Daly's Online Space

A quick post today. My site’s been down for a couple of weeks while I sorted out a few gremlins, and since I’ve got it back up I’ve been meaning to write a wee update on how things are going. Time at the moment, however, is short, so I’m just doing a wee quickie to share the resources I’ve been slavishly battering away at for the last week.

The school I’m working in celebrates the life of Robert Burns every year with a Burns supper, at which P7s regale staff and parents with renditions of some of Burns’ songs. Shock! Horror! Panic! the CD with the  backing tracks on it has gone AWOL. As the music guy in school, I took it upon myself to record a few backing tracks using my trusty guitar and Garageband—I’m quite pleased with the results, so I’m making them available as freebies for anyone that wants them.

Scots Wha Hae
Rantin’ Robin
Green Grow the Rashes
auld lang syne
a man’s a man

Education, music burns, mp3s, school

OK music fan, here is the plan. Having enjoyed several collaborative Spotify playlists with Twitter types in the past, I want to take the concept a step further. Some time ago, in February I think, Theo Kuchel first introduced me to the notion of what a collaborative playlist was. Anyone using Spotify, is able to suggest tracks that fit in with a specified theme. In this first instance, the theme was simply Scotland. All you had to do was think of a song that was in any way related to Scotland (Scottish artist, song about Scotland, bagpipe solo or fiddles in the middle-eight, you know the sort of thing) and add it to the list. (For what it’s worth, you can still add to this list if you’re a Spotify user.)

I’ve been involved in a few of these now: happy songs, sad songs, songs about school, songs about fruit amongst others.

Last week, after a conversation in the house with Gill we decided to start a list of songs with voiceovers. We got 10 or so in the house, then threw it out to Team Twitter. With the help of a handful of others (with a special mention for the efforts of Kenny O’Donnell) we managed to fill the list out to a whopping great 59 songs.

Anyway, enough rambling:

Here’s the plan!

This morning, being the swell folk that we are, started our own Chain (you might have heard similar on Radcliffe and Maconie’s excellent evening show on BBC Radio 2). The idea is simple.

• You start with a song. Any song.
• Then, you think a song that is in someway linked to it (bonus points for oblique or tenuous reasons!).
• In the comments section of this blogpost, you write what your pick is, and a quick explanation of why they are related.
• You add the track to the playlist
• The next person then thinks of a track that in some way connects with the previous one
• This goes on ad infinitum.

Simple, right?

A couple of examples just in case:

• This morning we managed to link the Happy Days theme tune to Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’. Reason: Henry Winkler played the Fonz in Happy Days, and also the Head Teacher in Scream, on whose soundtrack Don’t Fear the Reaper appeared.
• My personal favourite: Bob Dylan’s ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ was followed by ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ by Harry Chapin. Because Knocking on a door and Chapin on it are the same, aren’t they?

The only problem I can see is that everyone might have an idea for every song. I think the rule has to be that the first person to get on the blog gets the pick. That said, if you’ve had a turn recently, it would be sporting to hold off for a bit in case someone else wants a shot.

Be sure to leave your Twitter handle on your post as well!

All that remains for me to do, in that case, is pick the first song (which I can do without explaining it, cos it’s my ba). Enjoy yourselves!

Edit: To help things flow a bit, it would help if you could tweet your pick along with a link to this post , so your followers can add their ideas.

music

I am absolutely fascinated by chip music, to the point where I worry a little bit for myself. For the unacquainted, chip music normally refers to music made on, or synthesising, the music chips found inside 8-bit computers (e.g. ZX Spectrum, the original NES, Sega Master System, and the classic black-n-yellow Gameboy.) Here is a collection of Christmas Carols and songs, rendered as such for your listening pleasure – with nostalgic 8-bit gaming puns for you to spot too!

http://www.doctoroctoroc.com/video-games/8-bit-jesus-full-album-release/

(at time of writing this site was getting a bit hammered by traffic – so be patient with them!)

music 8bit, carols, chipmusic, christmas, gameboy, games, music, nintendo, sega, songs, spectrum

More last.fm:

my last.fm top 22 for 2008

This is a more interesting chart, I think, than the artists one, since it better shows up the ipodification of my listening, where tracks often have more value than albums (and even artists for that matter), simply because it’s just as easy to listen to tracks than it is to listen to albums these days, there being no need to physically switch media.

Loudon Wainwright III has stormed straight into my top 20. Dead Skunk is a song that Gill’s dad used to have on in the car a lot when she was wee, so I have her to thank for introducing me to it. Albeit a bit of a novelty song, it has all the hallmarks of a great singalong song in that it’s funny, and easy to sing. Similarly, #2 on my chart, Frankie’s Gun has similar qualities. The Felice Brothers do commit the crime of being absolute Dylan copyists, but Frankie’s Gun is excellent; and again, is endowed with a catchy, singalong chorus and some clever lyrical hooks in the verses.

The JP Daly prize for best pop single of the year goes to #5, Neon Neon’s I Told Her on Alderaan. Neon Neon are a collaboration between Hip Hop producer Boom Bip and Super Furry Animals’ main guy Gruff Rhys. I Told Her on Alderaan is one of the more accessible points of their album Stainless Style (a concept album about the life and works of time-machine manufacturer John DeLorean). An upbeat pop rock song with an impeccably authentic sounding 80s pop production, it’s almost like a time machine in itself. It’s also one of the very few Star Wars-referencing songs ever to be any good (although I am open to being convinced otherwise if anyone knows any better.)

Other notable entries are Half Man, Half Biscuit whose ‘All I Want for Christmas is  a Dukla Prague Away Kit’ appeared as a last.fm suggestion and seems to have stuck, although I remain unconvinced about their relative merits in spite of that song. Bonus points to anyone who spots the Lloyd Cole / Camera Obscura continuity.

music 2008, charts, lastfm, lists, music, scrobbles, tunes

One of the great things about a service such as last.fm is that it allows an almost scientific look back at listening habits over a period of time. I’m the kind of guy, you see, who had certain CDs that were hidden away from the rest of my collection – always a few guilty pleasures hidden away from the prying eyes of visitors. I have, of course, grown out of that very teenage mindset (honest!). These days last.fm captures everything I listen to. As a result it provides a quite interesting way to look at my listening trends and habits – and there’s nowhere to hide (there, that deals with ABBA right out of the box!).

last.fm artist stats for 2008

I was quite surprised by some of the results. I wouldn’t have said that 2008 was a particularly Beatle-y year for me, but I think I can attribute their runaway success to one rainy afternoon on Arran where the laptop played the three Anthology albums back to back while we… dealt with the conditions. One thing 2008 has been, though is the year where I started to understand what the fuss was about with the 1960s and 70s American folk rock and country – something I’ve always been quite unsure of. This explains the appearance of Bob Dylan and Loudon Wainwright III on my chart. Those two, along with Glenn Campbell, Sufjan Stevens and Paul Simon make an incredible FIVE singer-songwritery types to appear in my top 20 – something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. All in all, though, 2008 has been quite predictable in terms of bands I’ve been listening to.

I think I can explain away quite a few of the high placings for some of the artists. The reissue of the 1972 Santa Monica gig near the start of the year explains why David Bowie’s in the top 20, as I hammered that for a few weeks after it came out. Likewise, I got a hold of an excellent Yellow Magic Orchestra box set which resulted in a lot of play for them for a few weeks.

A worrying trend, either to do with my listening habits, or (I hope) the state of music in general, is that the vast majority of the top 20 are artists whose careers are oldies – people who, if they are still working have their best days well behind them. Maybe it’s time for me to start reading the NME again?

I really wish I had had access to a service like this for the entirety of my music listening life. There are lots of things I don’t listen to much now that it would nice to look back on. In truth, I don’t listen to music in general as often as I once did. Podcasts make up a lot of my commuting listening these days, and a lot of the time that I would have spent listening to music is often spent in other ways. A slightly younger me would have had much higher stats than this, which has led me to set a challenge for myself for next year. In the almost 2 years that I’ve been using last.fm, I’ve scrobbled almost 5,000 tracks. By 31st December next year, I’d like it to be at 10,000. 5,000 songs over 365 days works out at 13.69 tracks a day – should be easily achieveable given my commute. If you have anything you think might help me here – track or band recommendations especially, please leave me a comment

Tomorrow – my top 20 or so listened to tracks of the year. Hold on tight!

music charts, lastfm, lists, music, scrobbles, stats, tunes