For everyone who liked last week’s soundtrack mix, I went back in time a year and created a 2005 mix. (I’m not really trying to make a career out of this.) See what all you can spot in here…it’s slightly longer than the ’06 mix.)
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/soundtracks05.mp3]
Happy new year!… Read more
Two to go. Though I’m saying goodbye to a lot of folks tonight who are taking off early for the weekend.
Watched a little over half of The Runaway Bride today; I thought it struck just the right note between addressing what happened in Doomsday and getting on with it. The freeway scene was awesome – I’d already seen a preview of it, but it’s still a lot of fun. I kinda wish Donna was the new sidekick, though I can imagine everyone else was sick of her by the end of the hour.
I managed to get a look at the normally blocked-to-anyone-outside-the-UK Sarah Jane Adventures site tonight, and it looks like a promising show, if almost a bit too into Disney Channel Original Series territory for my tastes. (I’m hoping that it’s a little more sophisticated than that.) Roll on New Year’s Day…and freedom!
Also, I’m surprised by how well the “best of 2006 soundtracks” piece went down. (Though let’s not kid ourselves here, I think everyone’s just skipping past all the crap I wrote and going straight to the music mix.) I might just have another surprise for the folks who enjoyed that, right before we kiss 2006 goodbye.… Read more
First off, Merry Christmas!
And now, because you demanded it. Well, okay, not really. But here’s my top ten non-soundtrack albums for 2006, more or less in the order that I loved ’em. And yeah, if you know my musical tastes, it’s a pretty predictable list. … Read more
It’s kinda telling that when I go looking at music that I bought this year, the soundtrack stack is about one third again as tall as the pile of non-soundtrack/mainstream material. So, as a Christmas treat, here are the CDs that wound up under my tree this year. … Read more
Those at work who hadn’t seen it in the past were really jazzed by the annual appearance of the question mark sweater Friday night. This is almost the only time of the year I actually wear it, because it looks kinda Christmas-y, and yet it’s kinda me too. And of course not one person knew what (or, perhaps, who) the origin of it was.
It’s toy time in my house – several days ago I got a small package from Japan with some goodies I’d ordered on eBay. Those who know me know of my deep and abiding love for toy representations of real life spacecraft, and these are two that I’ve always wanted decent models of.
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Go click on the compass-y looking bit. Heck, click on ALL the bits, they’re very interesting.
This song sounds GREAT. I know this sounds stupid, but I could sit here and listen to that little sample all day. This sounds like it’s going to be the gem of the unreleased material discovered for the remasters – and are those actual strings I hear in there, unlike some of the other recently discovered tracks? (Then again, think about it – this is a bonus track for Out Of The Blue, for cryin’ out loud. What an album to have to live up to/fit in with.)… Read more
I woke up today at 1:30pm with the sound of dogs barking, phones ringing, and voices. Not a good combination. I went outside to see what the heck was going on, and there was a truckload of contract workers trying to cut a path through our hideously-overgrown pasture to inspect the utility poles that are out there (there are 2 or 3). The problem: Xena was alarm-barking these guys, and fiercely. That’s the second time she’s done that in a week (the last time was, amusingly enough, when my mother-in-law stopped by to borrow our Christmas wrapping paper). Xena usually presents the illusion of a Big, Mean Dog in our yard, which I’m sure – along with the unkempt exterior of the place – has kept intruders away. But apparently something has happened recently that has inspired her to act the part with gusto. Even more amusingly, Sparky showed up to back her up. These guys who were just trying to do their job were not happy. The voice on the other end of the phone was someone with the Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative, who was also not happy. Would it have just killed them to provide us with some advance notice that this was going to happen today? Xena would’ve stayed inside, and never would’ve called her little buddy (and, undoubtedly, his little buddy) for backup.
As we’ve been getting closer to Christmas, I’ve had a bit of a rant building up in response to such things as the political correctness fervor over Christmas trees and whatnot, and lo and behold, a couple of guys have saved me the trouble, read my mind, and said almost exactly what I’ve been thinking for a few years now: What the hell happened to Christianity? Good reading. Maybe now Christianity – which is simultaneously one of the world’s largest religions, and yet many practitioners of whom are also among the first to act like they’re still victims stuck in the coliseum with the lions – might just understand why there’s a bit of a bullseye painted on their back. After years of being co-opted by a political regime that’s tried to claim they have a “Christian” agenda whilst trying to strongarm the rest of the world into thinking their way, it’s no wonder we have Rabbis demanding that Christmas trees be taken down. The wheel turns. The Christian Right has just bought those of us who, while believers, happen to be moderates or even liberals, several years of grief.
Going from there to the Ask And Ye Shall Receive department, I got the Doctor Who CD in the mail today – man, is this a Whovian Christmas or what? I’ve been tiding myself over for several weeks with the Cardiff Children In Need concert, but the CD is even better. The Tooth And Claw teaser monk music? It’s there. Original synth-heavy version of “Westminster Bridge”? Check. Doomsday music? Bingo. “Love Don’t Roam” is a damned nifty song, though I wish they’d at least included the original “Song For Ten” as a bonus track (but fear not, it can be found here for what I suspect is a limited time – I’ll be a-burnin’ that to CD, thanks to the BBC!). Turns out I got the Limited Edition version after all, though the slipcase is the only real prize there – the “bonus badge” is tiny. 😆 Great music, though, and the track-by-track commentary from Murray Gold is interesting. This has been a great soundtrack year, especially in the TV department, and just a great music year overall, which I’ll cover in a forthcoming installment. The indie labels, especially the boutique soundtrack specialty labels, have definitely earned the money they’ve gotten out of me this year. Gapporin did a top ten of 2006 in his LiveJournal blog recently, and I’ve probably got a top 20 or top 25 in me. Hell, I’ve probably got the top 20 or 25 of the year in my travel bag that goes to work with me every night. (Yeah, I admit, it’s a big honkin’ man-purse, whose contents have more to do with my sanity than my job. Deal with it.)
The stuff I got for my wife for Christmas arrived today. Good stuff! Now I’ve just gotta hide it…
By the way, for fans of “AL-TV,” this just in from my inbox: “AL-TV” will premiere tomorrow (Friday, Dec. 15) at 8 PM Eastern (check your local listings!) on VH-1. Al will be showcasing many of the videos from “Straight Outta Lynwood,” as well as “interviewing” some of his “friends” in the “music industry!”… Read more
XLR cable problem solved. My wife stopped by a Radio Shack close to where she works, adamant that she would solve the XLR cable problem. She trudged out of the store a short while later, after I was equally adamant to her over the phone that there’s no way in hell that I’m going to pay $20+ per cable for blingy gold-tipped Monster XLR cables. We later found perfectly good new ones on eBay, four for $6. 😆 Plus adapters!
Do you ever pause for one scary moment to consider Life Without eBay? I swear the damned thing off from time to time, but I looked around my game room the other day and thought about it. No Kickman. No Avid. No arcade marquees. A much, much, much smaller number of game consoles and carts. Fewer screens in the room, LCD or otherwise. I actually shuddered. It’s scary how much shopping I do there.
It’s also scary the attitudes one runs into when one does go shopping there. My wife recently won an auction for two items from the same seller, a week apart, and had already mentioned to the lady that she’d pay once the second auction was won or lost. One day after she won the second auction and sent payment (this seller won’t accept Paypal or any other kind of electronic funds transfer), she found that a dispute had been opened and that she was being pegged as a NPB. Good Lord. Later we find out that the dispute was supposedly opened automatically (wha…??) by some program or service the seller was using because payment hadn’t been checked off as “received” from the first auction yet. Y’know, if you’re bloody fancy enough that you’re automating your eBay process (and I’m not completely sure I’m buying that story), you’re clearly fancy enough to get your own URL and stop doing business through a platform that eats a percentage of every sale you make.
So, Torchwood’s a go for season 2, only now it’s moving to BBC2. Hopefully that doesn’t force the show to lose its sharp edges, storytelling-wise. I’ve really enjoyed it so far; I’m a bit behind. Just watched Countrycide the other day, and all I have to say is: OWEN!!!????!? ICK! (Not much of a spoiler until you’re right on top of it.) I think we need Torchwood action figures. Or maybe it’s just my latent desire to have an Eve Myles sitting in the same room with me.
I’m a little miffed that my Doctor Who soundtrack CD hasn’t arrived, especially as I’m supposed to be reviewing it for theLogBook this weekend. (Fear not, there’s a fallback plan.) I ordered it the very day that it was first available for pre-order, directly from the label, and I’ve been seeing folks in Ohio and Florida talk about getting their copies direct from the label while it was still November (never mind that pesky December 4th street date). No sign of mine yet though. Given that the Doctor Who soundtrack topped the UK iTunes chart last week, one wonders if perhaps demand outstripped supply on the physical copies. Wouldn’t that be something?
The blooper reel went over like a lead balloon at the company party Saturday night. I wasn’t there (never have gone, actually), but reports are filtering through. I’ve already decided that this’ll be the last one I do anyway – I fully intend to be grazing on greener pastures by next Chritsmas. Hell, by next Groundhog Day, if I can manage it. I predict a year of upheaval at this place. As good a reason as any to bail. I bet by the end of 2007, the station might just go for a tidy little sum on eBay.… Read more
…it’s to tell you to go to my friend Mike Scully’s MySpace page and listen to “Grounded Angel” ASAP. I think the song’s gotten 40-something listens, and I’m pretty sure that about ten of those are me just sitting here listening to it over and over again, because it’s bloody catchy.
I’d love to regale you with tales of how Mike and I used to play music together, and the brief time we spent together in a local band, but the truth of the matter is that where I was much more into songwriting, and still fervently wish that I just had a neural interface where I could beam the fully-arranged music in my head directly into the brains of much more capable musicians (I mean, c’mon, my music section is loaded down with stuff done on a Playstation), Mike is exactly that: a much more competent musician than I – he can come up with catchy songs and play and sing them.
Somewhere I’ve got a CD labeled “Greenskulls” – kind of our own basement tapes. I need to figure out just how much he’d kill me if that stuff was ever heard by the public before I go there though. 😆 … Read more
Then, by all means, dear friends, go here and pre-order ya some through ye olde LogBook Store linkages. All proceeds go toward keeping the site on the air and keeping me in the music-reviewing business. 😀 At the moment it’s only available from the UK, but I’m watching like a hawk for it to show up at Amazon in the States and Canada.… Read more
