Seek Nuance

In between mind-mapping my future, updating my resume, meeting other Fisher ex-employees, and watching Deadwood DVDs from Netflix, I’ve had time to surf the web for whatever my passing fancy desires. One of my fancies is reminiscing about, and hunting for, music.

The earliest lyrics to notably impact my emerging teenage consciousness were these, from “Confusions about a Goldfish,” from the album of the same name by John Kongos:

Does the goldfish in the bowl celebrate Thanksgiving?
And can he see me?
And if he can, does he think that I created him
just to look like me?
And does he question the changing of the water?

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Jeff Carrick came upon my post about a song that was very important to me in my teenage years, but had been lost to time. He commented on it, and followed it up with e-mail, telling me the name of the group, album, and the song name. And he sent me a link to an mp3 of the song.

Oh. My. God.
Read more…

Most of the technical people in my division (Fisher Interactive) use Apple Macs. They’re all MacBook Pros, except for a Mac Pro used by Andrew.

I sometimes listen to music via iTunes when I work. I’ve rediscovered classical music, so my library has some of that (e.g., a London Symphony performance of Holst’s The Planets, a Boston Symphony performance of Carmina Burana), and more contemporary favorites (e.g., Yes, Traffic, B-52s, Poco, Nektar, and Dave Mason). I shared out my iTunes library — I’m hoping that others bring in their favorite music, and we build a shared library network at work…

Anyway. On a whim, I bought the only two albums (For Beginner Piano and Plock) made by the group Plone, from which the Plone CMS got its name. I plugged in my Bose headphones, cranked up the volume, started the Plone playlist, and began on a CSS task.

I found Plone’s music to be… Different. It was like nothing I expected. It’s… Unusual.

Andrew says it’s good music to code to. Um… Maybe. I don’t think it’ll ever replace Yes, Traffic, or Lou Reed.

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Updated 1/10: I replaced the last sentence with one a little less impudent.

Like everyone, I have some favorite songs.  Some of them are from a long time ago.

This is a snippet of a song lyric that I remember from my youth.  It’s a vocal refrain, sung by mail voices at the end of a rock song. (Possibly folk-rock, if you want to get particular.)  They repeated it a few times at the song’s end.  The time period was, I think, between 1970 and 1975:

Living in the city
Things can get too heavy
(Yes, they can, now)
You can lose the sound of your own voice
And you live out of key
And you cease to be free

For very personal reasons, this song meant a lot to me during a particularly rocky period of my life. Read more…