Monday, March 13, 2006:
Last post's Asha/Kronos track was in context of a disapproving film, but I'm not so sure about this one--I haven't seen Zoot Suit, the film it's from. Side one of the soundtrack is mostly Chicano swing (half of it, including this one, composed by Lalo Guerrero), with one then-modern rock song, all of them with vocals; side two is entirely instrumentals, most of them swing standards.
This one is from side one and features Edward James Olmos doing his best Dr. John impression. Or maybe he's imitating Tommy Mooney, whom allmusic.com lists as the only other performer of the song--but I have no idea who that is, and allmusic.com doesn't seem to know much about him either.
(update: rosswords writes in to say that allmusic.com attributed the song wrong on that page--that Tommy Mooney sang "Bingo Boogie" on the CD, but that "Marijuana Boogie" is performed by Lalo Guerrero. Also: "Neither of those two songs are really boogie-woogie, which is a wild eight-to-the-bar piano music. In those days, you just added the word 'boogie' to a song and sales doubled." And, finally, the version here isn't properly boogie woogie either, but more a Tin Pan Alley/Dixieland/showtunes version.)
My Spanish is a bit rusty, but I'm not sure I ever knew what a zizivato or a calco is. I understand the rest, though, and quite like the piano. And I can forgive a song about marijuana for not working itself up to a flashy conclusion.
...
For fans of Cronenberg and "body horror" in general: Ascaris lumbricoides, complete with pictures and video. I've been having nightmares about this three nights running.
...
There are a lot of complaints you could make about the Barnes & Noble website, but this is a neat feature: searching by instrument. These CDs in the catalogue have theremin on them (or, in the case of Portishead, a convincing synthesizer); these have pipa. Gentlemen, start your mixtapes.
...
A record exec answers, in general, "Why isn't $Awesome_Thing_X on CD/DVD?" Which leads, naturally enough, back to the question of whose purposes copyright is serving when the artists can't keep their work in print even though their audience wants it. I wonder if the current system is doing as much as it should for furthering the "progress of the arts and sciences"--it seems that scientific and artistic progress would depend on keeping works in print so those ideas can circulate through society and be challenged or built on. And things aren't valuable only because they can be sold; I'm sure we all have things we could sell (CDs, food, family) that we decline to because we prefer their function to their theoretical market value.
...
box.net has recently changed its prices and instituted a bandwidth cap. It seems they want to compete with Google's upcoming GDrive, probably as part of a larger quest involving disenchanting maidens and tilting at windmills. At any rate, by Friday I'll probably be out of bandwidth for the month, which means that I'll need to decide whether to pony up for more bandwidth, post less, or find some other solution.
Daniel Valdez & Edward James Olmos -- Marijuana Boogie
Daniel Valdez & Edward James Olmos -- Marijuana BoogieLast post's Asha/Kronos track was in context of a disapproving film, but I'm not so sure about this one--I haven't seen Zoot Suit, the film it's from. Side one of the soundtrack is mostly Chicano swing (half of it, including this one, composed by Lalo Guerrero), with one then-modern rock song, all of them with vocals; side two is entirely instrumentals, most of them swing standards.
This one is from side one and features Edward James Olmos doing his best Dr. John impression. Or maybe he's imitating Tommy Mooney, whom allmusic.com lists as the only other performer of the song--but I have no idea who that is, and allmusic.com doesn't seem to know much about him either.
(update: rosswords writes in to say that allmusic.com attributed the song wrong on that page--that Tommy Mooney sang "Bingo Boogie" on the CD, but that "Marijuana Boogie" is performed by Lalo Guerrero. Also: "Neither of those two songs are really boogie-woogie, which is a wild eight-to-the-bar piano music. In those days, you just added the word 'boogie' to a song and sales doubled." And, finally, the version here isn't properly boogie woogie either, but more a Tin Pan Alley/Dixieland/showtunes version.)
My Spanish is a bit rusty, but I'm not sure I ever knew what a zizivato or a calco is. I understand the rest, though, and quite like the piano. And I can forgive a song about marijuana for not working itself up to a flashy conclusion.
...
For fans of Cronenberg and "body horror" in general: Ascaris lumbricoides, complete with pictures and video. I've been having nightmares about this three nights running.
...
There are a lot of complaints you could make about the Barnes & Noble website, but this is a neat feature: searching by instrument. These CDs in the catalogue have theremin on them (or, in the case of Portishead, a convincing synthesizer); these have pipa. Gentlemen, start your mixtapes.
...
A record exec answers, in general, "Why isn't $Awesome_Thing_X on CD/DVD?" Which leads, naturally enough, back to the question of whose purposes copyright is serving when the artists can't keep their work in print even though their audience wants it. I wonder if the current system is doing as much as it should for furthering the "progress of the arts and sciences"--it seems that scientific and artistic progress would depend on keeping works in print so those ideas can circulate through society and be challenged or built on. And things aren't valuable only because they can be sold; I'm sure we all have things we could sell (CDs, food, family) that we decline to because we prefer their function to their theoretical market value.
...
box.net has recently changed its prices and instituted a bandwidth cap. It seems they want to compete with Google's upcoming GDrive, probably as part of a larger quest involving disenchanting maidens and tilting at windmills. At any rate, by Friday I'll probably be out of bandwidth for the month, which means that I'll need to decide whether to pony up for more bandwidth, post less, or find some other solution.
Labels: out of print, soundtrack
XML
