And the livin’ is easy. May 4, 2008

It’s Summertime. Officially. I got home Friday afternoon, slept until 1:00 pm today (READ IT: that’s the afternoon, people! oh, the magic of summer vacation!), and spent today relaxin’ with the fam, watchin’ the derby, and killing the battery in my best friend’s new car. Good stuff. I don’t know why I decided today was a good day to start blogging again, but whatever. It’s summertime. That’s my motto. Plus, this video was just too good not to share (with, you know, the zero people who read this blog?)

After watching this video, I have fallen a little bit more in love with John Mayer (which, trust me, is just what I needed). Also, his “Take Your Fans to Work Day” idea is so much fun! I’m sure Brody would be proud–all this new fangled on-line presence, get your fans invested stuff. (SIDENOTE: It has, however, brought back sad memories about how I never got to go to Take Your Daughter To Work Day with my mom because she didn’t work when I actually HAD TYDTWD, but now that I’m in college she works again. Man, how dare she spend all her time with me when I was in elementary and middle school. Wasn’t she thinking about ME and what I WANTED?! Jeesh.)

Anyway, the good stuff:

31 days down, 334 to go February 1, 2008

I am totally blown away by the fact that it is February already. I can tell you one thing–God has been really faithful to get my through January not only in one piece, but feeling really good about the coming months. February 1 officially marks one month since The Biggest Change of My Life, but it feels much longer than that. Some days are rough, but God’s being really faithful to me lately and teaching how to trust Him with every detail of my life. I’m going on a missions trip to the University of the West Indies over spring break, which I am very excited (and very nervous) about. Today I take my first exam of the semester and turn in my first paper, but that’s kinda crazy because I can’t even remember this semester’s class schedule on a day-to-day basis.

At any rate. I decided that this year, I’m going to make a playlist for each month. For a long time now, I’ve been waking up every morning with a different song stuck in my head. I don’t know if I dream about them or what, but they’re not even always things I’ve been listening to recently. That has since died down quite a bit and probably only happens once or twice a week. At one point I had decided it would be fun to keep track of which song was stuck in my head for every day of the month and make a mix of them all at the end. I never got around to doing that, but I decided that this year I’ll make monthly mixes. They’ll be composed of songs stuck in my head, songs that are resonating with me for one reason or another, songs that are applicable, songs I hear randomly, etc. etc. For January, I have 22 songs. Some days had more than one, others none, but 22 total.

January:

• “My Rights Versus Yours” The New Pornographers
• “Breakable” Ingrid Michaelson
• “Birds” Kate Nash (December, really, but important and there wasn’t a December list. so it can go on this one)
• “No One’s Gonna Love You” Band of Horses
• “Love Song” Sara Bareillas
• “Still Hurting” The Last Five Years
• “Sundrenched World” Joshua Radin
• “Three Cheers for Five Years” (Acoustic) Mayday Parade
• “Brick” Ben Folds Five
• “Either Way” Wilco
• “Mystery” Phil Wickham
• “Secret Crowds” Angels and Airwaves
• “Boy with a Coin” Iron & Wine (especially the awesome version in an NPR session I listened to)
• “Carousel” Iron & Wine
• “Gravity” Sara Bareillas
• “Imitosis” Andrew Bird
• “Impossible Germany” Wilco
• “The Boys Are Back In Town” by whoever sings that, in honor of Heath Ledger and the cinematic masterpiece that is A Knight’s Tale
  
• “The Pieces Don’t Fit Anymore” James Morrison
• “For All Who Are to Come” Hillsong United (yay for the book of Hebrews)
  
• “Chemicals Collide” Cloud Cult
• “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” The Beatles

Music Monday–TV Theme Songs! January 28, 2008

It’s Music Monday over at The Secret Life of Kat. I missed week 1 one when my computer temporarily died on me (the Computer Help Desk Guy revived it and didn’t even charge me!). This week’s theme is favorite TV Show Theme Songs, which was no question for me. But I’m also listening to an awesome interview/session right now on NPR with Iron & Wine, so I’m doing two things today. Enjoy!

This Week:  My favorite TV theme song… Full House!

More good stuff: This interview with Iron & Wine is great. Not so much the interview part of it necessarily, but the music. He starts off by playing my favorite two Iron & Wine songs– “Boy with a Coin” and “Sodom, South Georgia.” The last song he plays is great too.  I think one song in the middle somewhere has a little language in it, so if that bothers you, you might want to fast forward a bit. Also, Sam Beam has the craziest beard! haha

Enjoy

Mystery January 13, 2008

NPR’s mission is to make me poor. December 10, 2007

Since the year’s coming to a close (already?!?!), Amazon and NPR have both put out their “Best Music of 2007″ list. NPR has a new list of the year’s top 10 albums everyday until Christmas. Obviously a lot of stuff repeats, but there’s a lot of variety too. As awesome as this sounds…it’s really a problem.

All year long, I’ve been basically satisfied with my free downloads from Ruckus and listening to the music on my computer. But now my impatience is getting to me and I’m dying to burn some CDs for my car and for mixes and I just can’t do it with Ruckus. This is just starting to drive me a little crazy and making me want to rush out and buy all these albums in lieu of paying my rent.

My mom told me to e-mail her a Christmas list, and I had to seriously scale back the lists of albums I wanted. I told her she was getting the short list…I don’t think she believed me haha. I think 2007 was the Year of Good Music. Lots of my favorite artists put out new albums this year, and I’ve also come across a ton of new stuff that I LOVE.

Here are 10 of my favorites. Maybe I’ll elaborate on them later when I don’t have an exam in a few hours.

Stars “In Our Bedroom After the War”

Wilco “Sky Blue Sky”

Rilo Kiley “Under the Blacklight”

Angles and Airwaves “I-Empire” (disclaimer on this one: totally surprised. I have never like Blink 182 or any of their side projects, except for maybe that one Boxcar Racer song that everybody likes. I didn’t expect to like this album at all, but I really do!)

Iron and Wine “The Shepherd’s Dog”

Okkervil River “The Stage Names”

Jimmy Eat World “Chase this Light”

Peter Bjorn and John “Writer’s Block”

Band of Horses “Cease to Begin”

Arcade Fire “Neon Bible”

Only one more exam! I’m not really sure how prepared I am, but I don’t really care. That’s not a good sign, I’m sure. Then a presentation tomorrow and I am DONE and can start getting ready to head home.