A weekly note

Back to work! For real now, an actual full week.

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It’s been above 40 almost every day this week. I finally got out for a walk with Michelle and A today. It was so nice to feel the sun and breathe some fresh air.

It will probably get colder before it gets warmer, but it’s fun to see spring hanging out on the other side. It’s especially nice to look out at 4:30pm and see a light sky.

Of course now it’s pitch black at 5:12pm, so the especially nice is short lived. Soon!

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Spector‘s Do You Wanna Drive popped up on an algorithmic Spotify playlist and the lead singer’s voice reminded me a bit of Smoking Popes, so I listened to the entire album.

It was nice and in an attempt to follow my new rules, I looked for a Bandcamp profile. This was fruitless, but they do have a website on which they appear to only sell physical media. Spotify it is.

It’s immediately noticeable on today’s Shopify powered band merch sites how much fun people are having with vinyl. I thought I was cool with my yellow copy of Pisces Iscariot (I was) 20 years ago and now people get to be cool again with their colored copies of everything.

Yazz Ahmed sent out a message this week on Bandcamp explaining a shipping delay for her latest release:

A big thank you to everyone who has purchased the vinyl of Solo 7″s Vol. 1, and huge apologies for the delay in getting the discs to you. Apparently this is a global problem, partly caused by a certain big named artist ordering 500,000 copies of their album, which has caused a log jam in every vinyl production plant!

500,000 copies! Enough to go gold on vinyl alone.

And for the sake of looking back one day, vinyl outsold CDs in the US in 2020 for the first time since the 80s. And again, vinyl sales in 2021 are at their highest level in 30 years.

Anyhow. I’ve been thinking of getting a turntable again for the first time in a long while, so the hype works!

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Dawn FM was quite good. The right amount of exactly what it is and exactly what you want it to be.

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And yes! Pisces Iscariot. I finally reminded myself to find a blurb I wrote somewhere in a draft back in 2020. Here goes.

Frail & Bedazzled remains a fantastic rock track:

• Excellent use of phase throughout
• “stole my smile from the Chesire cat”
• Acapella verse (I guess there is no chorus) with the ba dum ba dum coming back in

Right. Still a favorite rock guitar album. Now I can delete that draft literally titled “Blurb”.

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More? More.

It was one I had recorded to cassette and used to jam to on my walkman while riding my bike in high school. I can still picture parts of the Fox Valley trail system where I would crank Pissant and just go flat out.

That’s a rock song.

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Looptap is fun.

A funny thing to me is that I’m not often able to find a game I enjoy playing through the Play Store, but here I am adding both Wordle and Looptap to my phone’s home screen.

More clever little games that don’t take time!

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I thought Michelle had a blurb for this week, but neither of us can remember it, so her new blurb is that she likes Wordle.

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Okay, one more.

I remember calling in to whatever radio station was in Champaign/Urbana back in 1997 (Probably WPGU 107.1?) with Frank and maybe Alan and requesting Starla because it’s 11 minutes long and we just wanted to hear it on the radio.

I don’t think they played it.

There’s probably a time-capsuled memory for each of these tracks. (I’m listening to Starla right now). Another day!

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“Say hello before you say goodbye.” 🍻