sneak in an audio recorder" thing, but you get the idea. Today is a blessed day. THE SUNDAY SOUND: June 19, How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place. For those following along in an RSS reader, click through to the original post to hear today's piece. |
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