music

2023.09.24 – Weekly Wrap Up (09.17.2023 – 09.23.2023)

I am bad at selfies.  I added one last week to these little journal posts and I wanted one for this week but they are kind of bad.  Or maybe I am just bad at looking excited.

Anyway, I’m not late, I am intentionally not on time, because I was busy yesterday.  I spent almost all day in Champaign (Urbana technically) at the Pygmalion event at the Rose Bowl Tavern.  I’m actually not sure if there is one of these or more of them per year, but it’s apparently the 19th year.  It’s a little craft vendor fair alongside a bunch of musical acts both indoor and outdoor.  I primarily went to see Lauren Mayberry’s first solo tour.  But I also like music, so I went early to see all of the outdoor shows.  There was swap flip-flopping between in and out on the schedule, I didn’t want to lose my spot up front, so I just stayed outside.  There were other Lauren/CHVRCHES fans there doing the same, which isn’t surprising.

Overall I saw 6 acts total, one of the scheduled outdoor acts, ggwendolyn, had to cancel.  This also meant the schedule got compacted up and while it was originally supposed to start at 1:45, things didn’t start until 2:45.  So I got there early, and then got to wait a bit longer than expected.  Not a huge deal.  I got to watch them doing the soundcheck, which, at least for me, was super interesting.  This guy, we’ll call him Bob, because that was his name, everyone on stage called him that, would go around checking mics and making sure things work then he’d head into the “crowd” and have band members do tests to balance things out.  Then they would all adjust their little personal directional speakers for levels on the various tracks (vocals, drums, guitars, etc.) on a personalized basis.  All from a little portable wireless pad.  It was neat.

Also, I say “crowd” because at this stage of the day, there were, maybe 20-30 people mingling around the small parking lot area where the shows took place.    As the day went on, the bands became clearly more and more professional about how they operated, and basically just, produced better and better sound.  As as that progressed, the crowd size grew and grew.  It was fun to watch actually.  From fairly basic setups to more and more complex setups, from using the house speakers for the feedback audio to using in-ear headsets.  From just, checking the watch after every song to see how much time there was to play, to having a full-on set list, ready and set up and available.  From random comments about writing up songs because of “X”, to having full-on fun little stories.

Anyway, I saw, in order:

  • Emily the Band – She mentioned that she went to school at U of I in Champaign and had played at the Rose Bowl Tavern a few times, so they seem to more or less be a local band.  It was the first time they got to play on the main stage.    I enjoyed their set and they seemed like they were having a fun time all around.
  • Fiona Kimble – She was alright, though probably my least favorite of the day.  The easy comment here is, it felt like there were too many people on stage, but then she said the pianist had come in special and they did a couple of duet songs, so well, maybe it felt like too many people because they had a bonus person in their set.
  • Lutalo – I really enjoyed his set.  It was very low key, basically finger-picking folk music on an electric guitar.  Dude seemed to really get into his songs too.
  • Tim Atlas – Dude was really good, and they hit all the right notes of having a band that felt like they all were really having a good time while putting out some good, varied music.  The guitarist also had a talk box (think Peter Frampton, Do You Feel Like We Do), for one song, which was fun.
  • Claud – The only artist I managed to get around to listening to before the show, and it’s funny how much that changes one’s perception.  I also found that I really enjoyed Claud’s music, from my before the show listening, and I was already kind of a fan, because it’s enjoyable.  I don’t really know why but it kind of reminds me of sort of, toned down a bit King Princess.  Just the vocal styling, the lyrics, and all that.  I want to listen to more of the artists I saw but probably Claud most of all.
  • Lauren Mayberry – Ok, Claud most of all, behind the obvious.  I tried to mostly avoid watching other people’s videos of Lauren’s solo tour, so I could mostly go into this show blind.  I had already listened to the one single, *Are You Awake*, and I had listened to *Crocodile Tears* beforehand.  It was all great, and definitely a good different feel from Chvrches.  Kind of reminds me a bit of Wolf Alice maybe.  Probably my favorite was the final track, *Sorry Etc*, which is one extreme end of the styling and very very “screamo punk rock” style.  The other end probably being *Are You Awake*.  Also, probably just because of where I ended up standing up front on the end of the stage when she came to my side of the stage, she seemed to be “angry face screaming” a few times like right at me.  

    Please don’t want to kill me Lauren, I’m sorry, etc.

Anyway, I’ll probably make a gallery of my photos at some point, though they aren’t real amazing, my phone’s camera isn’t super great.  I had asked them about bringing my proper camera and it was in the car but I decided it was too much of a hassle.  

I did have a fun good sign moment before the show.  I had stopped in a few stores over in Champaign before the show, and when I walked into Five Below, there was a familiar voice on the radio, with the CHVRCHES/Marshmallow collab track Here With Me.  It took me a minute to place the song because I don’t really listen to it, basically ever.  I keep forgetting it exists, which is funny because in some ways it may be the most popular CHVRCHES track due to the Marshmello exposure.

The rest of the week was relatively uneventful aside from Friday evening.  I went and met up with my parents and brother and a couple of my nieces and we went to watch the Route 66 Carshow parade in Springfield.  I didn’t end up taking any photos, but it was fun.  Basically, a lot of the classic cars that are in the show itself all just, drive to downtown.  They go a pretty good distance, as they start down near Dirksen and Stevenson Drive and go downtown.  I realize this is meaningless to most people but this means they go 3 miles or so up Stevenson and then 3 miles or so up 6th Street to downtown Springfield.  It’s a good distance on some main throughways in the city, especially for a bunch of classic show cars.  Also, there is a police presence, but they also don’t block the roads, so there are just, regular cars driving around them.

I’m sure I’ll write up on it eventually, but I also kind of spur of the moment updated my PC from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It’s mostly the same honestly. I hate how I can’t dock the taskbar to the side though and I immediately changed is the centering on it though because the centered icons is functionally garbage and it’s ugly as shit. I also found a cheap price to update it to the Pro version from Windows Home. There are a few virtualization things that are only in Pro, but also only Pro allows for Remote Desktop access. It’s actually something I have been wanting to do even in Windows 10, for the same reasons. Also, in theory, I think Pro has fewer ads stuck in it, because well, you’re paying for it.

On Friday before going to Springfield I had the day off so we also put out the fall decorations around the outside of the house, though they aren’t completely finished. Also a few indoor ones but my wife does all that, I just haul totes around for that.

Activity Log

I’m not going to go into it all, but one of the stores I went to was Ollie’s.  Which I’ve been to elsewhere years ago when traveling, but this one opened up recently, closer to where I live.  It’s basically a closeout store, lots of stuff for like, 75% less than what it would have been originally.  They had a ton of Marvel Legends I didn’t care much about, and a few Star Wars Black Series I didn’t care about.  What I did pick up was a pile of Fortnite stuff.  Also, they had a bunch of Eternals Marvel Legends, which I have most of from previous markdowns, but I picked up Ajak, which was the only one I didn’t have.  I kind of really like the design of the Eternals, but I they are also all very samey looking, with almost no accessories, which made the figures a huge turn-off at the standard ML pricing.  I’ve managed to collect them all at like half price or below, which is just fine for me.

Not much else otherwise this week.

CHVRCHES – The Bones of What You Believe

I feel like at some point I should get around to covering the rest of the CHVRCHES album lineup aside from Screen Violence. In proper fashion, I’m going to roll it back to their first album, The Bones of What You Believe. It’s appropriate because it’s the 10th anniversary of the album. I actually can’t say accurately when I first listened to CHVRCHES, though I can say I only recently started caring about them. I know that when I started to care, I realized that I already had at least one album I had bought on Amazon. So at some point, they showed up in a $5 album sale, and I decided I liked the sound and impulse bought it.

It’s probably worth mentioning that the album also recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary.

I also know that for a while I was aware somewhere of a band called “Churches” because for some reason I thought maybe they did that song Take Me to Church, which is actually by Hozier. This is based entirely on the whole Church/CHVRCH thing.

Whatever the case, while I probably heard their more popular tracks starting from this album, I didn’t really start listening until much later, though before the Screen Violence era. Anyway, after I started listening, shortly before Screen Violence, probably at the recommendation of folks in the Sigrid Discord, they quickly shot up to the top tier of my favorite artists. They are currently 2nd on my Last.fm scrobbles. I imagine that another influence was my obsession with Forza Horizon 4, which features Never Say Die, from Love is Dead.

I would say it’s hard to pick a favorite song from the album, except the track Gun is on this one, and it’s my favorite CHVRCHES track, so that’s pretty easy to pick. I just really love the metaphor of the hook. You fucked up, and you’re going to pay for it.

Maybe my second favorite track on this album is Tether, though it wasn’t always. It’s sort of grown into that place. I just absolutely love the build from calm and slow to the break at the peak. I also really enjoy the vocal effects and overlapping sounds of this one.

There are plenty of fan favorites and other notable tracks though. Their first big single, Mother We Share is such a good opener to the album with the echoing vocals. I particularly like the up-and-down background rhythms and the slappy fake clap beat that runs throughout. I want to say Lies, was the first track they actually performed during live sets, and while it’s popular, it’s probably one of my least favorite tracks on the album, because it’s very repetitive and flat in it’s overall presentation.

A few more of the more popular tracks are Night Sky, which I believe took 2nd place for most popular in the CHVRCHES Discord tournament (behind Clearest Blue). Science/Visions goes incredibly hard, and is pretty amazing live as well. Recover was the second single from Bones and has some following but it reminds me a lot of lies in that it’s a bit repetitive and it’s lower on my list of songs I enjoy. Another really good one is We Sink, which drives pretty hard and really shows off the CHVRCHES sound well.

Also notable is how many Martin lead songs are on this album. What I understand reading the history of the band, is that Martin was going to be the lead vocals before Lauren came along. There are two tracks from Martin on the base version of this album, Under the Tide and You Caught the Light. The Deluxe version adds the previously released track Zvvl, and the 10th-anniversary release adds in the previously unreleased Manhattan and Talking in My Sleep. That’s quite a few Martin tracks from the early era of CHVRCHES. It certainly would have been a different band without Lauren.

Another that I’ve started enjoying a lot more lately, though it seems contradictory since I dislike the repetition of Lies and Recover is Tightrope, though it’s only on certain bonus versions, and is a cover of Janelle Monáe. I just rather like the “T-t-tightrope” stutter lyrics and the varying vocals in the “high or low” bits.

All in all, like most of CHVRCHES music, it’s pretty much all good. I’ve been listening to this album for a while, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming 10th-anniversary re-release and all it entails.

Weekly Wrap-Up (09.03.2023 to 09.09.2023)

This week will be a bit music-heavy, not so much about anything specific, but about what I have been doing in general. It honestly could almost be its own, separate post and topic, instead of a weekly wrap post.
Anyway.

Roughly, 4 months or so ago, Target Circle had a 3 months free offer for Apple Music and Apple TV. I have no interest in Apple TV’s content, sorry Ted Lasso. I did take the offer, so I could watch Tetris, then immediately set it to cancel. The Apple Music I did want to try out.

I don’t make it any sort of secret that I prefer buying music, but I am increasingly kind of wishing I had a paid streaming option, somewhat primarily so I can sample artists a bit easier. Also, sometimes I just want to listen to some particular song or artist and it is otherwise inconvenient to do. Amazon really fucking screwed me up with they broke Amazon Music. I will never forgive them. I owned a lot of my music through Amazon, and could just “pick up and listen” easily in their app. But the app started CONSTANTLY begging you to subscribe to the premium option, and then the last straw was that it no longer does anything but shuffle, even if you own it unless you subscribe.

Bull.

Shit.

So anyway, in the past, I have had a 6-month trial of Spotify, and I had a 3-month trial on Tidal, and I have some YouTube playlists but Vanced Player finally broke broke. The easy and obvious choice is Spotify. Everyone uses Spotify, it’s the defacto choice. I wasn’t super keen on Spotify because one, they don’t include HiFi Audio. Tidal charges extra (by a lot) so Tidal was out for this reason as well. Tidal in general is very expensive compared to everyone else. Secondly, Spotify pays artists pretty low compared to others. I like supporting artists.

I had decided Apple Music may be a good choice, this trial was a chance to try it out. And I subscribed for a month at the paid tier. What I wanted though, was to do the Family Plan. For like, $6 more, I could eliminate the headache of conflicting with my wife listening at home on the Echo while I was at work. For $6 more, I could let my kids have music as well, so they don’t have to rely on random services or YouTube.

Except it turns out, that Apple, does not have a web-based account management system for Apple Music. To manage family sharing, you MUST use an iPhone or a Mac. I don’t have either one of these. I am actually vaguely considering getting a Mac for my next laptop, but currently, I don’t have either. So that’s completely not happening.

So for now, I have canceled that Apple Music subscription, and I have decided to just go with Spotify. I probably don’t need the HiFi audio anyway, since most of this listening is done with Bluetooth to my earbuds or my car anyway, and I still pay artists directly buying music anyway.

The pain now is, Spotify gave me a 3-month discount deal, for a single plan. So my family may be slightly screwed out of that for a bit. I honestly don’t think they even care about the overall prospect of a music service anyway.

One thing though, which brings this a bit into “What I did this week”, is to consolidate all of my music across these services into Spotify. It didn’t take too long, because I have never used any of them for a super long term. I used a tool called Soundiiz, which came up as recommended for most of it. The free plan is a bit limited though, so some had to be done manually. I was going to just cough up the $3 for a month of their paid tier so it would be instant, but it’s only $3 if you “pay annually”, and it’s $4.50 otherwise. That extra $1.50 wasn’t the killer for me, it was the bull shit annoying “marketing deception”. I HATE that crap. If it had been upfront with “4.50/month” or “$36/year”, I would probably have just paid for a month.

The core transfer was mostly playlists, and only two were larger than the 200 song limit. So I just transferred them in multiple chunks and then merged them back into the Spotify App. For liked Artists, I just set up side-by-side windows and manually searched on Spotify.  This also played nicely into another music project I had started on Apple Music to build a “Huge playlist of music I like that I can just play on shuffle”.  You can find it here or below, and my profile is here.

Activity Log

I mentioned last week getting a bit of a bonus at work.  That came through so I was a bit less restricted on a few things, in one case, with Humble Bundle, where I went for the following.

  • Masterful 3D Platfomrs – Primarily because I wanted A Hat in Time, but also because I enjoy these sorts of games, especially after playing through Yooka Laylee recently.
  • Tales from Wales Interactive – It’s cheap and I’ve been kind of wanting to try some of these FMV-style games, especially as I do like playing through CYOA Interactive Fiction text-style games.
  • DinoFever – Bought almost exclusively for the Turok games, because at the moment I have been playing Quake II Remastered and I’m on a bit of an “old school FPS Kick”. Everything else looked pretty interesting as well, and it’s cheap.
  • Dungeon Crawl Classics MEGA Bundle – I have this crazy fantasy that one day I will be able to play tabletop games. Please don’t judge me.

Books

  • Max and the Multiverse: A Sci-Fi Comedy Novel by Zachry Wheeler – It was free, sounded interesting
  • An Enemy Reborn (Realms of Chaos) by Michael A. Stackpole, William F. Wu – I swear I have heard of this author before, and it sounded interesting. It looks like he has done some Star Wars books.
  • The Hedge Knight (A Game of Thrones) by George RR Martin – Game of Thrones is still cool right? WHERE IS WINDS OF WINTER GEORGE???
  • 15-Minute Spanish: Learn in Just 12 Weeks (DK 15-Minute Langauge Learning) – I am not quitting Duolingo, but I really feel like my Spanish learning is stalling a bit so I want to supplement it a bit again. I’m actually explicitly blaming Duo for this because they have changed the learning tree like 4 or 5 times now and every time it feels like they push my progress way back. I mean, the goal is to learn the language, not finish some arbitrary tree, but it’s really really discouraging.
  • Woke Up Like This: A Novel by Amy Lea, Mindy Kaling – Every month Amazon Prime includes a selection of free books. I almost never read them and half the time I don’t redeem them, but I have been trying to pick out one just because it’s there.