Brandon's Blog

Red Hot Album & Children's Book

On the heels of my extended concert review yesterday, here are some tracks from a charity album entitled "Dark Was the Night" that I discovered today and have been listening to while I get some work done.  So far, I'm really impressed.  It was put together by The Red Hot charity organization.  (Trust me, click the link, don't Google "Red Hot.")  Contributing artists include some of my absolute favs, including a duet with Feist and Ben Gibbard, The National (Aaron and Bryce were the producers), Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Spoon, Beirut, Sufjan Stevens and more. 

A Live Music Trifecta

So February 2009 is shaping up to be a month of live gigs for me.  For Christmas, my brother bought me tickets to see Broken Social Scene (in Seattle back on the 5th) and Andrew Bird (back to Seattle on the 23rd).  And the other night, Kristy and I joined some great friends to see Lisa Hannigan in Portland.

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE (BSS)
The BSS show was ear-shatteringly remarkable.  (No, seriously, my ears were ringing two days after the show.)  In some ways, I don’t think one can really understand the talent, creativity, and innovation of BSS unless one has seen something of them live.  Even a video of a live performance points towards this, but of course could still never do it justice.

A Lesson from Jack Kerouac

I recently finished reading Jack Kerouac’s magnum opus, On the Road.  I don’t recall when I began having interest in this American literary figure, but I remember being convinced that I finally needed to read some Kerouac when I came across Ben Gibbard’s explanation of his inspiration to write the opening track of Death Cab’s latest album.  (Or was Kerouac the inspiration for the entire album?) 

So I went out and used a book shop gift voucher to purchase the original scroll version, “the legendary first draft” of On the Road - “rougher, wilder, and racier than the 1957 edition,” as the front cover states.  I’d like to say that I bought this particular edition because I wanted to get the version that reflected the raw creative, literary genius of The Beat King.  Truth be told, I was struggling to keep my 15-month-old daughter from pulling books off of every shelf she could reach (something akin to this scenario), so I quickly grabbed the first one I found that looked like the cheaper, paperback version. 

Twitterpated

In the midst of a flurry of fund-raising meetings and phone calls (okay, truth be told, it's actually a bit sluggish at the moment), I've finally given in to the Twitter bug.  It's a fascinating development in the social networking phenomena.  And what I appreciate about THIS ARTICLE at the NYTimes is that it points out the lack of rules or etiquette involved, in the same way that there is no correct way to blog, despite what some technology elites would try to suggest.  At the moment, there's even a Twestival happening to raise money for Charity: Water.  (See also Twestival.fm for a way they're including music!)  I've really been enjoying the opportunity it offers to share/discover web news and resources, as well as just to keep in touch with people.  And I've discovered that it's more than "Facebook Updating," thought it's generally the same idea. 

Having said all of that, it's not an easy task to try and describe it to some people, especially if they don't really understand online social networking in the first place.  If they get that, Twitter makes a little more sense, particularly with it's multi-mobile-functionality (there's a neologism, if there ever was one.)

In other news, following up THIS POST from a few months back, have a look at THIS ARTICLE about dentistry in the UK.  "DIY Dentistry" . . . the phrase makes me cringe.