music category archive

Review: Iron Maiden Biography by Mick Wall

Run to the Hills: Iron Maiden, the Authorised Biography, by Mick Wall

I’m not sure if I should mention this, since it could affect the willingness of people to loan me books, but I do a lot of my reading in the bathroom. Some books don’t grab me enough to carry out of the bathroom and it can take a while to get through them. This wasn’t one of those books.

(Oh, by the way, I’m giving you a review of a book that seems to be out of print. I don’t even see used copies at Amazon as I write this.)

I wouldn’t say the book is especially well written. (Much like this post and web site.) It’s a bit fannish in parts. It can …

Martin Sexton, ‘Hallelujah’

Martin Sexton

Absolutely loving Black Sheep and Wonder Bar, and I’ve already ordered two more of his albums: In the Journey and The American. I may have missed out on years of listening enjoyment, but now I get to experience it all for the first time. Woo Hoo!

I read some of the comments on Amazon about Black Sheep, and see that lots of squares like me first discovered Sexton by hearing “Diner” on Scrubs. At least one nimrod complained because every song on the album wasn’t just like “Diner.” Oh, man. It’s so sad that this philistine was given the opportunity to enjoy such emotional and powerful music, but failed to appreciate it. Not that …

Mah Na Mah Na » Scrubs » Martin Sexton, ‘Diner’

It all started when I had my daughter sitting on my lap and I decided to play for her:

Mah Na Mah Na

Which she seems to enjoy. (Me too!) In the related clips, I saw one for The Muppets meet [Scrubs], and watched that one also. I love Scrubs. That further led to a click on a related video for Scrubs outtakes. Outtakes are usually fun to watch. For shows that I enjoy watching, I like seeing the actors enjoy themselves making them. At 6:26 of the outtakes reel, there was this catchy song that I immediately liked. A quick search of some lyrics snippets turned up that it was “Diner,” by Martin Sexton.

It was also used …

Amazon MP3 Download: Jeff Beck, ‘Heart Full of Soul’

I’ve been trying out some new music download options lately. I was happy to see that Amazon started selling non-DRM MP3 files for about a dollar each. I think a dollar is too much for individual song downloads, but I wanted to try it out and help show that people are willing to pay for unrestricted music even when it can be had for free.

Not totally unrestricted, of course. MP3 is still patent encumbered. I’d much prefer Ogg Vorbis. Ogg is free as in freedom and supposedly it is technically better, although my tin ears wouldn’t know the difference. And the name “Ogg” sounds cool. I’m reluctantly willing to go along with MP3 since I already have a huge library of MP3 …