My Heart's on the Rail

Total Tracks: 3,476

Total Length of Music: 10.8 days

Sort by song title:
- First Song: The A Medley-Natalie MacMaster
- Last Song: a7th Minor - Jill Barber

Sort by time:
- Shortest Song: One Last “Whoo-hoo” for the Pullman—Sufjan Stevens
- Longest Song: Thick as a Brick (Parts I and II)—Jethro Tull

Sort by artist:
- First Song: Mamma Mia—ABBA
- Last Song: The Olympic Flame—The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Orchestra

Top 10 Most Played Songs: 

1. The Call—Regina Spektor @ 100 plays
2. On the Rail—Joel Plaskett @ 78 plays
3. Don’t Stop Believing and Alone—both by the Glee Cast @ 75 plays
4. No Air (Glee Cast), Telephone (Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce) @ 74 plays
5. You Keep me Hangin’ On—Glee Cast @ 71 plays
6. Take a Bow—Glee Cast @ 68 plays
7. Borderline/Open Your Heart @ 66 plays
8. Palmistry—Great Lake Swimmers @ 65 plays
9. Taking Chances and Sweet Caroline—both by Glee Cast @ 64 plays
10. I Dreamed a Dream (Glee Cast feat. Idina Menzel) @ 61 plays

I know it is a little heavy on Glee songs, but they are so addictive. :-)

First ten songs that come up on shuffle:

1. Stolen Child—Loreena McKennitt
2. I Drove all Night—Celine Dion
3. The Sun and the Moon—Mae
4. Gone, Gone, Gone—Joel Plaskett
5. Trainwreck of Emotion—Del McCoury
6. A Family Affair—Hans Zimmer
7. Du Labrador a Montmagny—Le Vent du Nord
8. David’s Jig—Natalie MacMaster
9. I Can’t Make this Movie—Daniel Day-Lewis
10. 31 Years—Elliott Brood

How many songs come up when you search for…
- sex: three
- love: one hundred forty-one
- you: two hundred eleven
- death: six
- hate: two
- wish: seven
- monkey: four

And now it is time for bed. I procrastinated long enough.

I just found out from Tom Allen that Jill Barber is coming to my neck of the woods again!! I have seen her two times now—at the Sound of Music Festival in June and at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival, but she is one performer that I cannot get enough of. Seriously, she is one of the most classiest performers that I have ever met and her music just makes me feel so happy and I just want to fall in love and listen to her music while dancing on a starlit summer evening. She is just an amazing person.

She is going to be performing with Canadian boogie-woogie Jazz pianist Mike Kaeshammer. My god, his performance last year at Harvest was absolutely spectacular. It was hard to sit still and nor clap along to the beat! Seriously, he is one of the most energetic performers that you ever will meet.

Anyways, back to the story. Tom Allen just told me less than a half an hour ago that Jill and Mike are going to be sharing a stage again in only a few weeks at the Jackson-Triggs Winery here in the Niagara region.

So if you have $61 I suggest that you GO!!

And if you want to kidnap me from Barry’s Bay, Ontario so I can see them again, please let’s begin planning an incredibly epic plan to do so!

My dear friend, Sammy Jane (Follow her at http://sammyjane.tumblr.com/)and I were chatting last night when she came up with the brilliant idea to send me every day a song by Regina Spektor. She has 110 songs by Ms. Spektor (I have 36) I immediately responded with a stalwart yes. So I am going to post what song she sent me each day, with my own little comments on it.

Day 1: Rejazz from 11:11

I really am liking this style because I can just picture her singing alone at one of those slam poetry sessions in a New York cafe. It is stripped down, just Regina and her double bassist accompanist, but it really allows for the lyrics to shine through! 

What a great start to the 100 Days of Regina!! I cannot wait for DAY 2!! :-)

I finally finished a blog post/concert review that is about a week in the making. Last week, I went to the National Youth Orchestra of Canada’s performance at Koerner Hall in Toronto and I absolutely loved it. Here is the post, follow it over to my other blog:

http://onetrainofadam.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/the-orchestral-stars-of-tomorrow/

I don’t understand why it took me a week to write it, but there it is!

I hope you enjoy!

AtomAtom

On Day 2 of SammyJane’s Daily Dosage of Regina, I received a song that was featured on an album by violin superstar Joshua Bell on his album entitled At Home With Friends.

Right from the first moments of the song, I fell in love with it. Joshua plays a haunting melody and Regina joins in for a lovely duet. When she finally does sing, it is almost as if the words and the violins are dancing together. It is so amazing. Kind of creepy, but still, so lovely. The lyrics are quirky, and I kind of don’t understand yet, but I know that if it is a Regina Spektor song, it has to have a meaning. Right?

Amazing collaboration! Amazing song!

PS: One day I hope to see Mr. Bell live in performance!

In addition to the 100 Days of Regina from SammyJane, I have gotten some new musiques added to my iTunes over the past couple of hours.

They include:

• The Inception Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. I know there have been criticisms placed onto Mr. Zimmer’s shoulders in the past, but he does create this world within the movie that is quite unique and amazing. I loved what he did in Pirates, Angels and Demons, and the Dark Knight. He is seriously one of the few movie composers that I will buy a soundtrack of, despite the fact that his music has been said to rip off composers like Gustav Holst’s Mars. But it is just big and bold and amazing!
• The Suburbs by Arcade Fire. My sister is in love with this band, and wanted to see them perform live on Olympic Island in Toronto a few weeks ago, but had to relent because of ticket prices. Anyways, I have not given the album a thorough listen through because I started listening to it at 11 at night when my family was going to bed and you need to really have this album at a good volume. More thoughts on that later!
• Oh Little Fire by Sarah Harmer. I heard Captive at least 167893455 times on CBC, so I am like since you are not going to play the entire album and focus on one song, I am going to buy it so I can do it. I like her sound. Again, more of a thorough listen through is needed.
• Safe Upon the Shore by Great Big Sea. I just love this band from Newfoundland a lot. Add the fact that some of their songs were co-written by Joel Plaskett and you have a killer combination for songs.

New music…how I love you so!

So I have to say I love La Roux’s Bulletproof. It is such a catchy song and makes me want to dance every time it is played. Like seriously, Welcome Week would not have been the same without La Roux playing at least one. So my song fail is that I think there are words to songs that are not there.

In the case of La Roux, I thought for the longest time that she was singing, “This time baby I’ll be burning through (or roof).” Now I should have figured out that does not make much sense. What the hell would you burn through? Why did she burn a roof? What possible metaphor is that?

Now I realize the lyrics are: “This time I’ll be bulletproof.” Fail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsbpmQ9-mc

Another song I thought the lyrics were different but really weren’t was the MGMT hit “Kids”. This song defined my first year here at university because I thought the lyrics talked about cheese muffins. Here is an example.

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of cheese muffins wanted to be haunted
Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of cheese muffins wanted to be haunted

Everytime that song came on, that was the version I sang. Until someone was like, “Adam you’re kind of singing the wrong song.” But I did not care, and I was for sure they sang cheese muffins right up the middle of May when it came on my iPod and realized that…oh my goodness. It was not cheese muffins. Instead it was:

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanted to be haunted
Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanted to be haunted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEOZCcaXzE

There are so many songs out there I thought I was singing the right way, turns out my ears were being dumb and heard other things. Maybe my subconscious is thinking of other things.

But still it is strange. And I don’t know why I do it.