Poetry Animations is a YouTube channel put together by British videographer Jim Clarke. His project animated old images of famous to make it appear as if they are reading their poems. Some of the recordings are the poet's reading their works. Where archived readings were unavailable, they are voiced by other readers.
A brief explanation about 3 months without a blog post: dedicating this blog to music alone is just too limiting. Call it a byproduct of my job navigating the Internet, call it my background in Literature, call it my undying quest for fun-yet-useless facts and articles, but this blog needs to start thinking outside the box of "local music."Part of my frustration in updating is below: TiVo guilt (or in my case Bookmarking and Google Reader guilt) is what happens when technology gives you seemingly unlimited content choices, but time and the need to sleep give you only so many hours in a day to absorb what you've collected.I definitely suffer from this, but hopefully the content changes here will alleviate some of that. Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe you've bookmarked 30 sites about Garfield minus Garfield but you don't have time to keep up every day?
"Economists call this 'opportunity costs,' " explains Berens. "You're sitting there and you have to weigh, well, 'I have to watch this thing, because I promised myself when I told TiVo ... I want the whole season of that! Go get it! And go get things like it!' And so you've committed to this decision and it's a burden -- suddenly your relaxation has turned into more work."
"With infinite media, you have infinite choices, and therefore you have infinite opportunity costs," he says. "Your satisfaction index of the thing you actually choose can never be equivalent to the infinite opportunity costs, so we're in this position of being behind the cognitive eight-ball all the time."
So I stand by my earlier statement: This blog is about musical discovery, not criticism, so I'll leave you with a bevy of Devon Sproule songs and links and let you figure things out for yourself.
I will say that you'd be a fool not to already own Devon's Keep Your Silver Shined, seeing as its one of the best records I've picked up in the last two years. Confident, relaxed, accessible and terrifying in its execution once you realize how young Devon is and what a fantastic musical future she has ahead of her.
Okay, it's time to try a brand new, uber-engaging feature called "Monday Funday." I'll post a question or a list (hopefully) each week and take comments and submissions until Friday, at which point I'll post a "Friday Funday" follow-up with links to download everything. Complicated? Let's do a live one:Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and most of my memories of childhood revolve around this time of year. Whether I was dancing to "The Monster Mash" or watching The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (see below), this time of year was it for me. This week's entry will be the beginning of a Halloween hit list, starting with Bing Crosby's "The Headless Horseman" and Otis Redding's "Trick or Treat."
Otis Redding - "Trick or Treat" Please leave comments with your suggestions, and make sure to check back Friday for the potentially embarrassing lack of results. Huzzah!
I'm always a little skeptical of XPN's annual countdown extravaganza, probably because the "Greatest Artists" and "Greatest Albums" of previous years were way too heavy on classic rock. On top of that, last year's "Most Memorable Musical Moments" was a very outside-the-box concept that had some great community-building, blog-ready moments, but it was a little too intangible to be really significant.This year's "885 Essential XPN Songs" countdown (obnoxiously interrupted and overshadowed by the Fall Fund Drive) got a lot of things right. Take a look at the top 5 tunes:5. Wilco - "Impossible Germany" 4. Kirsty Maccol - "In These Shoes" 3. Jeff Buckley - "Hallelujah" (3rd version of the song included in the countdown) 2. David Grey - "Babylon" 1. Richard Thompson - "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" I can't even tell you how proud I am to live in a city where a Richard Thompson tune is the most essential anything. I was seriously moved -- much more so than I am watching the Phillies get shut out in Game 2 -- so kudos to XPN and all my fellow listeners. Even the top 20 looks good, with Amos Lee and the long forgotten Alexi Murdoch both making appearances.Still, Barnes and Barnes "Fish Heads" is my top XPN song. A Kid's Corner childhood is a hard thing to overcome.... And what about you folks? Any favorite XPN-centric tunes, or a similar disgust with Helen Leight's playlists?
I'm so happy that Robert Plant has proven himself to be the smartest -- and most surprisingly smart -- of the aging Rock Gods of yore. According to a message on his website, Plant has no plans to tour within the next two years, and "all the musicians that surround the [Led Zeppelin reunion] story are keen to get on with their individual projects and move forward." Clearly that's not the case for Jimmy "Say, Coverdale / Page wasn't a bad idea" Page, but thank you, Robert Plant, for having the common sense to not butcher those high notes.And why should he? His collaboration with Alison Krauss has been wildly successful and has yielded a whole new sound and audience for him. In fact, he's the only member of the "old guard" to do anything interesting and relevant in recent memory -- eat your hearts out Mick, Eric and Pete. With any luck, the next two years will see a follow-up from the duo and give some late-career credit to a singer with an amazing feeling for blues that was so often buried by Page's histrionics (and I love Led Zep, but their day had passed well before Bonzo died).Seriously, how is this version of "Black Dog" not dozens of times more interesting than anything involving Jimmy Page?
