Category Archives: music

Mama, can I meet Arcade Fire?

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I was driving Will to preschool today while listening to Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs title track The Suburbs when Will asked me “mama, are those guys real?”

Confused, about his question, I looked around trying to figure out who he was talking about. I could only see some average looking people walking their dogs. Surely he could not mean them. “Which guys?” I asked.

“The guys making the music” he replied.

Ahhh.
“Well, they are real, but this is a recording of them.” Will was pretty thoughtful and didn’t say anything so, I continued… “These guys are pretty famous… they have won awards because they have been practicing a lot.” (Being me, and being a mama, I couldn’t help make a plug for the genius nature of the propensity to practice.)

After some more thought Will asked “someday could I go meet them?”

 

Rock on Will!

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Will loves music. I suppose all babies do. We don’t play him music specifically for babies. He listens to our music.

I am putting together a collection of tunes that gets Will rocking. “The Will Mix”. Stay tuned. I will share it with you here.

Spoiler: his favorite artist is The Juan MacLean

Will loves to dance! Sometimes his head moves back and forth so fast he becomes a blur. I have tried to mimic him. It hurts my aging and scared neck and makes me dizzy. He also raises his fists and pumps them to the beat or just sways back and forth with his fists framing his face.

As I type, he is playing his toy xylophone / piano thing-a-ma-bob that we have on loan via the mommy toy share I am doing with my mom friends.

Rock on Will!

Will & Billy Duet on the Keyboard

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Billy set up his keyboard today so that Will could play with it. Will loves all the levers, dials, knobs and, buttons.

When we went to Portland earlier this month Will was in love with my mom’s piano. Oh my did he play and play and play. Billy would sit him on the bench and watch and sometimes play with Will. Will played with a art that probably only a mother could love. To my ears he was composing. And, this made my mom decide to keep the piano when she was about to sell it.

Well, this was what inspired Billy bring out the keyboard now, when Will is only 13 months old. Rock on Will.

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Music and Dance Musings

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This afternoon I headed over to Hype Machine looking for a little random music but got distracted almost right away by the animated banner ad at the top of the site. The words “Treasure Island” caught my eye. I wondered “what is going on on Treasure Island?” I have never actually set foot on it but I pass by there a lot (when not on bed rest, that is) on my way from Emeryville into the city. “Treasure Island is an artificial island in the San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Oakland. It is connected by a small isthmus to Yerba Buena Island.” I watched the whole ad cycle through and discovered that there is a Treasure Island Music Festival coming up in September.

The line up this year is amazing! I was going through all the artists and heading over to their websites to listen to their music and check them out a bit. Wonderful, wonderful stuff! When I made it over to Amon Tobin’s site I was seduced by a song I had not hear yet: Delpher. I had visions of dancing to it (tribal bellydance with modern stylings). The snippet on the site is short and a tease. I have to have it! I also discovered a video of a dance choregraphy to his song “Rhino Jockey”. Seems others have had their own visions:


I kept exploring more of Amon Tobin’s music and discovered that my dear friend Dulcinea had the dancing visions to his music too! I recognized a song that she choreographed a beautiful dance piece for her dance troupe Gemini Project. Funny, I had thought of her right away when I was listening to Delpher and I was excited to turn her on to Amon Tobin. But she is already all over it!

Here is a clip from one of Gemini Projects performances. The first song you will hear is the Amon Tobin song I spoke of:

As far as the Treasure Island Music Festival goes, I realized that it falls on the same weekend as my other brother’s wedding in September and that we will be in South Dakota. Well, there is always next year.

oh music music music

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A few months ago Billy told me about a new way to listen to music: The Hype Machine.

The Hype Machine follows music blog discussions.
Every day, thousands of people around the world write about music they love — and it all ends up here.

Its a way to listen to music you like or music you want to try out. It tracks blogs that link MP3 files and displays them in a variety of ways. Two of the ways you can find music is by going to a page where the “latest” links to music are shown, or you can go to the “popular” page. I found this site to be useful for sampling music by entering what I want to hear in the search box. It is especially useful when you are on someone else’s computer and need a music fix.

I have come across some things I might never have found otherwise by using The Hype Machine. I even started visiting the blogs that were being linked to Hype. One of my new favorites is Letters Have No Arms!. I first discovered this blog because Hype linked to some cool songs that they posted about like a few Cure covers and a Hot Chip cover. I was intrigued by the look and feel of this music blog in addition to their music choices so I spent a little time there and discovered more and more interesting stuff!

If you are in need of new music inspiration you have to explore The Hype Machine.