In Which Sufjan Rocks! / Thursday, September 28, 2006
It was great! The House Of Blues is a great venue. 1000 people and four bars! No waiting for a drink! It's kind of small, especially for Sufjan. The stage is just about big enough for a four piece band, he had at least fourteen musicians, as well as a grand piano and a huge drumkit. I think the bassist might have been standing on the steps on the side of the stage. Oh, and they were wearing butterfly and dragonfly wings! It was great, I'm used to seeing music that goes to your heart, or feet. This went to those and to my head, and straight to my soul I swear. No music has made me feel so happy. I think that he's more happy in the studio than on the stage though, not like Ben Harper, he lives for live shows (so it seems to me anyway). Oh and also, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone apart from me say Sufjan's name. It's pronounced Sufjan, not Sufjan. Sorry about that!
I was going to see the Magnolia Electric Co. yesterday as well, but I didn't. Next month I'll either going to be Lost Prophets (Ash wants to see them. Are they any good?) or The Mountain Goats. I will be seening The Mountain Goats, it's the Lost Prophets I'm not sure about. Then I've gotta see Ok Go and Death Cab For Cutie the month after that, and The Black Keys in December. I might go to the Voodoo Festival as well in between, it all depends if I can afford it.
Talking about affording things, I'm no longer going to be a full time daddy, now I'm a job-seeker as well. We're going to put Toby in Daycare for three days a week so I can look for some work, and study and take tests for a state job. I applied for a job earlier this week, it's lousy hours (I'd have to work pretty much every weekend, definately every Sunday) but it's good money, and right now that's what we need. If I do get this job I'll stick it out for long enough to clear up some debt and make enough to pay for a bit of my education. I don't think I'll be able to do evening classes with this job, because I won't have any evenings to do it in. On Monday and Tuesday I'm working at Ash's place again, which will be good for a bit of cash.
Toby is doing well. He's 30 inches long, which is very long. He's in the 95th percentile for that (50th percentile would be an average baby) and in the 75th percentile for his weight. We've been trying to get him to sleep at a more regular time as well, now his bed time is 8 o'clock, it used to be some time between 10 and 12. It's been a hard week. We've been letting him cry it out, which is basically putting him in the crib, and checking on him every ten minutes, but not picking him up. the first few nights he would cry for an hour before sleeping, now it's five minutes. I'm hoping some time soon that he won't cry at all. It is an increadibly difficult thing to do. It's not like he's crying and you don't know why, you know you can stop him crying in a second. It takes a lot of will power. Still now, we're (Toby, Ash and I) getting a full nights sleep, and Ash and I even get a bit of Toby free time in the evening.
I've even managed to find some time to get back on the working my way through the library thing. I'm up to Peter Ackroyd, and I'm only getting out three books a week. I have finished reading The Shaman Tree, which is alright, I'd half figured out the ending halfway through though, and The Salmon Of Doubt by Douglas Adams. It's a post-humous collection of letters and a half finished Dirk Gently (or maybe Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy) novel which was more frustrating than anything. I mean why can't people finish their books before they die? Honestly! Oh, I know that Adams comes after Ackroyd, but I already know I like Douglas Adams, and it was right there on the shelf below. The Peter Ackroyd book is called English Music. I think it might take a bit of effort to get into it. I'm going to give it another fifty or so pages I think.
The other thing I've been reading is the Crutchfield catalog. I have everything picked out that I'm going to get when I win the lottery! There's one thing I might actually have to get, well actually a couple of things. one of them is this:
http://www.tvix.co.kr/Eng/Products/M3000U.aspx to put in my car. I think I could almost fit all my music onto one of these. The other one is this:
http://www.sonos.com/products/?tref=ghome of course I'll need to have my own place first! Just to clarify there are dream dreams and dreams that some time in the distant future may actually come true. It's not like I'm going to starve my family to get any of these things. If I ever get any expendible income, these are things I would seriously consider buying, because they're cool! The Sonos thing is definatly cool, and I think everyone should have one.... The Tvix is the only one I can find that has that size capacity. If anyone else knows anything else better you could tell me.
You're not getting a new song this time, I'm on the wrong computer. my music is all on the other one. So you'll have to suffer with the song on here for a while longer!
/Hopped!
8:44 PM
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In Which I Ramble / Saturday, September 16, 2006
Not much has happened recently, so I'll just type randomly, and hope it's kind of entertaining. Let's be honest, the main reason I do this is so you can see I'm still alive.
There may be quite a few typos because one of the computers I broke is fixed so theres three computers and only two chairs. I might get one in a secong if I'm lucky though...
I've got one! Yay! now the only excuse for typos is the beer I've drunk. It's not much, but it's enough to make me make mistakes! The reason I'm drinking (and there does pretty much have to be a reason nowadays) Is that LSU played (American football) today. It was a very exciting game, they lost, but they carried on fighting, ending up about 3 yards short of a touchdown that would've won the game. In the end it was 3 - 7 to Auburn.
You might be wondering why I have decided now to write. It's actually the first time I've been near a computer for any length of time for a while. The reason is that there is this program over here called Austin City Limits. It's a music program on PBS which means the public broadcasting station I guess - no ads, the odd fund raiser and the only channel that has decent music on, which is what Austin City Limits is. Austin has this really cool venue which has fake trees in it, and a pretty small stage. They have some great musicians on there like The Flaming Lips, Bright Eyes, Ben Harper, Jamie Cullum, Ben Folds, and some country artists as well like Gretchen Wislon and Rosanne Cash. Anyhow, They have an Austin City Limits Festival every year which is this weekend, featuring lots of these great musicians. I heard about it too late to get a ticket (I'm also not sure if I can trust myself to stay relatively sober at a festival yet) but they are streaming music live here:
http://blueroom.att.com/ so I'm sitting here listening to them play. Right now I'm listening to Iron & Wine, they're sounding very good.
Talking about live music I bought a ticket to go and see Sufjan Stevens on Tuesday at the House of Blues on Tuesday (that is he's playing on Tuesday, not I bought the ticket on Tuesday. Although I might have... It's not important) I'm very excited! The man breathes musicality. I'm pretty sure he must snore some beautiful melodies. The album of his I really like sounds like something you can't do live, it's all ochestrated and choral and stuff, so it'll be interesting to see what it's like. It's also at the House of Blues, which is a place with a fair amount of history. It only holds a thousand people, so it should be a kind of intimate affair. You may have hear his name before. That's because I keep begging you guys to listen to it!
I bought a couple of albums recently too, I got Sufjans album Illinois (I downloaded it but it was so good I felt guilty getting it for free) which is so very very good. It's the best album I have ever heard, beating What's Going On off the top. I also got Ray Lamontagnes new album "Til The Sun Turns Black which is very good too. I bought Trouble (his debut) a while back and loved it. Ben Dowsett told me to listen to the title song of that album, I did and thought it was great, but I thought it was a fluke. There's no way that anyone can consistantly make music that good. I was wrong. His songs seem to have always been there, they just needed someone to write them. He is one of my favorite artists (I haven't worked out my ranking for him yet though!)
I also just bought a DVD. It's Gojira, which is the original Japanese version of Godzilla. Some of you may remember I've been working on a musical version of Godzilla, that is the US version with Raymond Burr basically translating the story they decided to put together for the American audience. I haven't watched the original version yet (this is the first time it's been released over here - 52 years after it was originally released), but I'm sure it must be superior to the cut up version the Americans did. So I have I dilemma. Do I scrap the US musical version and start the Japanese version? I think I should. Or do both. I've got nothing but time... I'm thinking about doing the US version really basic, and I'll quadruple the effort I put in to the Jap version. Maybe I'll see if I can find some people to help out with it, after all I'm pretty much musically ignorant. I guess I'll watch it before I decide.
I've been watching a lot of films recently, I spend most of my time watching Turner Classic Movies (a movie channel over here) It's about the only thing I can do while I'm looking after Toby. I've many good films, lets see... There was Cape Fear, the original version which was very good.... and Mr Smith Goes To Washington, also very good, and The Seventh Seal which was a good film, surprisingly entertaining. I thought it was going to be more arty that it was, you know lots of shots of landscape with someone pontificating about something to do with death/morality/etc. there was a fair bit of that, but there was some funny bits as well. I guess in certain lights death could be funny. Obviously there was lots about death been as the plot is someone who plays against death in a game of chess. Still funny though.
Thinking time....... What else to write?
Oh, there's this really cool magazine I've started buying called Paste. It's a music/film/cuture magazine (similar to Uncut) with a CD. I listened to the Cd and I had only heard of one person on it, but I liked all of the songs. That's a winner as far as I'm concerned! It also had an article about a theramin festival, which doesn't sound very good now I type it, but it actually was. Anyhow, I'm going to subscribe to this baby as soon as I can.
I guess I better give you some news... Ash isn't feeling great, but she'll survive. Toby is doing great, he's teething and he has a cold but he's still happy most of the time. He's not sleeping much anymore, so I'm tired. I just got over a cold (given to me by my son. Genarous fellow!) and I'm looking for work, without much luck so far. And so the world keeps turning.
Oh if you're reading this in an email, I've got a song from my musical version of Godzilla on my blog. Also I am now on Myspace. It's here:
http://www.myspace.com/peterspencer You should also visit my blog, I have a really cool new skin for it.
Take care dudes!
/Hopped!
7:20 PM
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