A little quiet storm feels perfect for this Saturday morning after a busy week.
I disclosed my most fondest Christmas wish list item to my lady friend last night — a FiiO DM13 portable CD player. She laughed at me. You want a discman for Christmas?
How can I explain my love of single-purpose devices and high-fidelity to someone who lives on their iPad and sees no problem with lossy streaming music? I want something that doesn’t have a screen with which to focus on music and, for goodness’ sake, some time to part with my phone during the day.
Bluetooth codecs have progressed, but Apple hasn’t seen that as a priority in their annual device updates.1 Their hardware can’t even output the high-fidelity audio that you can stream from their Apple Music service. One could probably successfully argue that Apple is more of a mass-consumer device manufacturer now than the company that used to cater to creatives.
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Or even in their headphone updates. ↩︎
Non-standard Sunflower
The election is, whether mercifully or unmercifully, in the rearview mirror. Like some others, I want to turn my attention away from the day’s news, so closely coupled as it is with political events. Before I read about Kid Rock being appointed ambassador to the U.N., I mean to spend some time with my head in books.
Standard Ebooks has inspired me by making the barrier to reading well-produced classics low and ebooks free to obtain. From the site:
Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
This week I downloaded a collection from Emerson (which includes Self Reliance) and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. I haven’t started on Emerson yet, but I’ve found much enrichment in the latter book. Its short, focused chapters are a sort of balm in times when the world feels abrasive.
In the pages of this 500-year-old book, you will find the very things that speak to the rancor and division of contemporary American society.
True it is that every man willingly followeth his own bent, and is the more inclined to those who agree with him. But if Christ is amongst us, then it is necessary that we sometimes yield up our own opinion for the sake of peace. Who is so wise as to have perfect knowledge of all things? Therefore trust not too much to thine own opinion, but be ready also to hear the opinions of others. Though thine own opinion be good, yet if for the love of God thou foregoest it, and followest that of another, thou shalt the more profit thereby.
I’m praying that I can read these words with fresh eyes. It’s easy to absorb the words at night, though, and much harder to go out into the following day and put them into practice.
Save, help, and protect us, O Virgin Theotokos.
My mom asked my brother where he gets his news. He listed WRAL (a local news channel/site), IGN, Kotaku and Nintendo Direct Mini. In the past, I may have scoffed at this. Now, I think he may be onto something.
On Dark Horses
Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague about music. I had gone to see one of my direct reports' bands, and they were really genre-hopping. I told her about the experience and mentioned that they blended such far-flung musical styles as punk, hip-hop, and shoegaze. She said she loved shoegaze, but when I asked her if she was going to the Slowdive show, she confessed that she hadn’t heard of them. I was a bit shocked, since I would consider them just below My Bloody Valentine in the pantheon of shoegaze progenitors. I asked her what shoegaze bands she was into and she mentioned Emma Ruth Rundle, whom she described as metal/shoegaze.
Luke T. Harrington, echoing the end of Voltaire’s Candide, when writing about our current political equations.
That we can’t save the world until we all learn to tend our gardens?
I think my garden has grown a few weeds and I hope that I can tend to it.
Yvette Young - Always
Upon discovering the new single from Yvette Young (via Instagram of all places), I was immediately reminded of Sophie And Peter Johnson. The breezy sophistipop certainly merits easy comparisons. Then I realized that Young did vocals for Brothertiger’s mesmerizing cover of Sophie and Peter Johnson’s “Torn Open.”
The Mouse House Redux
Some of my fondest memories are of times at the Disney World theme park. In fact, some of the first memories I’ve retained are from my first trip to the amusement park. I was four, and sitting in between my parents in a car on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, filled with a mixture of excitement, fear and familial comfort. I also remember the thrill of going on Space Mountain over and over again later at night as a teenager, the unfettered access to the ride that was so elusive earlier in the day becoming manifest. I can’t forget the luxurious dining experiences my wife and I had on our honeymoon, the kind of which we continue to talk and joke about. I still get a twinge of panic when I think about buying several Lego Star Wars sets and then almost feeling them slip out from underneath my legs on the lurching, fast-paced Aerosmith Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster.
Triple Seven
I had been reading a lot of buzz around the Indianapolis band, Wishy, and their seamless blend of shoegaze and indie pop lately. Their debut album Triple Seven was stashed in my queue for later listening. Thursday morning, I browsed through the bands playing in clubs downtown for the free Day Parties, a staple of the annual Hopscotch Music Festival. The schedule app revealed Wishy was playing at a fairly small venue later in the afternoon. I quickly cranked up the streaming and fast-tracked listening to Triple Seven with just enough time to garner an appreciation for the recording before my trek downtown to see them play.
Wishy stays true to their description: “Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together.” When I shared this assessment with my son, he remarked that was how most indie bands today could be described. I’m wondering when my 18-yr.-old became so wizened and cynical, but I’m also not sure he’s wrong. For my part, the description reminded me of a band like Hotline TNT. Indeed, at the Wishy show, I spotted someone wearing a Hotline TNT shirt.