Writer's Block: Raining cats or dogs?

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Being highly allergic to cats, and growing up with dogs, the answer is simple - dogs.  And being highly allergic to cats, I could not consider a cat-owning roommate. 

However, if I wasn't allergic, I would probably have cats, because I am not home enough during the day to be able to keep a dog.

Writer's Block: Raining cats or dogs?

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Being highly allergic to cats, and growing up with dogs, the answer is simple - dogs.  And being highly allergic to cats, I could not consider a cat-owning roommate. 

However, if I wasn't allergic, I would probably have cats, because I am not home enough during the day to be able to keep a dog.

Not Another White Collar Post

(Well, maybe I can work WC into this post without astroturfing too much...)

The other day, I responded to the Writer's Block question regarding preferences for a single genre of music for the rest of my life, and I said classical, simply because it gives me the broadest range of choices.  Last night, I was checking out some playlist metadata in iTunes and I saw that none of the top 100 most frequently played tracks were classical.  In a way, that makes sense, because 50% of the 40,000 tracks (not exaggerating, at one point I had three concurrent subscriptions to eMusic) on my computer are some form of classical, so I tend not to listen to the same set of tracks over and over.  But there is a clear pattern to the music I listen to over and over again - the top 100 most frequently listened to tracks are either Annie Lennox or Oysterband.

I presume that most people have heard of Annie Lennox - part of the New Wave duo, Eurhythmics for 15 years, then a dynamite solo artist in her own right, and of course the Oscar-winning singer of "Into the West" from Return of the King (she also has a songwriting credit there as well).  Annie's my go-to girl for hurt/comfort/angst lyrics, and I am definitely going to write an entire White Collar fic cycle set to either "Diva" or "Bare" (see, I could do it - legitimately!). 

But my other most favorite music is from Oysterband (no, not Blue Oyster Cult), an English rock group  that has been around for over 20 years.  They are extremely non-commercial, so you'll never hear or see them in the US, but they've got a devoted following throughout England and Germany.  The best way to describe Oysterband is that the music is hard driving social poetry - which sounds pretty dumb - but it's probably the most accurate lable.  Their early albums were more folk oriented, cross-pollinating Fairport Convention with Jethro Tull - think  "Merry Old England" meets "Warchild."  I discovered them when they did a free concert at 3rd Street Jazz in Philadelphia, promoting "Freedom and Rain" - an album they did with June Tabor, and while they were still more folk than rock, you could definitely hear where they were going. 

The musical composite of Oysterband still reads like a basic English folk band - a violinist, a cellist, acoustic guitars and a variety of percussion, but the music's like nothing else I've ever heard.  Their latest (2007) album, Meet You There  is constantly playing - I've listened to most of the songs over 500 times - and I am sure that other tracks of theirs have higher playcounts, but were listened to on CDs and tapes (remember those???).

So, if you're looking for intelligent, compelling lyric driven music, check out Oysterband.  Most of their albums are on iTunes, but if you want to try a sample of tracks - I recommend the following:

Only When You Call (Deep Dark Ocean)
The Deserter (Deserters)  
By Northern Light (Shouting End of Life)
Blood Red Roses (Shouting End of Life)
Jam Tomorrow (Shouting End of Life)
20th of April (Trawler)
Don't Slit Your Wrists for Me (Trawler)
My Mouth (Rise Above)
If You Can't Be Good (Rise Above)
The Boy's Still Running (Meet You There)
Just One Life (Meet You There)
Ways of Holding On (Here I Stand)
In Your Eyes (Here I Stand)
I Know It's Mine (Here I Stand)

There are others - but these are the ones that I've pulled together as a playlist of my favorites - my go-to music when I need to get back into or back out of my head. 

Not Another White Collar Post

(Well, maybe I can work WC into this post without astroturfing too much...)

The other day, I responded to the Writer's Block question regarding preferences for a single genre of music for the rest of my life, and I said classical, simply because it gives me the broadest range of choices.  Last night, I was checking out some playlist metadata in iTunes and I saw that none of the top 100 most frequently played tracks were classical.  In a way, that makes sense, because 50% of the 40,000 tracks (not exaggerating, at one point I had three concurrent subscriptions to eMusic) on my computer are some form of classical, so I tend not to listen to the same set of tracks over and over.  But there is a clear pattern to the music I listen to over and over again - the top 100 most frequently listened to tracks are either Annie Lennox or Oysterband.

I presume that most people have heard of Annie Lennox - part of the New Wave duo, Eurhythmics for 15 years, then a dynamite solo artist in her own right, and of course the Oscar-winning singer of "Into the West" from Return of the King (she also has a songwriting credit there as well).  Annie's my go-to girl for hurt/comfort/angst lyrics, and I am definitely going to write an entire White Collar fic cycle set to either "Diva" or "Bare" (see, I could do it - legitimately!). 

But my other most favorite music is from Oysterband (no, not Blue Oyster Cult), an English rock group  that has been around for over 20 years.  They are extremely non-commercial, so you'll never hear or see them in the US, but they've got a devoted following throughout England and Germany.  The best way to describe Oysterband is that the music is hard driving social poetry - which sounds pretty dumb - but it's probably the most accurate lable.  Their early albums were more folk oriented, cross-pollinating Fairport Convention with Jethro Tull - think  "Merry Old England" meets "Warchild."  I discovered them when they did a free concert at 3rd Street Jazz in Philadelphia, promoting "Freedom and Rain" - an album they did with June Tabor, and while they were still more folk than rock, you could definitely hear where they were going. 

The musical composite of Oysterband still reads like a basic English folk band - a violinist, a cellist, acoustic guitars and a variety of percussion, but the music's like nothing else I've ever heard.  Their latest (2007) album, Meet You There  is constantly playing - I've listened to most of the songs over 500 times - and I am sure that other tracks of theirs have higher playcounts, but were listened to on CDs and tapes (remember those???).

So, if you're looking for intelligent, compelling lyric driven music, check out Oysterband.  Most of their albums are on iTunes, but if you want to try a sample of tracks - I recommend the following:

Only When You Call (Deep Dark Ocean)
The Deserter (Deserters)  
By Northern Light (Shouting End of Life)
Blood Red Roses (Shouting End of Life)
Jam Tomorrow (Shouting End of Life)
20th of April (Trawler)
Don't Slit Your Wrists for Me (Trawler)
My Mouth (Rise Above)
If You Can't Be Good (Rise Above)
The Boy's Still Running (Meet You There)
Just One Life (Meet You There)
Ways of Holding On (Here I Stand)
In Your Eyes (Here I Stand)
I Know It's Mine (Here I Stand)

There are others - but these are the ones that I've pulled together as a playlist of my favorites - my go-to music when I need to get back into or back out of my head.