iTunes, search me up some devil music!

Thanks, iTunes!

...listening to Art Ensemble of Chicago and Thao Nguyen.

...oohing and aahing over Processing and NodeBox (see the colors and graph libraries, currently linked from the home page! really go see them, i mean it!)

...hanging out with some of the coolest people you'll ever meet.

...intending to read much more by Wendell Berry.

...jonesing for Stumptown Roasters and Murky capitol hill.

With a big-disk ipod always in a pocket or nearby I've had reason to rip pretty much our whole cd collection. Which occasionally results in interesting results to queries like "feelin":

It's hard to imagine not shifting "New Feeling" up to the head of this playlist, the order of which otherwise works wonderfully. The name of this post is "Nothing more than feelin's", and that's what it's about...

The Posies' Frosting on the Beater is, so far as I can tell, one of the more overlooked rock albums of the past 20 years. I recently recovered a copy off an old machine, and after not having heard it for at least five years, I can confidently say: this is great stuff.

"Dream All Day" was a "Buzz Clip" or whatever MTV called those "great songs by bands you've never heard of" clips they'd play a few times for a week or two way back in 1993 when you could still actually find good new music via MTV. I remember that well because I was sick that year, and watched a scary amount of cable TV whenever I was awake and wasn't playing NHL 94 on the Sega some friends kindly gave me. The album goes way deep, though - most every track has the potential for brain-stickage, and a new harmony or riff or drum part or effect combo to notice anew and elevate the soul, as such things are wont to do.

Give it a listen if you can find it.

Why is it that I'm always realizing so late that I've been ignoring/misappreciating/willfully missing out on an amazing band for years and years? Or that sometimes an artist I know I should enjoy/understand/gain enlightenment from but never had before suddenly starts to make sense?

I was 19 before I finally grokked XTC. I didn't get Joni Mitchell until I was about 25. I ignored Radiohead until 2002. Bob Dylan didn't really click for me until I was 32. Two years ago I finally listened to Spoon and I haven't stopped yet. Last year it was Matthew Herbert, I guess. Now I don't get what it was that I was missing all that time for all those acts, beyond maybe some fuzzy sense of "maturity", whatever the heck that means. And I still don't get Pavement.

In any case, I'm beginning to suspect that 2007 will be the year that I realize that HOLY WOW SLEATER-KINNEY WHY HAVE I IGNORED YOU? And, of course, just this past year they went on indefinite hiatus.