If you thought this post-Christmas blogging explosion only covered the last month, have I got news for you! We’re going all the way back to August, baby! Eddie visited me in late August and we had a good time hanging out in Santa Cruz, trying to clean my office windows with a squirt gun and some Scrubbing Bubbles shower cleaner in the middle of the night, talking about how we handle risk, and talking about girls. Well, women. I guess some things have changed since high school.

Still, no visit with Eddie is complete without, you guessed it, rocking out. We used to perform together a lot, and Eddie has become quite good with a guitar over the last few years, so when we fired up Garage Band and put the guitar in Eddie’s hands, interesting things started to happen, and I recorded them.

Amongst the best were two covers of “Such Great Heights” that we ended up doing. At first, we were just trying to rip off Iron & Wine’s version of the song, but we eventually broke free and went punk. Later, Eddie urged me to post the stuff up here, and I refused because I didn’t like my singing. My breathing and phrasing is all wrong. It doesn’t go anywhere. The notes aren’t even all that accurate. All in all, they were some of the worst recordings of my singing that have ever been made. (Make no mistake, Eddie’s work is quite good here, and that’s the main reason I’m putting it up.) Eventually I decided to not listen to good judgement, get over it, and just put it up here in the hopes that people would enjoy these songs for the three-take wonders they are. Simple, faux-pretentious, and silly. Plus, there’s crackers!

Enjoy. Maybe.

Our Iron & Wine lullaby ripoff:
[REDACTED]

Our punk version:
[REDACTED]

Oh, and you don’t have to listen to them in your browser. You can download the MP3s here if you’d like to bring them with you or save them.

(Update 4/27/12: I decided that I am just too annoyed and embarrassed by these songs to keep them up here, so I removed the links. Call me a coward if you want, but I insist that I can do better, and I don’t need to publish my bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings in order to get there. I like Eddie’s work, but not mine.)

Sometime in 2005 I bought a song by Imogen Heap called “Hide and Seek.” I listened to it a couple times and forgot about it. For some unknown reason, it didn’t catch me. I actually forgot about it so completely that I didn’t realize I owned it when I tried to purchase it again this summer, when I fell in love with the song. I thought iTunes was making a mistake when it warned me that I already owned it, and I ignored the warning and spent another buck on the song.

It was a buck well spent, though. The song is as harmonically lush as a thick green garden, filled by Imogen’s vocals and vocoder. Every time I listen to it I’m moved by the shimmer, the passion, the sparse landscape of it, like some kind of angel. I’ve been nearly moved to tears by it on at least one occasion, and I can’t say that about very many songs. Especially not songs for which the lyrics mean almost nothing to me, and I admit I have no clue what this song is “about.” The complex, surprising chords, the swooping flange, the masterful pacing and super-wide dynamic range, those are the lyrics. They push me around.

After listening to this song over and over, I noticed one striking thing about it: the levels of passion in this song are truly off the charts, but they’re not unique in the kind of emotions they bring out. I was able to think of one other song that evoked that same kind of reckless abandon in its passion: “Let Go” by Frou Frou (probably recognized by most from the Garden State Soundtrack).

Some of you music lovers out there are saying “Aha!” right now, but it took me awhile. I finally noticed that the voices in both songs were similar and looked it up, and it turns out the two songs are written by and sung by the same person, Imogen Heap. So I guess this entire entry, oversimplified, is just my way of saying that I absolutely love Heap’s passion and abandon in her music, and I intend to be a fan of that aspect of her music for a long, long time. The strange part is that I don’t own the rest of her work. Just those two songs. I guess I’m a little afraid to confirm that she could never create more than two songs like these, and part of me would almost rather not know if those two songs are really the limit of what I’ll enjoy in her work.

Still, I’ve gotta give in sometime. Something tells me I’ll know the answer soon enough.

It’s official: Sufjan Stevens has recently passed the Beastie Boys on my last.fm artists ranking page for 2nd place. He’s worked hard. He deserves it.

It doesn’t look like anyone will pass Beck anytime soon, however.

Trivia: #11 and #12 are actually the same artist. If the scores were combined, they would rocket him to spot #4, bumping U2 down a notch. Here’s a fun game: see if you can figure out who he is and why I like him.

Also of note: I’m #60 on my own list. Yay me!

When I moved from one computer to another last spring, I accidentally erased my iTunes metadata. In other words, while I kept all my songs, I didn’t keep the information that told me when I got them, how many times I had played them, etc. I was bummed about this, and I felt stupid because I know what I should’ve done, but today I got an interesting view into my musical listening habits because of that mistake. (Technically, I could’ve seen this fact without the erasure, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.)

According to iTunes, I currently own 3575 things that one could consider “songs”. This excludes podcasts, voice memos, and other audio that isn’t music. Also according to iTunes, I haven’t listened to 2102 of those songs since March. In other words, almost 60% of my musical library has gone unused for the last seven months. That’s pretty surprising to me. When I really sit and think about this, it makes me wonder what the point of owning those songs is if I don’t listen to them at least a couple times a year. I mean, all my music put together isn’t even 10 days of music, so you’d think I would listen to most of my library a few times a year. But apparently I’ve been leaning pretty heavily in certain directions lately. Is this my brain’s way of telling me I own too much music? Is there a point at which a person can’t really consume and enjoy more music? Have I reached that?

So for a couple weeks I’m going to go on a diet of only music I haven’t been taking in lately. I’ll let you know how it goes. Try the same, if you’re game, and I’ll meet you back here sometime soon.

“I’m so bored of little gods
While standing on the edge of
something large
While standing here, so close to You
We could be consumed
What a glorious day”

Thank you, David Crowder. If that’s not what I needed today, I don’t know what is.

Robb, a buddy of mine, just posted a link to this article. The picture… the grey sub-title at the the top of the article… *wipes eyes* Wow.

Thanks for the laugh, Robb.

For you Harrod & Funck fans out there (which really should be anyone with good taste in music), I urge you to carefully peruse Link 1 and Link 2.

Thanks Jon for the links!