Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

This is a "what's playing on your iPod?" thread. 

Chime in with someone you've discovered lately!

As I've previously mentioned here at TW, while vacationing in a VT cottage last year I was exposed to a the music of the cottage owner and musician Dayna Kurtz.  Most of her stuff is available in full over at bandcamp.com (http://daynakurtz.bandcamp.com/).  Her first album (Otherwise Luscious Life - a live recording of just Dayna and her acoustic/electric guitar), and particularly her penultimate album (Secret Canon vol. 1 - a piano centric jazz album - and I generally hate jazz - but I've listened to this one 50-100 times) are my favorites.

Anyway, while in the cottage I was also exposed to Dana's fairly large and eclectic CD collection (her movie collection was also interesting).  I was familiar with perhaps 2/3 of it and so spent some time listening the rest.  The CD of one artist "stuck out" enough among the rest for me to order it used from Amazon, and that was "Northeast Kingdom" by Cheri Knight, the former bassist and one of the singers in the group "Blood Oranges".  Produced by Steve Earle with harmonies by Emmylou Harris, it's kind of rock / folk / country / Irish - kind of hard to categorize!  Her voice is pitched low with very little vibrato and I guess that could turn some people off.  I recently bought her first CD "The Knitter" which is less polished, but in a good way I think. 

Cheri did these two CDs and dropped off the face of the music world.  It seems my musical taste has the diabolical power to reach back in time and depth-charge the careers of artists I will hold most dear - before I even know about them!  (Jennifer Trynin was another victim, who was last heard playing incredible guitar and offering up incredible backing vocals on the "Gift to the World" CD for the now inevitably defunct band "Loveless").

Big dump of the people / bands I listen to most:

Ace Of Base -- Adams, Peter Bradley -- Black Crowes, The -- Bonham, Tracy -- Brooke, Jonatha -- Chapman, Tracy -- Colvin, Shawn -- Conjure One -- Cowboy Junkies -- Crow, Sheryl -- Crowded House -- Cry Cry Cry -- Cult, The -- Curve -- Drain STH -- Drake, Nick -- EastMountainSouth -- Egge, Ana -- Evanescence -- Finn, Neil -- Fountains Of Wayne -- Gathering, The -- Gray, David -- Griffin, Patty -- Hutchence, Michael -- INXS -- Indigo Girls -- Innocence Mission, The -- Jones and Leva -- Kidneythieves -- Lacuna Coil -- Lady Gaga -- Little Willies, The -- Lohan, Sinead -- Loveless -- Mann, Aimee -- McLachlan, Sarah -- Morissette, Alanis -- Orbit, William -- Phair, Liz -- Phelps, Kelly Joe -- Phillips, Sam -- Primitive Radio Gods -- Radiohead -- Rusby, Kate -- Smither, Chris -- Snakefarm -- Stealin Horses -- Story, The -- Sundays, The -- Tedeschi, Susan -- Thompson, Teddy -- Tikaram, Tanita -- Toad The Wet Sprocket -- Tomita -- Tonic -- Trynin, Jennifer -- Weepies, The -- Verve Pipe, The -- Whitley, Chris -- Winwood, Steve -- Within Temptation --

"It seems my musical taste has the diabolical power to reach back in time and depth-charge the careers of artists I will hold most dear - before I even know about them! " - Dewster

Hell, I know that blight! ;-)

Fortunately, it started early for me - and some of those artists damned by this diabolical power managed to recover and re-appear after after a couple of decades! (some didn't)8.. So I gotta be rational and think that a likelier explanation is that im drawn to music produced by artists who arent "going" anywhere.

I discovered this band (Jazz Butcher Conspiracy) by buying a random CD in a fete (Album "Draining the glass") << I discovered perhaps my favorite album in a similar way - I bought Tales from Topographic Oceans on a whim, never having heard Yes, from a market seller in the 70's prior to boarding a plane - Left the album on the plane and just "had to" find it and buy it new, LOL >> when they were 'gone' but it seems they'r back again.. IMO They dont sound nearly as good today as they did on the CD I own though - these are two songs on that album..   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIez7lGxKps   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfZ3dyruvNY

As for ""what's playing on your iPod?"" Hmmph! Ive never owned an ipod but my music is on HDD in uncompressed form - I do have a Sandisk MP3 player, but if your going to trash your audio by turning int into MP3, I cant really see the point an anything more than a Sandisk.

Nothing "new" here - All at least a decade or more in my collection. Cannot list my favorites or complete collection, but in the last year or so I can remember having listened to:

The whole Weather Report / Zawinul / Shorter set of albums; Most Chick Corea (Return to Forever) albums; Yes - [Tales from Topographic Oceans]; Hugh Masekela; Loads of Stevie Wonder; Eddie Grant; Bob Marley; Santana; Beatles [Sgnt Pepper]; Beach Boys [Pet Sounds]; Ladysmith Black Mambosa; Megoma;  Many John Lennon; [Throwing Copper] - Live; Enya; Most Talking Heads; Most David Bowie; Most Pink Floyd and solo artists thereof; some Uriah Heep; Lots of Jethro Tull;  Classical: Franz Liszt, Rachmaninoff,Grieg,Wagner [ring]; Other (electronic) Amethyste Spardel; Gordon Charlton.

Fred.

"As for ""what's playing on your iPod?"" Hmmph! Ive never owned an ipod but my music is on HDD in uncompressed form - I do have a Sandisk MP3 player, but if your going to trash your audio by turning int into MP3, I cant really see the point an anything more than a Sandisk."  - FredM

I don't own i-anything, but that's how these questions are often posed.  I too have a Sandisk, an old 4GB Sansa.  It could have more storage, the battery could last longer, and it would be great if it could play while it's charging, but other than that it's a miracle of miniaturization (it's actually a bit too small).  Got the Sansa in the first place for its ogg support, and the lack of ogg support on products like the iPod pretty much rules out a purchase from me.

I compress to ogg quality 6 and can't say I've noticed any degradation, though I haven't done any testing on myself in that regard.  An interesting blog entry on one person's lossy compression ABX testing experience: http://blog.szynalski.com/2009/07/05/blind-testing-mp3-compression/

Throwing Copper - Live - great CD!

"I don't own i-anything, but that's how these questions are often posed." -Dewster

Yeah, I know ;-( .. It annoys me how some companies manage to tag their brand to a generic product in this way, but im just an old grump!

"I too have a Sandisk, an old 4GB Sansa.  It could have more storage, the battery could last longer, and it would be great if it could play while it's charging, but other than that it's a miracle of miniaturization (it's actually a bit too small). "

I got the my Sansa a year or so ago, it takes micro SD, so I have been able to store my entire collection uncompressed onto a few of cards.. Quite comforting to have my music on Vinyl or CD and HDD and SD. I have never tried Ogg.

I agree about the Sansa's size - wish they did a bigger one with bigger (replaceable) battery -  I only use it when on long journeys bus/train and if its not fully charged when I leave it bombs out before I get home.

Throwing copper is another of my random CD buys from a charity shop - The picture on the cover was what caught me (had never heard it or Live) .. Possibly in my top 10 album list! ... Interesting reading the interpretation of the picture given on Wiki..

" It has been suggested that the painting explores the themes of betrayal, revenge, and fear and that it shows a group of prostitutes urging a man holding a bible to throw himself off a cliff."

It was the exact opposite to what I saw! I saw the "prostitutes" trying to stop the haughty bible wielding man from walking off the cliff, not as trying to push him off the cliff! -

LOL ;-)

If I had seen the other view, I probably wouldn't have bought the CD.. I have bought too many CDs in charity shops which turned out to be planted evangelical crap. (FYI, there is an industry doing this - producing evangelical CD's in secular looking disguise, and dumping these on charity outlets, some religions like Islam have also cottoned on to this method of distributing their "tracts".. I now look carefully at the record label and other details.. Wouldn't mind if the music was worth listening to, but it mostly sounds like a band-in-a-box production with worse-than-the-worst-you-tube vocals)

Fred.