What are you listening to?

Hi @sophia do you by any chance know how The Crane Wives got their name? There’s a great album by The Decemberists called the The Crane Wife that has the songs “The Crane Wife 3” and “The Crane Wife 1 & 2”, making “The Crane Wives” as it were. You might like the band if you haven’t heard them. This is my favorite song by them: (1) The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle (from Her Majesty) - YouTube

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Chistmas carols by Brian Crain.

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I just finished a week long art fair, and the fair has a theme song that they play ALL THE TIME. It’s a great song, but I have heard it so many times this week that I can’t get it out of my head.

London Homesick Blues– Gary P Nunn

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I cannot stop listening to Zach Bryan’s ‘Motorcycle Drive By.’ It’s been on loop for days. So much of his music circles around lost friendships he mourns or loves that’ve gone south, but there’s such an uplifting sense of triumph in this song, a sort of gritty optimism that really matches the vibe of This Year by The Mountain Goats. I love it.

It’s such a catchy song too- definitely one you could sing along to at a concert. Whatever the heck he’s doing on the guitar really scratches at an itch in my brain too, it’s a very fun twangy sound that reminds me of some of Chromeo’s electro-funk instrumentals when the boys get silly with it.

Some song lyrics.

It’s a motorcycle drive-by
Baby, dry your kind eyes
I think it’s about time we headed home
Walking on such tight rope with my damn high hopes
The country boys don’t die alone

Everyday’s so fleeting, and I have been trying to save it while I can
The look on her face, all these hot humid days
And the boys in my damn band

Reading poetry under shade trees
That woman, she’s my baby
I will be in Richmond by tonight
With so much shame inside me
I just want to hide me
They want to hear me sing my songs under lights

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I’ve been working on my SeedComp game on @sophia 's poem, and I also have two inspiration songs. I was reading the poem and thinking about disasters and listening to music on random, and Landslide by Fleetwood Mac started to play and I was like, aha! The perfect song for this game. And then I remembered a similar, also awesome song by Shawn Colvin, Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche (and omg is this live version with Allison Krauss gorgeous), and then the whole story for the game clicked into place. So Sophia-- you get Stevie Nicks and Shawn Colvin as co-inspirations!

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I immediately answered this and didn’t look at anything else, so someone has probably already mentioned these, but I’m really into soundtracks:

Soundtrack - Movie
La Valse D’Amelie - Amelie
Sextant - First Man
Epilogue - La La Land
City of Stars - La La Land
(The first one in the list on Spotify) - Moon
Isolated System - Muse

Etcetera etcetera. I’m also a big fan of Red Hot Chili Peppers.

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On this last one I wrote for OpenCola, I was listening to Must Be Santa by Bob Dylan…over…and over. I regret nothing!

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Finally, someone who understands my obsession with Zach Bryan. I was so pumped when I found out he played Motorcycle Drive By in Yellowstone, and it looks like he’s finally getting the mainstream attention he deserves.

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Yes! I’ve loved his music for years- my first song of his was Condemned. I’m a big fan of country and folk music, and it’s soooo awesome he’s seeing some mainstream success!

There’s something so raw about his earlier songs and singing technique, but I’m glad he seems to have also learned how to sing more healthily, unlike that one video where he’s dripping sweat over his guitar on the back porch in the summer night’s heat and is straining himself almost silent. Granted, he was also drunk in the recording.

He has a beautiful voice live, and I’ll always prefer it to the studio takes- he and Dermot Kennedy are some of the rare artists where I think they sound better sans all the careful polish.

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I’m a country fan as well, although I admit I don’t know a whole lot about the indie side of things, aside from the Texas country scene.

Growing up on neo-traditionalist country from the 90’s and 2000’s, I started getting frustrated by the crap that was coming out of Nashville (I.E. “bro country”, as well as the modern trend of “boyfriend country”), so I just gave up on country for a while.

That is, until I saw some dude talking about indie country and the red dirt / Texas scene, and that’s when I heard about Zach Bryan and morgan wallen. (Said dude is Grady Smith, in case you were curious.)

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Back here again. Hello.

I recently finished Signalis, a survival horror game about pre-Lovecraftian cosmic horror, rogue androids, meat, and Isle of the Dead, among other things.

Classical music is a very important part of the story, so I found a playlist of all six songs used throughout the game. It’s been really helpful for writing emotional scenes…and also ones where the player will get chainsawed in half.

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All’s I’m saying is Genesis can chainsaw me in half any day. (And, it absolutely would be like Donovan ‘I love Saturday poker nights with the boys!’ Hart to take him up on that gamble. Hypothetically.)

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Totally understandable! Lots of people hate country music as a whole- but often with a little probing, I discover that it’s a case of cheesy honkytonk or boyfriend country or just generally super commercial country-pop that they dislike- which is totally fair. (Sometimes showing them old country music from like the 70’s and 80’s can convince them that they might actually enjoy some of the subgenres! Super fun.)

I like a little of it sometimes, but I do prefer red dirt in terms of what’s on the air these days. A friend of a friend and I were babbling about some of the artists we like- Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, Logan Halstead, Tyler Childers, Colter Wall, Cody Jinks, etc.

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Cody Jinks is also one of my favorites. The dude could probably sing Madonna or Britney Spears (two artists I can’t stand) and I wouldn’t mind too much.

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It looks like Bo Burnham and country music have already been mentioned in this topic, but not together, so I’d like to note this, where I might be late to the party: (NSFW stuff)

I also re-watched/listened to the video for John Waite’s Missing You from the 80s. I was shocked to learn he was the lead singer for Bad English. I remember as a kid a friend and I thought it was entirely too cool when he smashed the pay phone into the receiver. I think we just enjoyed the general pointless destruction. Maybe we even took the song literally, like he was making a prank call and slammed the phone for emphasis. Oh, to be that young and imaginative again.

Also, I vowed one day I’d page through all of Weird Al Yankovic’s songs, and his youtube channel has a good chunk of them. It seems like an easy “stuff to do this year/month” sort of goal. Re-watching White and Nerdy, I’m also amused by who the two guys in the car are, that the guy with the lawnmower chases away.

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The most “obsessed” french singer (after the late Serge Gainsbourg)

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For coding, I prefer silence. If I can’t get silence, I listen to some instrumental music, including:

Philip Glass
Arvo Pärt (Found his music the other day, thanks to Spotify hinting me!)
Detektivbyrån
Jan Johansson (Mainly “Musik från fyra sekler”, “Jazz på ryska” and “Jazz på svenska”)
St Germain: Tourist
Mike Oldfield (most often Light + Shade, Ommadawn, Tubular Bells III, Tres Lunas)
Mark Knopfler: Music From the Film Cal, Local Hero

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My CD player is turning into an old fart. The last few months, it’s taking more and more tries for the Open/Close button to do its job. So when it does, the same CD is often stuck in there for a week or so. Good motivation to make it count.

These days Thelonious Monk has taken up residence in the CD slot.

De La Soul is on the record player.

(----mumble cough mumble–spotihoo?-yootoowat?–mumble spit fart----)

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In the last few weeks:

Cabaret Voltaire (early stuff). Love how they created their textures and loops. If you want one track only, I’d say Kneel to the boss.

Motörhead (early punky and later speedmetal). I have a friend who always bangs on about AC/DC and I need a counter. Lemmy is the big brother who settles the argument.

Stick in the Wheel. Because folk music is in all of us.

Dry Cleaning. Only the Fall did spoken-word and punk rock better or did they?

Stone Roses. I’m trying to learn the guitar again and John Squire’s approach is amazing. On the surface he uses the usual simple chords but then he throws these melodies into his rythmn playing. I wish I could play 5% of what he does.

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