Wedding Notes: Dancing with my dad

One of the first things I thought about upon getting engaged was my dad. I was excited that he would walk me down the aisle and that we would have a father/daughter dance. I remember a father-daughter dance we had in Illinois which was sponsored by the girl scout troop my mom was a leader in. It's a pretty foggy memory for me because I was only five or six, and yet it's stayed with me for most of my life. It's this memory I want to honor at the wedding, but I also want to honor all of the great times we've had together. We really are great friends. When I make huge decisions in my life, he's always the first person I call. In fact, I called him first when Travis proposed. I even called him before adopting Miyagi because I didn't know if it was the best decision.

In that vein I've been putting a lot of thought into what our song will be and I'm torn between songs that convey love and what our relationship is and songs that remind me of him, but don't necessarily speak to our relationship.

For the former I've come up with two songs:

Nickel Creek -"When you come back down"

Beatles - "In My Life"

When I think of my top three favorite bands, Genesis(and Phil Collins) always makes the list, and that is all thanks to my dad. The first song I remember learning the words to was "I Can't Dance." (The music video is hilarious; you must click on the link and watch it).

While the song always invokes memories of driving in my car with Dad, that song isn't exactly appropriate for the occasion. I have come up with a Genesis and two Phil Collins song I could see dancing to:

Genesis - "Follow You, Follow Me" (This actually makes me think of having nightmares as a kid and knowing it would be alright because Dad was there.)

Phil Collins - "You'll Be in My Heart"

Phil Collins - "Can't Stop Loving You"

NaBloPoMo: Musical distractions

I must admit that I spend far too much time on the interwebs discovering ridiculously awesome distractions from what I should be doing. For example, you can watch an amazing flute player play the Mario theme song WHILE beat boxing. He might be the most mindboggling musician I have ever seen.

Or, if you have more time on your hands than even the beat boxing flutist can fill, you could create your own music using a french website that lets you mix and match preloaded sounds. From basic hums to crashing symbols, the combinations are quite entertaining. Now, my dear readers, go free and be nonproductive.

Oh but New Orleans is too far away...

Ray LaMontagne continues to bring my mood back up whenever I'm down. Even though this song isn't quite the style I've been known to enjoy, halfway through I suddenly felt like I should be in a bar in New Orleans drinking and cheering to the upbeat and diverse music in the song. Take a listen. And while you're at it, start using Grooveshark. It is awesome.
"Hey Me, Hey Mama" by Ray LaMontagne

Forgive me for my absence

Sorry for my prolonged absence. Things got a little crazy the last few weeks. But not to worry: I am still here and ready to blog. I have never been a fan of music videos. I think most of them lack creativity. A lot of them are just the singer walking around singing while members of the opposite sex run around them. But lately, especially with relatively unknown musicians, there seems to be an uptick in creativity.
After browsing Buzz Sugar's latest updates, I found a post on Oren Lavie, an Israeli composer/singer. His beautiful music video utilizes stop motion techniques with a camera hung over a bed to show the hidden adventures of a young woman. Stop motion (think The Nightmare Before Christmas) uses thousands of still frames of methodically placed scenes and edited together to create a beautiful masterpeice. Look for the twirling dance scene created while they are still laying down. His music also has a beautiful ethereal quality to it. It's actually really hard to describe so just watch the video below.

As my guitar gently weeps...

I'll be the first to admit that it has taken me a ridiculously longtime to jump on the YouTube bandwagon, and to be honest I haven't 'jumped on' per se. Really I use it every once in awhile, but it's in those every once in a whiles that you are rewarded. Why? Well, sometimes I just need good guitar music to make me happy. Screw vocals and drums and everything else. I often just want to here that acoustic guitar taking on some of my favorite songs.
Here to my rescue is a web developer who also happens to make guitar compositions out of everythng from The Beatles to the Back to the Future theme song.

Take a second and enjoy Adrian Holovaty's strummings.

music obsession

I would love if I could just be given this sum of money every month that I could ONLY use to purchase music. I love music, good music, new music. I have a habit of finding a song that says everything I need it to say and then getting obsessed with it.

Case in point: FLOBOTS:

Specifically 'Handlebars' by Flobots. I admit that the first time I heard this song, I hated it. It seemed childish, monotonous and repetitive. Of course, I also didn't make it past the first repetition of "I can ride my bike with no handlebars." And that was where my fatal flaw was. The song is about building up to this moment where a choice is made and everything depends on the choice. So of course the song just gets better and better and better...and better. It's one of those songs that when you first hear it (and the next time and the next time) you don't fully understand everything going on.

And those are always the best songs, aren't they? The ones that speak to you and keep speaking to you, no matter the mood. Those are the songs that stay with you. The songs that follow you into your dreams, that you wake up to, that you find yourself humming along with as you cook food (or at least I do, anyway).

Anyway, my recommendation (at least after you've visited FLOBOTS' purevolume page and listened to all of their awesome songs) is to expand your horizons even further and try out a wonderful music-discovery site by the name of Pandora. The problem with a lot of songs, for me, is that you often hear them too often on the radio. Often, they start out good and then they just turn annoying as you hear them more and more. Pandora is chock full of songs that you've never heard of, or at least rarely heard. It's a great place to stoke your music obsession.