Fifteen
I'll get around to trying to describe the frequency comb portion of this year's Physics Nobel Prize, but I had fifteen individual student meetings yesterday, at which I did the red-pen trick on their draft formal lab reports. Pedagogically, it's probably valuable for them; in practical terms, I feel like my brain has turned to mush. So you get pop music commentary instead.
Here are a few songs that are in heavy rotation in my part of Chateau Steelypips at the moment:
"Almost Saturday Night," by John Fogerty. Apparently a pretty obscure song (the version I got from iTunes is live, and he introduces it as a "cult bootleg thing"), it was a favorite of the morning DJ's on the Armed Forces Radio Network when I was in Tokyo in 1998. Go figure. It's not great poetry or anything, but it's ear-wormy, and I associate it with my apartment in Komae.
"Common People," by Pulp. Not a new song, but one of the many CD's I own that were badly ripped by iTunes, so I bought a clean copy. It's rare to find a song that has both a strong political message and a good tune and vivid lyrics. This is one of the few. The William Shatner version is a travesty.
"Soul Meets Body," by Death Cab for Cutie. I don't have much indie cred, but I make the occasional nod in that direction. Expect to see the New Pornographers further down. It's a great tune, but you knew that already.
"Jumping the Wall," by Ian Knapp. A KEXP favorite, Ian Knapp sounds a whole lot like Ben Lee, if that helps at all. This is a little more up-tempo than most of the rest of the album (Into These Oceans), but it's catchy and bouncy and fun.
"Dishrag," by Wide Right. A female-fronted (possibly all female, I don't know) band with a serious yen to be Joan Jett. Nothing terribly innovative-- it's a straightforward plea for a lover to stop cleaning up and start canoodling-- but I'm a sucker for handclaps on the chorus. They also do a "Buffalo Fight Song" which is pretty funny ("Hey, ho, let's go Buffalo/ It isn't always freezing and it doesn't always snow!"), but maybe you had to be there.
"Master of the Clouds," by the High Dials. The album title is "War of the Wakening Phantoms," so if you're expecting something a little bit trippy, you'd be right. There's a lot of weird, echoing twangy guitar (I don't know the technical term), making it sound like something off the soundtrack to a psychadelic Western. Or a less grim Tarantino movie. A Pretty good album.
"Sing Me Spanish Techno," by the New Pornographers. I told you.
"Van Gough," by Slender Means. Sort of a brag song ("I'm just biding time, until I can unveil my brilliance"), but a little more ambiguous than that. There are some great shimmery keyboard things, some Beatles-esque harmony vocals, and a great chorus. Fun retro-pop (helpfully classified as "Rock" by iTunes. Yeah, that narrows it down...). The whole album (Neon and Ruin is good).
"Bad Sake," by kingsley. More fun power-pop-- slightly woozy verses (all starting "You and I, drinking {some liquid}"), a chorus with a bit of crunch, all wrapped up in a neat little 2:16 package. "Since You've Been Gone" is also a good tune. I'm not sure if it was an EP, or if I only bought four of the songs, and I'm too lazy to go look.
Two more lab drafts to go over today, and then the weekend. Hey, it's almost Saturday night...
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