Rowan Tree and Red Thread

THE RULES: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. [Silly Facebook tagging stuff deleted. Recycle as desired.] No particular order...

Stan Getz - Captain Marvel
Queen - Jazz
The Police - Synchronicity
Tom Lehrer - That Was the Year That Was
The Consort of St. Sepulchre - The Consort of St. Sepulchre
Rush - Moving Pictures
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Eurythmics - Be Yourself Tonight
The Sundays - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll
Dead Can Dance - Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
Morrissey - Viva Hate
The Cure - Disintegration
Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
Apparat - Walls

Well, mine are in a roughly chronological order as best my memory supplies. Heavily weighted towards formative years it seems.

(as inspired by http://www.facebook.com/ecryder)

Thanks to gillo and sammywol

I'm a big fan of Imogen Heap. Her new album is out tomorrow. There's a nice interview here. I'll be listening out for the arse slaps.

Beautiful little musical tool (seen first at Making Light). There goes my lunch time.

I can't say I've voluntarily listened to a Michael Jackson track in years, and certainly nothing really since Thriller. However there was a time - I'm guessing I was about 11 - that I taped "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" off the radio and listened to it over and over.

I've been listening to The Sundays this afternoon while I work. Gosh, but the waves of nostalgia are strong and threaten to pull me under.

Only three albums, dammit!

A while ago I put together a Top Plays of 2007 according to iTunes. A number of old friends did an end of year swap of CDs with their top plays and jolly nice they were too. Better yet some of the new-to-me music hit that nerve just right (e.g. Halfset - Thanks Barbara!).

I'm subscribed to eMusic.com and find it pretty reliable, but not great for recommendations. So far I've used it to buy music I've heard elsewhere or that I've heard before and want to have a copy of. Now I'm looking for (listening for?) more suggestions of new music. What are you listening to at the moment that really grabs you? I have to admit that The Wolfgang Press alubm 'Funky Little Demons' has come out of retirement and is getting heavy play at the moment.

Following a recent conversation in work that verged on hysterics I want to start a band called 'Filthy Tardis'. That is all.

Half day today, walking in to work now after lunch at home, new music
(something by Issa Bagayogo from theTraveler '02 collection) on the iPod and
sunshine lifting my spirits.

*Smiles*

Yoinked from viktor_haag, the meme of the moment.

search for your birth-year on YouTube; post a music video.

I was born in 1969, baby!

(and refrain from posting much cooler stuff by Miles Davis, the Stones and Janis Joplin. Gershon Kingsley is more my (corny) idiom. I'll also cop to Space Oddity, though.)

Yesterday I walked home from work in the rain and paused a moment on the new pedestrian bridge that crosses the north channel of the river Lee. The sheets of rain drove patterns into the surface of the river, sweeping upstream towards a weir, where the river ran rushing and shouting over the rocks in a mumbled chorus. I was listening to "Passing By" by Ulrich Schnauss, which seemed dreamily appropriate to the moment of rushing water, chattering rain and water making patterns in water.

A good moment.

Is it bad of me to think less of a musical artist when I read the liner notes, see photos of the lyrics and notice that the artist in question doesn't seem to know the difference between your and you're?

We're in the car listening to Peter Gabriel sing the Magnetic Fields' 'The
Book of Love'. He gets to the bits about the book being full of
"instructions for dancing".

Rowan pipes up.

"I don't need instructions for dancing. I'm clever!"

Indeed you are, love.

We're in the car listening to Peter Gabriel sing the Magnetic Fields' 'The Book of Love'. He gets to the bits about the book being full of "instructions for dancing".

Rowan pipes up.

"I don't need instructions for dancing. I'm clever!"

Indeed you are, love.

Here is a Distorted Tunes Test, courtesy of the American Nation Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. I stumbled across it on the Mind Hacks site.

I'm quite chuffed that I scored 25/26. It bugs me that I don't know which tune I got wrong.

One of the peculiarities of having a birthday close to Christmas is that I often end up with a double dose of cash or tokens to spend on myself in January. This year I'm looking at about €100 worth of potential presents and I have no real burning desires. Part of the problem is the increasingly choked feeling in the house as we're running out of space for all the books and other stuff we have. I don't really want to get more physical things. Any suggestions for digital presents that might appeal?

I've been listening to the Kate Bush double album Aerial that I got for Christmas. It's early days, but I'm not particularly impressed by a lot of it. However, I am in love with "Sunset", a track from the second CD. The rich, warm quality of the music and lyrics is almost hypnotising. I find myself listening to it on repeat for several plays, just enjoying the warm feeling. A good song for fighting winter blues, I think.

leedy dragged me into this.

( Five musical questions. )