Archive for the 'arts' Category
And we’re done
With a little help from a constantly refreshing playlist of Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw, Wynonna Judd, and Faith Hill (all the four- and five-star tracks for each artist, limited to 50 songs, automatically updated by least-often played), I managed to write twice as quickly as I was meant to do, and finished my NaNoWriMo project [...]
Filed under: arts | 3 Comments
Tags: nanowrimo
(I’d love to link to this video but embedding is disabled.)
What a tremendous album this is.
Brad Paisley has always applied a certain amount of wit to his records, and has written songs full of sexual politics, sentimentality, and recreational drinking in the great tradition of country music. As well as being among the best guitarists [...]
Filed under: Entertainment, Music, Songs, arts, beer | Leave a Comment
Tags: American Saturday Night, brad paisley
This fly-on-the-wall documentary was one of about three programmes that made up the BBC Four so-called Beatles Week. It was filmed by Albert and David Maysles, and is a reworking of an 81-minute film they made in 1964 called What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA.
Some of the footage is familiar from the Anthology series, [...]
Filed under: 1960s, BBC, Beatles, Entertainment, Music, Nostalgia, TV, arts, film, sixties | Leave a Comment
On Band Camp
BandCamp does for musicians what WordPress does for writers. We’ve had MySpace for a few years now, but MySpace is nasty, ugly, chock full o’ shite and owned by News Corporation.
BandCamp, as you can tell from their introductory video, was created by Mac users: people who know good interface design instinctively, and appreciate the importance [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Downloads, Entertainment, Music, MySpace, Songs, arts | 1 Comment
Tags: bandcamp
Accidentals
I vaguely understand that some good music has some accidentally played notes in it: mistakes which turn out to be quite musical. Very rarely, I am loose and relaxed enough to do something that sounds quite nice. I have found, for example, that I often play electric guitar better when standing up and moving around [...]
Filed under: Downloads, Entertainment, Music, Songs, arts | 2 Comments
Tags: home recording, pro tools
Tift Merritt – Home is Loud
On pre-ordering Tift Merritt’s live Buckingham Solo CD today, I noticed that another limited-release 2005 live recording, Home is Loud, was available again. Even better, for the instant of gratification, it’s on iTunes (that link should take you to the Store) for just £6.32, with no DRM. That’s 70p per track.
Home is Loud was [...]
Filed under: Downloads, Entertainment, Music, arts, secret girlfriends | Leave a Comment
Tags: Tift Merritt
Cunning
I thought it was cunning for Mr Springsteen to promote a new album on the back of the presidential inauguration (could they not find a better word than that?). I was slightly nonplussed when a new album was announced less than two years after the last one. At his peak, he went five years between [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Downloads, Entertainment, Middle Age, Music, Nostalgia, arts | 4 Comments
Tags: springsteen
In Film Club at school this week, we watched Air Guitar Nation, the 2006* documentary about the 2003 World Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, Finland, which were entered that yearby Americans for the first time.
I got three punters, all KS5-ers, and we all enjoyed it a great deal. It’s not only funny, warm, full of [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Culture, Entertainment, Movies, Music, arts, film, heroes | Leave a Comment
Christmas Telly
I don’t watch telly much when I’m in France. It’s not just because it’s all in French, but also because French TV just doesn’t seem to evolve quickly enough. They’re still doing the same peak time quiz shows they were doing 10 years ago, and those interminable panel programmes in which minor French celebrities make [...]
Filed under: BBC, Entertainment, France, Nostalgia, SF, TV, Television, Travel, arts, media studies, sci-fi, science fiction | Leave a Comment
Tags: steampunk
Review of the Year
January: Blank
February: Blank
March: Blank
April: …Nope
May: Holiday in the Vendée, which was quite nice
June: Blank
July: Wet
August: Wet. Bought a new (well, low-miler) car
September: Started diet
October: Fairly blank
November: Cold
December: Are we there yet?
Blogging seems to be a substitute for having a memory. Which is a concern, should something ever happen to WordPress, which is fairly likely, given [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Entertainment, Middle Age, TV, Television, Time-Wasters, arts, autobiography, being chippy, weasels | 4 Comments
Tags: 2008, review of the year
