the oh so quiet show

Ring Tone Dancer

Where do you go to piss off the person in your life that hates ring tones and websites with embedded music and animated backgrounds?

RING TONE DANCER!!!

(I warned you, right?)

Lots of weird stuff at Contagious Media Showdown.

Appel Farm Arts & Music Festival + iGuy

I guess a lot of music related things in NJ take place; I just don’t care most of the time. The Appel Farm Arts & Music Festival caught my eye until I found out that it’s about 150 miles away from my house. NJ is a small state but not small enough. Doh. It sounds like a good deal though; student tickets cost $29 and for that you get to see all these people perform. I heard about the festival because Rufus Wainwright is playing at it, but I’ve seen him play something like five times already. Besides that, it’s on June 4th and that’s the same day as Sondre Lerche‘s free Brooklyn show. So you know where I’ll be on June 4th…

iGuy

On a totally unrelated note, here’s another cute, “why do I need this” accessory for your iPod: iGuy. I don’t know about you but I only use my iPod when I go out, for which iGuy wouldn’t be very useful. However, iGuy is your iPods new best friend and my iPod cries at night for lack of companionship. Or something. (I have no accessories for my iPod and my mum thinks that’s nuts; “Your iPod has scratches all over it! You suck!” Well, I actually damaged my iPod in a way that any kind of casing would have failed to save it from (through the earphone jack–oh damn, double parentheses), so ha ha! …wait, I do suck.)

Feist tour

I just noticed that Feist is playing at Bowery Ballroom on June 25th. Am I just slow? Hm. This post is just a note to myself to…maybe go to that concert. Except I don’t know anyone who particularly likes Feist. So maybe not.

[sigh]

On a totally different note, if you live in Norway then I dislike you more so than people who live in other places because Magnet is playing lots of free shows there starting next week and I just realized his new album also comes out next week and I still haven’t gotten it. It would make me slighly happier if I did have it. Slightly. Materialistic things. Yeah.

Soft

Soft is a Brooklyn based band that does sound kind of…soft. Maybe. Soft is also a way to describe my stuffed animal penguin that’s staring at me right now. My penguin can’t play music though so there aren’t any other similarities to speak of.

I’m so bad at describing music that I had to talk about my penguin. But here I go. …… [tumbleweed rolls by]…upon my first listen, I thought “This reminds me of something. I like it.” 20+ listens later, I have absolutely no idea who Soft reminds me of and it’s kind of bothering me. I’ve read the description “dream pop”, which is appropriate. I’d also describe them as sounding British/un-American, a sweeping generalization but…hey, I’m allowed to do that and I mean it in a good way. Here’s their latest single, a floaty song (yes, floaty):

Soft – Droppin’

You like the song, right? You should. Wait, you didn’t download the song yet? What’s wrong with you, just click it! You’ll like their other songs too. Like this one:

Soft – You Make Me Wanna Die

Why do you like the song? Because…I said so. And I like the title (because it applies to so many people, yes?). I may have faulty reasoning, but you can’t do anything about it and I bet you liked the songs.

Crackers United has more info about the band.

totally useless knowledge

I feel so almighty and powerful knowing I can do useless time-wasting crap this:

[If you can’t tell, this is Beck’s Guero and not…penguin cakes.]

I will have much fun abusing Amazon images from now on because my life is just that empty. For god’s sake, it’s almost 4:30 AM.

I’m not insane. Really.

BC Camplight and squirrels

I am permanently attached to my computer at the moment. My laptop is draining the humanity out of me and replacing it with mechanical…goo. Soon I will talk in ones and zeros and emit random bleep-bloops.

Until then, I’ll just browser around music-related websites. BC Camplight’s homepage now displays new album art: a monolithic squirrel hovering over a dead guy bleeding from the head/neck as helicopters hover around the faraway mountains because they’re sure as hell not going to get anywhere near the squirrel, unless my sense of perspective is off and the helicopters are just really small and are about to ram into the squirrel’s head.

(Uhh…I swear that I got enough sleep last night.)

So anyway, that’s cool. Squirrels. Music. The combination of the two. I enjoy any excuse to talk about squirrels.

a sad happy song

I’m not in a particularly good mood.

This song is appropriate to listen to when I’m happy or sad. I don’t know why. If you don’t like it, you suck. In my opinion. Not that my opinion matters much:

Even Johansen – Quiet and Still [removed]

I first heard this song almost four years ago. …god, now I feel old.

no.

Spice Girls Reunite [via metafilter].

Why am I mentioning this? Are you telling me that you never liked the Spice Girls?

…erm. Well. I used to listen to them but I wouldn’t exactly want them to reunite. I kind of like knowing that the Spice Girls and other pop-artists of years past remain in the past. I don’t like the sound of this reuniting-whatnot. I became unsettled when I heard that the Backstreet Boys were touring again.

I think my listening to the Spice Girls and BSB was a result of peer pressure. Oh yes, peer pressure either get you to do drugs or listen to top-40 artists. I even used to listen to Aqua. AQUA! God, they were scary. And when I say “used to”, I mean this all happened seven or so years ago, or roughly an eon in my life as far as music is concerned.

Very bad things should happen to whoever thought of the idea to get the Spice Girls back together (for a “large paycheck”).

I’m lazy

I’m too lazy to go to concerts when I have to get someone to drive me to the bus station (I can drive but I can’t park there because I’m not a resident of that town, blast) and then I have to get on a bus for at least an hour and then I have to take a subway and then…at some point I get to the venue. But it’s not that hard. I’M JUST LAZY.

Should I go to Rilo Kiley this Friday, even though I’m not really a fan and it costs $18? Probably not. Cos I’m lazy. I need more excuses to get out of NJ though.

Thank god for the free Sondre Lerche performance, giving me a sliver of joy to look forward to since the rest of my life has been consumed by sitting on my bum working on websites and wheezing because my lungs hate me. I will go to Brooklyn for free Sondre! Mic.no a nice article about the awesomeness of Sondre [via It’s a trap!].

I was mildly frightened last week when my house received the latest issues of Blender and Entertainment Weekly with Coldplay staring at me from both covers. I don’t mind Coldplay, but I’m assuming that that was just the beginning of magazine cover assult-ness. Actually, the chorus of “The Speed of Sound” has been stuck in my head and I kind of hate that. The rest of the song didn’t feel like embedding itself in my brain meats. Super. I was curious enough to see them play so I watched Saturday Night Live–wow, it still sucks even though I haven’t watched it in more than a year (I liked Coldplay’s performance though). Or I’m out of the loop as to what constitutes as comedy. From what I know about SNL (not a whole lot, I admit), they go through loads of ideas for skits; how do they end up with so much painfully un-funny material?

…that wasn’t really music related. Thus, I go back to not watching any TV unless something music related is on. Oh, I technically caught SNL when Beck was on but it was during the credits. That doesn’t count.

Kings of Convenience on KCRW

Mmmm Kings of Convenience on KCRW mmmm better than pancakes mmm. Better because if I eat too many pancakes I end up getting sick of them but listening to too much Kings of Convenience is just…a good thing. [via I Think So]