april new music playlist

2022.05.09
Surprising number of songs based on bands I'm in pondering playing them, but I don't think any that I actually played.
If We Were Vampires
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Folksy, saddish song playing the "well if we're vampires we'd be immortal but we're not so let's make the most of what we got."



Mahna, Mahna
CAKE
The old "muppet" song - some folks on JPH want us to try an arrangement maybe sometime.
Jesus Walks
Kanye West
Big hiphop.
via this tweet.



Phone Wallet Keys (Single Version)
Adam Sandler
Comedy rap.



Dispatches 1
Blue Man Group
Cool percussion but I keep expecting it to turn into "Magic Carpet Ride"
Inspired to for more Blue Man after this Vulture Oral History of the show.



In Your Head
Isabelle Brown
Nice modern fast R+B
on the Hulu show "Woke"
Giacometti
Blue Man Group
Cool didgeridoo-ish noise in it... Blue Man Group really pursues cool noise making.
I've Found a New Baby
Ted Lewis and His Band
Old Time Jazz.
Another thing folks in the band would consider trying to arrange.
Lost at Sea
Oshima Brothers
Sad modern pop, a bit like The National
via This American Life
Dynamite
BTS
K-Pop! School of Honk is thinking about trying an arrangement.
Liquid Dance
A.R. Rahman, Swapna Madhuri, Palakkad Sriram
Really cool blend of modern electronic and that one classical India form, the vocal percussion they do.
Mentioned on a "Strong Songs" podcast episode.
Sting Ray
The Jazz Crusaders
Some nice fast jazz. New Magnolia Jazz band messed with this a bit, I think because the leader thought it was near my own "Space Cadet" bassline.
Fried Pork Anus Boxer
Dicktown
Very brief comedy interlude I mp3'd up for Melissa from John Hodgman's Hulu cartoon series.
Stand By Me (Live from the Late Show with David Letterman)
Tracy Chapman
Really nice cover spotify introduced me to.
Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27: No. 2 "Moonlight Sonata": I. Adagio sostenuto
Steve Anderson
More or less straightforward version of the classical piece, though I think with a subtle choir.
Originally I was looking for Pianist SHOCKS Audience With Moonlight Sonata Dubstep Remix but you know I think the simpler form works allright. It is a moving piece.



The Way I Am
Ingrid Michaelson
Oh, such a sweet modern indie song.
From a Melissa playlist.
Excursions
A Tribe Called Quest
Classic Hip-hop.
Via Strong Songs episode on "So What"
What Time Is Love?
The Williams Fairey Brass Band
Odd Brass cover of KLF's techno hit.
The Ballad of Kami Jean
Mama Digdown's Brass Band
NOLA street band stuff.
One of the songs I was asked to study up on when I swung in with Second Line Brass Band.

About half way through Karen Armstrong's "A History of God". The reminder that the USA's weird interplay of religious naturalism vs fundamentalism - and a notable lack of mystery and mysticism with both - is pretty damn idiosyncratic, historically speaking.

Honestly I am legit surprised there aren't more religions based on worshipping the sun, that true giver of life. Or as an old Tumblr Post had it:
The sun is probably the closest thing we'll ever have to a true Eldritch Abomination. Hear me out here-

* Older than recorded history; was here longer than any of us and will be here long after we leave. Has a finite beginning and end but is still incomprehensibly ancient
* Burns itself into your vision instantly and can blind you if you look for too long
* Further prolonged exposure can cause cancerous growths
* Non-humanoid shape floating through space; colossal flaming tentacles angrily lash out on occasion
* Sort of just appeared one day and is now surrounded by the corpses of its stillborn children
* People used to sacrifice other people to appease it
* Pretty sure it screams at us sometimes
I was going to say that almost all energy on the planet comes from the sun. Though geothermal - the way the heart of our planet is the superhot ball of metal, around 8-10K F - seems like another Eldritch horror.
"We could sell out and take a capital gain. Then again, the market's going up on Tabletop. We could hang on and make some real money. On the gripping hand, inflation's running wild on Tabletop. Lets get into something else."
[...]
"All of Pitchfork River, at least. Top to bottom, hill to spill, they've taken up that three-sided Aristotelian logic."
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, "The Gripping Hand".
So characters in this science fiction novel have noticed an idiosyncratic speech construction: "on the one hand X, on the other hand Y, gripping hand Z" where the final point is the overriding decision maker, and the characters realize that it means the extraterrestrials (with humanoid but asymmetrical bodies, with two small arms and one larger one) are having a big culture influence on the human colonists.

For some reason the phrase has always stuck with me - I always assumed "Aristotelian logic" was that idea of thesis, antithesis, synthesis though I guess that's more Hegel's dialectic, and Aristotelian is more that "If P then Q, If Q then R, P, so R" stuff.