Verily

As I delete my LJ entries from earliest to latest (don't worry, it's all saved to PDF), it is certainly bringing back memories and I do run across the occasional amusement.

A little something from the 2003 "Washington Post Style Invitational" contest. Readers were asked to submit "instructions" for something (anything), written in the style of a famous person. The winning entry was The Hokey Pokey as written by W. Shakespeare:

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- o banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

— by Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls

<grin> that kind of thing makes living worth it don't ya think?

To soothe the savage beast...

I am poking around my music collection (as a DJ, it's sometimes daunting) and I was fixing a few albums that I purchased as FLAC (I use ffmpeg to convert to MP3 if they don't come in both formats because I like having MP3 versions of everything for portability but listen to FLAC if I can)... sometimes the file name formats provided are not the way I keep my collection (<artist>--<album_title>/<track_number>-<artist>-<song_name>.mp3), so I have to change them to the correct format (for i in *.mp3; do mv "$i" `echo "$i" | sed 's/<before>/<after>/'`; done ... thank goodness for regexp ... also one of my favourite quotes: "Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems" ;-).

Anyway, all to say that I settled on listening to Josie Charlwood's album "Pieces of Me" as I start to study for my final exam in advanced quantum mechanics on April 25th (whether I pass it or not determines if I graduate or not... no pressure O_o). Gods but I love this album! Equal parts evocative, technically brilliant (her live looped covers are stunning), and heart-rendingly beautiful from start to finish. As the description states, "This is the debut solo album from Josie Charlwood, recorded in 2011/12. All songs were recorded live in front of video cameras. No click tracks, no overdubs, no headphones, just solo live performances." You can see videos for all of her songs on this album on her YouTube channel, or listen to the album (and her other stuff) on her Bandcamp site. For all that she was very young when she did this album, her original compositions (all but two tracks are originals) stand out in a field of those with much more experience. Again, the whole damned thing is played live (with loops for some songs for layers... she also uses a TC-Helicon VoiceLive for live vocal harmonies and effects). There are so many turns of both lyrical and musical phrase that I find captivating it's hard to pick favourites, but two that get me every time are "Just One Look" and "Famous Green Eyes" (I have green eyes too fwiw). And yes, the fact I like this music tags me pretty hard as a hopeless romantic, heh. The one song that she does (a live-looped cover) that I wish had been on the album was her cover of Magnetic Man's "I Need Air"... but I present it here for your enjoyment (I hope):

Watch on YouTube

(Most people are blown away by her cover of The Gorillaz's "Feel Good Inc.", which is here if you are so inclined: https://youtu.be/izrL7pBdkaw... I still like her original stuff the best though)