Good Music, 2016

Hi folks! I'm listening to a bit less music these days, but here are some albums and songs that I really liked in 2016 (though not all released this year):

Albums:

• Misty Miller - "The Whole Family is Worried." (Angry British Lady Rock)
• Sky Ferreira - "Night Time, My Time" (Great Indie Pop)
• Mike Doughty - "The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns" (Mike's best since at least Golden Delicious)
• Tokyo Police Club - "Champ" (Just like regular rock n' roll but v. good.)
• Moana Soundtrack (OMG please see this movie the music is so good.)

Songs:

• Lizzo - "Worship"
• Big Data - "Dangerous" 
• Meghan Trainor - "Me Too"
• BØRNS - "10,000 Emerald Pools"
• Bahari - "Altar of the Sun"
• Mumford & Songs - "Ditmas"

Listen to all of these, please. Google Music Playlist

Microchronograph!

In this period of intense travel, updates are few & far between. But dear readers I have music to present, and music say so much more than words themselves.

Microchrograph, is the latest Sick Ridiculous & the Sick Ridiculous tune to hit the market. Tom summarized it pretty well on his blog, but basically it's about academic dishonesty. You should definitely give it a listen, download it freely, and share it with your bros & lady friends.

Cannibal Resource

The song Cannibal Resource from the Dirty Projectors is highly recommended. The rest of the album, unfortunately, did not jump out at me in the same way. 

Sick Cafe

newyear2009-9
Originally uploaded by sick ridiculous.

Hey folks. I am alive!

After a much enjoyed, if not deserved, winter break in New Orleans and Pittsburgh, I am back to a somewhat normal life. This means I am coming in to school every day. Most people are here yet, though, so it's kind of boring.

Anywho, just before the New Year (actually New Year's Eve-Eve) Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous played a show at Club Cafe, right here in Pittsburgh. If you've never been, Club Cafe is a great venue that hosts a number of smallish national acts, usually of the folk/singer-songwriter variety. I have seen a bunch of good bands there, and the sound is great. We had a awesome time opening for our friends in Slingshot Genius. We even busted out a soon-to-be-favorite, "Duckles Chuckles," which we wrote when our friends Stephen & Laura moved to Washington D.C.

Please enjoy some pictures by clicking though. Our friend Shafeeq also took some pro-style pictures. Thanks bro!

Also, peep this incredible poster that Tom made for the show.

Flying Heavy Metal

Did you know that Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of Iron Maiden, is a commercial airline pilot? In fact, he hosts a show about airplanes on Discovery Channel called, "Flying Heavy Metal," and I've been watching it on YouTube. Awesome.

An Evening With Mike Doughty

An Evening With Mike Doughty
Originally uploaded by DixiePistols.

On Thursday I saw Mike Doughty at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh. He was touring in support of his new CD, "Happy Man, Sad Man," which I just purchased today and already enjoy. The concert was pretty much everything I could ask for in a concert-going experience.

So first off, as you might be able to tell from the ticket, this was AN EVENING with Mike Doughty. This is industry code for, "there are no other bands playing." This was, frankly, awesome. Yes, I know it is important for bands to have opening bands, to increase exposure for up-and-coming bands (which, by the way, is why you should come see Sick Ridiculous & the Sick Ridiculous October 29th at The Smiling Moose!) but sometimes you want to show up at 7pm, rock for the next hour and leave. This is exactly what happened.

Moreover, the sound at Club Cafe was great, and we had a table with a great view. See normally Mike Doughty plays at Mr. Small's-sized venues, but this time he decided to play three shows at Club Cafe instead. In this case smaller is definitely better! This is now the third time at least I have seen Mike Doughty in some form, the second time where it was just him, and acoustic guitar and his boy Scrap Livingston on the cello.

As a nice bonus, Mike put out a jar for questions from the audience. He answered the mostly-funny questions over the course of the evening, and I think through this we gotta a pretty good sense of his personality. Also, he like me, does not like when people in the back are talking and yelling things during the show. So he boldly (if somewhat confrontationally) told those people to shut up.

Um, and that was about it. He played most of my favorites, so it was a good time. His voice sounds great, low and gravelly. Also, they recorded the show and offered it for sale immediately afterwards, which I thought was pretty cool, although I didn't have any money so I didn't actually buy it.

Boom

This song is unbelievably funky:

"You Dropped a Bomb on Me," by the Gap Band 

Girl Talk!

Last night I saw Girl Talk in concert and had a great time! The concert was held at the Station Square amphitheater which is conveniently right next to Sation Square, but which has these amazing views of downtown, since it's right across the Mon. The scenery was definitely amazing, since we got there at about 7:15, and watched the city slowly get darker as the sun went down.

There were at least four good bands: Grand Buffet was tight as always. I liked seeing this band Donora, who had this Shhh! indie rock chick thing going. Then there was Wiz Khalifa, a more serious rapper, who was pretty good and had at least one song I already knew ("Say Yeah") from Girl Talk.

And of course there was Girl Talk. I really do love Girl Talk. He has achieved something that is really way beyond any other mashup artist which is, I guess, to make me actually like a mashup artist. Many of his songs, while maybe not better than the original, certainly have more energy. He has a pretty standard formula of Rap + Pop Hook, but the songs really come at you pretty fast & furious. I think he probably does a better job at picking the backing songs than many rappers themselves do. Maybe he should be a producer? Here's one example of that.

The concert itself was definitely fun. Dancing was the order of the day, and despite the fact that this was a big outdoor music festival, people were really dancing and having a good time. The vibe was like 90% positive I would say. If I had one complaint I guess I would say that his songs tend to drag just a bit more live than they do on the albums, but I figure that's because he's doing a little bit more in person and therefore needs more time to think. Anyway, highly recommend! 

We Know Something

Watch this music video from Jurrasic Five and DJ Format!
http://www.vimeo.com/361491

7/4 and My Dumb Car

My Dumb Car:
I had to get all of this work done on my car. It was totally expensive and predictable since I had basically been doing no regular maintenance on my car. Lame. I got new break pads in the front and back and I had to get at least one new rotor. I also got a new belt and a PCV valve. That was like the emergency stuff. But they also said I needed a new sway bar, a tune-up and something else I wrote down but can't remember. I am starting to get a little bit worried about the price of all these things, and was thinking about getting a second estimate. Does anyone have a mechanic that is not Pep Boys that they go to and would recommend?

7/4:
The other night Tom and I worked on a new song which just happens to mostly be in 7/4. Writing lyrics is largely my responsibility. The funny thing about writing lyrics for a song in 7/4 is that it's difficult; you're not use to doing it so it takes some work. However, the great thing is that you're constantly amazed by how many more syllables you can fit in each line. It's like the measures never end!

I Got the Internet!

Today the Comcast man came and turned on the cable TV and Internet at my new place. Nice! Those first few days in a new apartment without the Internet are always hard.

The only annoying thing was that I had to string the cable myself, from the side of the room where it came in to the other side of the room where my TV is. I actually did a pretty good job of this. It looks pretty good, thanks to my friends at the Home Depot.

I also have a few neat toys that I am playing with: An M-Audio recording box and Microphone to go with it, and a Korg USB keyboard (the musical kind) that Rand gave me for Christmas. I'll play around and try to post something cool in the next few days.

Woot! 

TRANSACT Submission Submitted

Why, oh why does the 'backspace' key go 'back' to the previous page in all browsers? This is a bug, not something helpful. I just lost the entire entry that I was composing. This is worse than the 'insert' key.

Last night we finally submitted the paper that I have been spending all my time on for the past 3 weeks. We submitted to TRANSACT 2009, a workshop on transactional memory. Our paper was on an optimization of STM using the static aliasing annotations that we have been working on in our group.

Honestly, the process was pretty painful. We had to do benchmarks, which is not something I am used to, and we had a couple fall through at the very last moment, because we could not explain why we were seeing the results we were seeing. I now have a lot more repsect for people who work in systems.

Anyway, tonight I am rewarding myself by going to the Girl Talk concert. I've never seen him live, but his last two albums are in super heavy rotation at home and at work. (Seriously, check the stats.) Also, Grand Buffet is opening, and they are sweet.

While the Tom is Away, the Nels Will Play

Tom is out of town. So, acting in a completely unauthorized manner, I posted some songs that we recently recorded, for free, on last.fm. You can hear "Custom Party Music," which is what I'm calling the collection of all the songs that we wrote for a specific occasion, and you can download all of the songs.

Highlights include, "Birthday Control," and "Unfairbanks," which is about the sad economic state in which we find our country and my friend George Fairbanks leaving Pittsburgh. "Sick Day," isn't really custom party music, and in fact is just a demo.

Music

 Last night at a Steeler's Game Watching Party/Free Concert/Free Hot Dog Festival, I saw two bands.

Nik and the Central Plains: I know Nik from the open mic nights. His music is great. It's like super weird folk music, but is very catchy.

Aloud: Aloud was your more straightforwad modern rock band, but they were pretty good. The were from Boston, MA, and had a good "wall of sound" thing going.

SR&tSR Gig Log #3

Last night Pittsburgh's own, Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous played at Brianne's birthday party. We had a great time, and debuted a few (3?) new songs. We ended up playing three separate times during the night, including as late as 2am. This happened because people kept showing up, and getting upset that they had missed the music. Thank-you guys for feeding our large egos! Also, the first set was a little sub-par, due to some string-related issues. 

With any luck, we'll record a few of the new ones tomorrow, so you can hear that.

The party itself was pretty rad too!

Last Minute Rock Announcement

Tonight Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous will be playing at George's graduation party. I won't give out the information here, but email/text/message me for the infos. 9pm start, 10pm rock.

Kings of Leon

Well I know I'm like 5 years behind the times here, but the Kings of Leon album, Youth and Young Manhood is really good. You should give it a listen.

Home Slice!

On Friday night, I saw John Vanderslice at the Andy Warhol museum, an incredible experience. I heard about him through Tom, basically the only person I know who listens to him, and therefore Tom gets bonus points for introducing me. The concert was great. The band was incredibly tight. The sound was great, and John had plenty of neat old analog equipment, for which he is pretty well know. (This is partially the reason for my renewed interest in the electric guitar.) He was really funny, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. The selection of songs was good too, mostly songs I knew from Emerald City and The Life & Death of an American Four-Tracker, the only two albums I have, but also some ones I had never heard.

The highlight was the end, when he and his band-members went out into the gallery area for some acoustic songs. It sounded even cooler with the natural reverb of the room.

Go to his web site. You can listen to his entire new album, and I'd be surprised if you were disappointed.

New Song!

Hey guys,

It seems like clockwork, but Sick Ridiculous and The Sick Ridiculous (that's now the official capitalization) has a new song. It's called, The Giving 43 Billion Dollars to Charity "Blues," and as always it can be downloaded from our MySpace page. Hope you enjoys.

Pizza! Time

My best friend from high school, Rand, is now in a band out in LA. They used to have a somewhat ludacris name, but now that they've gotten some interest from actual music people, they are known as "Pizza!"

Anyway, they just released an album and it's available for free on their web site. Their music is somewhat avant-garde, but they are extremely tight musically, and have some clever songs. My favorite so far is bird-dreams.