Getting Gruntled

This week, I was getting back into some electronica, but kept looking for something that was complex yet danceable. Then I stumbled onto this single by Stella & The Doggs. Stella is notable for her involvement in the Manchester band called Intastella in the early nineties, and refers to this new band and album as “Dark, electro pop”. This track, “Supersize” has interesting lyrics and a building beat that also makes it a good accompaniment to night driving. “Star, you know how gorgeous you are/you lost your mind in my car/star - it’s all too much. More money, more love, more money, more sex. Look what they’ve done/They supersized…” The guitars are prominent without taking the front seat, all while keeping the European feel.

This week, I am talking about a band called “ones and zeroes”, or more exactly, 0N3S & Z3R0S. This three-peice is from Northern California, and has a unique sound, melding the sounds of electronica loops and effects with traditional instrumentation and alt-grunge vocals. After you sample “Mind Run Free”, Click on the “more by this artist” button and make sure to hit “Nothing Left” and “Rose” while you are checking out the 0N3S & Z3R0S.

This week, I wanted to draw some attention to a band called Red Guitar, a band from Kansas City with a folksy rock sound and songwriting combination that makes me think of Tom Petty. They have also been compared to The Fray, Ryan Adams, and Coldplay. Red Guitar is another one of those bands I have found on Amie Street where I purchase all their music, and *almost* feature them for a few weeks in a row, then wait in a vain attempt to choose a single song to highlight. Be sure to listen to “Angel Across The State Line” and “Jump Out On The Water”.
This track, “Let’s Go Out,” is about feeding wanderlust as both an activity for both searching your own soul and for exploring relationships with your travelling companions.
Today, the national average for a gallon of gasoline is at 3.50, and traveling is a headache. Spring is in full bloom, and schools are out in another month. It’s more difficult and expensive to get out and roam, but that spirit is as important as it ever was.

It’s interesting to see your own attitudes toward a given historical event change over time. A couple of days ago (Saturday, even) was Patriots’ day. This one has nothing to do with Amercan football, and the majority of Americans on the street wouldn’t be able to tell you offhand what Patriot’s Day is supposed to be about. It’s likely because there isn’t a tradition of buying copious amounts of sugar, or killing a bird to use as a centerpeice.

The high points of the Revolutionary War, including the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s Ride are very familar, mostly due to Longfellow’s poem, but the holiday isn’t.

More info on Paul Revere’s ride
Timeline from PBS

The PBS site makes me wish I’d heard about the film before it aired. I bet it was good.

This week, I found a band called Porchsleeper. They don’t have much in the way of detail on AmieStreet, but they are out of Ann Arbor, MI. The “Stinkeye” track I have in the player here really kicks, and has a pop-punk feel to it that reminds me of The Refreshments. Be sure to check out the “Bulletproof” track while you are here.

This is my first stab at web2.0 poetry, as a followup to the High ASCII post.


> dude, u there? che's 4me.
< y u say? ura n00b!
> 1, che friended, drops invites.
< invites... sure. brb.
> 2, alwys acc, no spam reply.
< still in bud zone there, n00b.
> 3, phone: vm rb, no dnd nvr perma-hold.
< that's btr. ne w/w, follows, links?
> Well, always avail/acc count?
I lightboxed and meta’d.


hrm. it’s a stab at any rate.

Just a little blast from the past here. Some of you were around back in the Hayes Volksmodem and BBS days, and will remember this as well as I do.

FYI - a “wahka” is the decidedly “proper” (by popular vote) name for
the characters “>” and “< ". This is in spite of INFOCUS readers of
Denver who still refer to them as "Norkies". The Michigan crowd
apparently has corrupted the spelling to "waka".

To wit, it is -
------------------------------------------------------------
"...a poem we think is about the lowly wahka. Maybe. Well,
perhaps---we're really not sure what the poem actually is
about. Here it goes:"

<>!*”#
^@`$$-
!*’$_
%*<>#4
&)../
|{~~SYSTEM HALTED

Transliterated:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret at back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat tick dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka number four,
Ampersand right-paren dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket tilde tilde CRASH.

original Leitner page
Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese

I have been thinking back on this recently and was thinking that some new possibilities are possible nowadays with widespread PC usage, the internet, and all of our new web lingo. I’ll be posting a couple of attempts soon. If any of you want to take a whack, feel free to share.

I found a lot of good female vocalists this past week on AmieStreet. One of these was Karma Lively, who has “a hundred songs of peace and war,” is from “North to the Future” Alaska. Besides having a light, fun acoustic sound, and having something to say with her lyrics, She’s donating all of her music sales for the year on AmieStreet to charity. She has a sound that is somewhere in the neighborhood of The Cranberries, Jewel, and Sia.
It looks like she’s laying down all of the instrument tracks herself, which always gains a lot of points with me.