I used to live, live.

I love this band. And Mitchell.
Do you even read this? Does my witty sarcasm make you laugh?
Or do you move straight to the videos and use them as your playlist?
I don't even read what I write. Isn't that sad?
I guess I don't have a long attention span, even for myself.

Well then.

Hey, Kate.

Anyway.

Although I haven't blogged in 10 days, I HAVE pushed myself in the musical community.
How so?



Apparently I'm good. I don't know.

This song is by the beloved Regina. I've always thought to myself "if I ever wanted a good musical warmup that I could sing along to, I'd pick one of her songs."
Full of vocal inflections and lovely… vibratos, I guess they're called, her songs always make me burst out loud and attempt to sing along.

I'm pretty sure I've talked about Ne Me Quitte Pas before. One of my favorites, but hella hard to get a hold on to, basically because Ne Me Quitte Pas is a song that gets covered a lot, and Regina's doesn't sound ANYTHING like the original.

twin suns of Tatooine

Before we get started, here, there's something that needs to be said if you live in my area.
Taken off Grafton's status, itself…

"Go to Bob Evans Friday night November 19th with a coupon to help us get new drums. If you get a coupon from any of us percussionists, 15% of your sales will go to us getting new equipment, not affecting the cost of anything purchased. Our drums are 15 years old and have literally and figuratively taken a beating. Help us out, go get some good food, and allow us to replace our old drums!"

And you can do this by clicking here: COUPON

Now, moving on.

Indie music is something that I'm always drawn to. Scratch that, indie ANYTHING. I could name things here, but I don't feel like putting in that much effort today.

Back to my transition! This man made this song in GarageBand, using his computer's mic.

Mind you: this is a Star Wars song. But it's delicious!

Jeremy Messersmith: Tatooine



If you're a big internet nerd, or like to check in on Yahoo!'s stories once in awhile, you'll know that this song was used in a popular paper Star Wars video.

OH! And I apologize for those of you who have stupid pop-up blockers, because ALL of my links open in new windows.[ I got denied when I was on a friend's computer and couldn't click on a link I had posted on here.]

Do not leave me.

The Girl

Hey, kids! It's been awhile. Mainly because I got so sick of my old music and then I was focused on new music and that took effort and then I found too much music that I couldn't take it all and still need to learn my new Mae CD and get my This Will Destroy You CD. I don't remember if I've talked about these already, but I'm too tired and I want to finish this post quickly so I can go to bed.

Along with those two new CD's… I cracked and went to Best Buy and bought [after 2 days of searching through incorrectly labeled bands (I mean, OWL CITY and SKY SAILING are NOT the same thing!!!!)] OK Go's Of the Blue Colour of the Sky.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about a song that is hella fun to cover [on ANYTHING, not just the uke, mind you, even a cappella] and has grown on me.

I remember listening to it and thinking "Cute… but it's not AMAZING."

Now, it's the other way around. But not really. "AMAZING. CUTE!!!"

Here.

We will be victorious. So come on!!

Woo! So, a song that's been stuck in my head recently is Muse's [thank god, not OK Go] Uprising.
Heard this bitty on the radio. I really like it. Really really.

Another song that I like [more of the swinging-like motion of the chorus] is DMB in a live concert in 2009, I think, singing a cover of The Zombies's Time of the Season.

I've listened to more radio this month than I did in 6 months back home.

MY "Final Fantasy" IS...

Time for international music!
My all-time favorite country is Japan. Though I've never been there, the culture, language and EVERYTHING interests me. I'm currently learning Japanese, and I don't care if my friends tell me its the most difficult language and I'm crazy, I love it.

So, today I'm going to give a little thing on, you guessed it, Final Fantasy 13. Only because I briefed on it yesterday, and I just want to dive in a little further.

I buy all my songs, and don't download any for free because I know that if I was an artist I would want my revenue for a service that I provided. And since I don't listen to big-time music people, the smaller you are, the more each download counts. Sure, if the band offers a free single, like Vampire Weekend did, then that's okay, that's their choice.

But while all my friends used limewire, I stayed true to iTunes.

Okay, back to the whole reason for the title of this post!!!

I would love, love, LOVE for iTunes to carry international songs. The video I posted yesterday, that's not on iTunes or the American version of the game. No, apparently Leona Lewis's "Hands" or something is at the end. I don't even LIKE Leona. She's... Well, not to be rude, but we used to call her Leon Lewis when she hit her big streak with "Bleeding Love". Just because she kinda sorta looked like a man, BUT I DIGRESS [again].

I DO have a chinese song that I bought from iTunes. If you've ever seen the GE commercial... Here, I'll just put it here:


Kudos to the people who cut up this song, because it's actually only about 1 minute long.
What's the song? Cao Fang's "In the Summer" followed by some Chinese characters.

Anyway, the whole point of this was that I wish that iTunes carried more authentic Japanese artists so I could buy them and install them and be happy.

Okay, time to go swimming!

End Love

Heyhihelllo.
I personally love Ok Go's music videos, whether they're the official or ones they've done for fun. Their YouTube channel is something that always keeps me entertained.

And their new video for the song "End Love" is awesome, yet again. But instead of linking it, or buying it for 2 bucks off of iTunes, Ok Go is having a contest. You can download their video for free. Annnddd, if you do that, and upload it to your Facebook page, you get a chance to win an iPad. But, I don't want the iPad, I just want to put the video up.

If you want the video for yourself, or the chance to win the iPad, click right on over here.

Things that bother you, never bother me...

Today, my grandpa said my hair made me look like Tiny Tim.
If you don't know what he looks like,

Thanks, Grandpa.

And he helped come to that conclusion by deducing that since I have curly, dark hair and play the ukulele... Oh! I must be Tiny Tim!

No.

If you don't know who this saucy fellar is, think again. You may recognize this little tune.



Wait, where is that from? I've heard it before...

Good observation, random viewer. It was in the first episode of Spongebob Squarepants, where he feeds all of the sardines with his super spatula.

RELAXATION, PLEASE.

When the family is driving you crazy, like mine is [my three younger cousins came up from Georgia and my aunt just left them here for the day... again] the only thing I can really do to get away from them while still staying in their view [so they don't light the house on fire] is listen to music.

A particularly calming remix of an already good song is "Hide and Seek 2" by Imogen Heap. Both me and my friend Joey had each version of the song, and it was a pretty awesome moment when we found out just how similar in music tastes we really are.

Hide and Seek 2 was put on the "Songs for Tabet" album with pretty awesome artists, like Regina Spektor.

It's so calming and relaxing. Imogen Heap paints you a picture if you choose to listen, or just let the sound of the song on the whole relax you.

Joey had actually done an in-depth interpretation on the song for a class, and when I read it, the song made so much more sense to me.



The smallest one, Lucy, who's about 6, likes to touch everything.

Megofna? *

Time to incorporate two of my favorite things into this next blog post. Well, really my three fav. things. Music, YouTube, and ukulele.

I just thought this guy deserved way more recognition.

Now, as I usually am when discovering cool YouTube things, I'm not sure how I got here, but I ended up watching a guy play Hey There Delilah on ukulele.
He's got SUPERSATURATED talent.

Here's the link for the video itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7bsfRal38Q&feature=related

His name is Shawn Megofna and he sings better than most singers out there.

Here's his channel.
Here's his myspace.

I like him.

SHAKEDOWN

Okay, so today was the last day of school and it just so happens that I went to my first grad party today as well.
He lives in another town, but anyway... His dad and my dad go to this one cover band's concerts all the time. The band's called Shakedown. I have a shirt from them.

Anyway, one of the main guys was there. Frank.

That's him on the right.

My brother got him to sign a playing card just as he walked out of the door. My camera was in the car, so I didn't get a picture with him.


This band mainly does covers, but it's a local band, so I don't expect much. He learned that I play ukulele and he asked me something like "Are you really into music?"

Yes, Frank. I'm pretty into it.

[and YES, I'M WATCHING BONNAROO RIGHT NOW! I missed The Young Veins & She & Him because of my darn previous engagements. :(]

BONNAROO 2010

NOTE: this is a Bonnaroo blog post. If you don't want to hear Bonnaroo ten million times and what it is and it's awesomeness,

go somewhere else.


Yep, that's right. Bonnaroo. For the past week, but more for the past few days, I've been spazzing about Bonnaroo. I've been looking up and reading EVERYTHING on the Bonnaroo website, and even though I'm not going this year, I'm going to try to plan next year.

This year, Bonnaroo has 15 bands that I want to listen to. AND, it's not only a music festival. It's a music&arts festival. It's my kind of place.

You might be thinking, 15 bands? Please.
Guess again. Straight off the Bonnaroo lineup:
DMB, Kings of Leon, Weezer, Phoenix...
Oh, screw this. Check it out for yourself..

Bonnaroo Artists

Iron & Wine were there last year along with Julia Nunes. She's back again this year, along with...

SHE & HIM.
Yeah.

So basically, if you can't go, like me, and you want to see it, you can stream it live on your computer thanks to YouTube. Technically, it's sponsored by the 2011 Ford Fiesta.

This sucks for me because I'M IN SCHOOL. My last day is tomorrow, and Julia's performance [which is the first one] is going on around 12:30 and I'm taking a Spanish final at that time! I could if it was around 8 am or even 2 pm, but nope. It's during one of the only two periods that I CAN'T stream it.

And, I can't even access it on my school's computer because it's on YouTube. And my stupid school has that blocked. Arg!! I'll find a way!