Category: music

The Week Behind

It's been a good week, with much satisfaction arising from the current book project, The Art of the Shim: Low-Alcohol Cocktails to Keep You Level. All the amazing conversations of the week before and much digging in old cocktail books, thinking about principles of drink creation have been percolating in my head. This resulted on Tuesday in my finalizing the first draft of the Bibulo.us Cocktail Taxonomy and posting it for comment. Mostly Twitter chatter in reaction so far, but the process of articulating my principles for others has, as usual, clarified them and this structure is performing well as I continue to research old recipes and organize the book's recipe candidates.

This pleasant creative burbling all week was accompanied by a big experiential spike in the form of an amazing concert Sunday at the new SF Jazz Center in honor of Bobby Hutcherson. Wonderful sound and great performers! Such a joy to have this resource so close to our home.

Around those themes the week swirled along quite well with a nice mix of home life and time out on the town and up in Napa county for Joe's work.

Proud: I have been keeping up my exercise routine! Between the Fitbit, the treadmill desk, and Zombies, Run! I am able to make myself put in the effort and seeing my strength and endurance grow as a result. Very pleasing!

Completed: I think I can now say I've achieved mastery on maintaining a beautiful, uncluttered living space with minimal effort. Still projects to be completed and undulation in tidiness from day to day, but in general the place is within ten minutes of "company-ready" pretty much all the time. The fortnightly visit from the maid who does my most-hated chores (vacuuming and scrubbing porcelain) has helped tremendously in letting me put my energy into things that pay off without driving me nuts.

Learned: Twitter may not seem like it eats much time to quickly check now and then, but it is a huge time-suck if not constrained. Trying out a Pomodoro method timer to help keep me on track and not ducking into email/Twitter/etc every 10 or 15 minutes. Getting better at managing this will help me not only with completing the current to-do's but also with staying focused on work as my social media activity grows when the book comes out.

Inspired: The barfolk I've been talking to as I research the book have been just marvelous; generous, enthusiastic, customer-focused. Really looking forward to working with them a lot this year.

Happy 10th birthday to my iTunes library!

Thanks to my return to the Apple family in 2002 and continuous smooth migrations from Mac to Mac since then, I now have a certain degree of continuity with my music collection management.

There's been a small amount of lost information due to things like tracks being replaced when I've switched from a mix from a friend or a 'best of' album to the original, but in general these are the same tracks I've had all along.

One big factor in that array of music is my habit of weeding out things that I don't like. 'Meh' doesn't cut it; a song has to be rated three stars or higher to stick around for long. Each time a track irritates or bores me (and I know it isn't just a temporary mismatch in mood), I drop it one star. If it's already down to a single star, I delete the track. This means over time, some albums and artists completely vanish, but allows me to listen to my music on shuffle play with little risk of bad songs.

The track with the most plays in my collection is, somewhat oddly, My Chemical Romance's version of "Desolation Row" from the Watchmen soundtrack, but that's a result of it being played on loop as the writing background to some action scenes I was writing in a fiction work in progress and doesn't thus reflect my general listening habits.

With it set aside, my top twenty songs are:

"As Serious As Your Life" by Four Tet (electronica)

"Wildest Pig In Captivity" by John Renbourn (folk)

"Stiff Jazz" by Dzihan & Kamien (electronica)

"Cashmere" by Nerf Herder (alternative/punk)

"Time Has Told Me" by Nick Drake (folk rock)

"Northern Sky" by Nick Drake (folk rock)

"Vaseline Machine Gun" by Leo Kottke (folk)

"['casino' from the game Grim Fandango]" by Peter McConnell (big band)*

"Hey Bulldog" by The Beatles (rock)

"A String of Pearls" by Glenn Miller (big band)

"You're The One I Want In The Next Episode" by Grease Vs Dr Dre & Snoop Dog (mashup of 50s-esque and hip hop)

"YYZ" by Rush (rock)

"Cobbler's Jig / Maltese Brawls" by John Renbourn (folk)

"Pyramid" by Backini (electronica)

"Polythene Pam" by The Beatles (rock)

"Espionage" by Green Day (lounge/rock)

"Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" by Aphex Twin (electronica)

"The Earthly Diana" by Combustible Edison (lounge)

"Lark in the Clear Air" by John Renbourn (folk)

"Peter Gunn" by The Art of Noise with Duane Eddy (electronica/rock)

 

The oldest albums in the collection for which I still retain over six songs are White Courtesy Phone by Angel Corpus Christi and Ego sum Resurrectio: Gregorian Chant for the Dead by the female vocal ensemble Aurora Surgit. The latest album added was Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones.

 

Yes, it could be said that my taste is a trifle eclectic.

 

*To my utter delight, in looking up the name of the Grim Fandango composer just now I discovered an entire sountrack album available! O bliss!