Recently in music Category

Pirate Kitteh!

Yeah baby!

I just read about Scott Andrew's first full-length studio album, Save You From Yourself on Photojunkie's blog. Scott is a very talented blogger and musician. I listened to his demos and was instantly impressed by his intelligent lyrics.

Scott is currently taking pre-orders of his CD to help pay for production costs until Monday, November 12th. There are various packages that you can choose from in order to contribute to the production. I got the Pirate Kitteh package because I like pirates.

If you get the SuperMegaGiant Destruct-O-Beast package (contribute $1000 or more) Scott will even play a private concert for you at your house (or some other venue of your choice!)

I'm in the market for a keyboard. The musical kind, so I can brush up on my sonatas and what not since my piano is about 2500 miles away. Unfortunately, there are too many choices and I some how got the idea that I should get a keytar as a quirky alternative since it would really narrow down my choices. Imagine rocking out to Mozart, 80's hair band style. That would be so tacky (seriously, was anything from the 80's not tacky?) yet awesome at the same time.

It turns out that the last mass market manufacturer of keytars discontinued the product line earlier this year. I'm a few months too late. You can still find keytars on ebay, but at 3x the original price, even for a used one. Boo, hiss.

So my search continued and I somehow ended up buying an electric guitar... even though I don't know how to play the guitar. It's not a regular guitar, though. Instead of strings, it has buttons where the frets are. Think Guitar Hero, but a real instrument that requires real chord fingering, sans the callouses. Yeah, I'm a wuss.

I'm still on the lookout for a keyboard, though. I would appreciate any suggestions at all, because I don't really know where to start looking.

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest today. It was entertaining, but I liked the first movie more.

When I was in Toronto a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Nelly Furtado's new album, "Loose". There are some catchy tunes on the CD, but there's something about her voice that makes me tire of it easily. I don't know why people like her so much.

I was listening to a Parisian radio station today when I discovered an artist by the name of Sandi Thom. I like her song, "I wish I was a Punk Rocker". Coincidentally, she's on her North American tour right now, and she will be playing in San Francisco next Wednesday. I'm going to try to make it to the show. Mike doesn't seem enthusiastic about it, so if anyone else wants to come with me, let me know.

Mike bought a copy of Karaoke Revolution Party for the Xbox for me, and now I'm addicted to unlocking all of the secret songs. In the process, I'm learning a lot of classic and contemporary songs that I should know, but don't, due to my indifference to pop culture. Yay.

round_ruckus (of bong bong bong fame) released 6 new tracks today. I highly recommend education and coffee shop. Both of these songs were originally slated to appear on his debut album, but now they are available as free downloads on his web site.

Education (rap) is round_ruckus' answer to Jin Tha MC's Learn Chinese, but round_ruckus takes it to the next level by explaining the meaning of every Cantonese expletive I've ever heard. The lyrics flow seamlessly between Chinese and English so unless you are a native speaker of both languages, it might take a few listens before you pick up any Chinese.

Coffee shop (a cappella) is a pining love ballad about a girl who works at Tim Hortons (a Canadian coffee shop chain.) The back up singers are actually 4 copies of round_ruckus' own voice. Once again, round_ruckus seamlessly inserts Chinese into his lyrics. If you listen carefully, you will find that "wo ai ni" (Mandarin for "I love you") is stealthily interchanged with the phrase "what I need."