freeform goodness

Hug A Senior Citizen Today

I am a Norwegian boy
which have some question
I have only 13 years
and I am crazy of you

“Penpals” by Sloan

Okay, so I have slighly more than 13 years today, and I fail to be Norwegian by a pretty spectacular margin. Thankfully, that didn’t stop a few folks from getting me birthday gifts. Tammie bought me all sorts of flattering, slimming black clothing, so I’m now fully equipped for stealth.

Beth sent me an iTunes Music Store gift certificate, which was pretty darned cool. You get a card via email with a clickable link. When you click, it opens iTunes, asks you to confirm that you want to redeem the certificate, and adds a little LCD-like readout to the upper-right corner of your iTunes window that shows your remaining balance. Slick. Thus equipped, I headed over to the iTMS to do a little “record” shopping. I decide to buy a couple of full albums, since up to this point almost all of my purchases there have been singles.

My first pick was the wonderfully titled (in true 60s fashion) The Tornados Play Telstar & Other Great Hits. Nothing says “you’re buying this for the hit single and a bunch of filler” like one of these old-school album titles. The art is perfect, too, of course — it would certainly be worthwhile to hit up the local Goodwill bin to try to find a full-sized version of the original album cover. You’ve probably heard “Telstar” even if you don’t know the title. It was the legendary Joe Meek’s biggest hit, and is one of the best selling instrumentals of all time. The thing that prompted me to take the plunge on the whole “album” (quaint term, that) was the presence of a Meekified version of Theme from “A Summer Place”. The best known of version of this song is the ultra-syrupy million-and-one strings rendition by Percy Faith, which I love with every fiber of my being. (Don’t act so surprised — I’ve confessed my hidden, shameful love which dares not speak its name for this kind of stuff before.) I’m really enjoying the Tornados record overall — it’s fun to listen to how much sound they were able to wring out of two-track recording technology. It doesn’t hurt at all that tracks like “Stingray” and “Robot” are every bit as fun and loopy as you’d expect from the titles, and the version of the Lawrence of Arabia theme is a stitch. “Life on Venus” even starts with a fake news bulletin, and “The Ice Cream Man” has a killer hook.

In keeping with my onrushing dotage, I picked as my “new album” purchase the debut album the band British Sea Power, The Decline of British Sea Power. Besides having a really great band name, they’ve been tapped as sort of a throwback to the golden age of UK postpunk indie-ness. They’re usually compared to early-to-mid period Echo & the Bunnymen, and while I can definitely hear the influence, I think I hear a bit of Kitchens of Distinction (and an occasional noisiness via maybe the Pixies) as well. It’s a little comforting to me to hear people still trying to make a go of this sort of sound in 2003, without a drumloop, autotuned chorus, bass-free garage-band sneer, or guest appearance by Sean Paul in sight. How quaint. ;) I’m interested in seeing them live.

:: Dave Walker 12:45 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/entertainment/music]
:: tags: music

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