Bunton’s Winter CD: Track 4

Every so often I make up a mix CD of my favorite songs at the moment; mostly new songs, but with some old songs sprinkled in for flavor. I thought it’d be a neat feature of this new blog to go through, song-by-song, and explain a little about why it appeals to me.

Chris Thile may very well be my favorite individual musician. Hand-picked from a young age to be a phenom on the mandolin, he was hooked up with friend Sean Watkins and his sister Sara to form the bluegrass group Nickel Creek. But as a solo artist, even at a young age, he was (perhaps unwittingly) tapped to be the savior of the genre. However, as he grew into his music, many were disappointed with his choice to stray from the fundamental roots of bluegrass.

Pandora, as good or bad as you

Shame on anyone who knows of the website www.pandora.com and didn’t tell me! In short, it generates a radio station tailored to your musical selection. You enter a song or artist and it plays songs with similar musical qualities to what you’ve entered. It works based on the Music Genome Project, which attempts to produce a genome like description of music so that different selections can be compared for likeness. The wiki entry explains well enough how it works.

Bunton’s Winter CD: Track 3

Every so often I make up a mix CD of my favorite songs at the moment; mostly new songs, but with some old songs sprinkled in for flavor. I thought it’d be a neat feature of this new blog to go through, song-by-song, and explain a little about why it appeals to me.

As I mentioned on the Summer CD, Bloc Party’s A Weekend in the City was my favorite album of 2007. Here I include “I Still Remember”, and all I really have to say about the song itself was already covered in that earlier post on “The Prayer”. So here I’ll talk about why I think I like the band so much.

Dry Times Ahead

And so it begins… after what seemed like, for North Carolina, an unusually chilly Spring (and commencement), summer has tipped its hand a few weeks early and we are now looking at at least four days in a row near 100F. Now it is time to start really sweating the drought again. We’re still on water restrictions here (try growing tomato plants when you can only water twice a week!) and according to the University of Nebraska’s handy drought monitor, “abnormally dry” conditions are already rolling over the research Triangle while the mountains are still under extreme drought conditions.

But it could be worse, as Radiohead’s new video for “All I Need” argues. No, it’s not just that the video is from Radiohead that’s the downside (Brian B. and Brad usually would rather have a toothache than listen to them). In fact, I was hoping that Prof. Bunton might find this one a bit more accessible. Of course, part of its accessibility is that it’s not quite as melancholy as some of their songs, a fact more than made up for by the video’s message:

The Blind Leaving the Blind

First Movement

Part One

Tell me what you want me to think

You can lead me to water, you can make me drink

I trust you if you say it's good

You wouldn't hurt me and I don't think you could

Tell me what I don't need to keep

I over-packed and the sidewalk is steep

To your cathedral at the top of Nob Hill

It makes me tired and, dear, it always will

 

Bunton’s Winter CD: Track 2

Every so often I make up a mix CD of my favorite songs at the moment; mostly new songs, but with some old songs sprinkled in for flavor. I thought it’d be a neat feature of this new blog to go through, song-by-song, and explain a little about why it appeals to me.

It seems to me that it would be impossible for anybody who’s older than about 20 to not know the work of Bob Seger. He broke onto the scene with the hit “Night Moves”, but is probably most well-known for “Like a Rock”. The latter is probably the most successful single-to-jingle transition ever, as it’s still used in advertising for Chevy trucks, though most of the ads feature now feature the infuriating John Mellencamp tune “Our Country”. His song “Turn the Page” was covered and made popular by Metallica*. My favorite of his songs, however, are “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and the song that appears here, “Against the Wind”.

Bunton’s Winter CD: Track 1

Every so often I make up a mix CD of my favorite songs at the moment; mostly new songs, but with some old songs sprinkled in for flavor. I thought it’d be a neat feature of this new blog to go through, song-by-song, and explain a little about why it appeals to me.

I’ve raved a lot about my favorite band Nickel Creek, and most of it has been due to their mandolinist Chris Thile. But the other members of the group, Sara Watkins and her brother Sean are quite talented themselves. Sean has released solo albums, as Chris has, but I hadn’t taken a listen to any of his work until his recent release, Blinders On.

The 2008 SXSW Torrent

For the past few years, the South by Southwest Music and Film Festival has released a (free, legal) BitTorrent of one mp3 from each band performing there. It’s hit-and-miss, mostly miss, but now you can get some help wading through this year’s batch. Paul Ford at The Morning News offers six-word reviews, plus five-star ratings, for each song in the torrent. (Thanks to Marilyn for the heads-up.)

Bunton’s Summer CD: Disc 2 Track 19

Every so often I make up a mix CD of my favorite songs at the moment; mostly new songs, but with some old songs sprinkled in for flavor. I thought it’d be a neat feature of this new blog to go through, song-by-song, and explain a little about why it appeals to me.

The admittedly lengthy 2007 Summer CD collection ends with a very personal song. One of my best friends from high school, Will Ragland, was the “artsy” guy. When the musical play movement was revived in high school our sophomore year, he wasn’t nearly as interested as I was. After he saw how much fun we had putting on Li’l Abner and Annie Get Your Gun, in which I had major roles, he tried out for and got the role of Kenickie in Grease our senior year. And he was good—really good. Will caught the bug big-time, going on to do much more theater than I ever got around to. He’s become very involved with the Greenville theater scene, both for adults and children. Will is probably best known for his title role one of the biggest hits in local theater history, The Buddy Holly Story. It was such a big deal, he and the rest of the band in the play recorded an album of Buddy Holly and the Crickets tunes. One of those, “That’ll Be the Day”, is the last song on this collection, and can be downloaded from the linked site. I’m very proud of Will and all he’s accomplished.

Bunton’s Summer CD: Disc 2 Track 18

Every so often I make up a mix CD of my favorite songs at the moment; mostly new songs, but with some old songs sprinkled in for flavor. I thought it’d be a neat feature of this new blog to go through, song-by-song, and explain a little about why it appeals to me.

My three favorite TV shows of all time are, in no particular order, The West Wing, the new Battlestar Galactica, and Six Feet Under. They’re all tremendously acted, written, and directed, and they explore very difficult themes. But Six Feet Under stands apart from the others because of its fantastic use of music. In fact, the boxed set of the entire series comes complete with its two official soundtrack albums, with artists from Peggy Lee to Arcade Fire. The use of one song, though, used over the final minutes of the series, etched itself into my soul.