Giant Hogweed!

A friend recently sent me this link: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/08/04/hogweed-can-blind-humans-found-calhoun-county/31094763/ .  Yes, it appears that the notorious Giant Hogweed is making a stand here in the USA.

All of which, of course, reminds me of the great song "The Return of the Giant Hogweed", from my favorite Genesis album, Nursery Cryme.

If you're unfamiliar with the album, here's a list of the songs, with a few YouTube links:

1. The Musical Box - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X_3yOUKSOc
2. For Absent Friends
3. The Return of the Giant Hogweed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTuJQL8GBqY
4. Seven Stones
5. Harold the Barrel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT7k7keej0k
6. Harlequin
7. The Fountain of Salmacis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In2fRySroH8

IMHO "The Musical Box" and "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" are fantastic, being some of the best stuff Genesis did.  "The Fountain of Salmacis" is pretty darn good too, and "Harold the Barrel" is amusing.  But .... I always thought the overall acoustics of the album were poor.  It almost sounds as if this was recorded in the 1950's, not 1971!


A couple more links:

"Giant Hogweed" live - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59EKHdeyKc

"Giant Hogweed" remastered, (GREAT visuals!)  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASo7dklOTP0

Why Are LPs, ("Records"), Back?

A few weeks ago I was reading a post on a blog I admire, ( http://www.budgetsaresexy.com/ ), and I saw that he LOVES LPs, of all things.  I thought this was just a quirky entry for a long forgotten product, but then today, while we were in Barnes & Noble, I saw a stack of new records, (with classic rock artists, like Hendrix, the Doors, and Led Zeppelin), for sale.  And they weren't cheap either - about $24.00 each!

Who these days would buy an LP, I wonder?  My wife doesn't even know what they are!  I'm old enough to remember when CDs first came out, and how thrilled we were to have a recording medium that was lighter, smaller, and much, much more resistant to scratches and other damage.  Good riddance to LPs forever!

Or so I thought.  Now, apparently, they're a designer item? 

Good grief folks!  LPs have so, so many disadvantages compared to CDs and MP3 files that I couldn't get rid of my old ones fast enough. 

Why would anyone chose to own music recorded on a vinyl record, unless there is no other alternative?

Avenue Q Soundtrack

How about the soundtrack from a funky musical.

Avenue Q ain't your Grannies type of fun.  (Unless, of course, you've got a really cool Grandma!)  It's a sarcastic telling of what may happen should a group of "Sesame Street" type characters grow up, and get smacked in the face by the real world.

The CD I've come across is the Original Broadway Cast Recording, and contains the following tracks.  I've put the YouTube links for most of the good ones; the rest are easy to find too.


1. The Avenue Q Theme

2. What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?

3. It Sucks To Be Me

4. If You Were Gay

5. Purpose

6. Everyone's A Little Bit Racist

7. The Internet Is For Porn

8. Mix Tape

9. I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today

10. Special

11. You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)

12. Come True

13. My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada

14. There's a Fine, Fine Line

15. There Is Life Outside Your Apartment

16. The More You Ruv Someone

17. Schadenfreude

18. I Wish I Could Go Back to College

19. The Money Song

20. School for Monsters/The Money Song (Reprise)


As always, if you enjoy this music, PLEASE consider buying it!

Yes, this post contains, (** gasp! **), affiliate links!  Please don't fear them; they mean you no harm!

And in the cash deprived spirit of "Avenue Q", (Wikipedia too, by the way), I will now beg for money, and ask if you would be so kind as to click one of the following links.  You will simply pass thru an advertisement page to a page on one of my other blogs, where I heartily thank you for the billionth of a penny your selfless action gave me.

Just make sure your anti-virus software is running beforehand please!

http://www.linkbucks.com/BJ4GF  -  No more Linbucks links!

http://adf.ly/8579093/bn---faq

Thank you for your patronage!

Mimi Dye - Angel Songs of Mimi Dye

Here's something to declutter your head a bit, and help you feel, "energized and renewed by the music."

The CD is by violist Mimi Dye, and is subtittled, "Solo Violas".  Give it a listen some quiet day, and I think you'll be pleased.

01.  New Day Angels (solo viola)
02.  Joy Of The People (viola and drum)
03.  Angels Around Us (solo violas)
04.  Tears of the Angels (solo violas)
05.  Lament For The Women (solo viola)
06.  Prayer For The Earth (viola and guitar)
07.  Song Of Life (solo violas)
08.  Oh The Passage Of Time, Adeline (solo violas)
09.  Mahalo Love Angels (solo violas)
10.  Aloha Spirit Angels (viola and guitar)
11.  Vern's Heavenly Dance (solo viola)
12.  My Angel Scott (solo viola)

If you've clicked any of the links, you realize she has her own website, http://www.mimidye.com/ , and her own YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCre12ga2sIT8rwlNjhY4zMA .

And as always, if you've enjoyed listening to this music, PLEASE consider buying the album.  You can do so conveniently at a page on her website, http://www.mimidye.com/orderinfo.html .

Monster Island - Dream Tiger

The band is Monster Island; the album is called "Dream Tiger".

Wikipedia never seems to have heard of either of them.

I can tell you that some of the songs on this CD, (such as "The Dead Father" and "Fantomas"), are about the creepiest things I've ever heard.  Ugh!  Gives me goosebumps just thinking about them.

Here is the song listing:

Dream Tiger

Hob Goblin

The Dead Father

Mothra

Halloween

I Love Gorillas

Ghost at My Window

Fantomas

I Am a Cloud

Lost Souls

Cherry Alive

Goin' to Nepal

Behold the Moon


If you've enjoyed this creepy music, why not purchase the CD at Amazon?

Avoid MediaFire!

I've been going through the old, (ancient), posts on this blog, and EVERY SINGLE MediaFire.com link has been disabled!  Poop!

It's a pain in the rear, but I'm going through all those old posts now, updating them to use links to YouTube, where videos of the songs have been uploaded.

MediaFire is an awful company!  I'm amazed they're still in business.  (Are they actually in business, or is their website just a dead ghost website?)

So how about YouTube?  Other than videos getting nuked because their violate their puritanical views on nudity, do YouTube videos just mysteriously "go away" over time?  Has anyone had a problem with old YouTube videos being nuked?

We have some videos, (for example this one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8l6mgKwq2c ), that we uploaded to YouTube over five years ago, and they're still going strong.

Don't use MediaFire!  Upload your music videos to YouTube instead.

Milemarker - Anaesthetic

Here's a fairly obscure album from a fairly obscure band, although Milemarker does have an entry on Wikipedia.  They supposedly hail from Chapel Hill, NC, yet while I lived nearby in Raleigh, I never heard of them.  (But then again, I'm an old fart, so what do I know?)

The Anaesthetic CD and its case are a nice blank expanse of pink, with a small white emblem of a flying horse on the case cover.  There's no listing of the songs on the CD as far as I can tell.

According to Wikipedia Anaesthetic is their third album.  I can't find anything else about it on the ol' wiki, but these are the songs that are on my CD:

Shrink to Fit

Food for Worms

A Quick Trip to the Clinic

Lost the Thoughts But Kept the Skin

Ant Architect

The Fear is Back in Town

The Installment Plan


Well what do ya know - every single song from this CD has been uploaded to YouTube!  Maybe these guys were more popular than I thought?

If you've enjoyed this music, please consider buying the CD at Amazon.

Two More Songs from Ken Still

Here are two more songs from Ken Still, that I believe will be on his, "Whims of Chance" album, although maybe not in this exact form:


Starshine

Thelma Does the Wacky Dance

Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle

If you grew up in the 1970's, you'd have to had been raised chained to a basement wall not to have heard at least part of this album.  It certainly is not "missing music"!

So why then do I post links to the songs on the "Fly Like An Eagle" album here?

1. Whether you like Steve Miller and his band or not, it's a good, if not great/excellent/phenomenal, album.

2. It's my cheezy way of letting folks know they're clicked on a link for something which doesn't exist yet.

"Huh?"

Okay, I have this other webpage, "A Day in a Year in a Life", where I give links to a daily post I wrote for each day in my life.  As not all of 2015 has come to pass yet, clinking on, (as I write this), "Day 305" will send you back here, after passing through an ad page that pays me a tiny fraction of a penny.  It's my (pathetic? desperate? hopeless?) way to try to make my webpages self-supporting.

"Why did you choose to do this to Steve Miller?"

It's the lyrics from the "Fly Like An Eagle" song.  You know: "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' .... into the future."  I don't know; it just seemed like a good match.

Enough drivel!  Here are the songs from "Fly Like An Eagle":

1. Space Intro / Fly Like an Eagle
2. Wild Mountain Honey
3. Serenade
4. Dance, Dance, Dance
5. Mercury Blues
6. Take the Money and Run
7. Rock'n Me
8. You Send Me
9. Blue Odyssey  -  hardly worth the click!
10. Sweet Maree
11. The Window


..... and, as a bonus, a song from the "Book Of Dreams" album that I always liked:

Jet Airliner


You can, of course, purchase the "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Book Of Dreams" CDs at Amazon.

The Tong Tong Pakitong Song

My Wife's Papa used to sing this song to her in Bisaya, (Cebuano), when she was a little girl in Mindanao, Philippines.

Here is a Bisaya, (Cebuano), version of The Crab Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKc93P0GM4U .  Another Bisaya version, this time a boy accompanying himself on ukulele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vlebvIFCx4 .

My wife insists that the Bisaya version is "the original", (of course!), but if you prefer Tagalog, here is a different version in that dialect:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtmyNIWutkY .

Yet another Tagalog version, with commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzRb_6d3Ln8 .

Stevan Pasero - Christmas Classics for Guitar

Stevan Pasero - Christmas Classics for Guitar

This is a spiffy CD that I got .... well, I don't remember where I got it from.  Mr. Pasero is a great guitarist, and the arrangements are well done.  Great music for the holidays, (yeah I know ... poor timing on my part for that!), or anytime of year actually.

As you can see if you click on the link, the CD itself is no longer availabe, so I guess I have a collector's item?

Here are the tracks:

Messiah "Allelujah"

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Canon in D Major

A Soul'n

Greensleeves

Ave Maria

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Deck the Halls

"Winter" and "Spring" from Four Seasons

O Holy Night

Dija  -  can't find this one on YouTube at the moment, drats!


..... and a bonus not on my CD:

Carol of the Bells