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OT :: Morning music suggestions


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I haul my sorry, antedeluvian backside out of the rack and, though I haven't had a drink in almost 11 years most days I have what feels like more than a hint of a perennial hangover.

 

What I want is music. And I have access to a huge (if not complete) online library in the form of MusicMatch's On Demand service.

 

But danged if I can think of what to play most days.

 

I want something that won't necessarily intrude too much on my thoughts, that doesn't have many sharp edges to cut my swollen brain on, but that isn't just insipid background music.

 

MMOD's biggest sector of failure is classical music... otherwise, I'd know right what to play. But finding classical pieces means trying to search on the artist as a rule. And their classical selection is way spotty. They have a bunch of Kronos and some Yo Yo Ma (mostly his 'pop'/new agey stuff).

 

So, as it is, I often find myself playing Pentangle or the Chieftans, but even that's sometimes problematic. The last thing I want to hear first thing in the morning is Mick Jagger with the Chieftans doing Long Black Veil. (Love Mick, love the Chiefies, love the song... so why does it come off so bad? Anyhow...)

 

OK...

 

Any suggestsions for early morning music?

 

PS... I'm listening to Lisa Gerrard, now, so I'm already hip to the Dead Can Dance angle (though I'm pretty burned on DCD, since my favorite coffee hangout played them into the ground and back out the other side back in the day).

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Have you tried soing artist search on the conductors name, like Szell or Bernstein? Maybe that will turn up some better classical hits.

 

I always plug WERS college radio in Boston. Streaming audio through their website. 10 AM - 2 PM Eastern (7-11 AM Pacific, but you know that) is the Jazz Oasis - full spectrum of jazz both traditional and electric. :thu:

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I usually let the mood I wake up in determine the stuff I listen to. Weather plays a part, too.

 

My iPod has a cool alarm feature that I can set any tune I want to wake me up in the morning. I've yet to try it for the above-mentioned reason.

That, and my wife would punch me.

I've upped my standards; now, up yours.
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Originally posted by billster:

Have you tried soing artist search on the conductors name, like Szell or Bernstein? Maybe that will turn up some better classical hits.

 

I always plug WERS college radio in Boston. Streaming audio through their website. 10 AM - 2 PM Eastern (7-11 AM Pacific, but you know that) is the Jazz Oasis - full spectrum of jazz both traditional and electric. :thu:

Good suggestion, that. But, unfortunatelly, MMOD just doesn't have much classical... it's mostly crossover. The two Bersntein albums that showed were "A Total Embrace: The Conductor" and "Barber's Adagio and other Romantic Favoties" -- I kid you not. Now, me, I never thought of Sam's Adagio as exactly makeout music. I mean, my local symphony, putting up a brave front a week after the 9-11 attacks played the Star-Spangled Banner (all those WWII gen folks singing along was absolutely the most moving version I've ever heard -- or will ever hear again I'm positive, not my fave anthem) and then whipped into Barber's Adagio. Pretty solemn stuff. Not going to replace Johnny Mathis and Barry White around here.

 

Thanks for the tip on the jazz station. We're fortunate to have a pretty good jazz station on the air right here in the LBC (public, of course). Most of the DJs are pretty good and fairly rooted, but the last few years you can feel them reaching out for newer members with a Saturday night heavy on jump blues and Sinatra. And they simply don't do avant-garde jazz -- but then that's compensated because they never, ever do 'smooth jazz' (although they every once in a long while have some 70s jazz funk like Grant Green's discofied late 70s work). But they're jazz (or blues on the weekend) 24/7 and that's certainly a blessing.

 

You can find their simulcast streams at www.kkjz.org

 

Thanks for the tips.

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Motley Crüe's Kick Start My Heart

 

But maybe that's just me...

Seriously, what the f*ck with the candles? Where does this candle impulse come from, and in what other profession does it get expressed?

-steve albini

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Originally posted by Philip O'Keefe:

I think "Good Morning Good Morning" by The Beatles is an obvious choice for good morning music. ;)

That'll wake you up!

 

Unfortunately, the Beatles is one of MMOD's holes. They've got some German period early stuff from some odd off label album and that's it. Same thing for the Stones before they broke out of Allen B. Klein land. Nothing before Let It Bleed. Bummer. Now, I have all that stuff from both on vinyl... down in the garage... where the turntables sit stacked under boses [hangs head in shame].

 

__________________________

 

Lee Knight

 

Glenn Gould... now there's a name you don't hear like you used to. Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortuantely, see the notes on classical selections available to me above. Maybe I'll have to add this to my purchase-wish-list, though. I think any musically literate person should at least be familiar with that landmark album.

 

___________________________

 

Offramp

 

Yeah, me, too, on the mood, weather, etc, thing. I usually get up about 4:30 or 5 am to, uh, take a short walk (getting old is hell, but then when I used to drink I was up 2 or 3 times a night, anyhow, for the same reason) and when I do, I open the blinds... I have a nice over the rooftops view and it really helps my mood.

 

That iPod feature is killer!

 

And, actually, since I wake up so funky I'm usually not even sure what my mood is, the first thing I play is usually just a guess, which is why I like to keep it kind of neutral. (Good Morning, Good Morning! for this reason might not work that often.) With re your wife punching you if you were to wake up to the iPod... you could always go to sleep with earbuds in (probably not a good hygiene idea, though).

 

___________________________

 

All excellent choices, and particularly with re GP and Django/Stephane G I listen to them ALL the time.

 

And now that I've found you on Soundclick, I can add you to that list. ;) (I'm lisening to "Listen" right now.)

 

____________________________

 

gearmike

 

Yes. It's just you. :D;):D

 

But thanks for the suggestion. But I just dug up the Crue on MMOD and it looks like they pretty much have the entire MC ouvre. I tossed Kickstart into my playlist after Arrel. Here it is now... Holy Bananas! Ay yay yay! Now that's a freakin intro!

 

Yep. That'll wake up Jerry Garcia! Hell, I think it'd wake up Nick Drake and maybe Mozart, too.

 

I'd forgotten how much energy those guys had.

 

And how much energy it takes to listen. Woo... I'm drained and it's only the quiet spot in the middle.

 

Okay. It's 2:23 pm my time. I'm awake.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. If anyone's got anymore... post 'em if you got 'em.

 

:);):)

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At the risk of starting another SSS food fight, may I suggest Michael Franks? Stay away from his first album "Art of Tea" (he couldn't sing in tune yet) but the next few albums are the best morning music you can listen to.

Botch

"Eccentric language often is symptomatic of peculiar thinking" - George Will

www.puddlestone.net

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Originally posted by Lee Flier:

Morning? Music? I can barely even talk to anybody in the morning let alone listen to music. I prefer dead silence in the morning - a few birds singing is all right. :D

Lee

 

I hear ya. Maybe I should suggest an album or two of bird calls and nature sounds to the MMOD gatekeepers. They added the whole Ubiquity label after I suggested it (with everyone from DJ Nobody and Greyboy to Dave Pike and a bunch of hip latin jazz guys). Of course, I suspect it might have happened anyway, but my wheel was squeakin'...

 

__________________

 

Botch

 

I sense and understand your trepidation. Michael Franks raises passions in his non-admirers that can be hair-raising. In fact, when I saw "Popsicle Toes" in the tracks listed for Diana Krall my jaw dropped. (I haven't heard her ver, yet. I've been, uh, saving that. :D )

 

Anyhow, though I've never met him, Michael's mom is married to my uncle George.

 

Once, 20+ years ago, when my grandmother was still alive, and I was still in bands and just moving toward some kind of adult stability (about to be shattered by a big ol' motorcycle wreck that's better saved for some other thread) I was telling my (Scottish) grandmother about my steady job, the fact that I was taking a couple of night classes at the state U I'd dropped out of a few years before, and that I had my own band.

 

God love her, she looked at me with those steely blue eyes and said, "Well, Betty's boy, Michael, just finished his fifth album, it's on the Billboard charts, and he's getting his master's degree in comparative literature in Paris."

 

So... you know. I've got issues....

 

:D

 

_________________________________

 

Bunny

 

Actually, selected Byrds songs (especially featuring my fave members Gene Clark and Gram Parsons) would be a good suggestion for me. A left-handed thanks on that.

 

;)

 

_________________________________

 

Arrel, again

 

The reason I didn't mention Emmylou above was because the first time I checked her on MMOD there were only two albums. But now they have 300+ tracks listed by her (probably a bunch of duplicates, I notice a lot of compilations listed and that puffs up the track count... there are over 1000 Sinatra tracks listed on MMOD for that reason).

 

Anyhow, I'm listening to Emmylou right now (something from Wrecking Ball, from the sound of the fuzzy guitar way in the back).

 

Thanks for prompting me to check, again! I feel like I just went out and bought 15 or 20 new albums! (Just gotta make sure I pay my $9 next month so I can 'keep' 'em.) [Actually, it's $27 every 3 months, but, you know...]

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May I suggest a nice morning raga- classical music, classical Hindustani music.

 

Those guys know what they're about, and lots of morning, afternoon, and evening ragas to choose from!

 

My taste runs to Anoushka Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan...

A WOP BOP A LU BOP, A LOP BAM BOOM!

 

"There is nothing I regret so much as my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" -Henry David Thoreau

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Originally posted by theblue1:

I sense and understand your trepidation. Michael Franks raises passions in his non-admirers that can be hair-raising.

Uh, yeah. I have graciously refrained from offering my opinion of him. :D

 

Anyhow, though I've never met him, Michael's mom is married to my uncle George.

...

 

So... you know. I've got issues....

 

:D

Oh cool, now I have one more excuse to hate him! :D

 

Actually, selected Byrds songs (especially featuring my fave members Gene Clark and Gram Parsons) would be a good suggestion for me. A left-handed thanks on that.

LOL... well if we're gonna tell totally tangential stories, I DID listen to the Byrds once early in the morning. That is, I had this dream that Roger McGuinn came over to my house. In the dream, he'd brought his Ric 12-string of course, and I have one too, so we sat down for a jam. Then I turned on the radio while we were setting up, and "Turn Turn Turn" came on. Roger started playing along with it, and I thought, "Oh cool, now I can see whether I've been playing it correctly all these years." That was when everything got all weird, because I started watching his fingers and there was like NO WAY that where he was on the fretboard could've matched the notes that were coming out. Luckily, since this was starting to reall freak me out, I woke up right then. Turns out that the construction workers who were putting up an apartment building next door, had a radio playing and "Turn Turn Turn" was on. :D So you can see how music in the morning can totally traumatize me, it ends up getting into my dreams and messing with my head. :D

 

But, uhh, more seriously, if you like Emmylou and GP (which I do, big time) and Gene Clark (ditto), you might want to check out the albums that Gene did with my friend Carla Olson. Dunno if you ever saw them play live together in the 80's, they played locally in L.A. quite a bit... but they did two excellent albums together. So check it out. I also love listening to Richard and Linda Thompson when I'm in that kind of mood... granted none of this is in the "morning morning" as in "when I first wake up," but rather in the "wee hours morning," i.e. 3 AM. :)

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Originally posted by theblue1:

Botch

 

I sense and understand your trepidation. Michael Franks raises passions in his non-admirers that can be hair-raising.

:D:D:D You got that right! I'm just waiting for Gas to read this, I'm ready for a good fight tonight for some reason!

Botch

"Eccentric language often is symptomatic of peculiar thinking" - George Will

www.puddlestone.net

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Just a peek at some of the musicians on ONE Michael Franks album: Manolo Badrena, Warren Bernhardt, Michael Brecker, Hiram Bullock, Joe Caro, Clifford Carter, Ron Carter, Mark Egan, Bill Evans, Jon Faddis, Lawrence Feldman, Steve Gadd, Peter Gordon, Danny Gottlieb, Neil Jason, Steve Khan, Will Lee, Hugh McCracken, Marcus Miller, Rob Mounsey, Andy Newmark, Chris Parker, Brenda Russell, David Sanborn, and those are just the ones I've heard of. Ain't no Steely Dan albums with that much firepower on one disk (but you don't care, do you Lee?

:D )

 

I've always wondered why so many folks on this board worship someone like, say, James Taylor, who's songwriting just wilts next to Mr Franks, along with having a whiny fingernails-on-the-blackboard voice, compared to MF.

 

Sample Michael Franks lyric:

Lady you lip service has no rival

Don't you know deception is uncouth?

Didn't you read somewhere in the Bible

Not to bend the truth?

If you think your lip service will amaze me

You're utterly confused that much is clear

Cuz baby your lip service doesn't laze me

It's so insincere.

 

Sample James Taylor lyric:

It's like jelly, baby.

 

:rolleyes::rolleyes::P

 

:D

 

Bring it on, guys, I'm sparrin' for a fight! :P

Botch

"Eccentric language often is symptomatic of peculiar thinking" - George Will

www.puddlestone.net

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Originally posted by theblue1:

[Q]

Originally posted by Philip O'Keefe:

[q).

 

All excellent choices, and particularly with re GP and Django/Stephane G I listen to them ALL the time.

 

And now that I've found you on Soundclick, I can add you to that list. ;) (I'm lisening to "Listen" right now.)

[QB]

Hey,hey! BLUEONE!

thanks for to be clonking upon the site which is my page to soundeclicke like gangbusters hey? ahahaha!

I listened to some of the songs at soundclicke. OY!

I'm wishing to be sending you a fully checked and goodely rated, musical, compact disc of my latest and greatest, tunes, runes, rants, chants and obvious attempts at making a musical statement.

Give me a snail mail addy and (in a few weeks)I'll jet you a twenty-one track disc of my all original compacted musiks and other noises, titled: CIRCA 2004. I have a few left on my ninth printing. :wave:

It's really fun to send my music out knowing it'll soon be shared and experienced. ..

I can't keep one of my own. folkes keep saying they want one and I have MY COPY LEFT and so I give it away and print up ten or so more .

I just gave away my personal copy away again las' night. :love:

I can only hear it on my 'puter as of now! ahaha!. .in some weeks from now I'll be able to mail you one if you wish!. P.M. me an addy.. .

thanks for lettin' me share!.

NOW, I must go purchase new hats with the beeg elastic band.. ..

Frank Ranklin and the Ranktones

 

WARP SPEED ONLY STREAM

FRANKIE RANKLIN (Stanky Franks) <<<

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Lee: Don't forget the sound of the coffee maker.

 

Botch: I'm incredulous at your assessment of Taylor vs. Franks. :eek:

 

Franks? Good GOD...will someone PLEASE shove some hormones down that man's throat?!?!

I've upped my standards; now, up yours.
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When I first started the job I'm at, and waking up early was still a new thing to me, I found myself listening to Chumbawamba's WYSIWYG almost every day on the way to work. It's funny and uplifting, which is what I needed to get my ass moving in the morning. Unless of course you don't agree with their politics or social opinions, in which case it might just piss you off. If you listen to the lyrics.

"And then you have these thoughts in the back of your mind like 'Why am I doing this? Or is this a figment of my imagination?'"

http://www.veracohr.com

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Arell, I don't think it's fancy, it's quite simple really:

 

 

http://www.cooking.speedera.net/c3aabbfb78ba8698202b8404cecb4e31/images/products/Enlarge/215697e.jpg

 

You just boil water on the stove, pour it in along with the coffee, wait a couple of minutes and push the plunger down. No electricity required, no noise, no paper filters, and no burnt coffee taste from sitting around on a heating element. It's kewl!

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Originally posted by Lee Flier:

Arell, I don't think it's fancy, it's quite simple really:

 

 

You just boil water on the stove, pour it in along with the coffee, wait a couple of minutes and push the plunger down. No electricity required, no noise, no paper filters, and no burnt coffee taste from sitting around on a heating element. It's kewl!

oh no!

Caught! ahahahah!

 

The press seems cool. Simple.

I just got a coffe maker. looks like something from the jetsons. it's digital.. has an alarm. you can set your maker to go off before you wake up.

I like yours better.. even if ain't got any feathers. ahahaha!

Frank Ranklin and the Ranktones

 

WARP SPEED ONLY STREAM

FRANKIE RANKLIN (Stanky Franks) <<<

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Phait

 

Oops. Found another hole in the MMOD library. Only one Radiohead song, Pyramid Song. Which I listened to a day or two ago. But a good suggestion, I think. I don't actually own any Radiohead. All my 3DW (of a certain age, anyhow) friends have been gushing about them for years and that always puts me off. Sometimes, it's no problem, like w/ U2. I was already put off them when people started gushing about them. But I think if I were to give Radiohead more of a shot I might like them a bit. (About this time, people are probably asking themselves, how on earth can he avoid a ubiquitous band like Radiohead... well, it ain't easy. But I avoid commercial radio like the plague it is. That said, my local college joint plays them a bit when there's new product out so I do hear them... but, for some reason, they've always stayed kind of anonymous in my mind... I don't really recognize them necessarily when I hear them... except for the OK Computer stuff. That got played to death at my coffee hang.) Someday. Right after I explore that new band, REM. (Just kidding... but another band I put off and put off. Everyone else LOVED them to pieces but they were so poppy I could never get there. Still, I sort of like their place in history. And Procol Harum. I've been meaning to check out their stuff besides Whiter Shade of Pale. I have sort of a backlog. But it's not nearly as bad as my movie backlog. I carried Apocalypse Now on my mental "see soon" list until it finally popped up in the mail from Netflix (I'd ticked it without thinking much in my movie queue. Not bad. Maybe not worth all the fuss, but it definitely had some moments. And, of course, I finally found out what all those buzz lines attached to. Kind of spoils the newness, though, when you've been hearing bits and pieces of the dialog for a couple three decades.)

 

____________

 

Tedly

 

EXCELLENT choice! I've been listening to Anoushka Shankar now for 15 minutes or so. There were 17 tracks from 3 (partial) albums. They also have over a hundred tracks from the ol' man, so I'm pretty well set. (They also have cousin, uh, I'm blanking. Anyhow Ravi's very popular and very Americanized niece. I was kind of surprised to like her, too. It's nice to hear a pop singer who doesn't oversing!)

 

I'm kind of embarrassed I hadn't thought of ragas in the a.m. myself. I used to listen to Ravi all the time back in the 70s, especially in the mornings if I had some time to hang and drink coffee.

__________________________

 

Blackfish

 

Yeah, I'll put that on right after the Crue! :D

 

They only have the '82 BB epynonymous album, for some reason. A label thing, no doubt. Can't guarantee I'll be playing it in the a.m. but I'll definitely reaquaint myself with the 'Brains. BTW, do you remember, before BB there was an all-black punk band around the end of the 70s. I saw 'em a couple times, but there are some missing synapses in that part of my brain. I remember they had lightning bolts (or at least one of the guys did) bleached into his hair.) Their name is on the tip of my tongue... along with the names of about half of my ex-girlfriends and all but one of my grade school teachers...

 

_________________

 

Lee

 

Another head slapper. I can't understand why I didn't think of Richard and Linda Thompson (quirkily enough, MMOD has the Best of R&L T listed under Richard and 'I Want to See the Bright Lights' under R&L T where you'd expect. That's one of the reasons, I sometimes think they don't have someone. (Well at least they got jazz funk guitarist Grant Green out of the Nashville hatband section.)

 

R&L T's Pour Down Like Silver is absolutely one of the most gorgeous albums in my collection. (Happily well represented on the Greatest Hits on MMOD).

 

I've seen Richard a bunch of times (including with the supergroup no one ever heard of -- French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson. (w/ John "Drumbo" French, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser) But it would have been really killer to see Richard and Linda when they were together.

 

Your Byrds dream is eerily similar to one one of my best pals had his first year of law school.

 

He said it was really long but that, ultimately, it involved his ultimate hero, Jim, er, Roger, McGuinn looking him up because he'd knew what a big fan he was (my pal had actually -- in the real world -- seen a picture of Rog's garage with his BMW bike (and Corvette?) in Rolling Stone and took out the ol' magnifying glass and figured out what the license number on the bike was. He then went to the DMV and told them he'd been driving in back of a guy on a motorcycle and a camera had fallen off (no, really) and he wanted to return it. The DMV said, sure, whatever, you don't have to tell us a big story, you only have to give us a buck and we'll look it up. So my buddy -- on the afternoon of a big Byrds show he was going to drives past Roger's house, sees him puttering around the garage and walks up the long driveway. "Uh, Mr. McGuinn, I'm a big fan and I was driving past and I, uh, recognized you and, uh..." This guy's now a bigtime corporate lawyer. Imagine.) ANYHOW, back to the dream, Roger calls him up and says, I just fired the band again and I need a rhythm guitarist, can you play? And my friend, who can't at all, says, uh, yeah sure. And they get together and jam and my friend can magically play all the songs and Rog says, great, can you go on tour. And my friend said something about law school and then woke up.

 

___________________________

 

Botch.

 

Now, I don't want to start nothin' here, and the guy is my cousin-in-law, or step-cousing or something. But, uh, the word "overclever" comes to mind...

 

:D

 

But I tossed some of my famous cousin's stuff in my playlist just now (right after Chumbawamba). I picked St. Elmo's Fire off the Art of Tea. I picked it 'cause there's an Eno song by the same name. Pretty different, though. ;)

 

_______________________________

 

Arell

 

If all the stuff is on Soundclick, save your CD and postage. I'm trying not to get any more CD's. I don't even have a CD player (proper) hooked up to my stereo, even though I own two. That said, if there's some cool stuff not up on SC, you could email it or, what the heck, pop some art and a bare CD in a thin envelope and mail it for cheap. They never break. Usually.

 

__________________

 

Offramp

 

You guys play nice now. I don't want to have to stop a fight. Not to say I haven't wondered about the hormone issue. But, you know, it never hurt Donovan or Nick Drake. And then there's the Smiths. But I'd have to say Morrisey seems to evince a higher testo level... :D

 

________________________

 

Veracohr

 

I have to admit I always wanted to hear a bit more of Chumbawamba. But I never had the guts to steal one of their albums, which seems de rigeur. There was a track I kind of liked a while back.

 

If you don't tell them, I'll just listen to their tracks on MMOD (they have Tubthumper and WYSIWYG). It's almost like stealing. Except I pay a little. And they and their label get some tiny fraction of a cent for every play. I know they'd be disappointed.

 

___________________

 

I like the French press.

 

They're really cruel to Bush. Oops. Wrong forum.

 

Yeah, I always wanted one of those, but they seem to go up in price every time I see one. How can that be? There's nothing to them.

 

I only made espresso at home for most of the late 80s and 90s, but last time I looked in my 'spro blower, the aluminum tank was looking kind of like it was developing a mineral life form. I think it's time to clean the thing out, somehow.

 

__________________________________

 

Arell

 

Can you hook that space age coffee maker to an iPod?

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Actually in the morning, if I'm not getting on the treadmill, (which is what the Crüe is for) I like to put on some Twilight Singers or Afghan Whigs...

Seriously, what the f*ck with the candles? Where does this candle impulse come from, and in what other profession does it get expressed?

-steve albini

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Not familiar at all with the Twilight Singers. I just dumped a bunch of their tracks into my playlist. As soon as Anoushka is done showing off her chops, we'll be checking them out.

 

Ah, this is nice so far... "Twilight" -- think I've heard this on my local college station. ( www.kcrw.com )

 

I especially like that modified lap steel guitar intro.

 

Nice choice for either end of the day...

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