Our 4 yr old Seth is a lover of the music. He is constantly amusing us with his requests for certain bands when we are driving or at home. He really likes Muse and Seve Vs Evan, so you can see how most of the time its not hard to fill his wants. One of the only things he likes possibly more than music is his Grandpa. They are totally best friends.

My dad is a big fan of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys (so am I actually, which is hard to comprehend if you know me and how much I dislike all country music… except for Bob Wills). So naturally when I finally got some of my Dad’s Bob Wills on my ipod and played it for Seth last month it started some kind of explosion in Seths brain causing him to beg for it constantly when he and I are alone in the car (which is a lot since the other kids are in school and he and I run lots of errands and go places together).

(a little clip you might like, even though the quality isn’t perfect)

Seth is actually going to spend over a week next month with my parents while I go to Puerto Rico, and he is most excited about jamming with my Dad every day. My Dad is very musical and he has an area in the loft with a drum set, keyboard, guitars, microphones, and harmonica. They play together often. Seth likes to bring his blue ukulele.

So that is my big music scoop for last month, perhaps not so “gen x” as usual, but I like Bob Wills because it is incredibly entertaining, and I love the quaint undiluted sound of the guitar, violin, piano and who knows what else. Mr Wills talks while they are playing, to the band itself and commentary on the song in general and it is so funny. He also makes crazy noises. They went through several band members, and I like some better than others, but one of our favorites is the piano player Kelso. We are naming our next dog Kelso, and that is the name Seth uses now when he pretends to be a dog.

My Dad has a huge box set, but for the average listener I think the best album to start with is Bob Wills the Country Music Hall of Fame. (check out the listening samples there on the album, you might surprise yourself and like it too)

Our 7 yr old son created some new additions for our 10 yr old daughters Christmas village. I love it, she didn’t so much. click on the picture to make it larger if you want.

We had a great Christmas season, filled with tons of family, junk food and good food, and some cool new toys too. ( I felt bad omitting that spiritually we also had a wonderful time, but this blog hardly seems like the place..) My new toys came in the form of 2 necklaces from a site that I have been drooling steadily on for some months now. I guess Tac got the hint when I showed it to him every day for like a week.

If you are interested in either wearing or making a beautiful woman in your life very happy,check out this very uniquely beautiful jewelery at www.jewelsbynature.com, where you can link to her etsy site and see the SteamPunk line, which is where Tac did his shopping for me. ( I’m just linking to it because I like it so much, I am not “advertising” or anything weird like that, I leave the marketing in this family to Tac.)

This roused my curiosity about steampunk in general and I found out some really interesting stuff, like…

“Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of “the path not taken” of such technology”
and
“Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual craftpersons into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical “steampunk” style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.”
(from Wikipedia, follow this link to read more)

I also found a SteamPunk band; Abney Park, have you heard of them?

Well that should give you your daily allowance of semi-music related trivial information.

The Smashing Pumpkins have been doing concerts for (mostly) happy people all over the country this month, but so far from what live performances I have heard, this one from the Bridge School Benefit on 10-26-08 has been my favorite. Especially because there are some songs that I had not heard before; namely “99 Floors,” and “Owata.”

I realize that my admitting to not having heard them yet possibly exposes me for the incredibly busy mom fan that I am, as I am not the intense reading everything I can and listening carefully to every show put in the live music archive fan that I wish I could be sometimes.

I’m not complaining though, I love every second with the kids. However, I have not had new Pumpkins in the playlist since American Gothic, so downloading the Bridge School Benefit was pretty wonderful to me. I thought for sure a couple of my favorite readers would like it as well. The song list isnt in the player box, so just listen and/or skip through as you like.

1. 99 Floors
2. Owata
3. Sunkissed
4. The Rose March
5. A Song For A Son
6. Disarm (with Josh Groban)

Also, and I should do separate posts for each of these but if I waited to do that it might not happen…., there is some more new music to speak of.

Tac got I Empire by Angels and Airwaves a couple weeks ago, and we have been quite enjoying it.

Neater even, we finally bought Impeccable Blahs by Say Hi. If you follow the link, the song “These Fangs” is the one from this album on the player. We have spent whole days listening to just this album.

I saw that Shiny Toy Guns came out with a new album, but havn’t given it any time yet to see if I want it. Have any of you listened to it yet? What do you think?

And lastly, sorry to Larry about the Bloc Party review :), I like them so much too, except that album. Although I would like to admit one or two more songs have since grown on me, so I guess I really like at least half the album now. But the other half, still not doing anything good for me.

I think I still feel like a 6 yr. old when the UPS truck pulls up in front of the house, especially when I know that I ordered the new AquaLung album just days before that. I hadn’t even seen the songlist when i ordered it, I was in a hurry and knew that I would love it no matter what. So what a surprise when I started playing it and the first song was “7 keys” which could possibly be my favorite song by Matt Hales.

I knew that some of the songs were new and different versions of previous songs, and that was especially wonderful because the songs he picked are from singles that I have, and love so very much. They include “Can’t Get You out of My Mind,” “7 keys,” “Nothing Else Matters,” “When I Finally Get My Own Place.”

Two of the new songs have really captured me. “Arrivals” is the final song on the album and it begins with beautiful and delicate sounds that I would guess were bagpipes, but thats an uneducated guess. It continues with the piano and Matt’s voice which is AS ALWAYS lovely and full of emotion.

“Good Goodnight” starts with touching and simple words, made all the sweeter because of the piano and voice that accompanies them. I added this song to my “Twilight” playlist on my ipod, I have not even been obsessing over those books lately but this song in my opinion could be the ultimate twilight song because of the lyrics and emotion. It doesn’t have anything to do with vampires or high school though, so don’t worry if you don’t like Twilight, you can still love this song.

A big first for me was also on this album, I actually don’t like one of the songs. I just can’t like “Mr. Universe” (sorry Matt), and that is the first song by him that I don’t pretty much love.

The genre section on my itunes labeled this album as “unclassifiable” which I found rather fitting. I know that I couldn’t classify it. My four year old yelled to the front of the car that he didn’t want to listen to that anymore, he wanted a band. To him a band includes your normal guitars and drums. So he would not put it in the band genre I guess.

I have been waiting a very long time (at least a year, which, put in the Jen time converter is equal to centuries) for The Mummers album to come to life. I have had to make due with their two songs I was able to purchase last year, circulating as many playlists on my ipod as I could think of.

The Mummers truly have their own lovely sound, they have a band; more like an orchestra, that accompanies Rice’s voice so nicely. Its tricky, I think anyways, to get the right sound with that kind of a band. It seems like it would almost be too scary to try. But The Mummers pull it off, with almost a magical effect, like when the horn player isn’t busy he’s sprinkling fairy dust or something. They even practice in a tree house.

They are a local band in Brighton, England, and if I ever get to go to England I am planning my trip around one of their shows (and Aqualung if I could be so lucky).

See below as they perform one of the songs from the new album: “Tale to Tell.” I really like this album.

Tac and I don’t get to as many concerts as we would like. Our children’s main reference in regards to concert attendance is seeing me get really excited because “so and so” is touring, then watching as I try to put together some kind of plan for how we could travel 100’s of miles to see “so and so” while still getting kids to school and husband to work, and then the inevitable pout of despair as I realize its hopeless.

From this they have inferred that it must be pretty fun to see live music, and they would like to see some for themselves. Taking them to a concert would be dangerous, sometimes illegal, the boys would whine and make us miserable, and it would be embarrassing.

I compromised with them by finally telling the boys they were too young; sorry, and promised Emma that if Seve vs. Evan ever came to town I would take her. I knew they would be at an all ages venue, and figured out of all the bands Emma and I both love they would be the safest (clean, fun, all around good time, etc..)

She made her own t-shirt for the night, it was so very cute. It was brown with a green Seve robot and a red Evan robot. We had a really good time, Tac was in Sun Valley so he couldn’t come, and while he asked me nicely to get him a shirt I totally forgot, so once again “sorry honey.”

We stood up front because Emma couldn’t see past all the overly tall teenagers. This was fun, but proved dangerous as said teenagers started a pit right next to us. One of them fell into me, causing me to fall into Emma, shoving her into the speaker. Luckily we had one of our own overly tall teenagers because my “baby brother” Kyle (he’s at least 1/2 foot taller than me) watched over us after that.

Seve and Evan sounded great, pretty much exactly like they do on their cd’s. Seve had a keyboard and a microphone, and Evan had the drums. I hadn’t noticed until then how much drumming there is in their music, Evan was impressive. Seve sang, played and talked to the audience like he does it all the time, but afterwards he told Emma that he had been a little nervous. He was really nice to the youngest member of their audience.

Emma has now been to a concert, her little brothers have Seve vs Evan pins; one on his backpack, the other on his “Wall-E” hat.

Somehow, S vs E fit perfectly in my music puzzle. Shoved in there somewhere between Muse, The Pumpkins, and Mew, underneath AquaLung, Say Hi, and Silversun Pickups is a little indie band from Utah. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could not like them, especially if you have kids that you want to brainwash into liking cool music…they won’t be able to resist. Play a fun little video game on their site and listen all at once, Seth and I have been playing it lots today.

I have been putting this post off for too long, but I really didn’t want to write it; thus making a formal admission of not so much liking Bloc Party’s new album “Intimacy.” The first words of the first song pretty much sum up what I think of this album.. (whoa whoa whoa whoa)

And its not like I hate it or anything, I just don’t get the familiar Bloc Party lovin’ feeling when I’m listening, and I don’t want to listen to it very much either (not a good sign). I generally feel irritable after listening to it for a while, and my kids will firmly attest that I need no outside help with this. To sum it up, I don’t enjoy the album.

To play fair and nice, I do want to mention that I like the 3 songs “halo,” “signs,” and “one month off.”

While making a routine examination of band websites looking for tour and other info, I noticed that the Silversun Pickups had an album called “Pikul” that I had never heard of before. I guess when we bought “Carnavas” I just assumed it was their only one and didn’t notice this EP released in 2005.

There are 5 songs, the first of which is Kissing Families which can be heard on their myspace. The first time I heard this song I knew who was playing, but I think even if I wouldn’t have known, I could have picked up on the fact that is was SSPU after the first few chords, because it sounded just so like them.

Another of my fav’s on this album is “Comeback Kid” which you can watch a video to right here:



We have been listening to Pikul a lot the last 2 weeks, its kind of like a treat to hold us over until the new album comes out.

One of the things I love about Stephenie Meyer so much is that music makes a big contribution to her writing. She is then so kind as to share her playlists with us, so we can hear what songs and voices inspired her books. She also thanks the band Muse in more than one of her books for creating their beautiful music, as it has fueled her awesome writing even more. Since I love Muse *almost* as much as Billy Corgan, that kind of thing makes me all happy.

Not all of the bands on this list are held in my highest esteem though, some of them were never even considered for my own personal “Twilight” playlist, and while I am no expert in this, it would seem almost scientifically impossible for such fabulous writing to have been inspired by songs I feel such animosity towards. But I learned a long time ago that not everyone can share in my exact vision of what perfect music is

Breaking Dawn Playlist

Book I

* Beach Boys — Wouldn’t It Be Nice
* Billy Idol — White Wedding
* (INXS — Never Tear Us Apart)
* (Muse — Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You)
* Blue October — Congratulations
* Plain White T’s — Take Me Away
* Jack’s Mannequin — Dark Blue
* Coldplay — No More Keeping My Feet on the Ground
* Fuel — Hemorrhage

Book II

* Nine Inch Nails — Down In It
* Aerosmith — What it Takes
* Incubus — Earth to Bella (part 1)
* Interpol — No I in Threesome
* Korn — Twisted Transistor
* TV on the Radio — Wolf Like Me
* My Chemical Romance — The Sharpest Lives
* Motion City Soundtrack — Point of Extinction
* R.E.M. — Accelerate
* Blue October — My Never (song not released until March 2009)
* Jimmy Gnecco — Someone to Die For

Book III

* Smashing Pumpkins — Today
* Right Said Fred — I’m Too Sexy
* (Jimmy Eat World — Chase this Light)
* (Jackie Wilson — Your Love is Lifting Me Higher)
* Linkin Park — Pts. Of Athrty
* 3 Doors Down — Duck and Run
* Simon and Garfunkel — Hazy Shade of Winter
* Death Cab for Cutie — I Will Follow You Into the Dark
* Muse — Intro [Absolution]
* Muse — Take A Bow
* Muse — Assassin
* Ok Go — Invincible
* Travis — Safe
* Arcade Fire — No Cars Go

As much as I never wanted names like Linkin Park, Korn, Incubus, or Fuel to ever, EVER, make an appearance on this blog, I decided to give you the full (un-jen-edited) version. Stephenie’s site has a cool little player where you can listen to all of these songs if you like.

I was thrilled to see INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” because that was a favorite song for many years of my young life. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” by Muse was a new found treasure for me, and I have enjoyed it a bunch. NIN’s “Down in It” paints an accurate picture of the emotional pain taking place in the book, I have not listened to that song in years so it was fun to hear it again. TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me” is the most perfect song for Jacob, plus I totally like that song, and I always dig a little My Chemical Romance.

FINALLY!!!! The Smashing Pumpkins made it on one of her playlists; and “Today” is one of the greatest songs ever, its also one of their most popular and being the fan that I am I wish one of their lesser known songs could have found it’s way to the list as well…perhaps “Eye” since that is such a hot sexy song, and so is the PG honeymoon scene in the book…but I’m still overjoyed for “Today.” Also, “Invinsible” by OK Go is such a perfect song for the end of Breaking Dawn, great song pick. I have not heard Coldplay’s “No More Keeping My Feet on the Ground,” but it gives me something fun to look forward to buying soon…(along with Block Party’s new album which I was so happy to read was released today).

If you really liked the books, you might enjoy seeing a few pictures from a little Breaking Dawn party my cousin had a couple weeks ago. You can see them on my lovely sister’s site. Enjoy!