“music”

I’m in the middle of (among many things) an intriguing music experiment. More to come in a month or two.

Google’s Music Search represents one important future of Google’s “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” mission: digesting the chaotic web and regurgitating it anew, catalog-like, simpler and more standardized (which has worrying implications, but is also a wonderful prospect, provided it’s just one more option). Yes, this is similar to what it actually does through search, but the difference is that this new Google-digested web is browsable, not just a black-box accessible piecemeal only through question & answers. Google wants to become the interface.

...le llamaria “Si nos dejan”.

Just so you know, y’know.

I’m ashamed to admit this but Undomondo is the first music blog I’ve ever perused and I’m only sorry I took so long: it’s wonderful! Every mp3 I’ve heard for the past half hour has been a keeper.

This Thursday I went to my first Stereo Total concert and it was great.

Stereo Total —“yéyétronic, electropunky, kitsch & speed, sissilistening, bricolopop, Berliner juke-box”— is coming to Guadalajara! Yey! I still can’t forgive myself for not going to their now legendary 2003 concert (so long ago already?). In my defense, that concert (or more precisely, the notice thereof) was the first time I’d heard of them and it took me several weeks before I started to really dig them:

Ex fan de sixties (“Ex-fan des sixties, / Où sont tes années folles? / Que sont devenues toutes tes idoles?”), Babystrich (“Am Bahnhof Zoo hängt ein Riesenplakat: ‘Ego, Berlins größte Diskothek’”), Tokyo Mon Amour (“Ce jour-là en été sous le soleil”), Ma Radio (“Je ne peux pas vivre sans ma radio / Mon transistor j’adore”), Schoen Von Hinten (“Geh, es ist vorbei / Goodbye!”), Heaven’s In The Back Seat Of My Cadillac (“Makin’ love, makin’ love to you / Is a beautiful thing to do”), L’amour à 3 (“Je sais c’est démodé / ça fait hippie complet / mais je le crie sur les toîts / j’aime l’amour à 3”), Kleptomane (“Je pique c’est un tic / j’adore ça, ça m’excite”).

The concert will be part of some sort of France-Mexico musical festival, Mundo Latino. Date: this Thursday, May 4. Time: somewhat confusing, all one knows is that it’s somewhat after 8PM. Place: ”Terreno localizado en López Mateos, entre Plaza del Ángel y Plaza del Sol”. Price: $150 or $350. Be there. And if you are, say hi.

Oh, I just love those Oriental parables ridiculing symbolic communication. This was a new one for me (read it with Jorge Wagensberg’s aphorism in mind: “To compress is to comprehend”):

“Y mi mente ha parido nostalgia por no verte ya… Hasta en sueños he creído tenerte devorándome, y he mojado mis sábanas blancas recordándote”. Extraña esta cancion de Lalo Rodriguez, Ven devórame otra vez. Es tan burda que es chida in a campy sort of way. De cualquier forma, es destacable por el solo hecho de ser una canción inmensamente popular (hasta yo la conozco) que menciona (aunque algo eufemísticamente) la masturbación y los “sueños húmedos”.

I’d never heard of Jerome Kern. Much less of The Platters, apparently a pretty popular “doo wop” (!) group from the 60s. But in 1933, it turns out, Jerome Kern wrote a purdy, small song called Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, which The Platters in turn recorded and made famous in 1959.

And in 2006, today, serendipity brought me the song, played by Roxy Music (who are oh-so-very-cool), and it made me smile.

Yup, I am aware of it’s glaring cursileria, but it’s late at night and I’m strangely happy, so shut up and read the lyrics:

Yey! A playlist serendipity has brought me back Roy Vedas’s wonderfully weird Fragments of Life (its weirdness is a fact). If I remember correctly it was Pako who first showed it to me, late nineties, and I hadn’t heard it in years (old, how past starts to pile up). Anyway, it’s definitely one of my favorite songs. Here, enjoy.