Having worked at home alot over the last week, I've been listening to music whilst working, and suddenly realised that although I had Winamp set to "all audio", it seemed to be repeating itself. I knew there should be more tracks, but I just couldn't think what was missing.
Although the playlists were working OK.
I've obviously listened to the same "all audio" tracks for so long I'd not noticed that nearly 2K songs weren't in the library.
Suddenly I'm rediscovering stuff that I'd forgotten about!
In my Favourites playlist, I've got Barry White & Lisa Stansfield singing "All Around The World". Sad, I know, but that's not the important point, so pay attention.
Lisa sings as she does on her original solo version, and Bazza just chimes in with the occasional "oh yeah", "Mmm-hmmm", "Say something baby", "That's right, that's right", etc.
Loved it! (The beauty of keeping a list of films that came out months ago and watching them now, is that the ones with shit reviews get removed from my list, so I keep seeing great films).
Somewhat predictable twist to give the dynamic tension that a plot needs, but well played nevertheless. Nice ending. Action was pretty good, characterisation OK, acting good - some old names in it as well as Mark Wahlberg (spelling?). All round, a well-spent 90 minutes or so
Song of the Week: Budget Meeting
An odd title for the music overlaying the main battle scene in the much-maligned King Arthur, and the tune (in fact, the entire soundtrack) is Hans Zimmer amped up. Everything he developed starting with Crimson Tide - drums, male choir, brass, etc - to make his recognisable sound has been thrown in here and the dials twisted to 150%. A lot of people have reviewed it saying "Hans, do something different for a change", but I feel that this is archetypal, yes, but still powerful.
This particular track is 7 or 10 minutes long (one version is the one from the film, the other version is a different mix), so it comprises several different sections with slightly different feels. A powerful bit, possibly my favourite of this "triumphant" music, kicks in around 4:30 into the film version. A real driving drum beat, with a choir soft in the background, and muted brass giving a motif that can be heard in a few of the tracks in the OST.
For MadJock's benefit, it starts at 2:37 into this Battlestar Galactica mash-up thing:
Edit: Actually, for some reason when I watched this on youtube.com, I could see the time since start + total time, but when embedded here, it's "time left" that I'm seeing. In which case it's 3:55 remaining.
Odd.
Anyway, another one that I want to listen to when I get the surround sound fitted. Or when I get a car with a nice stereo. I think the car's coming sooner....
World Of Warcraft Update
Two words: Pish. Uninstalled.
How they call it "role playing" I'll never know. RPG via a PC changed the day that Baldur's Gate was released. I know WoW is "MMORPG", but it's really "MMO Hack And Slash". Old idea. Very boring. Great for 14 year old virgin American geeks.
But it reminded me I had a copy of Warcraft III, a "demons, zombies, and elves" version of Command and Conquer, and I'm happily playing that when I get some spare time. Good game, even now.
I'm getting quite into movie music: real dramatic Hans Zimmer-esque type of music. The sort of thing you hear on trailers for the Spidey films, LOTR, King Arthur, etc. Lots of choral work, drums, and a big dramatic build up.
And nothing comes more dramatic than Trinity (nothing to do with She Of The PVC Skinsuit in the Matrices).
It starts of real, real quite, just a thrumming baseline, with a subtle brass(?) theme coming in. Then a few drums. Then a choir (very Omen-ish, male choir singing in Latin or something). It all gradually builds up and up into ... well, a masterpiece in triumphant music. Then it goes silent, pauses, and it starts again in mid-level triumphalism, and builds up again.
You've got to hear it.
Loud.
If there was a bagpipe in it, the Scots would have played this at Culloden and might have actually won. Ah well, you live and learn, eh?
It's songs like this that make me wish I had my surround sound installed at home again... I wonder if I can fit it while Her Indoors is out shopping. Think she'll notice??
So, for the benefit of Mad-"If It Ain't On YouTube It Ain't Worth Bothering About"-Jock, here's a Heroes fan movie thing with the music.
God, I'd forgotten how much I loved this, back in the day. Ben Liebrand (THE mixmaster of the '80s, in my opinion), mixing Jeff Wayne's prog-rock classic War of the Worlds. Pure class. Big fat orchestral sounds, Richard Burton's voice (made even more melodramatic by a slight change in tone/timbre), and some classic '80s scratchy-mixy type of sounds.
Class.
Of course, I'll be fed up to my back teeth with it by next week, but there you go.
And while cruising around YouTube, came across this - Now, I rarely enjoy big solo breaks on any instrument, but even I've got to admin that Phil can't half play the drums, even as an old geezer.
Ever since hitting the pub on Saturday, watching some game (rugger? footer? god knows, all look the same to me), that bloody Phil Collins song/gorilla Dairy Milk ad has been running through my head.
So. Found the MP3. Turned the volume up. Loving it!
I've just upgraded last.fm's WMP plugin, and been doing some "people who listened to this also listened to this" type of browsing.
Here's a screenshot of one user who's been listening to Matt Nathanson this week:
1,555 tracks listened to. Is that even possible in a week?
1555 x 4 minutes = 6220 minutes = 103 hours.
Jesus. Someone hasn't got anything better to do.
And I know he's got a few albums out (5?). So that's maybe 50 tracks. So she's listened to each one.... er... hold on... complex maths coming up.... 31 times.
She must be deaf or insane.
Or maybe left her PC on repeat and went on holiday.
Just listening to "Oops Up" by Snap! The second of two great songs on an album of shite.
This verse always makes me laugh:
She is soft as bubble bath I am as hard as chinese math Ready for the ultimate affection Took out a pack obtain my protection Rolled it on one hard stroke It was my last and yes it broke
Reading Madjock's "Song of the Week" series, I was reminded of my Music To Listen To series, which got to a grand total of ... er... Number 1. Which was promptly dissed my DJ Fly because I made a fatal error on the music front.
Whatever. Get over it. Things Gonna Change still rocks, no matter who plays it...
Anyway, on with number 2
Some background. There was I a few years ago. Single. Feeling sorry for myself. A week off work because I had some holiday to use up, but nothing doing as I had no woman, no friends, couldn#t be asked going "darn sarth" etc, etc.
Result: A week watching Sky Movies. Lots of them. Even the shitty day time ones.
Well, one of them, "Cowboys and Angels", was as shitty as the rest. It was about... well, a modern day Texan or whatever cowboy who ... well.... meets an angel. Like I said, shitty.
But... It had a sublime motif running through it. Not a full track, just background music repeated a few times. Kind of operatic, but not classical opera. More like a soprano singing in another language (Italian, I thought at the time, although I wasn't sure even though I speak a bit), over a modern beat.
Sounded pretty good, so I watched all the way through to the credits (not advised! - definitely wished I had it on DVD so's I could fast-forward), and found out some details of the composer (not the singer).
Internet research revealed... nothing. Nada. Zip. Couldn't believe it.
However, I kept coming back to it every few months, and eventually found a post on a newsgroup where someone was selling not-generally-available film music via CD, and had this track on one of them. Got the CD... sounded pretty good. Then, by coincidence, I found out that the singer was Sasha Lazard, and she was releasing an album The Myth Of Red shortly thereafter.
Ordered it, and the new re-mixed version of the single, "Angelli" (Angels) is just fucking beautiful. Starting with a chilled-out cello section, it seques into Sasha's trained operated voice overlaying a slow modern beat.
(Incidentally, this was my intro to so-called "cross-over" music - classical + modern, principally opera-light vocals over a modern background - and the delights of Emma Shapplin, Sarah Brightman, Filippa Giordano and other not-so-beautiful artists, including Thomas Otten, who bizarrely sounds like he sang the theme music from Blackadder II, but can be quite good regardless).
Haunting. Enchanting. Magical. And dare I say it, angelic. It really is the most beautiful piece of music in my collection, only beating "Evenstar" by a smidgen.
Summary: Every time it comes on, my soul recharges a little bit...
I'm still recovering from the disaster that was moving my music from the C: to the Y:, with the simultaneous renaming of about 10% of my files into the same name as another song, and the dumping of about 30% into folders they don't belong to (eg, putting about 40 albums into "Various Artists", even though the tags are very accurate - even now - about who the artist is).
Never mind, back to the point.
I've just seen three tracks (normally it's only two) with the same tag for the title, the same filename, in the same folder.
Bedshaped by Keane.
So what I normally do is listen to a song, and if I don't recognise it, I hunt down the lyrics and rename the tags. Sod renaming all the files. That just causes more problems, trust me.
But .. hold on.. all three songs sound the same. Just the rest of the Keane album.
I've just been reading through some of the music reviews provided on tnt-audio.com, a site for audiophiles (or hi-fi buffs, as I called them over the years). And it's inspired me to write a series of posts about the music I listen to. And I mean JUST listen to. Not "put on in the background whilst working". Not "play in the car". And not "singalong to".
Just stuff I put on to play, sit back, close my eyes, and listen. And to which I maybe tap my a foot or finger, if I'm feeling particularly worked up about the song.
The sort of stuff that I'd listen to first, if someone gave me a cracking music set up to listen with which to listen. OK, occasionally, "stuff to sing-a-long with" will sneak into the list (Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler - go on, I dare you to say you've never strutted your stuff to Jim Steinman's best!) as will "stuff to dance to" (You Got The Love by The Source and Candi Staton)
So here's the first: Things Gonna Change, by John Lee Hooker
Now, I'm not a blues person. I think this is probably the only blues song in my collection, and that's after buying (yes, BUYING... that thing were you like something so much that you hand-over cold, hard, cash and get something non-digital in return) the CD and listening to it.
John's got the deep gravelly voice, and is one hot guitar player to boot (take a listen to this sample). It's a cool little song, which summarises the first time I heard it:
Sat on the back of a boat, rocking gently in the bay of some Greek island which I forget the name of now, small enough for one village, two tavernas, and not much else. Myself and three mates where on one yacht, in a flotilla of about 10 or so others. It was in the middle of the two week break, so we'd had enough time to get to know everyone else on the boats, and scare off anyone who thought we were too young/too drunk/too balshy/all of the above.
So there were about 8 of us playing some card game, for a drachma a time or something. The music was playing. The rum was flowing. The stars were shining like you've never seen them before. A lightning storm was playing out on the horizon. The evening was balmy but with a bit of a breeze to cool us off. And we were all well fed.
The perfect setting for the dulcet tones of La Hooker (so to speak) to come out of the boombox. I was hooked (no pun intended).
That song will forever transport me back to that delightful summer evening.
