Extended winter

It's officially still winter until 21-Mar, but usually by this time we are climbing through the low 40s for high temps.  But we have been in an extended "polar vortex" due to erratic jet stream patterns for most of the time since mid January. We did manage to get two high 40s days last weekend to get rid of a lot (but not all) of the heavy snow that had accumulated. There is more snow on the way after the weekend, however.  A lot of people are complaining about winter now, of course.  But I'm trying not to. It is what it is.

Working on a conceptual paper

I've begun work on a short conceptual paper on the evolution of parental care ideas I've been developing, some of which if discussed in this blog.  My thinking has come a long way since I wrote that stuff. The editor of Quarterly Review of Biology is a faculty member in my department and I brought up the idea with him and he is receptive to the idea of submitting a piece to QRB. Hopefully I'll have enough time to get it done this semester.

Submitted a paper yesterday

One of my most recent student, Shu-Dan's, thesis chapters. I haven't been able to work on publishing much since the events of 2010. It's good to be getting back into it.

Goodbye to You - Scandal

From 1982. Always loved this brilliant little pop song. The keyboard solo is pretty fun. The break after that is one of the truly great moments in pop.

Good Girls Don't - The Knack

[link] This was the B side of the mega hit My Sharona and is just as great a song. From 1979. Had the 45 rpm vinyl.

Rosanna - Toto

From 1982. This song probably got more airplay on rock radio than any other song of the 80s. But it has held up. Very tight arranging and production put keyboards and brass on high display. Here, Toto probably achieved the peak of the funk/fusion-influenced rock boom that started in the late 70s and really took over the rock sound for a while. Chicago was also a huge purveyor of this sound. Lots of others, though.

Midnight Wind - Jon Stewart

Another one from his 1979 Album Bomb's Away Dream Babies. Stevie Nicks sings background just as in his megahit Gold. There is a subgenre here that includes Nicks's stuff, Fleetwood Mac's material from this time, and probably others. It's all about what the 70s were in pop, aside from disco and stuff that was going on with Soul and R&B.  The soft rock that was happening in the US was strongly country and folk influenced and had to do with the post-60s disillusionment and loss of vision and direction. It was a turning inward.

Lost Her in the Sun - Jon Stewart

[link] An old great one from 1979.  Stewart's late stuff brings a very nice but subtle rock/pop edge to his folk style.

Cocoro - Plastic Girl in Closet

This is an entire album I haven't listened to in full yet.Very poppy and sing song. You can hear the Beach Boys-incluenced facet of shoegaze. Pretty conventional chords and structure. The SG is the blurry vocal harmony, and the guitar noise, primarily.

Transmutation of noise...

My first two years of being a dad, my brain transmuted various faint house noises into baby crying. Still happens occasionally...

Upside Down - Bertoia

[link] Not sure I had this in the list of Bertoia songs in that earlier post. This song seems a little different from their others.  Maybe a bit more conventionally pop-structured. Less striving for atmosphere, although there is still plenty here. More attention to the vocal.

thinking during manual labor

Manual labor, like snow shoveling and washing glass fly vials, has always been an opportunity for me to think.  I can do the work basically without being conscious of it. So at the end, the works gets done, which for me is very satisfying, and hopefully some creative thinking also gets done.

Pretty sure no one is reading

Each one of my posts get exactly two views.  One occurs very quickly and the other shows up within a day. These are probably webcrawlers. So I'm blogging in silence for now.  Still, I'm going to keep it up.

Moon Note - Bertoia

[link] I haven't seen this one before but it's on the same album as some of the others I've posted. Incredibly lovely.  The video is seems like a night time version of the ride I had from Tokyo to Narita airport, which was a breathtaking techno-urban panorama. I e-mailed this band's contact address several months ago indicating that I was interested in a t-shirt and some of their other stuff.  I really hope they are still active.

Aureole - Jens Gad

[link] And now for a song called "Aureole" by Jens Gad, a NY based artist.  Instrumental, but almost in the same genre as the previous song.  Except for the soft jazz horn element that comes in the middle. Very dreamy stuff.

Suicide - Aureole

[link] Found this Tokyo band linked to some of the Bertoia videos. Slow, soft, haunty. The very dreamy end of dream pop. All creaminess, no edge.  A good refresher from some of the harder stuff.

Time Passages - Al Stewart

[link] High pop art from maybe the peak of pop diversity (1978) - also one of the peaks of my early age music influence sensitivity (I was 11). This song has at least three hooks: the intro figure, which comes back in the chorus, the verse part, and the break part. Stewart's warbly voice is also unique. A song of its times. Nostalgic.  Hauntingly so, in fact.

Never as Good as the First Time - Sade

[link] Sade is listed in the Quiet Storm artist list that I saw on Wikipedia. What makes songs like this great are the rhythm track, specifically the bass line. What You Won't Do For Love by Bobby Caldwell also has this characteristic (and great brass). It would be fun to sift through all the QS and really find the trenchant rhythm tracks. For me, that's where the lasting impact is.

Gold - Sugarcubes

[link] No other band was like them. Nobody else ever will be.

Quiet Storm playlist

[link] I just found this; haven't explored it yet and there's no playlist. From the first song it sounds like it's going to use a broad definition of the genre, including a lot of 80s stuff.

Classic commercial from my youth

Gillette Foamy. I have always used the product because it is thicker than other brands. So I guess the commercial worked.

Outside - the Fixx

[link] Another epic song. One of their most atmospheric (which is saying a lot with a band that thrives creating atmosphere). I hadn't seen this live video previously; it's pretty faithful to the studio track.

Mother's Opinion - Men Without Hats

[link] Sort of an epic song from Men w/o Hats; not one of their better known. Angry and atmospheric, it builds and repeats and keeps building. The guitar line folds in and out, crisscrossing with the vocal.

Mummenschanz

A childhood exposure to Mummenschanz on the Muppet Show and possibly PBS may be at least in part responsible for my appreciation for the abstract and conceptual in art and (to a certain degree) in music.

Eyes of a Stranger - Andy Summers

[link] Fragile, and even vulnerable-sounding, pop from the former Police-man. This album brings back the summer of '88 I think. One of the soundtracks to my pathetic and pathetically introverted little life back then.  Things were simpler then, by about ten orders of magnitude.

You - Gold Panda

[link] Found on a search for "Asian Dream pop". Interesting. Rather lo fi and machiney; a lot of treble. Has some narrative content. Gold Panda is a British guy named Derwin Schlecker. There is an Asian feel to this music; thanks to some of the note motifs.  Maybe that's what he intended with the performing name.

What You Won't Do For Love - Bobby Caldwell

This song is in a commercial now (I forget what) so I hear it a lot.  The version they use on TV has a stronger base line. I've always loved the song, which is from 1978.  Researching the song on Wikipedia, I find that it is an example of a genre called Quiet Storm. (Named after a 1975 Smokey Robinson song.) It will be interesting to research this genre further.

the interpersonal matrix

For a long time, I've envisioned the state of relationships among individuals who know each other as a huge 2x2 matrix with either number or color in the cells indicating the warmth or coldness of the relationship. For my part, I like to keep my column as uniormly good as possible and I worry when cells indicate a bad relationship (pretty rare) or a recent encounter that was awkward. But it's frequently the case that I am friends with two people who  do not have a good relationship between each other. While not necessarily being a mediator trying to improve the relationship, I am dealing with both people who are not dealing well (or decidedly not at all) with each other. This is often very frustrating.

Talk Talk live from 1986

[link] One of my major influences.  Great stuff.

I'm Gone - Tamaryn

[link] Very guitary and spooky. The instrumental track moves under the vocal like oil. Then noise binds it all together.

All Names - Jun Miyake

[link] Heard this in a Land Rover commercial.  Pretty groovy. Very textural.

Eyes on Fire - Blue Oyster Cult

[link] Continuing the thread of late 70s-early 80s hard rock that I was steeped in in my mid-teens.  The whole "Revolution By Night" album by B.O.C. was a favorite of mine.  This is one of several hooky songs on that album.

In the Dark - Billy Squier

[link] For some reason this song jumped into my mind today.  It's a staple from my hard rock youth.  Still sounds pretty good. There are three hooks in this song; two in the verse and the chorus.

Applause - Lady Gaga

[link] Ru-Jun is really into this song thanks to her dance lessons.  Musically, it's a cool song with some powerful moments. She co-wrote and co-produced it.  So not only can she sing, she has a musical ear and can write. Musically she earns my respect.  I have only heard a couple other of her songs, but even just from these I think she must be taken seriously by musicians (and I generally think she is, from what I've heard). This video is captivating. I can't take my eyes off it. There's a lot there and it is fascinating to think about what she is trying to say. She is dead serious in making a statement about fame here and just looking into her eyes, Lady Gaga is very sophisticated in what she is about and she has big things to say.

I defy

Anyone tracking my consumer activity, to successfully change or predict my activity to the point where a cent of profit can be made.  It can't be done. To quote Crow T. Robot: "Nobody gets me.  I'm like the wind."
On the other hand, if they put something in front of me and I buy it and it gives me pleasure, more power to them. That's what I want to happen.