I don’t usually use soundtracks for posts, but hey, it’s always worth doing something a little different sometimes, right? My friend Jack was, when I first met him, a devoted inhabitant of that space where black and white and poor and crazy meet in early American music. He introduced me to musicians like Ralph Stanley and the Blue Sky Boys, and showed me how they connected to people like Howlin’ Wolf and Mississippi Fred McDowell. It was with Jack that I first heard McDowell, and Robert Johnson, and so much other music, and was initiated into the secret history of …
Tag: MUSIC
Time After Time
Music for when everything’s feeling difficult: Time After Time, sung by Cassandra Wilson, from the album Traveling Miles. Here are the lyrics. Yes, a Cyndi Lauper song, on my blog. The song won’t be here too long, for copyright reasons. But someone needs a copy, so… Here’s a video with the lyrics synched up:
Dhuluma No More Podcast
More writing squeeage — Starship Sofa, an excellent British SF podcast I’ve been listening to for a while now, will be podcasting “Dhuluma No More,” my most recent publication which appeared in Asimov’s SF. Now, I just need to get the manuscript tidied (ie. enter the copy-edits into my final text) and email it to Tony Smith at Starship Sofa. Apparently he’s got a hell of a lineup in addition to the stories he’s already podcast, including people like Bruce Sterling, Nancy Kress, Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Bear, Norman Spinrad, and all kinds of other luminaries. So, yes, I am feeling …
Star Wars ROK Rock
The stunningly knowledgeable Helikkopter (of Indieful ROK), who was kind enough to remember I’ve been trying to get a handle on the status of SF fiction and film in Korea, very kindly notified me of the fact that in March of this year… a very odd little album was released by Ruby Record. It’s called Star Wars Project Compilation. SF fans, panic not! It features not some Korean form of the filk (perish the thought) but rather original works by (seemingly) competent musicians in homage to, reference to, or all about the Star Wars movie series. I can’t get the …
Voix Angelique
One of the things I miss, over here in Korea, is how few really interesting foreign acts come and do shows here — at least, how few of such shows are accessible to me, given my schedule and given the range of what comes here. There’s no demand here for, say, a group like the Trevor Watts Moiré Music Group, or, say, for someone like Pandit Ulhas Bapat to drop in on Seoul. Once, long ago when I still lived in Montréal, I got the chance to see Salif Keita live. Which, my friends, if you don’t know how cool …
Because the World Needs More Cheese…
… I’ve uploaded the uncut, massive single MP3 version (please right click and save the file, as it’s huge!) of the second-to-last musical performance I ever made in Saskatoon, back in 1998. My friend Mike invited me, my ex (the vocalist on the track), and two DJs I knew from high school (Phil Greer and Keenan Gauthier) to perform at what he was then calling “parties” (because, I think, “rave” was passé by then. We played a few gigs, and on the last one — just before I took off for Montreal in fall 1998 — Keenan got a buddy …
new free music
Free, and DRM-free, music: The new Nine Inch Nails album, “the slip”. via BoingBoing, hip-hop/bluegrass mashup madness: Gangstagrass Worth checking out…
Why Can’t Korean Pop Culture Be This Bizarre?
I like the guy, and his writing, but the_flea_king is evil. Not as evil as some people, but still evil, for having done this to me (LJers, just click here instead, and then, if you’re still note satisfied, here): UPDATE: slightly less odd, but still bizarre, video for the same song:
Seoul Audiences: or, How to Buy Seats for a Classical Music Concert in Seoul, and What I’ve Seen of Late
Over the last couple of months, I’ve seen an unusual number of orchestra concerts, and mostly they’ve been quite good. I’ll get to all that in a bit, but I want to generalize a little about concertgoing in Korea first. The programs here tend to be even more conservative than what I was used to in Saskatoon, Sasktchewan, the last time I was attending classical music concerts regularly. In Saskatoon, you would often see a contemporary composition open a concert — often enough that I had something to really look forward to most of the time. But in Korea, it’s …
Thank You, Gim Hyung Tae
I don’t know whether he’d like or approve of any of my fictional depictions of Korea, but I find Gim Hyung Tae a great inspiration in that area. Whenever I’m writing anything trippy, weird, or odd about this country in my fiction, I turn to his music for inspiration. It’s a strange combination of trance, rock, folk, and 뽕짝 — in proportions that vary from song to song and album to album, but always in proportions that both work, and sound absolutely like Gim Hyung Tae. By the way, if you’re looking for his CDs, you’d be best to ask …