![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Week in Review
Mar. 16th, 2025 03:56 pmIt was a productive week. I’ve got the Zen Room closet repacked, again with better organization and with less stuff sitting in other places – I kind of wonder if I did that process enough I could get everything down to a single box. I’ve got the ten space live PA rack sitting in there, but that’s all that needs to move, and I want to finish the cabling on it before I return it to the other PA gear.
While I was doing that I had music playing, and I chose some things I haven’t listened to in a while.
Merril Bainbridge In the Garden: I got turned on to this album back during my big career growth year of 1998. I was working IT for a credit card company, and they had a sort of Muzak style loop of songs going, though all of them popular songs by the original performers. The song “Spinning” off this album would pop up from time to time, and the glow and optimism of it always put a smile on my face.
Dave Weckl Hardwired I got turned on to this one in a Sound Warehouse right before they became Blockbuster Music. I was there with the person to whom I was espoused, and the first track is an attention getter. I commented that I liked the sound of the group a lot, so my former partner bought it for me as a gift with no gift giving day attached to it. I miss that kind of casual love expression.
Rare Silk Black and Blue and American Eyes I saw this group at the Starfest site at Park Central in Dallas, opening for Spyro Gyra, and ran out and bought their first album, New Weave as soon as I could. They’re in my personal opinion the best vocal jazz ensemble of the modern age – I like them more than Manhattan Transfer and a little bit more than Take 6. I wish they’d done more albums. Their version of “Red Clay” by Freddie Hubbard is amazing, they do a great job with Chick Corea’s “Spain”, and they do an acapella take on “Lush Life”, but these are three standouts on three top notch albums
Porcupine Tree Signify This album blows me away. It’s full of atmosphere and some killer lyrics – one of the tunes, “Dark Matter”, inspired a short story I wrote that was accepted over at Magnets and Ladders (www.magnetsandladders.org). This band puts to the test my contention that there’s nothing much to listen to released after 1992. I found this band when I was looking for Genesis on Emusic, and they referred me to Porcupine Tree instead.
I also listened to a lot of movies too – the first three Beverly Hills Cop movies, Constantine, Jackie Brown, and Poor Things, and I cleared out my talking books on my player, so it was a media heavy week.
While I was doing that I had music playing, and I chose some things I haven’t listened to in a while.
Merril Bainbridge In the Garden: I got turned on to this album back during my big career growth year of 1998. I was working IT for a credit card company, and they had a sort of Muzak style loop of songs going, though all of them popular songs by the original performers. The song “Spinning” off this album would pop up from time to time, and the glow and optimism of it always put a smile on my face.
Dave Weckl Hardwired I got turned on to this one in a Sound Warehouse right before they became Blockbuster Music. I was there with the person to whom I was espoused, and the first track is an attention getter. I commented that I liked the sound of the group a lot, so my former partner bought it for me as a gift with no gift giving day attached to it. I miss that kind of casual love expression.
Rare Silk Black and Blue and American Eyes I saw this group at the Starfest site at Park Central in Dallas, opening for Spyro Gyra, and ran out and bought their first album, New Weave as soon as I could. They’re in my personal opinion the best vocal jazz ensemble of the modern age – I like them more than Manhattan Transfer and a little bit more than Take 6. I wish they’d done more albums. Their version of “Red Clay” by Freddie Hubbard is amazing, they do a great job with Chick Corea’s “Spain”, and they do an acapella take on “Lush Life”, but these are three standouts on three top notch albums
Porcupine Tree Signify This album blows me away. It’s full of atmosphere and some killer lyrics – one of the tunes, “Dark Matter”, inspired a short story I wrote that was accepted over at Magnets and Ladders (www.magnetsandladders.org). This band puts to the test my contention that there’s nothing much to listen to released after 1992. I found this band when I was looking for Genesis on Emusic, and they referred me to Porcupine Tree instead.
I also listened to a lot of movies too – the first three Beverly Hills Cop movies, Constantine, Jackie Brown, and Poor Things, and I cleared out my talking books on my player, so it was a media heavy week.
