School is just about all most completely 100% done. more like 78% done. I just have one more final critique today at noon, then a little presentation tonight at 5:30. I'll be the one on stage wearing the sparkly sequined sweater. Just kidding. I'll wear something slightly less distracting. I'll be back to my regular posting soon I promise, because I am about to have all the free time in the world! There will be more sleep, more projects, more friends, more family, more snuggle time with cats. I can hardly wait. My eye isn't twitching like it was, but my back is still giving me some serious situations. School stress get out of here!
{My face after a week of finals}
This week's project comes to us from Seattle. Royal contributed this project after taking his own sweet time choosing a topic, brushing off my pleading, and watching his wife get hers done in under a week. Apparently Royal is resistant to my kind of pressuring. I do appreciate the effort from Royal, because he came up with a very cool music project, with lots of links. Good work Royal, you did your homework!
Lets go!
It always surprises me when I meet someone in Seattle who isn’t into music. You have to work pretty damn hard to avoid it, I think. I’ve lived in Seattle for a long time now, and while I’ve always liked listening to music, my tastes and interest in and knowledge of music have definitely increased boatloads since moving here in the late 90s.
But I’ve never done much with my love of music, except consume. Posters, MP3s, band t-shirts, not to mention going out to live shows. The amount of money I’ve spent on CDs since moving to Seattle is difficult for me to fathom. And the amount of space those CDs take up in my house is a constant bone of contention between my wife and I. And yet it doesn’t stop. Because, well, there just seems be a constant stream of new things I must listen to and add to the collection.
A favorite show poster from my favorite show-poster artist, The Bird Machine.
My day job as an “Account Manager” at a fancy-pants Brand and Design firm in Seattle no longer scratches my creative bones on a daily basis, since I moved up from "Designer" a couple years ago (but I still LOVE what I do for a living). And I don’t make art in my free time, nor do I play a musical instrument. But I do take the occasional photo or two. And all of that is not nearly enough to satisfy my artistic urges.
So I’ve pointed my creative needs in a direction I never anticipated: writing. Writing about music, specifically. On a whim, I answered an open call for new writers from a small, local music blog and started writing for them in November of this year. It‘s slow going because I don’t have the free time I once did, but it’s something, and right now it’s a ton of fun.
The reason I don’t have nearly as much free time as I used to.
As a way to hone my writing skills, I created a challenge for myself: pick my top 31 albums released in the last year and write about them, one a day, throughout the month of December. I’ve decided to call it The 2009 Musical Advent Calendar. Every day I feature one of the great albums that was released in 2009, counting down to #1 which will be featured on December 31st. You can read more specifics about my selection process, and follow along as I count them down at the newly created space where I exercise my new-found music-related skills, The Bacon Review.
For the benefit of the Mi Piace Kate Design readership, I’ll reprint my favorite entry to date from the Calendar:
#27 on the 2009 Musical Advent Calendar
Grrr… by Bishop Allen
Quick aside: I find myself, here, now, working on this fifth entry on the Musical Advent Calendar, looking forward to getting farther down the list so I can be writing about those albums from this year that I truly love and will listen to a lot into the future. We haven’t gotten to that point yet, and I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to detect when we do, as all this hedging and slight negativity will drop away. I think next year I might stick with a true advent calendar timeline and only pick the top 25. OK, back to it.
As I believe everybody on the planet now knows, I started writing for a music blog called Click & Dagger about a month ago. The first thing I wrote for them was about a Bishop Allen show. I had a great time, and a lot of what I found in myself when I wrote that article is responsible for me wanting to start this advent calendar.
I don’t dislike this new album from Bishop Allen. It unfairly has to stand up to their previous album, The Broken String, which is a highly rated album for me. So, in the shadow of the previous album, Grrr… leaves me a little wanting. But as is often the case with going to shows and seeing songs performed that I really hadn’t paid attention to before, I started to like the album quite a bit more post-show. The video above, for the song “True or False,” isn’t the best song on the album, but it’s definitely the most fun video they’ve put out from the album. You can download an MP3 for “Dimmer,” also from Grrr…, and the video for that song is also quite nice.
One of the best things about Bishop Allen is that they split lead singing duties between multiple people. Usually you’ll get Justin singing, but his wife Darbie will take the lead from time to time. Darbie is quite a bit more reserved than Justin is, and the band shifts accordingly, giving you what equates to two distinct musical styles within one band. They’re a lot of fun overall, and I recommend you check out The Broken String before diving into Grrr…, if you can only buy just one.
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28. Keep It Hid by Dan Auerbach
29. It’s Blitz! by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
30. Beware by Bonnie “Prince” Billie
31. Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear
Sincerely, @royalbacon
1 comments:
Finally, someone who shares my appreciation for poster art and Jay Ryan!
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