salvaged tunes

many mp3s perished in yesterday's purge, but today was a time of musical salvation. i was preparing to trash most of aqualung's strange and beautiful album; the tracks were rated 1s, 2s, and 3s, and seemed unlikely candidates for survival. but then something peculiar happened. i gave them a second listen and was pleasantly surprised--i may like this aqualung fellow! perhaps my tastes are changing....

that's all.

andrew david. "a strange plant that you mistake for a weed and then learn to love." san ignacio town, belize.

deleted tunes

my laptop is bursting with mp3s and photographs, so i recently purchased an external hard drive to help with the storage problem. after backing up the files, i went on a deleting spree. the first files to get the ax were 196 songs (that's about 1 gig) from the paste magazine sampler albums. each of the casualties was first given a 5 to 10 second opportunity to increase its ranking to the 3 star safety threshold, but only 1 song was spared (an arcane fire song).

two deletion observations:

• several of my favorite bands appeared to use paste as their dumping ground for sub-par songs. paste contributions from ben harper, ben kweller, bright eyes, cat power, coldplay, death cab for cutie, solomon burke, and van morrison each found their way to the recycle bin.
• the paste music editors and i strongly disagree on several bands. multiple contributions from bill mallonee, brindley brothers, mary gauthier, michelle shocked, rachael sage, sonia dada, and the black keys were included in paste albums and subsequently deleted by me.

a list of the most recently deleted songs (sorted by artist)


andrew david. "iguanas and the s.o." san ignacio town, belize.

some of the others in a live concert at the green bean

that's right, my new band, some of the others, will be performing at the green bean open-mic night on wednesday. we're a cover band that focuses exclusively on sufjan stevens classics. more particularly, we have trained our euphonic sights on chicago, one of the singles from come on, feel the illinoise (check out track #9). some day we may broaden our repetoire to include other sufjan songs and perhaps even some muse but in the meantime, our guitarist, trombonist, accordionist, violinist, marimba-ist, vocalists, and pianists make chicago a spectacle that is more than worth the drive (or flight).

we'll be playing sometime after 9pm. incidentally, the green bean is greenwood's favorite non-profit coffee shop. you can find it next door to the tap root theater at 210 n 85th st. also, some of the others is a name that i coined just now, so don't be surprised if mari (our illustrious leader) introduces us by some other name (e.g., sufvan stejens) at the show. (some of the others seemed an apt name because the band consists of some of the players from our soccer team, the others, and then some others.)

for those of you who are very ill and can't make it to our second debut, i hope to have some bootleg youtube footage for you in the next few days.

the s.o. "contemplating the d-c-g sequence of chicago." cahal pech, san ignacio town, belize.

added some films to the scale

i spent today's blogging time adding films to the rankings on the left panel. until this evening, the list only included films that i'd seen since july or august of 2006. however, because the list makes no mention of this exclusivity and because i can't quite recall which month i started this tally, it seems a bit silly to ignore other films that have been discussed on this blog. here are the new additions to the 17 point scale film ranks (and as is my custom, comments to the right of the hyphens indicate why one might choose to forego the film, and the exclamation marks indicate that the link will take you to something i've written about the film)

15.good night and good luck - in black and white
14.magnolia - foul-mouthed, violent, abusive ch's !
13.united 93 - somber yet poignant !
13.crash - profane, violent; lacks subtlety !
12.sophie scholl:final days - like a german tv movie !
12.l'enfant - slow, awkward, in french !
11.the son - slow, awkward, in french !
11.searching for the wrong-eyed jesus - quirky !
10.the storekeeper - short, silent
10.munich - long, too many kettles boiling !
10.brokeback mtn - long; mostly hype !
09.tsotsi - gaps in ch. developm; poorly translated !
09.dandelion - awkward, disjointed, and strange !
07.v for vendetta - worse than i expected
07.the da vinci code - crammed, silly, wrong !
05.new world - boring, cliche (sorry jeff) !

soon, i hope to share with you my opinion of blades of glory, the last king of scotland, and the queen.

andrew david. "tree of life." cahal pech ruins, san ignacio town, belize.