Last night Becky and I went to see the (roughly) octogenarian choir, Young at Heart.  The age range is actually from 70 to 95. There’s currently a documentary in theatres about them and it just so happened they were performing at the Wilshire Theater which is right next door to my office.  They started in a retirement home in Northampton Massachusetts and have toured all over the world.  The kicker is they sing songs from their grandchildren’s generation.  Their first number?  ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ by the Rolling Stones.  The crowd went nuts.  The very mixed crowd that is.  People screamed, whistled, applauded, yelled in between songs all as if they were actually watching the Stones.  Who else does the choir cover?  Nirvanna, Radio Head, Jefferson Airplane, Jimmi Hendrix (their rendition of Purple Haze was fucking awesome), the Ramones (old people singing ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ is also fucking awesome), Bruce Springsteen, and on and on and on.

The show was absolutely inspiring.  How can anyone complain about anything when 2 dozen old folks are rocking out on stage before you?  Not to mention the comedy and new meaning that any drug reference in any song takes on when the elderly set sings is it.  The show was really fantastic and I urge everyone to at least catch the documentary if you can’t see them live.  If you DO have the opportunity to see them, GO!  Not even kidding, it is sooooo worth it.

Here’s a link to the trailer for Young@Heart

Tags: youngat heart, concert, old people, wilshire theater, los angeles

A little live music to start this one.  Nice.  Acoustic guitar sounds pleasant.  I think I should know the song he’s playing…I don’t.

Why would you want to blog a cover?  Perhaps you reallllllly enjoy the music and performing it is an important part of your appreciation.  Borrowing, mixing, recomposing is all part of our musical culture.  Copyright and the internet clash and make it very difficult to do this.

Nice breakdown of music copyright and what exactly is copyrighted and what isn’t. 

Playing an old Tiny Grimes (sp?) song.  “Romance without Finance” which I think I might have to find online…eMusic here I come.  So basically, stripping out the copyrighted stuff (the notes that are on the copyrighted page) allows you the freedom to blog the cover.  It seems like that doesn’t make sense but the notes on the page are a small, small bit of what’s in the actual song.

Enjoying Lucas Gonze’s info and knowledge of early 20th century music.

Ah yes, Creative Commons has done well in letting remixes exist but not covers.  Certain music has been completely removed from the public domain thus damaging our musical culture.

In summary:  If you’re going to record a cover and blog it, cya.  Research your options and play between the copyrighted bits. 

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Tags: barcamp, barcampla 4, barcampla, music, covers, blogging

Check it out in me sidebar! It’s not in its full glory as I removed some of the styling to make it play nice with WordPress but it’s a vast improvement on their previous playlist widgets. Nice work kids, keep it up.

Find me on last.fm

UPDATE: I’m monkeying with the code to see if I can get the whole widget to display.

UPDATE: bah!  I dunno what’s wrong, back to the simpler, no styles version

technorati tags:last.fm, audioscrobbler, widgets, playlist, music

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I’m sitting at work listening to a long list of Ms. DiFranco’s fine work and the track Self Evident pops up. I haven’t heard it in a while (like a few months) and while it refers to events of 2001 it’s still wildly relevant and something to be listened to. Here’s the 30 second sample from Last.fm:

I definitely recommend pulling down the track if not the whole album from the music store of your choice. Damn she’s good.

technorati tags:ani difranco, music, poetry, relevant

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This morning, events lined up like they sometimes do when the universe takes a minute to smile.  I jumped on the early-for-me bus from the westside towards the office and thought nothing of it. 

Same bus, 20 minutes earlier. 

It’s one of the Big Blue Busses and it takes an odd path down Olympic, up into Century City then back to Olympic with a slight veer to the right brining us to Pico and then a stop at La Cienega where I depart and the bus continues on its way forgetting about me, leaving me to fend for myself. 

Well, let’s backup, at one of the stops in Century City a cheerful lady jumped on the bus (with the drivers permission) and handed a couple of coffee-cup sleeves to each rider.  It turns out, they were coupons for free coffee from a variety of establishments.  Free coffee, just for looking at the Bank of America logo.  (I’m not switching banks, nice try).

We’re getting to the poetic part…

One of the establishments on the coupon is Coffee Bean, and Coffee Bean is a block and a half from the office.  I take a slightly more circuitous route to get to Coffee Bean via the trusty skateboard, acquire my free joe and step outside, reinsert the earbuds (the Zen was on Random All Play) and to my surprise, Louis Armstrong was belting out “What a Wonderful World.”

I smile, with my free coffee in hand, the wind blowing by whilest I skate the block and a half back to work.  The best part?  The song ends as I roll up to the door of the building.

Every day should start that way…if only the universe would let it.

technorati tags:louis armstrong, poetic, coincidence, music, what a wonderful world, zen, bus, metro, los angeles

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For you have provided me with the variety of music that Halloween deserves and it is good. I shall listen to the wealth of Halloweeny songs for many, many hours.
Go the the playlists now…

technorati tags:halloween, music, playlists, radish

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