tags: music

I can’t live without aural stimulation. Why do I like “Gladiator” so much?

I am currently watching Showtime where they have Radiohead in concert (2004), and I am amazed at how the first few chords and guitar strums of their songs can evoke such vivid memories and even bring a smile to my face.

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June

2006 Jun 24

songs for another journey on my own

I immediately hearken to “10:15 Saturday Night” by The Cure, although I’ve long stopped waiting for the telephone to ring. It seems that that long, dark tea-time of the soul hits me long before Sunday, and it’s kind of sad that I’ve forgotten how to enjoy a weekend on my own.

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2007

March

2007 Mar 24

a decade’s worth of bittersweet memories

I ended up watching two out of the five bands playing at Lolopop, which featured Filipino American musicians. The one that drew me (and the only one I recognized) was Julie Plug which I blithely described to Andy as a girl-fronted alterna-pop band (which was apparently the fad in the late ‘90’s) I first heard about them in the waning years of my college career, introduced by Manny. Their first CD ”Starmaker” rapidly spread virally amongst my friends and there are quite a few memories attached to some of their songs (in particular ”Sometime in June”) We watched a couple of shows, the last of which was in SF in 1998 after we all graduated.

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April

2007 Apr 4

aac

On Slashdot, there is a post about Apple’s deal with EMI to release non-DRM’ed music in AAC format may change how music is distributed on-line. While the conclusions drawn by this article may be suspect, I think there are aspects that are worth considering.

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May

2007 May 1

tempus fugit

My oldest friend whom I’ve known since we were in third grade is getting married to a wonderful woman sometime in 2008, and I can’t help but marvel. It seems like it was just last week we were playing Wing Commander II and listening to the Cure, the Smiths, Soft Cell, and Front 242, or walking up that godforsaken hill while playing some weird word game. There were all those hours spent in front of the Commodore 64 and the 8-bit Nintendo. There was Robotech. Voltron. Bastketball in my backyard. Junior high football. Watching movies at the AMC in Burbank. I could stop and reminisce for hours on end, and my memories may be astray. But it all goes by so fast.

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2007 May 31

afraid of apple

Wow. This story has actually hit the mainstream media. The BBC notes that people are paranoid about all that personal information embedded in the DRM-free songs offered on the iTunes Music Store.

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2009

February

2009 Feb 15

a soundtrack for storming the castle

My oldest friend B had a Commodore 64 too growing up, and he was who I got a lot of my warez from, actually. One of the most addictive, most imagination-capturing games he lent me was The Bard's Tale, a first-person party-based computer fantasy role-playing game, akin to the more established Ultima series and Wizardry series. God knows how many hours, how many sleepless nights I spent grinding through the cellars and the sewers, getting killed by animated statues and unending swarms of berserkers.

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May

2009 May 15

like a ladder to the sun

For a while, I couldn't get the Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Zero" out of my head. The lyrics are pretty sparse, but people have come up with interesting interpretations. The idea of the song referring to a prostitute does seem to fit. But, maybe because the bass-line reminds me of an engine, or a propeller, "zero" makes me think of the Mitsubishi Zero, the mainstay of the Imperial Japanese air force during World War II, and of kamikazes.

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2010

April

2010 Apr 11

help, i'm trapped in a disney movie, and i'm not the hero, or even the sidekick

The Americana at Brand is one of those hybrid residential/commercial developments that sprung up like weeds during the housing bubble, featuring high-end boutique shops and restaurants with condos on top of them. They're basically the next-generation mall, carrying on the long tradition pioneered by Southern California, of creating quasi-high-density pseudo-urban experiences in the setting of a private development (see also the Paseo Colorado, L.A. Live, The Grove, Universal City Walk, Downtown Disney, etc.)

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2012

January

2012 Jan 4

better than a time machine

I didn't want to threadjack, but it's crazy how a song will just take me back into the recesses of my memory (although the version that I have in my head is the inferior remake by INOJ¹.) It reminds me of the summer I went on an East Coast trip with my parents and siblings, from NYC to northern Virginia. It was definitely a time when the world was still rife with possibility, and I still remember hoping for something dear that never came to fruition.

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May

2012 May 28

almost like a time machine

I have always used music to index time, since I was a little kid. I may not remember exact dates, but I can often remember the exact details of what was happening around me the first time I hear a song.

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June

2012 Jun 29

music from the land of canadia

As my iPod decides to play some songs from female Canadian singer-songwriters back-to-back, I ponder over how I should probably be ashamed that some of these songs are on my iPod. And I wonder, was Carly Rae Jepsen directly influenced by Avril Lavigne? Was Avril Lavigne directly influenced by Alanis Morissette? Are these the only female Canadian singer-songwriters I actually know?

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