ayelienne 7:34 am on December 19, 2013
Tags: 2000s, Advent Calendar ( 24 ), Tori Amos

Musical Advent Calendar: December 19

Today’s track is from Tori Amos and it’s from her 2009 Christmas album, Midwinter Graces. I chose “Holly Ivy and Rose/Snow Angel,” a live performance from her tour with Dutch Metropole Orchestra.

While I’m not as obsessed as some, believe me, I have seen Tori live about a dozen times; she can pretty much be counted on to deliver a solid show. She’s been known to engage with the audience throughout her career; and one of the nice surprises of a live Tori Amos show is hearing her do an improv on the spot about whatever’s on her mind that day.

At the beginning of this video from the Amsterdam show, she sings a brief improv in support of her tour mates, the Metropole Orchestra, who were at risk of losing their funding from the Dutch government. They were subsequently provided funding until 2017, so, happily, the music played on.

Anyway, let’s get on with it – here’s “Holly Ivy and Rose/Snow Angel.”

ayelienne 7:23 am on December 18, 2013
Tags: 2000s, Advent Calendar ( 24 ), andy williams

Musical Advent Calendar: December 18

This is another oldie but goodie – Andy Williams with his 1960s hipster groove, singing “Happy Holidays/The Holiday Season.” – Here’s a version (with his brothers) that was on his Christmas special in 1964. Andy Williams recorded 44 albums and sold over 100 million records during his career.

ayelienne 7:30 am on December 15, 2013
Tags: 1990s ( 9 ), 2000s, Advent Calendar ( 24 ), Dave Matthews Band

Musical Advent Calendar: December 15

Today’s entry on the calendar is “Christmas Song” by Dave Matthews Band. I haven’t followed Dave Matthews Band in years, but I really liked their first few albums & always appreciated this track.

The studio version as found on Remember Two Things (1993) has a nice little bonus song tacked onto the end after about 8 minutes of silence. The version below is a live acoustic version with Tim Reynolds from 2009.

ayelienne 7:46 am on December 11, 2013
Tags: 2000s, Advent Calendar ( 24 ), Digidesign, Pledge Drive, Queen

Musical Advent Calendar: December 11

Starting sometime in the mid/late 1990s, the ProTools people at Digidesign (now Avid), would press a Holiday CD with songs created by employees and distribute the CD internally within the company. I think the last one was released in 2007. It was always was fun to listen to the tracks and see what kind of songs the Digi crew cooked up in a particular year. Songs would range from faithful renditions of the classics to avant-garde noise tracks and pretty much everything in between.

The 2003 Digidesign Holiday Album, entitled A Silent Night at the Opera, contains what I consider to be one of the best tracks of all the Digidesign holiday releases, “Christmas Rhapsody” by Pledge Drive. Readers familiar with the Queen catalog may have already been able to infer that “Christmas Rhapsody” is indeed, a parody of Queen’s operatic masterwork, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and a brilliant one at that. It’s a classic in our household, for sure.

Fortunately, Pledge Drive has made this track available for your downloading pleasure – follow the link to download the mp3 and to view the lyrics.

ayelienne 7:14 am on December 9, 2013
Tags: 2000s, Advent Calendar ( 24 ), Pedro the Lion

Musical Advent Calendar: December 9

“I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day” is one of my favorite traditional carols. The lyrics are based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that was written during the U.S. Civil War.

Here’s a nice rendition by Pedro The Lion:

ayelienne 7:21 am on December 5, 2013
Tags: 2000s, Advent Calendar ( 24 ), Sufjan Stevens

Musical Advent Calendar: December 5

Some years our Christmastimes are wonderful and sometimes they are the worst; in either case, there is just as much to be pensive and thoughtful about as there is to be excited and distracted by during this time of year. When we are young we are rarely burdened by the sense of what we lack in our annual Christmas festivities, but as we collect another holiday season or twenty for our scrapbooks, we see how time changes things. I feel the Ghosts of Christmas Past accumulate, and their presence becomes more felt with each passing year. Today’s song evokes the deeper, more somber feelings of the season for me and it’s a good counterpoint to Sir Paul’s vision of a wonderful Christmas time.

Today’s song is by Sufjan Stevens, “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” from his 2006 box set, Songs for Christmas.

ayelienne 2:19 pm on August 20, 2012
Tags: 2000s, deYoung, Fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier, San Francisco ( 3 )

Gaultier at the de Young

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk

Gaultier at the de Young, a set on Flickr.

Yesterday was the last day of the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. The price of procrastination was a huge crowd and an inability to see this fantastic show a second time. Non-flash photography was permitted, so here’s some shots I took at the show 🙂

ayelienne 8:36 am on June 15, 2011
Tags: 2000s, Music ( 10 ), Oakland, The Police

The Police, Oakland, CA – 06/13/07

(originally written 6.14.07)

The Police in Oakland, 2007

Here’s my take on last night’s show:

The Police show last night made me happy. Not as happy as I would have been had I been allowed to see them on the Synchronicity tour at age 13? 14?, (my hopes were kiboshed by the “parental units” on that one) but considering there were no albums after that one*, I can’t imagine the show would have been too drastically different (although maybe I would have heard “Tea in the Sahara” back then).

* Not including the greatest hits with the re-recording of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”

From a sound standpoint, both K and Larry said the low end was pretty sucktastic – we didn’t pay $200 for our tickets, and I felt like their performance was worth the $30 per guy I paid to spend a couple hours with them. I had a good time, and that was all I was looking for. K was a trooper; we didn’t know if he was going with us as he’s been sick for the last few days, but we cajoled him into going and I think he was glad he went.

The Police is one of those bands that I used to really like a lot, but I almost never listen to them anymore, so it was kind of strange to be sitting there, singing along word-for-word to all these songs…I kind of marvelled at myself for remembering them, and then tried to remember if I was a HUGE Police fan when I was fangirly about so many other acts in high school. Apparently so 🙂 I always did love Sting’s lyrics, though, and was reminded of how much I learned from tracking down the myriad references that peppered his writing.

Highlights for me:
– “Invisible Sun”
– “When the World is Running Down”
– “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”
– “Can’t Stand Losing You”
– The fact that I was finally watching The Police – Live!
– No drunken jerks in our section

A gratifying and satisfactory concert-going experience all in all, for me at least, and an absolutely perfect night for an outdoor show. Not the best, far from the worst, and glad to have seen them live at last.

ayelienne 7:23 pm on May 18, 2011
Tags: 2000s, Music ( 10 ), Peter Murphy, San Francisco ( 3 ), The Fillmore

Peter Murphy at The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA – 5/24/05

(originally written 5.25.05)

Ticket stub, Peter Murphy at The Fillmore in San Francisco, 2005

Peter Murphy in San Francisco, 2005

We went to see Peter Murphy at The Fillmore last night; there were issues with the sound and Peter’s in-ears – he introduced us to Sascha, his tech, as Sascha spent more of the night than he should have running around the stage adjusting things and trying to put the in-ears back in the middle of songs while PM was singing.

Most of it was either new material or stuff from Holy Smoke and later; 4 songs from deep, if i recall correctly, two of which were in the encore: “Cuts You Up” and “Marlena Dietrich’s Favorite Poem” (which was great to hear, one of my favorites); he also did “A strange kind of love” and “deep ocean, vast sea”….The new stuff sounds like Deep II; I was hoping that he had continued down the turkish-influenced path, but apparently not. I’m a big fan of his first two solo albums and was slightly disappointed but unsurprised to not hear any songs from that era.

I don’t think I heard any Bauhaus songs, but I wasn’t expecting to.

quote of the night:

“You know, 3/4ths of that band [Bauhaus] were total primadonnas, and Peter was the QUEEN BITCH.”

ayelienne 9:45 am on May 14, 2011
Tags: 2000s, Bjork, Meeting the Band ( 3 ), Music ( 10 ), San Francisco ( 3 )

Bjork, San Francisco, CA – 8/8/2003

(originally written 8.9.03)

Bjork in San Francisco, 2003

so…
we just got back from the afterparty for the Bjork show 🙂

The show itself was fantastic, there were *fireworks* that went off during a few of the songs. We sat in the bleacher area, it was a strange venue (Piers 30/32), but once the fireworks went off, it was like “oh, maybe that’s why” — her ‘backing band’ consisted of the “Icelandic String Octet”, a harp player, who also played a bunch of stuff (like accordian, harpsichord, etc) and Matmos, a blip pop duo (which is a genre I’ve never even heard of! K just informed me of it, and a quick search on google confirms it. My god! *marvels*) They played with Bjork on Vespertine.

There was pyro, there were fireworks, there were pyro(!) and fireworks at the same time! It was off the hook. She sounds as good live as she does on the albums – her voice is amazing. I have a whole new level of esteem for her- it’s rare these days to hear that level of expertise.

She played a lot of songs that are on her greatest hits album that recently came out. K’s a much bigger fan than I am, he really enjoyed it. It was a really good show.

Our friend Wobbly was dj’ing the afterparty, and he told us about it and where it was going to be. It was all very hush hush, even though, in his email he said she almost never shows up at them. So, we got there early, we actually found parking right away in North Beach at 10:30 on a Friday night (which is virtually *unheard* of, incidentally) we showed up just as Matmos showed up with Wobbly (they’re friends). So, we met the Matmos guys and chatted with them for a minute while they got the place opened up. Big white space, they threw on a vintage golf instructional video up and set up the drinks table. K and I talked with W. while he got set up.

We’re all hanging out, people start showing up, a very hip and arty crowd. Everyone’s got their own vibe going, it’s fascinating to just sit in the corner and watch. There’s this interesting woman who looks an awful lot like Bjork; I say to K “look at that girl…she looks like Bjork” – he looks and says “it *is* her”. So, there you have it. We were all dancing in a circle on the dance floor, a bunch of girls. I haven’t danced in a long time, and I danced my ass off. It was great. We got home at 2; it was such a fun, random evening. The rock gods were with us, we had a really wonderful time. We need to go out more, definitely.

mostly music

blog.ayelienne.net

Tag Archives: 2000s