• Jon Bon Jovi
    Daily Life

    “Gospel Truth” playlist

    I started a new playlist the other night, “Gospel Truth,” which currently contains the following songs:

    Alison Krauss: Down By The River To Pray
    Kansas: Wayward Son
    Rufus Wainwright: Hallelujah
    Zulu Tradition: Hallelujah
    Cole Porter (Kevin Kline, De-Lovely): Blow Gabriel Blow
    Bon Jovi: Keep The Faith, Captain Crash & the Beauty Queen From Mars
    Jon Bon Jovi: Bang A Drum
    Guys & Dolls: Siddown You’re Rockin The Boat, Luck Be A Lady
    Taylor Swift: Wildest Dreams (this may go, not sure yet), Out Of The Woods

    Queen: Who Wants To Live Forever, The Show Must Go On
    Hozier: Take Me To Church
    Guns N Roses: Knocking On Heaven’s Door
    Heart: Stairway to Heaven
    Amazing Grace (bagpipes)
    Meat Loaf: For Crying Out Loud
    Bon Jovi: Living On A Prayer
    Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah
    Take That: Rule The World

    I’m looking for other recommendations for the playlist! Favourite covers of Amazing Grace and Hallelujah are particularly welcome, as it’s impossible to have too many versions of those songs (someone’s recommended John Cale’s Hallelujah but I haven’t downloaded it yet). Nor have I gone through the rest of Alison Krauss and/or Union Station to pick up what’s best from them, but as you can see, the vibe here isn’t meant to be so much actual gospel (although that’s obviously good too) as a certain vibe that I think the above songs generally encompass. So I’m looking for songs that speak a truth to your soul, basically. Hit me with your best shot. :)

  • Daily Life

    The Great Digital Move

    I have just about completed ripping our CDs. This is a task that has been done in the past, but I’ve been unable to find the damn drive upon which the old rips were saved, and probably a new rip (10+ years later) is better quality anyway (it’s certainly faster), and because I have little need to own physical CDs, it will reduce our physical possessions by some percentage when I’m done. I’m trying hard to buy music digitally now, although mostly that means I just forget to buy it at all.

    In ripping them, I’ve discovered we have a lot of great music we never listen to. @.@ I got a digital music player a few years ago but it hasn’t proven as satisfactory as we’d hoped. We have another Android-based one that’s better (if I can find it), so we’re going to have to get a decent speaker set for it or something and go from there, because really! Lots of good music here!

    But I am MISSING a Jim Byrnes CD! Missing like I didn’t even know it existed, not missing like I have a copy and can’t find it (although I’m missing one in that sense too)! Love is a Gamble, 2001 from One Coyote Music. How can this BE?!

    I’m also reminded, as I periodically am, that somehow I do not own Bon Jovi’s Keep the Faith on CD. I don’t know why. I must *have* at some point, because I think there was a digital copy of it made at some point, but I don’t have it and I don’t understand why. :) I own every other album they (and he) have done, so I just have no idea where Keep the Faith is. And it’s one of my favourite albums!

    I also own every album Meat Loaf has ever done, even the stupendously bad ones. But I don’t feel any need to keep the physical copies of those. :) (Bon Jovi, Jim Byrnes & Martin Hayes are the 3 that for some reason I wish to retain physical media of. Possibly because I think they’re all hot.) Anyway, I’ve gotten a large, sturdy, well-made CD carrier so the CDs and liner notes can be kept tidily and the jewel cases can be ditched for everything we’re keeping.

    In an attempt to Do Something about the TV on DVD, I found these DVD binders, who have turned out to be pretty good. They’re advertised as holding 20-25 pages of DVDs & liner notes, which appears to be pretty accurate, although it turns out Buffy & Angel together basically fill 2 of them and Highlander overflows one by a considerable margin. So I have to get some more, but they’ve reduced the space taken up by those 3 series by about 2/3rds, so they’re WORTH getting more of.

    (I was putting DVDs into the pockets & being amused at the various pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Boreanaz, Adrian Paul & Jim Byrnes at different ages and looking different sorts of sultry or noble or whatever, and then I picked up one with Peter Wingfield on it and made a sound inappropriate for company. #laughs And it’s clear to me from Twitter chat that some day I need to have a massive Methos Chronicles sleepover party weekend thing and basically all the women I know need to show up so we can giggle and squeal like idiots for three days straight.)

    Oh, my, Ted’s been much braver culling his selection of CDs (his music is the hard rock, the pop, and the country; mine is the rock, the blues and the soundtracks, generally speaking) than I expected him to be. I didn’t need a 200 CD case to save what was left in. Well, that’s okay, it won’t hurt to have it. :)

    All right, there we go. 366 albums ripped. I’m gonna go…listen to some music now. :)

  • Family

    Young Indiana’s Song of Sorrow

    A certain young man does not wish to go to sleep. He is serenading me from his bedroom. His song goes like this (and this is verbatim, I’m typing as he sings):

    We’re a mom and son
    Moooom and son
    and we have to stick together
    or we’ll (mumble)
    and that would be unnecessary
    and i’d be sad forever
    and you’d be sad too!
    because i’d be sad until
    the end! of! this! day!”

    Please listen to me
    or it will be the end of the world
    and we won’t be together anymore
    and we won’t be able to stick together aga-aa-aain.”

    Oh mamma if you don’t come now
    you and I will be failed
    you and I couldn’t be together anymore
    waiiit and then we would just get sadder and sadder
    and then we would be sad enough to be saaa-aaa-aad.

    Oh I don’t like it when we’re sad
    and we would be sad together
    for ever and e-e-e-ve-e-r-r-r
    forever and ev-er!”
    and ever
    and ever and ever
    I would be sad
    you would be sad
    we would be sad together

    I don’t want to be sad
    I don’t want to do this with you
    (SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF)

    And this is the end of you and mee-ee–eee
    if you don’t come and be with me I’ll be saaaaaad
    and I won’t be happy
    I’ll be sad

    At the end of this masterpiece he came out to sit sadly in the hall, where I discovered he was wearing a cheapie airplane sleeping mask and slumped in dejection. #laughs

  • Crowdfunding,  Friends

    Cyber…Tuesday…late… o.o

    I am doing a MID-WEEK ROUNDUP of AWESOME CYBER STUFF!

    1. Judith Tarr’s HORSES OF THE MOON Kickstarter is 80% of the way to funded! I personally *dearly* want it to hit the 6500 mark and get us THREE novellas, which might be just enough to satisfy my grabby little hands! :)

    2. SIX BY SIX is a fantastic looking anthology with 6 stories each by 6 authors. I admire the whole idea of it and, uh, am jealous of the people doing it, if you wanna know so much. :)

    3. Cats Laughing–you know Cats Laughing; they were the band who did the soundtrack for WAR FOR THE OAKS–are doing a 20 year reunion concert/album. Fourteen-year-old me is delighted. :)

    4. I have FINALLY got a 2015 calendar up, if people wish to purchase one! Zazzle likes to give me a fancy link for the version with US holidays on it, so I’ve got a fancy link, but THIS is a less fancy link for a version with UK holidays on it. :)

    5. This Secret To Writing mug is so admired amongst the word warriors we may declare it our Official Word War Coffee Mug. :)

  • Uncategorized

    Internet Fast

    Going off-line for a couple of weeks, or at least that’s the plan. I want to catch up on reading, writing, etc, and not obsessively check Twitter and Facebook every four and a half minutes, you know?

    I leave you with what is theoretically an embedded video but which may not work, so if it doesn’t, you can watch my toddler learn to headbang to hair band rock here. :)

    Internet fasting commencing in three…two…one…now.

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