Book , Music & Movie Junkie | Whatsis iSuggestions

The library is a salvation for my practically non-existence media budget. The other day I picked up a CD and as I listened the first thing I thought was: Holy crap! Heard It on the X by Los Super Seven is theA and B the C of D. Released in 2005, it features a variety of Texas singers, (Delbert McClinton, Joe Ely, Freddy Fender, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown among others ), paying tribute to a Mexican radio station of the 30's -- 50's, (the station is a fascinating story in itself). I wouldn't be surprised if you have this already.

I just finished a book called Little Money Street by Fernanda Eberstadt, published by Knopf in 2006. It's about Gypsy musicians in the South of France bordering on Spain. Although her syntax is often tortured, I like the way the author tells as much about American consumerism as she does about the Gypsies. The Gypsies live in a very traditional society that is against education. They stay home, watch TV all day, and are constantly bombarded with advertising for junk food, which makes up most of their diet. As a result their health is terrible. They get the worst of both worlds. In America we have notions of romantic Gypsy vagabonds. White Europeans think of Gypsies, (the largest minority group in Europe), as lazy, obese welfare cheats. It's like the way Seattle people are capable of looking down on people that live in trailers in Lynnwood. If those people had their own language and culture.

You Suck, A Love Story by Christopher Moore, HarperCollins 2007. In this fast-paced romp, Jody and Tommy, two teenage vampires, attempt to make their way in San Francisco, a challenge when you've only been doing the whole vampire thing for only a couple of months. There are all these rules, including: only feed from the terminally ill or weak, no food or drink, and you can't see your parents any more--at least not during the day. On top of that, many are hot on your trail. The two set out to accomplish what any on-the-ball vampire might do in the course of a normal day, er, night--locate someone who can keep them safe from vampire killers and find them an apartment. After bumping into the two newbies in Walgreens, Abby Normal, a goth teen, becomes their self-appointed minion after crushing on Tommy and then chases the vampire lifestyle herself. Moore takes what would normally be a bleak, horror story plot and transforms it, giving the colorful characters lots of amusing twists to work out. You Suck made for a quick and entertaining spring break read.

The "365 Days Project" is a site chock-full of mostly outsider, novelty, and oddball recordings -- made available for the public to download in MP3 format. I almost peed my pants. Click on the link to the days February 16-28, and that gets you 1970s (80s?) Christian aerobics, Pat Boone pushing Amway and William Shatner singing his heart out on Rocket Man, among others. Laugh yourself silly at the written commentary and the visuals: photos, graphics, album covers, sheet music, etc. Here are a few others......

047 Cathi Stout - Hips and Abdomen
049 Virginia Rogers - Thanks for the Memories, "Bear" Bryant
050 Cambodian Funk Yodeler - Unknown Title
051 Dick Clark - Open Letter to the Older Generation

*052 The DeZurik (Cackle) Sisters - Intro/Old Dan Tucker/Whipperwill Song
056 Wizz-o (Chris Palestis) - Don't You Want Me/I Love Rock and Roll
057 Buddy Max - Uncle Mistletoe
059 Richard Dawson - Apples and Oranges

*Highly Recommended--The Cackle Sisters can make their yodeling sound like chickens! Not to miss!

The "365 Days Project" is linked to ubu.com, another choice stop. From the site: Ubu.com is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. Here you'll find cinema shorts, MP3 interviews with the likes of Marcel Duchamp, and other intriguing installations.

Have you heard: MARY HARTMAN MARY HARTMAN is out on DVD!!! MH2-a-thon, baby!

That's it for now. Sayonara.

Joyce Hansen, MLIS
Silverfish Editor, '06-'07

Me, at 18 mos., with my books

Book & Music Junkie | Whatsis iSuggestions

By Joyce Hansen, MLIS

Salutations. It took just four measly minutes to yank down the Xmas lights from the front porch last week, yet I experienced a rush of accomplishment that got me thinking. As I roll to the end of my time here, this is the small corner I have come to sometimes occupy—a person who prizes polishing off tiny, non-school tasks. Because there is hardly any time for laundry, QFC or scrambling eggs, these little bursts of short-term satisfaction allow me to slog through papers, tedious readings, the cat throwing up, the car breaking down, etc. For that I am mighty grateful.

Anyway, I’ve come across some nice stuff so put aside that research paper. Here are a few whatsis suggestions…

MUSIC

The Gothic Archies / THE TRAGIC TREASURY: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events. 2006. Nonesuch Records. www.nonesuch.com/thegothicarchies. Shake up your music cache with this compilation of witty, miserable songs, most of which originally showed up within the audio versions of the Lemony Snicket books. Lemony Snicket not only writes wondrous strange children’s books, he plays the accordion. Along with Snicket, The Gothic Archies are singer/songwriter Stephin Merritt and John Woo on electric sitar. The songs are short in length and lyrics included. Sing along! The music is jaunty, and, sometimes vaguely reminiscent of 80s pop songs with their angst-filled chords and gloomy singers (hello, Morrissey). The chorus from the song Scream and Run Away:

When you see Count Olaf, count to zero;
Then scream and run away
Scream, scream, scream and run away
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run
or die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die,
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run,
or die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die

Hee-larry-us!

Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass whipped Cream & Other Delights Re-Whipped. 2006. Shout! Factory. www.shoutfactory.com. Listen to this remixed classic and even scrubbing out the red-sauce encrusted oven is pure mirth! The cover says it all: Once upon a time, there was a badass with a horn, a babe in whipped cream and a bunch of songs that became American classics. Now, 40 years later, Herb Alpert is back with new solos mixed in alongside even newer grooves by some of the most innovative artists around. Rewhipped indeed.

BOOKS

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby. 2006. Believer Books. It’s possible you and Hornby are in the same boat. This is the predicament: “a hilarious and true account of one man’s struggle with the monthly tide of the books he’s bought and the books he’s been meaning to read” (from the book jacket). The comic writer keeps a monthly journal for 14 months that includes lists of books he’s purchased and books he’s actually read for each month.

From the book: “Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper vs. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See?”

Because I’ve only finished half of it(!), I can’t say if it’s all-the-way-through noteworthy, but there’s remarkable consistency in this and his other books, and because of that I’m going to go ahead and say, pick it up: it’s smart and entertaining.

Arboretum by David Byrne. 2006. McSweeney’s Books. www.davidbyrne.com. www.mcsweeneys.net. How do we perceive information? What associations with that info does our ever-churning brain create? Byrne’s compiled an intriguing book of his tree diagram drawings which he describes as “faux science, automatic writing, self-analysis, satire and maybe even a serious attempt at finding connections where none were thought to exist.” Byrne, legendary former lead singer and co-founder of the music group Talking Heads, has spent much of his life exploring stories, and started

Alternate Universes, 2002

these drawings as instructions to himself: “draw an evolutionary tree on pleasure,” mental maps of imaginary territory. Paragraphs explain some of the drawings. Byrne cites Lawrence Weschler and his book, Everything That Rises: A Book of convergences as some of what makes him consider connections beyond the obvious. Byrne: “(Weschler) asks if the similarities in the branching structures of neurons, trees and genealogies mean that we have a predisposition towards making things fit these structures.” What stories do we tell ourselves? No commitment to reading straight through—open it and step in anywhere.

That’s all, folks!

Joyce Hansen is the editor of the Silverfish and a 2nd year. She really didn't mean to leave the Xmas lights up so long. Really. Her cat, Debbie, fights crime.

Miraculous Musical Madness, Comparing Free Music Recommendation Sites

By Amy Vecchione, dMLIS

One of the greatest aspects of the World Wide Web has been the seemingly unlimited access to music. Yes, music. No, not information (am I really in the iSchool?).

Music is good for you. It increases your quality of life. But how often do we find ourselves listening to the same music because we can’t find anything new that is “good?” Meaning, we can’t find new music that we like.

Music recommendation sites acquire intelligence about what you, the listener, like and do not like based on your choices and uses that to inform its next recommendations. Another bonus is that musicians and listeners readily tag their own music, making deciphering “good” music from “bad” music somewhat easy for the untrained eye.

Below is my analysis of several of these sites geared to help you, the reader, find more music compatible with your tastes. I chose the sites based on price; they had to be free because, well, we’re all college students, right? Some of these sites give you the whole song, or just ten seconds of the song. You usually have to register, which is free, but both listening and registration is free for all of those I reviewed. I mention Rhapsody because it is totally fee based, but provides on-demand access to entire albums for that cost, and is more similar to iTunes in that way, but it also provides excellent recommendations.

These web sites work by making use of some fancy database programming, which if you feel like nerding out, you might enjoy investigating. They work similarly to the way the readers’ advisory database NoveList works, except you don’t then need to go out and find the music to see if you like it.

For some sites, the music is added into the database, but each web site does this differently. (See more about this below.) And also unlike NoveList—I’m going to give away the ending of this article: I chose last.fm to be the best music recommendation site.

The sites that I enjoyed the least are the ones where you have to really, really choose which ones you like and dislike so much that you lose track of listening to good music. That’s part of why Pandora lost the number one slot—I had to click “dislike” so many times that I stopped enjoying myself, and I wound up hearing repeated songs or The Dave Matthews Band (a band I don’t really like much).

About me: I like independent, world, rock, rap and country music. I don’t like Britney Spears, but I like Madonna. I like Ludacris, and sometimes Eminem. I like Justin Timberlake, but not his boy band beginnings. I like Erase Errata, Low, Lightning Bolt and Neil Young. I’m very varied so my tastes will showcase these sites pretty well.

And onto the sites!!! Explore away!!!

Music Strands

http://www.mystrands.com/

• Complex interface with too many options and tabs to comprehend at first use. You choose an artist you like and then are presented with a list of artists that are similar.
• Only plays snippets of songs, so it’s only previews. For previews, AllMusic is much better, and the interface is far more navigable.
• There are some features that aren’t really about recommending music.
• Does not stream.
• Has a networked community where you can add friends or people with similar musical tastes, which might help expand one’s horizons.
• Don’t have to download a new interface as everything is in Flash in the website.

AllMusic

http://www.allmusic.com/

• Find out everything an artist has done, which bands they’ve been in, which bands they started, which bands they inspired, which bands inspired them.
• Awesome fact-checking tool!
• Plus, snippets of hit songs.
• Perfect when trying to find a song, but you only know how it goes, the tune, the lyrics, or both, and you think you might know the name of the artist, but can’t really remember.
• No networked community.
• Incredible and accurate history.
• Easy to use with simple search bar and advanced search options.
• Incredible database.

Pandora

http://www.pandora.com

• Pandora has a huge library and is part of the Music Genome Project, an incredible project founded by Tim Westergren: “Over the past six years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time.”
• Pandora does not require downloading of new software; the interface is easy to use and online with a Flash system.
• By building your own custom radio station, Pandora learns your taste in music.
• Search by artist name or song title. Recommendations are made based on the song attributes that you choose and like.
• Recommendations depend on whether you like or dislike a song (or do nothing, so three choices).
• Pandora tends to descend into newer, indie rock that I don’t like. More of that jock-rock. Since it’s not based on user tags, it’s difficult to know how the decisions are made.
• Obscure artists are represented because they can submit their own music to Pandora.
• You start by picking a song or artist that you like, and the recommendations follow. Recommendations do sound similar to the music that you choose, but sometimes lack a certain edge or emotional quality of music.
• Pandora tends to present some of the best specific mood selections and variety.
• You can only skip three songs per hour, so if you dislike more than three songs, you have to sit through the others.
• I have no clue what the algorithm might be for determining recommendations.
• No networked community of friends.
• It is seemingly near impossible to get Pandora to stick to a sub-genre.
• Streaming is terrific, and recommendations are generally of an incredible variety.

Last.fm

http://last.fm

• You have to download new software, but it’s quick, fast, and doesn’t occupy a huge portion of your desktop like some downloads.
• Recommendations are based off of user tags and band tags.
• Like Pandora, creates “radio stations,” but skip as many songs as you want and store a track listing of every song listened to. Declare your “love” with a heart icon for certain songs, instead of just plain “like.”
• Calculates your favorite or most listened to band based on number of listens.
• Tracks all the music you listen to and stores it on a website.
• Search based on tags or on artist name.
• Has very obscure artists.
• It's fast and simple to upload songs.
• See what music your friends are listening to.
• Easy to use. The interface is user friendly with a simple search bar.
• Networking community.
• Option of skipping songs without saying you don’t like it. Sometimes you’re just not in the mood for a certain song, but you like it.

Mercora

http://www.mercora.com

• Need to install a plug in.
• Listen to full songs on demand.
• Has networking community.
• Become a Mercora DJ.
• Clearly a Pandora rip-off project, but is based on P2P software.
• Since you can demand whatever song you want, the predictability takes away from of the charm. Not knowing what will be suggested next—what makes Pandora and last.fm both so outstanding—is what makes the listening experience a real adventure.

Rhapsody

http://www.rhapsody.com

Rhapsody is probably the best, but wasn’t rated for this survey because it costs money to sign up. Download entire albums at a time, and listen to them over and over. Rhapsody, like last.fm, makes quality recommendations, has an unlimited library, and brings you the ultimate in control.

Well, that’s all for now. Hopefully you guys can get some entertaining done in between papers, group projects, and discussions. And remember…. Listen to music! Life will be better if you do!!