freecycle jackpot! (part 2)

Technically, it wasn't Freecylce. But the idea's the same. A friend's husband is doing carpentry in a house in East Hampton. The ownerwants to sell the home, and wanted it emptied. He didn't want to bother selling things. So our friend posted on facebook all this free stuff that was in need of new homes. We're talking bicycles, furniture, art, clothing, ceramic tile. And, of course, the subject of this post: Two big metal CD stands full of CDs.

There were fewer discs than the last haul (which I wrote about here). But this was more closely aligned to my taste. As before, there are a few discs that I already have (e.g., Schoolhouse Rock Rocks, Saturday Morning Cartoon's Greatest Hits and Elvis Costello's Blood & Chocolate), and I'll be passing these duplicates along.

There are some that I'm reasonably confident I won't like (Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin). But I'll give them a listen just in case.

There are a lot of CDs that I'm excited to be getting. Three are as follows:

• Black 47 -- Home of the Brave: I have Black 47's debut, Fire of Freedom, and I've loved it ever since buying it. The combination of rock and rap with Celtic influences was fresh and innovative when it came out, and it's still a great listen. But for some reason I never bought any of their other material. I read a review of one other album. That was a very positive review, but it was clear that the reviewer loved the album before hearing it, so I didn't put much weight in it. Now, I guess I'll find out how the followup to HotB was.
• Blink 182 -- Enema of the State: I saw a couple of their videos years ago, and thought the songs were catchy. I never did buy any of the albums, though. I guess I was waiting to get one for free.
• Various Artists -- Pure Disco 2: There's a bunch of great tracks on this: "Last Dance," "Upside Down" and "Play That Funky Music." But the big thing for me is that The Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" is represented. I had the single back in the days of vinyl, and have missed it since I don't have it on CD. Or, rather, I didn't until today.

I will say there's one thing frustrating here. I found there are a bunch of jewel cases that have the insert and everything, but no disc. There are others with the disc but no booklet. And there are some with the wrong disc in them. I suppose that makes sense since this is all coming from some single guy's home. On the other hand, more than half of the discs (including the three listed above) are still factory-sealed.

By the way, As I write this, I am listening to Songs in the Key of Springfield, a collection of music sequences from The Simpsons TV show.

let's all rise for the discussing of our national anthem

A few days ago, I talked about Steven Tyler's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the AFC championship game. Without going into detail, I discussed the things that annoy me in anthem-singing. So, here are some details.

The thing that bothers me most is when the singer is purposely disrespectful to the anthem. Of course, this is exceedingly rare; the only such occurrence that comes to mind is Rosanne Barr back in 1990:

Now, some will argue that it's silly to start sporting events with the national anthem, so it's fitting to make fun of it. I agree that you can make a good case against singing the anthem at ballgames. But given that you are singing it, you should do it with respect. Of course, if you pay to have Rosanne sing the national anthem, you shouldn't be surprised if you get Rosanne singing the national anthem.

Barring outright disrespect, I think what bothers me the most is when a singer tries to stylize it so much that it effectively becomes a different song. R. Kelly came close to that:

It's easy to list forgetting the words (or getting the words wrong) as an annoyance. For me, that depends on whether the singing is being done by a professional or an amateur. If it's an amateur I am in favor of cutting some slack. Hey, you go in front of thousands (or tens of thousands) of fans, maybe you're on TV. You get nervous. If you're not a professional, it's likely you get flustered. I expect more from a Michael Bolton or a Christina Aguilera.

There are also a couple of nitpicky things that annoy little ol' anal-retentive me. First is the word "perilous." For some reason, it is rare that singers pronounce that correctly. they ususally sing "pero-lous" pronouncing the first two syllables like the name of former presidential candidate Ross Perot, or "perilless" which means "without peril." The other nitpicky annoyance is when scoreboards flash the words so the crowd can sing along, but get the punctuation wrong. There are questions in the anthem, and rarely do I see a question mark.

At any rate, let's end things with a montage: