you can count the fingers on one hand

maura @ 10:57 pm

I read a lot of stuff about instructional tech and information tech these days, and I see a lot of love for Twitter in those spheres. And I share that love, really, I do. I felt kinda embarrassed when I first signed up,* but Twitter has become a pretty indispensable part of my infostreams.

* linking to this post is cracking me up because apparently back in May of aught-eight I was all “I don’t want an iPhone!” And look at me now.

But lately I’ve been thinking about the other stuff that I like about Twitter. I don’t go overboard w/the celebs on Twitter — really it’s only a few folks. But it’s neato to be able to follow some musicians that I like, most notably Kristin Hersh and Tracey Thorn. Maybe it’s because they’re old like me and have kids and still talk about “records.” Tracey Thorn’s kids made fun of her for using that word, and now that I’m a librarian it sometimes has a different meaning for me, too, though I will always think of A sides and B sides before anything else (old habits die hard). Kristin Hersh, one of the most prolific (and sharing) musicians out there, lets us know every time she has a new song up on her website. And they both tweet silly funny stuff about their kids, an indulgence that any parent will probably appreciate (and admit to).

My Twitter music fan habit is probably just another mutation in the evolution path (and aging) of me as a music fan. I’ve written some about this in the past. The older I get, the less I crave live music, browsing record (ha) stores, and reading music reviews/news/zines/etc. (though I still sometimes miss my college radio show). But I still feel strongly about music and consider “music fan” to be a core facet of my personality.

Gets me thinking: what counts as a “fan”? I’ve seen only a handful of live shows since Gus was born and probably buy only 1-2 CDs every few months these days. But I still listen to music every day. And my Twitter habit helps keep music in mind, too.

here’s your future: it’s gonna rain

maura @ 9:39 pm

I’ve been mentally blogging all day in discrete paragraphs rather than sustained narrative, so I’m going to kick it list-style here tonight:

1. After multiple recommendations I finally got my hands on some Thermals records. And they are awesome! Good for listening to while cleaning the stacks of papers off your desk, arranging the fall workshop schedule, and doing the dishes. Since it has rained here for a million billion jillion days straight, the line that’s the title of this post seems particularly apt.

2. Seriously, it has rained for a million billion jillion days straight. I mean, I used to dig in Ireland, I know from rain. I finally bought some big tall boots, but this is still getting pretty old. No rain today but the forecast for the weekend looks ominous, bah.

3. Last week we went to the curriculum share at Gus’s school to see all the fantastic work they’ve done all year. I am completely in awe of his teacher: she took those 27 kids on a ton of field trips all over the city (they studied a lot of architecture this year), including walks over the Brooklyn, Manhattan AND Williamsburg bridges (not all in the same day). Among the work Gus showed us was a book he made entitled “All Kinds of Awesome Poems By Gus.” Which makes me giggle every time I think of it.

4. I finally cleared a whole bunch of random old photos off my phone recently. Here are two:

This is from a crazy place with tons of inflatable stuff to climb on called Bounce U that we went to with friends earlier this year. Gus had a blast, predictably.

There’s a fun public art project all along a street near my work for which lots of people knitted cozies for the parking meters! It’s amazing, very Doctor Seussian. I took this photo right after the cozies were installed — they look much more droopy now that they’ve been rained on for a month. You can get a better look in the nice Flickr photostream and there’s also more info in the Times.

heads roll and heads roll

maura @ 11:26 pm

My birthday was last week. It was a good day: I went to Library Camp and ate chocolate cupcakes w/vanilla buttercream frosting, yum. (not at the same time, though.) I am also old finally enough now. “Old enough for what?” you may ask. And I will answer: “everything.”

Among the lovely wishes + gifts, I got the latest release by 50 Foot Wave: “Power + Light.” 50 Foot Wave is Kristin Hersh (of Throwing Muses fame)’s other band, and they are loud + rocking. Lately this old lady has been all about the rock music, and I am happy to report that this scratches my rock itch. (Which sounds kind of yucky, actually.)

But that’s not what I want to blag about. What I really want to do is give big ups to Kristin & Co. because they have escaped the shackles of the recording industry and are kicking it open access-style. They founded Cash Music as an alternative means of music distribution. They released this new record on beautiful vinyl (choice of 4 colors! I picked cyan), which you can buy. And they also made the mp3 of the whole dang record available to download for free. Which kicks ass for me because now I don’t have to sit there making sure the cats don’t mess w/things while the USB turntable rips the vinyl to mp3. And of course the whole dang thing is Creative Commons licensed, so others can mix + mash these tracks as the spirit moves them.

I’ve been interested in open access/source kinds of things for a while, I guess, but I’ve gotten more and more passionate about those issues since I became a librarian (don’t get me started on the absurdities of scholarly journal publishing). Of course music/content/art producers need to get paid for the good work they do, but so many of them are held hostage by the recording/publishing industry. These models are broken. I’m not sure what the answer is — I don’t think we’ll know that for a while yet — but I’m 100% convinced that things like Cash Music are a step in the right direction.

yes, alright, i can, with sunburned lips

maura @ 10:37 pm

Where I’m not:

1. Throwing Muses/50 Foot Wave, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

Yeah, so it turns out that I was kind of lying when I said I wasn’t all that disappointed not to be going to this show. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve had the 50 Foot Wave records on repeat this whole week. I’d listened to them a bit a while ago but hadn’t much recently and holy crap they are amazing. Much harder than Kristin Hersh’s solo stuff, and even harder than much Throwing Muses, but in a wall-of-driving-guitar-and-drums way rather than an intricately-woven-guitar-and-drums way. I like it. Which makes me even more mopey because 50 Foot Wave don’t play out much and I’ve never seen them live, bah.

But it *is* late, and I’m already exhausted. For whatever reason Spring Forward is really kicking my butt this year. Maybe it’s the morning darkness, but this has been a long week. Who’s idea was it to move the time change up to March, anyway?

2. ACRL National Conference, Seattle, WA

Yes, the biannual library nerd-a-thon! It’s far away and expensive and inconveniently right in the middle of our semester, so I decided not to go. CUNY follows the public school holidays which means that our spring break is in April, not now like everywhere else. (Which I don’t hate at all, actually, since it makes childcare easier.) Also I thought that this would be a really busy week for instruction in our library.

But it turns out that we don’t have that many classes this week (we’ve scheduled most for after midterms, in a week or so). And I’ve been thinking a lot of research thoughts recently and really jonesing for an academic conference. Yes, had you any doubt about the depth of my nerdiness, I’m pretty sure I just dispelled it.

So I am using twitter to follow the conference. I guess living vicariously isn’t so bad. And it is much, much cheaper.

it’s all here in writing

maura @ 9:42 pm

I am ripping my very first LP to MP3 right this very minute: Thomas Dolby’s second record “The Flat Earth.” So far it’s been a pretty easy process, though you have to press a button to indicate the start of a new track, which is kind of a drag (Jonathan swears that there’s software that senses the silence between tracks automatically, so we will probably look into that). But really the simplicity is amazing — huzzah for USB!

I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately, spurred mostly by turntable acquisition and following the prolific Kristin Hersh on Twitter. Throwing Muses are playing here in mid-March. We’re not going. It’s on a weeknight and our babysitter’s in high school and my mom is busy and it’s expensive and late and loud and…

And in some ways I am sad about that. They’re one of my favorites and don’t tour together much anymore. But I’m not as sad as I thought I would be, which is kind of interesting. You’ve heard me moan & groan here about not being able to keep up with music, not being able to go to shows, blah blah blah. Where has the time gone, why don’t I feel the same drive to go find the new stuff, etc.

The other day I was reading a post on Easily Distracted, historian Timothy Burke’s blog, about mass consumption and the economic crisis. In the middle of the post (reason #5) he writes about “saturation of personal ownership,” and one of his examples is music. Maybe one of the reasons that music sales are slow is that the old folks (i.e., me) are buying less music than they used to. And one reason for that is that we already have so much music, all of the music that we’ve bought over our lives thus far.

I don’t know, it’s not news or anything that I have a lot of music (and only listen to a fraction of it). But for some reason just reading that paragraph made me feel a whole lot better about my relationship with music these days. It’s no big deal if I’m not as hungry for new music as I used to be. I’m having a big birthday this year and I’m too old to worry about whether I’m cool (and I never have been, anyway, so why would I start now?). And just like everything else that there’s not a ton of time for now (hello, video games), I’ll have more time for them again in the future, I’m sure.

And as I slowly digitize my records, all of this old stuff will be new to me, anyway.

but the very next day you gave it away

maura @ 8:14 pm

Why is the lame Wham Christmas song in my head? A friend asked for fave xmas songs on facebook, and I said “Christmas in Hollis” and the entire Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. But someone else said Wham. I mentioned this to Jonathan yesterday and he claims to have no recollection of the Wham song at all, even after I made him watch the video on YouTube. Which I guess makes sense, because he was never a 15 yr old girl.

I was telling my sister about this yesterday and she brought up Music and Lyrics, the movie I’ve been trying to forget for ages. And now the songs are right back in my head again, dammit.

Have I said this before? Since we don’t have cable (and don’t watch live TV because the rabbit ears aren’t very good), we don’t really get to see commercials much. And apparently I’ve completely lost the ability to tune them out. Seriously, it took me like 10 minutes to write this blag, because my brother in law is channel surfing on the sofa next to me.

i’ve got your p.o. box number

maura @ 7:38 pm

“Yes, yes I would, yeah baby, yeah!”

That’s what Gus just said when Jonathan asked him if he’d get cherry pie again someday. He had some over the weekend at his school’s fundraiser. It was a good time, as ever, if a bit chilly this year. What with the wind most of the littler kids ended up in the gym, running around like crazed monkeys hitting each other with inflatable spongebob and spiderman hammers that their pushover parents bought for $3 each (us included). Just remember, kids, it’s only fun until someone loses an eye! Or gets hit in the face with an inflatable hammer, as it turns out.

When we got there the high school band was playing, by which I mean 3 kids w/guitars + drums (rather than the kind with uniforms + woodwinds). You know you’re an old lady when all you can think is OMG they are so cute with their pop-punk + guitar solos + crazy tight purple pants. Gus was positively enthralled with the drummer: “look, he has cymbals and a drum with a pedal on the floor!” Not exactly the best choice for apartment living, but maybe we’ll have to figure something out. When they came offstage I heard one of them telling a parent to check their myspace. Adorable!

the forest was emerald

maura @ 10:11 pm

Earlier this week at work I noticed a tiny plastic turntable sitting on the table in the tech services area (where my cube is). I asked a coworker about it and she replied that she found it in one of the boxes, and that she didn’t know where it had come from.

(keys for scale)

I couldn’t resist, so now it’s stuck on the wall over my desk, right next to some of Gus’s artwork and a Made With Love By Hannah postcard.

I’m thinking that this is the universe’s way of telling me that yes! I should put a USB turntable on my xmas list. So I will! And who cares if I never have time to digitize all of my records, anyway. As long as I can get Thomas Dolby’s 2nd album (“The Flat Earth”) in there, that’s good for a start.

in our angelhood

maura @ 9:34 pm

Today’s unanswered questions:

– What should I get everyone for Christmas?

– Why do the cats keep scratching the rugs (and the corollary, why isn’t the new anti-cat-scratching spray working?)

– How do you spell “corollary,” anyway?

– If I get a USB turntable, can I plug it right into our prehistoric amp + speakers? And if we get rid of said ancient (17-yr-old!) hi-fi stereo amplifier, how will I listen to my records on my new turntable?

– Assuming acquisition of said turntable, will I ever find time to rip my records to digital files?

– And speaking of time, how can I get back on my daily reading track?

– Will I have time to sew myself a new iphone cozy, purse and in-bag purse-like organizer over the holidays?

– If I go to sleep now, will I kick the exhaustion that’s dogged me for the past few days?

– Are accurate lyrics for older Cocteau Twins songs available anywhere online? Or was Liz Fraser just making it all up as she went along?

– Will I ever get over my annoyance at that nightclub in Philly that wouldn’t let my underage self (accompanied by my dad) in to see The Chameleons play on their last ever U.S. tour?

– What should I get my brother for his birthday?

– Did we pay less than our fair share at Japanese dinner tonight?

we’ll make plans for buildings and houses from mobile homes

maura @ 9:26 pm

I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately. My mom is coming to babysit tomorrow night so we can have a date, and we’d planned to go to one of our favorite restaurants here in the county of Kings. But, but, but…according to the New Yorker* Throwing Muses is (are?) playing at Bowery Ballroom. One of my favorite bands at one of my favorite venues (it’s like the Bronze!).

* okay, I’m getting my show info from the New Yorker, am I 75 million years old?

I used to see a lot of live music, in high school and college but also throughout the roaring 90s. I’ve been to only one show since Gus was born (strangely, also Throwing Muses). It’s not really Gus’ fault — in truth the show-going dropped off before he was born, around the turn of the millennium. I can’t really put a finger on why it happened. Some of it was having to travel into the city (we’d moved to Brooklyn by then). Some was the sort of dissolution of the indiepop thang that had come together in the mid-90s. People moved away, everyone was busy. I feel like a dork going to shows by myself, and Jonathan and I don’t always like the same music.

I’m sad about it in some ways, but also, not. That one show that I’ve seen in the past 5 yrs? I spent most of the time tired of standing, wishing it weren’t so late, wanting to go to sleep. Of course, Gus sleeps more now so maybe I could last longer. But it is expensive to get tickets + beer + babysitter + cab home (lazy). But #2, then I read about other folks who are in my same age + parenting boat and I feel lame, lame, lame. And I’ve had this mild obsession with Bunnygrunt for the past month or so, and they are playing** at a popfest in New England in the fall, and I am kinda jonesing to go, though me on a popfest road trip at this point is REALLY farfetched, what would I do with the boys?

** with Pipas! who I also love!

It’s been hard for me to keep up with music lately, too. I am lucky enough to be able to listen to music a lot of the time at work***, though I never seem to have the time to search the internets for the newest shiniest music that I might like. We never listen to music around the house, either (see above about our sometimes varying tastes in music). Which I do feel bad about, from a Gus-perspective. I remember my own parents playing all manner of 70s crap music (much of which I am still fond of, e.g. Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan) when I was little, and it saddens me that I’m not making Gus go through the same.

*** and to hear what the kids are into these days, too, thanks to our iTunes shared library. Sadly, many folks seem to love Coldplay, duh.

Hmmm, clearly I’m rambling, and I’m also having a beer (there’s likely a connection in there somewhere).

Anyway, the Throwing Muses show tomorrow is probably sold out by now. How’s that for semi-sour grapes?