Once

MA and I enjoyed the movie "Once"-- good music, interesting story and performers.

Being of the "Boomer Gen" I feel I should know more about the music of the '60s and '70s. I amaze myself when I "discover" a "new" artist. But here it is I discovered Tom Waits on Rhapsody this morning and he is my "new" old favorite of the day.
I read about him on the web and could not understand how I did not know him. When my wife came strolling in for breakfast, I casually ask her if she knew Tom Waits and to my distress--she did. And now she claims she has "heard" of Beefheart.

Well, I guess my ongoing point is that Rhapsody is good and like the web, in general, it "leads" me down new avenues.

our raison d'etre

After reviewing our reason for being, as outlined so succinctly on the initiation of this blog, I feel I need to tout Neil Gaiman. He is one of my near new favorite authors.
American Gods is a great read/listen. Well, he keeps a daily Neil Gaiman's Journal blog and has some interesting things. This is where I found Jason Webley and Thea Gilmore.
Try the 1st haven't spend much time with Thea to be honest.

From Beck to The Dynamics

It has been over a year now since I have become a big fan of Beck, who is now one of my favorite artists. This is mostly because of his latest album, The Information, which I purchased from the iTunes store. Just recently, as a result of having made this purchase, the iTunes store recommended an album to me called Give Up by The Postal Service, while I was searching for new music in the electronica genre. I think this is an excellent album, and it really struck a nerve for me when I recognized the intro for the song, Such Great Heights as the music for the UPS Whiteboard Advertising Campaign, which had already caught my attention. After taking a new interest in The Postal Service, I did some research on the band and found that some of their other songs had infiltrated pop culture and several of their songs had been covered by other bands. Due to this finding, I went back to the iTunes store to sample some of their songs as performed by other groups, which is where I found the wonderful A cappella performance of Such Great Heights by The Dynamics. The Dyanamics is an A cappella group at UMASS Amherst and their first studio album is Crescendo. A performance by The Dynamics of Such Great Heights is available on YouTube which I have posted below and is the reason why I started this post in the first place. The video can give you and idea of the talent but it is no comparison to the studio version.