Three dollars and 63 cents

Good sunny Saturday music!

saturday, december 20 starting at 4 pm at marz/motion shinjuku, tokyo, japan Watt's 51st birthday party! Jim O'Rourke has just been added to the Brother's Sister's Daughter lineup. Damn, I hope there's a taper there.

I've been fussing with this for awhile now, and I figure I might as well just go ahead and post it, even though I'm expecting to get a few albums for Christmas that might change it: 1. Evangelista

I saw this posted on another board and thought it was worth mentioning over here. The album will benefit the AIDS charity Red Hot. From 4AD:

I actually like Bono's vocals early in the song. Sometimes he has a tendency to oversing because he has such a powerful voice, and I was glad to hear him hold back a little. I'm doing what I did for the last album--not listening to anything except official singles until I have the CD. I'm guessing there will be a single by the end of January, so that should be enough to hold me over. I haven't been watching any of the U2.com videos and don't plan to listen to the album if/when it leaks. I did that with Sky Blue Sky last year, too, listening to it the first time having only heard the road-te

Based on our weather map, it should start snowing here any time now and last until late tonight. Between this and the snow they're calling for on Sunday, we're predicted to get at least 9 inches. Quite a few of my students have been scrambling to reschedule flights home for the semester break. I especially feel bad for one who was supposed to be headed to Arizona Wednesday night. They canceled his flight because of too much air traffic, and I know the weather in the midwest was bad yesterday and that it's headed east. Hopefully he made it out of here yesterday or this morning. I can't believ

Sorry, I was going to post the link in my last post, but I got a phone call. It's here.

The video for that song is floating around YouTube. While I'm not a big fan of Christmas songs, I have to say it's nice to hear Bono sing something I haven't heard him sing before, and I like that the song wasn't overdone. I'm curious about this album--I have high hopes for it based on what I've read, but it could also be the album that makes me give up on U2 for good. All of my favorite artists except for Carla Bozulich are either in the studio or have announced releases for the coming months. 2009 is shaping up to be a good year for music

If anything is announced, there will be posts about it all over the place. We're not going to keep it top secret. If we're not talking about it, you can assume no one knows anything yet.

From the store on Scott's website. mp3s are $9.99 and flac is $12.99, I think. It's not their usual lineup--it's Scott, Nels, Jenny Scheinman, and Charlie Hunter. I was there that night and it was my first time seeing Nels play jazz. It's a night of music I'll probably never forget, and I'm glad to have a good quality recording of part of it. (I'd hoped the N.C. Singers sets would be recorded and sold, too, but they never surfaced).

I love the Jazz Loft. I first discovered them via ebay, and now I try to order most of my jazz albums from them. My favorite jazz releases of the year were Devin Hoff's Solo Bass, Mary Halvorson's Calling All Portraits, and the Scott Amendola Band's Live In New York (digital release only). I'm hoping to get Bill Frisell's History, Mystery for Christmas, and there are still a few other jazz releases I've picked up recently I need to listen to some more.

It's supposed to be almost 50 here today. It's not going to be pretty tonight when everything that melted refreezes.

I hope Fat Possum ships the new album with better packing than they did the other Andrew Bird CD I just got from them. That one was in two pieces when I took it out of the sleeve.

Nice set list. It killed me to have to miss this one, but I couldn't rearrange my work schedule for today.

I keep trying, but I'm still underwhelmed by this album. It's not bad, it's just a far blander version of a band I used to love.

The academic job market makes people do crazy things. I still haven't been up to visit her, but Watertown looked pretty bleak the one time I drove through it en route to Montreal--and it was summer and sunny. We're settling into that long monochromatic part of winter that always makes me gloomy.

The Black Keys--Attack & Release

The blizzard of '93 happened in Pennsylvania on my birthday. I remember how disappointed I was that we had to postpone my party. I also remember birthdays when it was 65 or 70 degrees. March is always a pretty strange month in terms of weather. And considering I wonder sometimes why I live here in the winter, I can't imagine living in Buffalo. One of my best friends and her husband moved from Texas to Watertown last year. Her husband was a life-long Texas resident, so when they had their first snowstorm, he was running around outside playing in it

Kicking Television. After this is over I'm going to listen to Andrew Bird's Live In Montreal

No wonder I can't find this album--it's not out until March 10. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

My copy of Live in Montreal arrived from Fat Possum yesterday. I figured they'd just wait to ship it with the new album, so it was a pleasant surprise. They marked on my invoice that the deluxe edition ships January 15th.

I couldn't believe how quickly the storm cleared out of here yesterday morning and moved upstate. At one point, the entire weather map for our area was dark blue for snow and pink for wintry mix, and the next time I checked it was completely clear and the storm was nearly to Albany. I don't mind snowstorms too much--they're difficult if you're trying to travel, but mostly you just stay home and wait for the snow to stop. Ice storms are completely different beasts, though, because of how often they cause power outages. I've been lucky that I haven't had to go through that yet, even though we