Author: Tim Jarrett

New mix: something other than regret

Starting to have the energy again to think about posting here, which is nice. I’ve been down the grindstone for a very very long time, and now, faced with some unexpected downtime, I’m going to use the opportunity to catch up on a  few things.

Starting with this. I completed something other than regret, my 33rd mix in the modern era, on the 10th of November, and it’s all over the map, but with some pretty strong thematic material running through as well. I especially love the way that Laura Marling excavates on the three tracks from Once I Was an Eagle, which is my favorite album of 2013; the woozy, witchy, R&B-driven silliness of “Nommo (The Magick Song)” (“All praises due to the Black man,” indeed); the light touch of Antony’s “Crackagen”, and the way that John Fahey’s riff on Clarence Ashley’s “The Coo Coo Bird” fits so seamlessly with gospel. I’ve definitely got something other than regret.

  1. Song-Song – Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art Of The Trio Volume 3)
  2. Nommo- The Magick Song – Gary Bartz And NTU Troop (I’ve Known Rivers And Other Bodies)
  3. Is That Enough – Yo La Tengo (Fade)
  4. Blue Light – Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)
  5. Life & Soul – The Sundays (Blind)
  6. Take The Night Off – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  7. I Was An Eagle – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  8. Crackagen – Antony and the Johnsons (Another World)
  9. Everybody’s Heart’s Breaking Now – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
  10. Variations On The Coocoo – John Fahey (The Dance Of Death & Other Plantation Favorites)
  11. Where Shall I Go? – Sister Marie Knight (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
  12. Don’t Give Up – Peter Gabriel (So (Remastered 2012))
  13. Incinerate – Sonic Youth (Rather Ripped)
  14. Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes – Sun Kil Moon (Tiny Cities)
  15. We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning – Gram Parsons (G.P. / Grievous Angel)
  16. Breathe – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  17. Turn Your Color – The Men (Campfire Songs)
  18. I’ll Fly Away – Southern Sons (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)

Ten years ago (soon): BloggerCon

Dave reminds us that it’s almost ten years to the day since the first BloggerCon. I was highly invested in blogging at that juncture of my life, having tried and largely failed to figure out where I fit inside Microsoft, and so I managed to combine a recruiting trip back East and attendance at the first day of BloggerCon.

I liveblogged much of what I saw of the day. I’m sure most of it is redundant with the other coverage, but in retrospect it’s interesting to read through the coverage and see how much of it was on target, or just off-target. I think the biggest bit that surprises me is the collective failure to imagine that blogging, per se, was just one manifestation of a million ways for individuals to share ideas and feelings with the world, or that most people would be most interested just in sharing those ideas and feelings with a few friends and family.

New mix: will you buy me a shaky heart

As I grow … well, older isn’t right, and neither is more mature, so let’s just go with “as I grow,” I find that what I listen to is less about lyrics and singing along and more about just listening. So, of the 19 tracks on this mix, six have no words at all, and a few more are mostly nonsense.

No real notes here, except to note that Jonny Greenwood’s Bodysong, from 2003, is an unlikely sleeper album. There are bits that remind me of Ravel, and Berg, and glitchy techno, and sometimes they come in the same song.

Also: why did it take me so long to listen to Bruce Cockburn? He would have been right up my alley in 1988 or 1989.

Also also: I’m in the crowd for that 2004 Sonic Youth performance at the Showbox. This one.

  1. Burning Of Auchidoon – Maddy Prior (Silly Sisters)
  2. Tree (Today is an Important Occasion) – David Byrne (The Knee Plays)
  3. Ready to Start – Arcade Fire (Ready to Start – Single)
  4. Lovers In a Dangerous Time – Bruce Cockburn (Stealing Fire (Deluxe Edition))
  5. Wiggle-Waggle – Herbie Hancock (Warner Archives)
  6. Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead (Kid A)
  7. 24 Hour Charleston – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
  8. Concorde – Modern Jazz Quartet (Concorde)
  9. Track 4 – Sigur Rós (( ))
  10. Chemtrails – Beck (Modern Guilt)
  11. Sorrow – The National (High Violet)
  12. I Should Watch TV (M. Stine remix) – David Byrne & St. Vincent (Brass Tactics EP)
  13. Pattern Recognition – Sonic Youth (Live at the Showbox in Seattle (2004))
  14. Milky Way – Weather Report (Weather Report)
  15. Alone And Forsaken – Neko Case (Live from Austin, Texas)
  16. Hi-Speed Soul – Nada Surf (Let Go)
  17. After All – Christian Scott (Yesterday You Said Tomorrow)
  18. Bode Radio/Glass Light/Broken Hearts – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
  19. I Wanna Dance With Somebody – David Byrne (David Byrne: Live from Austin, TX)

The Colonoscopy Playlist

I can tell that I’ve reached that certain special age based on what my interactions are with the medical profession. And this week I had one of those really “special” ones: a visit from the camera snake.

As I was getting ready for the procedure, I realized that there were a lot of songs that were inadvertently funny in the context of a colonoscopy, and that there didn’t seem to be a lot of people putting them together in playlists. So I figured I’d do it so you don’t have to. (You’re welcome.) I posted a request for help on Facebook and got a lot of suggestions from my friends, so this was a real labor of love…from the bottom to the top.

  1. Baby Got Going – Liz Phair
  2. I Like to Move It – Reel 2 Reel
  3. Relax – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
  4. Shout – Tears for Fears
  5. Take It Easy – The Eagles
  6. When the Levee Breaks – Memphis Minnie
  7. Medley: Highway to Hell -> Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC
  8. Highway to Hell – AC/DC
  9. It Looks Like I’m Up Sh*t Creek Again – Tom Waits
  10. Medley: “All Stripped Down” / “The Earth Died Screaming” / “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me” / “New Coat of Paint” / “Chocolate Jesus” / “Take It With Me” ” / “Tango Till They’re Sore” / “Don’t Go Into That Barn” / “The One That Got Away” / “How’s It Gonna End” / “Make It Rain” – Tom Waits
  11. All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
  12. Chocolate Rain – Tay Zonday
  13. Everything Must Go – Manic Street Preachers
  14. The Waiting is the Hardest Part – Tom Petty
  15. Pants on the Ground – Larry Pratt
  16. From the Bottom to the Top – Frank Sinatra
  17. Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits
  18. I’m Looking Through You – The Beatles
  19. Wide Open Spaces – Dixie Chicks
  20. I Can See Clearly Now – Johnny Nash
  21. Back Door Man – Howlin’ Wolf
  22. In Too Deep – Genesis
  23. Da Butt – EU
  24. Mega Colon – Fischerspooner
  25. I’m Beginning to See the Light – Bobby Darin
  26. Shine a Light – Rolling Stones
  27. The End – The Doors
  28. Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
  29. Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
  30. Moon River – Henry Mancini
  31. Boogie in the Butt – Eddie Murphy
  32. Baby Got Back – Sir Mix-A-Lot
  33. Show Me the Way – Peter Frampton
  34. Stinkfist – Tool
  35. John Mayer – Inside Wants Out
  36. Up in the Dark – The New Pornographers
  37. Searching With My Good Eye Closed – Soundgarden
  38. Shot in the Dark – Ozzy Obourne
  39. Way Down Now – World Party
  40. Already in a Daydream – Freddy Jones Band
  41. Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival
  42. Scatman – Scatman John
  43. Into the Great Wide Open – Tom Petty
  44. Tighten Up – Archie Bell and the Drells
  45. Supermassive Black Hole – Muse
  46. Broken Hearts Are For Assholes – Frank Zappa
  47. Black Tongue – Gene Simmons
  48. Medley: ‘Fire in the Hole’->’Do It Again’ – Steely Dan
  49. Shake Your Booty – KC and the Sunshine Band
  50. Dig for Fire – Pixies
  51. Medley: ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ -> ‘Moanin” -> ‘Walkin” -> ‘I’ll Never Be The Same’ – Frank Sinatra / Art Blakey / Miles Davis / Art Tatum
  52. Better Days (And The Bottom Drops Out) – Citizen King
  53. Rolling in the Deep – Adele
  54. My Face Your Ass – Lambchop
  55. Pretty on the Inside – Hole
  56. The End – The Beatles

Welcome, Andris Nelsons

Boston Globe: BSO names Andris Nelsons music director, succeeding James Levine. An exciting day. I sang with Nelsons last summer at Tanglewood in a deeply felt (if a little idiosyncratic) performance of Symphony of Psalms. I also watched him conduct the BSO in a spine tingling version of Ravel’s La Valse that was easily the best musical moment of the Tanglewood anniversary concert. Can’t wait to sing with him again.

Careless Love: The Virginia Glee Club in the 1950s

Glee Club 1956 promo acetate

There’s not a lot to say about the Virginia Glee Club in the later 1950s, seemingly. The group lost one of its more influential directors, Stephen Tuttle, to Harvard in 1952, and saw two directors alternate during the remaining years. There were tours, sure; legend has it there were even panty raids on other campuses. But no LP survives from the period between 1952 for almost 20 years; no big commissioned work exists; nothing remains but a bunch of concert programs.

Except this. The image above is of an acetate recording that was made as a promo record and sent to radio stations. Seems that Donald MacInnis didn’t spend much time with his group recording because they spent time trying to get on live radio. We know they were broadcast on WTVR radio, probably as a result of this acetate.

(Aside: an “acetate” is actually made of aluminum—or, in the WWII years, glass—coated with a thin layer of lacquer. You could cut one live, and some did, but you could also copy prerecorded music onto it. It was common to use acetates for promotional recordings when the number of playbacks was unlikely to be high. You can see the aluminum under the black lacquer of this disk around the hole of the record.)

The repertoire on the disk is interesting, too. The Bach is pretty straightforward, but it’s followed up by a downright woozy version of “Careless Love,” and then by MacInnis’s own version of Tom Lehrer’s “The Hunting Song.” I’m trying to imagine that on a Glee Club program today. In fact, I’d pay money to see this paean to hunting, in which the protagonist bags 7 hunters, two game wardens, and a cow, on a modern day program.

It’s a fun recording, albeit short, at around 6 and a half minutes. 

We’ve moved!

After a really good run with Weblogger, Jarrett House North is no longer hosted there. The team there is now focusing on things other than WordPress hosting, and I’ve moved on accordingly. I wish them all the best–Erin Clerico has been great to work with, and I know the new endeavors there will be successful.

I’ve moved to page.ly, who seem on first blush to have the right balance between ease of use and security — at least they mention security in their service description, unlike some of the other WordPress hosting leaders that are out there. The transition has been interesting, and something I did with one of my plugins seems to have dropped a lot of my posts on the floor–the autoposts from FriendFeed, so nothing really lost there. But we’re up and running.

And maybe this will be the kick I need to start writing some more. I’ve got a lot to talk about, so stay tuned.

New mix: my love invented all of you

This has been building for a bit. I had more work to do on it, then I thought it was done. Then I heard the last two songs side by side and realized they were the perfect coda. So it’s a little longer than CD length. Oh well…

  1. The Empty Page – Sonic Youth (Murray Street)
  2. Rock And Roll – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin Remasters)
  3. Don’t Care – Klark Kent (Klark Kent)
  4. What Difference Does It Make? – The Smiths (Hatful Of Hollow)
  5. Manta Ray – Pixies (Complete ‘B’ Sides [UK])
  6. Carry Me Ohio – Sun Kil Moon (Ghosts Of The Great Highway)
  7. Vengeance Is Sleeping – Neko Case (Middle Cyclone (Bonus Track Version))
  8. Back Of A Car – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  9. Just Like Heaven – The Cure (Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me)
  10. Space (I Believe In) – Pixies (Trompe Le Monde)
  11. Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  12. Gravity’s Angel – Laurie Anderson (Mister Heartbreak)
  13. Water Babies – Miles Davis (The Columbia Years 1955-1985)
  14. Working For The Man – PJ Harvey (To Bring You My Love)
  15. Lil Wallet Picture – Richard Buckner (Richard Buckner)
  16. In the Devil’s Territory – Sufjan Stevens (Seven Swans)
  17. I Don’t Recall – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
  18. Dawned On Me – Wilco (The Whole Love)
  19. Morpha Too – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  20. Kiss Me On The Bus – The Replacements (Tim [Expanded Edition])
  21. Dauðalogn – Sigur Rós (Valtari)
  22. End of the Line – Sleigh Bells (Reign of Terror)

Cousin Frantz

NewImage

As these things tend to go, my Virginia Glee Club history project has ebbs and flows. Sometimes there’s not a lot to write about; sometimes there’s too much. Like this past week, when I nailed down the identity of a few presidents of the Glee Club and discovered one was a third cousin.

I should have known that when I found someone named Frantz Hershey, he would turn out to be a relative. It turns out that not only do I know him, I have him in my genealogy. Ezra Frantz Hershey, Jr. was the president of the Glee Club in 1938–1939; he was also the son of E.F. Hershey, first cousin of Milton Hershey and treasurer of the Hershey Chocolate Company for over 40 years. Frantz is therefore my third cousin, twice removed.

As they say, you can’t make this stuff up.

I also confirmed Dan Vincent and Thad Polk as presidents of the Club in 1984-85 and 1985-86, thanks to a newly available Cavalier Daily article that showed up in Google News since the last time I checked. Surprisingly, even with those discoveries, I know less about the 1980s presidents than almost any other decade: I’m still missing information about 1980–81, 1981–82, and 1986–87. Always more work to do…

Whither iTunes Plus upgrades (again)

A while ago I wrote about how Apple’s offer to upgrade previously purchased music to iTunes Plus, their “drm-lite” offering that raised recording quality and eliminated copy restrictions, had gone missing.

At that point the issue appeared to be faulty infrastructure, since the link was sometimes available and since you could hit the page directly if you bookmarked it.

Today, it looks like the page may be gone for good. I haven’t seen it in the store in several weeks, and the bookmark now returns a “Could not complete the iTunes Store request” popup.

While I’m not entirely surprised—the promotion has been running for what, four years?—I’m disappointed. Because this is what I see in my smart playlist that contains the old, “FairPlay” encrypted, DRMed iTunes Store downloads:

671items

That’s right. 671 tracks, in about 178 albums, that were never made available for upgrade through the iTunes Plus page. I know, because every time something was made available in Plus, I paid the 30 cents per track or $3 per album to get my music out of DRM jail.

So my question to Apple is: what happened? Did the rest of the music never get “plussed” because of the labels? Or did you just forget?

I’ve read some speculation that iTunes Match is the new “upgrade to iTunes Plus”. If so, I’m still out of luck, because I have more than 25,000 songs in my library—all purchased legally, I might add, though some came from eMusic or Amazon, or were ripped from CDs or vinyl that I own.

So let’s see: I’m stuck with a bunch of DRMed music that I can’t unDRM, contrary to Apple’s iTunes Plus promises, and I can’t take advantage of the other legal path offered to me because I’ve been too good a music customer.

Is it any wonder that people just say “screw it” and download music for free?

Default to the right thing.

One of the things that makes me nuts is when a product gets the default settings wrong and makes me do work to make it do the right thing.

This happens more often than you’d think. Example 1: the stereo in my new car. I love the GTI for a lot of things, including the ride and the compactness of it. But I am really growing to dislike the way they did the stereo. Why? The default behavior when I turn on the car. It should remember that when I turned it off I was listening to music through the phone (either Bluetooth or the dock connector) and go back to that channel. But it doesn’t. Instead, its logic seems to be:

  1. There’s nothing on the dock connector!
  2. There’s nothing on Bluetooth!
  3. So let’s go back to the other thing we were listening to–the satellite radio.

Except, the reason there’s nothing on Bluetooth is that it takes about 30–45 seconds to pair a phone with the car, and the designers surely knew that. So why wouldn’t they just have step 2 wait for a while? That way I wouldn’t have to fiddle with the settings every time I get in the car.

(Why don’t I just plug the phone into the dock connector before I start the car? That works for about 30–45 seconds; then when the Bluetooth connection is established, the phone gets confused and stops playing back through the dock connector!)

The problem with this scenario is that it’s not obvious when you look at any of these pieces that they’re wrong. When you consider the component level, any of a number of choices look like they could be the right one. It’s only when you stitch them all together, and think about how the user would use them, that the right behavior becomes apparent.

I’m pretty sure there’s a product management law that describes this principle, something like don’t make me do more work than I have to. But it’s astonishing to me how often people, and products, get it wrong.

Breaking silence

My posting on this blog has deteriorated even from my low standards of the past few years. The blog made it to 10; it might not make it to 15.

I still love writing, and I’m not closing a door here any time soon. But I should probably acknowledge what is increasingly obvious: my energy, passion, and time are being spent elsewhere.

There’s a few reasons for that. My work at Veracode has grown increasingly to consume my better energies and thoughts. That’s good; where there were parts of it that used to be unrewarding, things are now at a point where I can take my whole energy and apply it and see a difference being made. I’m heading a group now and relearning the challenges, and rewards, of managing people as well as products. 

The other big reason is my family. I have two kids now, and staying ahead of them means using my whole energy and intellect at home too. And that’s turning out to be rewarding in ways I couldn’t have dreamed seven years ago. 

But… I still miss writing. So maybe I’ll start to make a little room at the edges for drafting my thoughts into words, maybe trying to make sense of some of the things I’m working on. It’s good practice for speaking sensibly and well, and it’s good to exercise those muscles more often. We’ll see.

First month driving report: 2012 VW GTI

Long time readers of the blog may be surprised to learn that, when it was time to purchase a new car, I got a new Volkswagen GTI. After all, I had a very poor experience with my 2003 Passat, which even before I drove it off the lot suffered from a broken windshield wiper and later experienced several ignition coil failures while I was driving.

But the company has come a long way in the last ten years, and I’ve been very pleased with the month (and about 1500 miles) I’ve spent behind the wheel of my new GTI. Specific notes:

  • I’m too grandfatherly a driver to really appreciate how fast this thing can get off the line, but it definitely comes in handy when you’re trying to merge.
  • I haven’t really tried “launch control” — the feature that lets you go from 0 – 60 in less than 7 seconds — but it looks like fun.
  • The car is pretty comfortable. I spent sixteen hours in it this past weekend and was less fatigued and sore than after shorter drives in my Passat.
  • Mileage is acceptable. I posted 30.9 MPG driving from DC to Boston in light Sunday traffic, and a lower 28.9 MPG in summer Saturday driving on the way down. In town I regularly get better than 25MPG between my house and my office.
  • I love the convenience of integrated Bluetooth in the audio stack. It’s perfect for phone. However…
  • …integrated Bluetooth for audio has some problems. Due either to a GTI bug or to my iPhone 4s, I usually only get one audio channel. So if I’m in the car for any length of time I plug it into the dock connector instead.
  • Cargo room is pretty good for my needs. I remember my 1996 Golf being more spacious, but that’s probably just because I drove that car before I drove the Passat with its more capacious trunk. As long as I’m not taking a family of four on a long trip it’s just fine.

So yeah, I’m kind of glad I gave Volkswagen another chance. So far it’s paying off well.

New mix: An attic space overgrown

I wasn’t expecting to do another mix so soon after the last one (the business), but this one was kicking around for a while. As always, I was throwing songs I liked to listen to into a temporary playlist called “next,” but couldn’t figure out how to link them all together. Then one day I heard a recording of Kenyan girls singing (like so much these days, it surfaced out of my library on shuffle), and I said “Hmm.” I threw a handful of short world music songs into the mix (from an album of Tuvan throat singing, an Internet-curated collection of African music, and a historic field recording of the Bera pygmies from the 1950s), shuffled them about until I got the right order, and before long I had something that seemed set to shuffle into the ear in the same way that the songs had wormed their way into my mind. An attic space overgrown (also on Art of the Mix) was the result.

The mix:

  1. Chemirocha [Kipsigis] w/Chemutoi Ketienya & Girls – Kenyan Songs and Strings (Kenyan Songs and Strings)
  2. Strange – R.E.M. (Document)
  3. Rolling – Soul Coughing (El Oso)
  4. Vessel – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  5. Bodhisattva Vow – Beastie Boys (Ill Communication)
  6. Right On – The Roots (How I Got Over)
  7. Yraazhy Kys (The Singing Girl) – Shu-De (Voices From The Distant Steppe)
  8. The Eraser – Christian Scott (Yesterday You Said Tomorrow)
  9. Harrowdown Hill – Thom Yorke (The Eraser)
  10. Jean-Baptiste à la fenêtre – Sonic Youth (Simon Werner a Disparu)
  11. Tshetlha Di Kae – School Girls In Kayne (Tswana and Sotho Voices)
  12. Half Way To Crazy – The Jesus & Mary Chain (Automatic)
  13. Infinity Guitars – Sleigh Bells (Treats)
  14. Staircase – Radiohead (The Daily Mail & Staircase)
  15. One Big Holiday – My Morning Jacket (It Still Moves)
  16. Skipping Song – Bera Pygmies (Music Of The Rainforest Pygmies)
  17. Antenna – Sonic Youth (The Eternal)
  18. Hikikomori – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  19. Silver Rider – Robert Plant (Band of Joy)
  20. You See Everything – Low (C’mon)
  21. Moorestown – Sun Kil Moon (April)

Track notes:

  • I finally heard the original version of “Strange” (on Wire’s Pink Flag) last year, and while I love it, it made me appreciate the R.E.M. version I heard in high school–bravura, loud, beery, and outré.
  • It’s a pity that Mike Doughty has disavowed the Soul Coughing discography, because tunes like “Rolling” were made for delicious cognitive dissonance–the luxury and assonance of the words and the thick beats…
  • Zola Jesus was a discovery for me about this time last year. “Vessel” is the strangest arrangement of the album, with Nika Roza Danilova’s voice hocketing into the echoing void at the opening over a sort of middle-period Dead Can Dance accompaniment. And that’s just the opening.
  • I miss Adam Yauch.
  • “Right On”: Who knew that Joanna Newsom made such a good chorus for hip-hop?
  • Christian Scott’s “The Eraser,” its strikingly original jazz arrangement of Thom Yorke’s original, has been in heavy repeat since I heard the album last year. The whole album is worth checking out.
  • “Harrowdown Hill” gives you an opportunity to hear Yorke’s original glitchy percussion against the jazz acoustic original. Not as starkly tense as some of Radiohead’s earlier (or later) works, it feels a little more personal but still despairing.
  • Sonic Youth’s final(?) recording, a soundtrack, carries enormous tension throughout it even if you don’t understand the cinematic context of the songs, which, um, I don’t. Still absorbing.
  • I dug out “Automatic” the other day–still a great album all these years later.
  • I found Sleigh Bells thanks to Molly Young‘s plug for the band (she plays the gum-chewing cheerleader in the video for this song). I like the second album better as an album but “Infinity Guitars” is still an astonishing kick to the head.
  • Someday Radiohead will make a full album that “Staircase” fits into and I’ll be a happy man.
  • My Morning Jacket’s It Still Moves was the last of the early albums and the one I love best, I think. This one reminds me of growing up in the South.
  • Robert Plant’s cover of “Silver Rider,” from the underappreciated Low album The Great Destroyer, is both hypnotic and wholly respectful of the original.
  • Low’s most recent album is the one I’ve liked best since The Great Destroyer. “You See Everything” is a great spotlight for Mimi Sparhawk’s voice.
  • Finally we get to “Moorestown.” After the psychedelic wonderland of Ghosts of the Great Highway, it took a long time for Sun Kil Moon’s acoustic albums to grow on me. But this one had been waiting to find me, and today I realized it was the closer.

Finally, a note on mixes: Seems to me that I put them together to digest the music I’m listening to and to claim it before it claims me.