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"These syllables might be nonsensical, but they are telling and resonant."
Freida Hughes is less than reverent about a Robert Service poem. She's right—the callow lad got bent out of shape when his booty call wasn't the idyll he had imagined.
Spinner picks 'em. Yeah, it's a list, but this one has the songs embedded, so you can hear the ones you don't know—or the ones you love, for that matter.
The list violates John Atkinson's "No Smiths" rule, but it does boast "Hallelujah," "Eleanor Rigby," and "He Stopped Loving Her Today"—surely the greatest, saddest song ever. No "Honey" though—which proves its impeccable taste.
Subway maps of the world, rendered to scale. Why do I link to that? Because it's got subways . . . and maps . . . and, uh, scale.
Okay, it's because I have a fetish.
MIT Media Lab has posted a survey seeking to discover "what words people use to describe sounds—and whether everyone uses a common vocabulary, or whether the choice of words is related to a person's musical or cultural background—and how the chosen words relate to a sound's timbral characteristics."
You might want to bone up here first.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Tonight, John Atkinson is going to give me an honest to God production copy of the Attention Screen Live at Merkin Hall CD. You need to get one too. In the meantime, here's an interview with one of the truly great improvisors, Keith Jarrett.
"There's no change in the basic plan, which is that there is no plan."
Days pass, there are weddings and funerals, pink flowers smile everywhere, and we get closer and closer to the 2007 Home Entertainment Show.
I love wandering the hotel halls, listening for music, knowing that behind every door is the possibility of something new and wonderful. For now, my desk is covered in the press announcements, silent unveilings and invitations and enticements.
Among the many I received today, one stands out. A quick and simple note, in no fancy dress, lacking commas and periods and capitalization: "hope all is well" it says. "if you have a moment…
Classical Values takes a sharp look at the much ballyhooed honeybee blight. "The bees that seem to be suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder are the ones that get boxed up and trucked around, and they've been kept going for decades with regular dustings of miticides. Whether this is good for bees and how long they can be expected to compete with wild insects is of course debatable."
Hmmm, I did not know that.