april_r’s Journal

the heart wants what it wants

14 Jul 2007, 17:32

For starters, just know that I'm not proud to admit to any of this. But the guilt has been crushing. It really has. I just have to come clean about this and get it off my chest already.

I am a cheater. And I have been cheating for a while now. Cheating on my blog, that is. On the blog that I claim to 'heart'. You see, for weeks now, I have been consumed by a new passion. Something fresh and exciting and frankly, it's all I can think about. I can't deny it any longer. It just wouldn't be fair to my blog, to you my readers, or to myself.

My new love is Last•FM.

Seriously.

I can't help it. It's a social music revolution!

I have set it as my homepage. I have installed i•scrobbler on my mac and enabled iPod scrobbling. It's the first thing I do when I get home from work and it's often the last thing I do before I go to bed at night. Sometimes I lay in bed Saturday evenings or bright and early Sunday mornings, and I pour over my charts of recently played tracks, marvel at the growing numbers beside each artists name, and search for upcoming events in my hometown. I peep into my neighbours profiles and I watch what they listen to, and then I sample some tracks. I read the artist bios, and look at their photos, and then before I know it, I am tracking down their music and downloading it into my iTunes with utter abandon (20 gb and counting!). Just last night, I discovered The Pipettes and The Long Blondes. It was an instant attraction. Oh, Last•FM!

I have scrobbled over 1000 tracks since mid April, and to borrow a Depeche Mode-ian phrase, I just can't get enough!

Thanks to this new love of mine, I not only discovered the delicate, exotic strains of Beirut, but I found out they had announced a show in my city. I purchased tickets as soon as they became available and am going to their show in the Fall. Last•FM also told me that Stereo Total are coming too, and so I snapped up tickets for that as well. Last•FM just keeps on giving, and giving, and I love it for that.

And while I'm being open about all this, I may as well confess that occasionally I have in fact copied posts from my blog (gasp!) and have pasted them into my journal on Last•FM. (oh god, I can only imagine what you must think of me).

My blog has been there for me through thick and thin for more than a year now, and I know it's despicable to place my affections elsewhere and to not faithfully post to it like I should. Please understand that it's not that I don't heart my blog anymore because I still heart it very, very much. I never stop thinking about it or caring about it the whole time I'm on Last•FM. Honestly.

Perhaps Last•FM is just a phase and I'll grow tired of it after a while. That's probably the case... right?

In the meantime, sweet, dear blog... Be patient with me and try to understand. I will return to you someday soon; for you are my one true love. You and I have a history and have shared so much.

I heart you, blog. Wait for me.

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my mainstreamedness is calculable

7 Jun 2007, 03:27

On this day, Wednesday June 6, at 10:15 pm, I am hereby declared to be a whopping 19.14 % mainstream.

What drives up my mainstreamedness?

U2 / Gorillaz / Placebo

And what rages against it?

Juan Garcia Esquivel / Transvision Vamp / Lukas Rossi (eh)

Calculate your musical mainstreamedness level @

Mainstream-O-Meter

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i heart battling album covers

28 Apr 2007, 16:29

I don't know about you of course, but I certainly spent a lot of time examining and critiquing records covers. No matter what the genre. In many ways, I greatly miss the those large, 12x12 perfect squares of art that told an entire story as I listened to the songs held within. Sometimes their message was simplistic, decidely frank, or even unapologetically BRAZEN... but oh! Often they were open to interpretation! How I LOVED to analyze the facial expressions, the colours used, the light, the shadow, the placement of the title, to decipher the album's innermost meaning. So when I chanced upon this tonight, I couldn't help but but think, wow! Brilliant, brilliant, and totally BRILLIANT! From Glass Houses to Upstairs At Eric's, to Nothing's Shocking and For Those About To Rock... this little slice 'o' warring album covers is pure genius. And I guarantee, there is no other place on earth where you'll be able to watch the Dead Kennedy's beat the TAR outta Van Halen. (And I have to admit that I always wondered what Rio was laughing about...!) Gotta love music lovers with loads of time on their hands!

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the soundtrack to my childhood

14 Apr 2007, 21:14

My dad's dad, Norm, was passionate about music, and I have vivid memories of him planted in front of his state-of-the-art Marantz stereo with several speakers (almost as tall as I was) blaring The Beatles, The Platters, or his all-time-party-faves, Boney M. I fondly recall our last Christmas together when to Boney M, Norm and I busted our best Kossack dance moves to "Rasputin," with the whole family looking on. When he passed in '79, my dad inherited that amazing stereo, and Norm's copious record collection.

Just like his dad before him, my dad could also often be found sitting in front of that same stereo, singing along to those same records, as well as with some of his own favourites: Elvis, The Edgar Winters Band, Rocky Burnett, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, The Stones, The J. Geils Band, The Knack, The Cars, Genesis, Queen, Kenny Rogers, Crystal Gayle, Helen Reddy, Bob Seger, and later, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner... and Prince's, "Around The World In a Day." I remember having him hook up a mic for me, so that I could sing through the speakers to "My Sharona," "The Gambler," "Delta Dawn," or "Freeze Frame" (ah, if only there were tapes made of that!!!).

My older brother was a huge influence over my taste in music at that time, too, and when we hit on a favourite, we played it to death. We often played "air band," with our red, orange and yellow shag rug as our stage. Of course, we were a 2-piece: a guitarist (tennis racket) and a drummer (stacks of throw-pillows). We took it rather seriously, and if I do say so myself, we pulled off some of the most rockin' air-performances of all time in that rec room on Victoria Street. Our set list looked something like this:

"For Those About To Rock" AC/DC
"Here She Comes Again" - The Cars
"Don't Try Suicide" - Queen
"The Logical Song" - Supertramp
"Heat Of The Moment" - Asia
"The Stroke" - Billy Squire
"I Can Feel It Coming In The Air Tonight" - Phil Collins (that brief but iconic drum fill!)
"Hotel California" - The Eagles
"You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth" - Meat Loaf
"Crazy Train" - Ozzy Osbourne
"My Sharona" - The Knack
"Modern Love" - David Bowie
"Don't You Want Me" - Human League
"Tainted Love" - Soft Cell
"Turning Japanese" - The Vapors
"Drugs In My Pocket" - The Monks

Geez, the memories! I gotta wrap this up posthaste and go make a playlist already!

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Journal

the heart wants what it wants

my mainstreamedness is calculable

i heart battling album covers

the soundtrack to my childhood