Spotify Playlist: Architecture, Music, and Metaphor

timelinealmoravidTo celebrate the launch of the new Archnet, I’m presenting a Spotify playlist on the theme of architecture and the built environment. It explores various themes, ranging from an appreciation of great cities and monuments, to architecture as a spiritual metaphor.  Check it out and let me know what you think?

I’m missing are.  This is just what happened to come to mind at the moment, so I’m missing a lot, I’m sure.  What would you add?  Leave a comment and let me know.  
On November 24, 1971, levitra canada pharmacy check address it was announced that Sullivan would win the 1971 Heisman Trophy. All the parts in pumps buying levitra in canada are water resistant and selected to offer good grip. Erectile dysfunction is also called up by the click my shop now cialis sale name impotence by many people. The Spanish found that what was good for their horses would also benefit humans, so payment for the canadian generic cialis taxes levied on the locals was taken in Maca.

“Now or Never” and Digital Piracy

The album from which the Rachid Taha single comes, ZOOM, is released in Europe, and if you go to the YouTube page you’ll get iTunes link from which you can buy it.  But as is often the case with music I like from other countries, I can’t actually do so. If I were buying the CD, which I may well do at some point, I could simply use my credit card and the internet, pay extra shipping charges, and take advantage of the borderless world of the internet to get the newest release by an artist I’ve been following for decades. There’s an Amazon link, too.  Ironically, the digital store is more locked down.

Yes, I know there are ways around these restrictions such as proxies and such, but that’s not my point. I don’t want to have to result to those techniques in order to legally purchase music, just because the record label has decided it isn’t ready to distribute across the pond yet. And most people don’t know how to do take advantage of those methods yet. Make no bones about it, it’s a corporate decision to lock down distribution this way.  The artists, with the possible exception of huge megastars, are usually just thrilled anyone at all is actually buying their music and paying full price for it. They love having fans wherever they are. 
Continue reading

“Forward” Music Video

There’s always a part of me that feels just a little naive and sentimental when I post a video like this one.  But I suppose I am a little of both those things.  I strongly believe in the essential goodness of human nature, and that when a society offers people an opportunity to excel, most will rise to the occasion.  Congressman Barney Frank once said, that government is simply the name we give to those things we choose to do together.  That is the view taken in this video, and it is one thing I like about it.

Continue reading

Happy National Voter Registration Day!

Sharon Jones says “Register to Vote”

Tomorrow is National Voter Registration Day and volunteers all over the country will be out in communities helping people be sure they are registered to vote in the upcoming elections.  In this photo Sharon Jones urges you to take advantage of the opportunity provided by Head Count volunteers with clipboards.

She’s an amazing artist.  Listen to her singing “This Land is Your Land” here. Then check out some of the many photos of Rock Stars and celebrities urging you to get out and vote at these links:

You will be able to see many advantages only when the cheapest brand cialis https://www.supplementprofessors.com/free_quote/ medicine is taken as per the requirement. Admission of pfizer viagra canada supplementprofessors.com should be considered just with the meeting of a speviagrat or health proficient. It cheap cialis can even have a couch, TV and your home gym equipment. Experts conducted the study to analyze the efficacy of the chemotherapy agent name doxorubicin, as it boosts to undermine the heart related quandary stimulated by the nerves, these spongy tissues are seen arranging itself in such a way that more amount of blood gets into the male buy cialis in usa reproductive organ.

 

Lyric Videos for New Singles by Two of my Absolute Faves

‘Nuff said!

————-

Their amazing portable hookah is a combination of old style and new beauty. sildenafil generic from canada Your diabetic can typically experience levitra no prescription https://unica-web.com/archive/2015/unica2015-report-of-the-treasurer.pdf large versions in how much sugar in their blood, mainly after foodstuff. There are many online outlets to buy viagra pills buy Shilajit capsules. In ‘Josie and The Pussy Cats: The Movie’, the protagonist and her levitra sildenafil band listened to music with subliminal messages and behaved abnormally.

———–

Help Me with a Concert List: My Memory Doesn’t Serve Me Well

Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses in Boston MA. Always a great show!

If you have ever been to a concert with me, I need your help! I’ve been trying to come up with complete list of every musical act I’ve seen in concert, from the cradle to now. Well, not every act.  They have to be nationally or internationally known, because if I list every band I’ve seen at a local event, I’d never stop listing.  I’d also never be able to do it.  I’m also not including choruses, orchestras, musicals or theatrical events.  Let’s take Harry Connick Jr. or Bernadette Peters for example.  Both of these people have done concerts on Broadway and been in shows.  Harry Connick Jr. I list because I have seen him in concert.  I have not seen him in a musical, but even if I had, I wouldn’t list him unless I had also seen him in concert.  I have seen Bernadette Peters in musicals, but I have yet to see her in concert, except recorded.  So she is not on my list.

Anyway, I can’t remember them all.  I know I am missing some.  One act came back to me today since I originally developed this list and posted in on Facebook last night.  Something brought them to mind.  It was a good show, too!  It’s just hard to bring all acts to mind in a list like this.

So if you’ve been to a show or festival with me, could you look at this list and make sure all the artists we saw are included here. The band has to have made enough of an impression on my that I remember seeing them of course.  If I don;t remember them, I’m not going to add them, but I know the list should be longer than this.  Plus I keep finding duplicates, so it isn’t even really this long!

  • Bruce Springsteen
  • Dave Matthews Band
  • James Morrison
  • The Gaslight Anthem
  • Suzanne Vega
  • Idir
  • Najat Attabou
  • Cheb Mami
  • Khaled
  • Cesaria Evora
  • Red Hot Chilli Peppers
  • Prince
  • Foreigner
  • Bryan Adams
  • Tinariwen
  • Ashley MacIsaac
  • Tina Turner
  • Midnight Oil

They do not consider those women who are suffering from the problem of sexual dysfunction. canadian cialis online will help women to go for better sex with their husband. Perricone cipla cialis italia on the Oprah show, and dubbed “The worlds #1 superfood”. The benefit of these medications is that on consulting your doctor, you can know for uk viagra prices a fact whether the medication will be suitable for you. Before increasing your dose, make sure you consult the doctor as and when you find difficulty with the dosage or with the treatment of cialis in australia.
Continue reading

Amnesty International’s 50th, 80+ Acts, 76 Dylan Songs, $20, 5+ hours… No Matter How You Count, It Equals Awesome


Amnesty International is one of the most important human rights organizations operating in the world today, and it celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. Started in 1961 with a worldwide “Appeal for Amnesty” on behalf of individuals imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their beliefs written by British lawyer Peter Benenson, the movement now counts more than 3 million people worldwide.

What better way to celebrate this milestone anniversary than with an album of songs by a man whose songs include the anthems “I Shall Be Released” and “Chimes of Freedom”?  Bob Dylan has long been a supporter of Amnesty International, and Chimes of Freedom was also the unofficial anthem for the amazing Human Rights Now Tour, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1988.

The collection is available now directly from Amnesty International, on iTunes, or at Amazon.  I downloaded the digital tracks, 76 of them, for $19.99 and it’s the best $20 I’ve spent in recent memory.  I’m not exaggerating.  By and large it’s great music, but more on that in a minute.  Let’s get some math out of the way first, if you’re budget conscious like me.  I don’t buy much music these days.  For the most part, I rely on a subscription service, Rhapsody, for my music.  I only purchase music when there’s are really good reason to.  This is worth buying, a bargain by any standards.

It is a 76 song digital download for $19.99, or 4 CDs for $24.99.  Moreover, all profits go to help Amnesty International in its work.  That’s well over 5 hours of music and the satisfaction of helping out one of my favorite causes, for the price of two album downloads on iTunes.  Your average digital LP on iTunes or most other legal sites is usually $9.99 (increasingly $11.99) and it usually includes 10-12 songs.  This is 76 songs.  If that were sold at 12 songs per record , it would be 6 1/3 records.  Nobody like fractions, so let’s just say this collection equals 6 iTunes LPs + 4 free bonus tracks.   If Amnesty International were a record label and not a human rights nonprofit, they’d have known to more slickly market this collection typical price of $59.94, but tell us it’s on sale now for $19.99,  $24.99 for the 4 CDs.  Then we’d know we’re getting a bargain!

Of course it’s only a bargain if the music is good.  It could contain twice as many tracks, but if you only like 9 of them, then you still don’t want to pay $20.

So then, is it any good?

Continue reading

The Steel Wheels Coming to Town

If you are fortunate enough to live in or near Marlinton in Pocahontas County, WV, make your way to the Opera House this Saturday, November 12 to see The Steel Wheels in concert at 7:30 pm.  I’ll be there!  I’ve been a fan of these guys for a while now, but this is the first chance I’m getting to see them live.  I can’t wait.  I learned about them from Bicycle Times magazine’s June 2010 issue which reported on their  pedal-powered, seven night, concert tour.  They strapped their instruments and merchandise to their bikes and headed from town to town, covering nearly 300 miles.  This wasn’t some stunt, followed by a support vehicle in case they got tired and needed a lift; this was a genuine concert tour on bicycles.  In fact, they did another this year.  As I read I learned that they were based in Harrisonburg, VA, a place I knew well having gone to James Madison University for my first two years of college.

Those two things alone were reason enough reason to like these guys.  They hail from Virginia, and they tour by bicycle.  (Not always, of course.  They have a national following, and a bicycle tour across the entire country is impractical, at best.)

They were praiseworthy, but were they any good?  Now I had yet to check out the music.

Continue reading

Day One: The Life is Good Festival

Today was the first day of the Life is good Festival, and it was a lot of fun. Life is Good founders Bert and John Jacobs announced from the stage that the festival had exceeded last year’s totals and is close to reaching the goal of $1 million to help children in crisis. But close isn’t good enough. Perhaps you can help with a donation? You can learn more about the cause and make a donation on this page. You can also just come out to the festival!

Continue reading

Blame it on the Dave Matthews Band and their Caravan!

This post is slow in coming because I’ve been lethargic, tired and just feeling kind of blah since this weekend.  Now that I am sitting down to write it, and though it pains me greatly to do so, I am publicly accusing an outfit that heretofore has been a positive force in my life: The Dave Matthews Band.  The Dave Matthews Band is responsible for the DMB Caravan, a three day music festival visiting four cities this summer.  This past weekend, June 24-26 was the first of the four at Bader Field in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  I was there, and it took it’s toll.  To understand why, let me tell you a little about me.

Most people don’t see me as an addict, but in fact I am.  It just that the things I am addicted to are not illegal or even controlled, and music is my most powerful addiction by far.  If music is an addiction live music is it’s purest, most potent, addictive form,  and this festival served up something like 40 amazing acts over the course of three days!   The schedule was pretty well planned out with three stages scheduled to have performances on them from around 1:30 pm to 10:00 or 11:00 pm, but staggered so that you usually only had to choose between two acts at any given time.  The tickets were not cheap, just under $200 for three days, but once you were in you had 10 hours at an open bar of music, an addict’s dream!  Someone like me should never have been let in the door!

Mariachi El Bronx

More than that, this musical bar was packed with top shelf brands.  The variety of musical styles represented was impressive.  If you are a Dave Matthews fan, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.  The band plays each night, there’s a Dave and Tim Reynolds, and solo projects of band members are also featured.  Of course they all sound great.  The members of DMB set standards for musicianship whether you like their music or not.  On the other hand, if you had gone expecting to hear three days of bands that sound like the Dave Matthews Band,  you would have left deeply disappointed.  To cite just a few examples, Mariachi El Bronx are, fundamentally, a Mariachi band cross-pollinated with hard core rock and roll.  The Carolina Chocolate Drops play music that is, at its foundation, pure bluegrass, even if they are covering a Beyonce tune.   Damian Marley, one of Bob Marley’s sons, plays reggae based music as might be expected.  Lisa Hannigan is contemporary singer-songwriter from Ireland in what I suppose we could call the contemporary folk style.  Thievery Corporation play music that incorporates everything but the kitchen sink.  One of the things they all share with the Dave Matthews Band is that they are innovative and not afraid to stretch their wings.  Consequently, none of them are easily classifiable and none of them sound very much like the other.

Continue reading