Evisceration by Camden

Sadly, it's not the name for a new band we all love, but a new friend of the site. He's someone I work with and has some cool pics of the city up. Also, he eulogizes Richard Pryor which I feel I neglected in the holiday crush. So check out Evisceration.

Pink Floyd 'world's best rock act' - Yahoo! News UK

Pink Floyd 'world's best rock act' - Yahoo! News UK

I felt this was important enough to share. This makes me really want to see one of Zeppelin's live shows on DVD. I also still think the late 60's were the golden age of rock, not sop much the 70's. BUt when you look at it, the 70's mainstream rock scene came mostly from what was going on in the 60's. Even the punk world still had it's roots in the late 60's with the Stooges, the MC5, and the Velvet Underground.

I hope everyone is having a good extended, holiday weekend.

Christmas Eve Downloads.

I've got a couple downloads for everyone to spend the holiday. The first is "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" read by Boris Karloff. The second is "The Junky Christmas" by Bill Buroughs. One is for those of you who need a good, heart warming story. The other is for those of you needing some Bill Lee this Christmas.

Personally, I can do with a bit of both.

I had special holiday greetings from Meera, Kammie and I recorded, but currently, I can't find them on the computer. HA!

http://box.net/public/themadterran/files/1804823.html
http://box.net/public/themadterran/files/1804824.html

Have a good holiday folks.

Early Holiday Gift. . .

http://davidgilmour.com/

I just can't stop listening to it. An mp3 and video version of the first song out by David Gilmour in over a decade, "Island Jam." It's so beautiful.

This is something a customer recommended today . .

Buika who is a Spanish performer who manages to blend dance rhythms, FLamenco, pop, jazz, soul and whatever else into her music. She's new to the US and will probably be the next BIG THING in the international fusion scene. The link takes you to a site in Spanish, but I'm hoping everyone would be able to figure out what the symbols mean to watch her video in WMP.

I'll look for something decent in English as things progress. In the meantime, give it a listen.

Another from one of our Holiuday helpers.

This time, I asked a fairly local friend of mine, Ella to write something up on her latest witness of the Phantom of the Opera, but she said something to the effect that she'd seen it so many times that it really wasn't worth it. Personally, I suspect she didn't want to get anymore fangirl/boy germs all over our wonderful blog. (As if my obessions with Pink Floyd wasn't anything less than that.) Instead, she offered this interesting bit of insight into the latest score from the Harry Potter series of movies. In essence, she offers us a bit of a contrast between the current composer and John Williams. Besides, who, when they saw the series and had an ear for this sort of thing weren't comparing the two. Personally, I've never been much on Williams. I find most of his work pretty much the same from movie to movie (aside from Star Wars and some of his major themes such as Superman).

Moving on, here's Ella:

I've always known Patrick Doyle was a tone poet, in the tradition of the expressionistic composers Saint-Saens and Mussorgsky. Where John Williams' Harry Potter soundtracks were more interested in developing character themes and providing "the moment," Patrick Doyle is as interested in telling a story as director Mike Newell. Since I'm the sort of person who uses all her senses to seek inspiration, I can honestly say that the GOF soundtrack touched me more as a whole than the scores for the previous three films. Standouts definitely include the foreboding first track, "The Story Continues," "Dark Mark," with its terrific introduction of the Voldemort theme, and the ethereally sentimental "Harry in Winter." Can't say I thought much of the rock contributions by Jarvis Cocker--while they do sum up the general disposition of a high school prom, if you take them apart, they don't add up to especially original or interesting rock pieces. However, I've felt more deeply the arc of Harry's story with Patrick Doyle's accompaniment than ever.

(Patrick: I can't say I agree on the Wierd Sisters, their tracks were a hell of a lot of fun. Maybe my school dance experience sucked that bad, but as Kammie said, that's for another story.)

Holiday Help

I knew things were going to be rough this holiday season with getting posts up. In fact, I've still got a couple in mind that I've got to write up and a mix to post up soon too. In the meantime, I asked a couple of our readers to write something up for the holidays. My girlfriend, Kammie, settled on writing a short article on Rasputina, a band that I've discovered and come to enjoy through her. It's curious how there's so much trading of interests during relationships.

Kammie:

I have adored Rasputina for years, so it was a bit odd that I didn't snatch up their newest cd, Frustration Plantation, when it came out. I have always been a bit odd with the cd's I buy though, so it isn't really that surprising. When I did finally pick up the cd earlier this year though, well, I was in love. I don't normally fangirl bands, it's just not my nature to get obsessive about one band, or even one type of music.

I should revise that though, because after this year I really could fangirl Rasputina, and yes, I am the reason they are in a great deal of The Mad Terran's mixes since I foisted them on him. It makes me feel more than a bit pleased to introduce something new—musically— to him, because truthfully it is usually the opposite, and he is sending me something new to listen to (and let me tell you sometimes that is a success, but there have been more than a few disasters that left me exasperated. Electronic. *shudders*)

Coincidentally, I found a copy of A Radical Recital (Rasputina's Live album) in my mail box a couple of weeks ago. A gift. And I haven't stopped listening to it since. The only thing it was missing was their rendition of Wish You Were Here, which I find I am addicted to as badly as I am addicted to candy. But I digress---Ha! I always do--- the band is actually better live. In the studio sets a bit is lost, like Melora's clever chatter. She is very charming and apparently knows how to work the crowd. Truthfully I find that impressive. More than a few bands sound horrible live. They also sound nice sung in the car, but that is for another story. . .

Aliens and Saucers

I decided to put a lot of things on hold that I had planned for this month to bring you this special mix. . .

Flying Saucers have Landed

It's a collection of songs revolving around Aliens landing or being sought out by mankind. The last four tracks are almost entirely instrumental, hopefully, run seemlessly together.

1. David Bowie - Five Years
2. Sufjan Stevens - Concerning the UFO Sighting
3. Klaatu -Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
4. Bernard Herrmann - Prelude - Outerspace
5. Tangerine Dream - Sunrise In The Third System
6. Pink Floyd - A Saucerful Of Secrets
7. Sun Ra & The Funkadelics - We Travel The Spaceways

We'll get on with our holidays plans as soon as possible, I've been too preoccupied working to get as much done as I'd like.

Next up, a request.

I'd like as many of you as possible who follow this little project of Meera's and mine to particpate in it. I need a short paragraph or two about some kind of musical experience you've all had this year that was important to you, or you could just talk about your favorite album this year. Whatever you like, but I'd like to have as many as possible by the 15th so we can start posting them with some special holiday things I've got in mind.

I'm also wondering, who uses Soulseek as a P2P. I'm hoping to maybe set up some kind of network for all of us to have access to mp3's we all have. I don't necessarily support piracy, perse, though I am quilty of quite a bit of downloading. I do however think it's a good thing to purchase music (and by my back accounts and employee purchase records, I buy a lot). I think it'd be good to further the aims of the site to share our musical passions though, and this is a cheap and easy way to do it (without granting wholesale access to each other's machines and IP addresses). So who's in?

Broken . . .

Well, it's finally happened. After two years, and about six months of it sitting on my dresser collecting dust, my MiniDIsc player finally gave out. I recently installed it on this machine because I'd frankly forgotten that I had it. We had a lot of good times together, it drowned out the noise one a plane trip to Dallas. It tromped around Book Fairs and Ren Fests with me.

I remember the first time I really got to use it was for 2003's King Mango Strut Parade, and it proved itself quite useful drowning out whatever else was doing on. It was nice because I didn't have to carry along my CD player and a limited amount of CDs. It also meant that I didn't need to carry along a bag, either, which freed me up quite well.

But now, it sits, it's mouth lolling open because it will no longer close. It'd been giving me trouble the past few days, stopping in the middle of tracks, so finally, it gave up it's finally breath, not letting me tranfer over my latest personal mix. In a few months, in a few weeks, most likely, I will have to look into buying a new mp3 player. I just hope to god, I don't kid myself into purchasing an iPod.

A little of The Who, in tribute:
http://box.net/public/themadterran/files/1477078.html