Sometimes I like to share my G-Chat convos. This is one of those times:

Scene: Discussing music playlist for my upcoming dinner party

me: I'm on isoHunt
searching for torrents
and always giggle when I come across these albums called things like
"Electro House you NEED 2007"
cuz let me tell ya...
I don't need no electro house

Monica: haha
what kind of music for Friday? the old standards (dean, frank)

me: I'm going to play **exclusively** only music from commercials--you know iPod ads and Mitsubishi commercials. Bands like the Ting Tings and Cat Power...maybe even that new Madonna song from the Sunsilk ad

Monica: haha
Feist?

me: I don't know what it's called. I just call it "that shampoo commercial song"

Monica: Why don't you throw in Of Montreal for their song that runs in the Outback Steakhouse ads (even though the lyrics were completely changed for the ad)? What lead you to this decision?
me: Well, there is just so much good music in advertising these days...

Monica: no kidding

me: i may even throw in a few of the old standards. You know, like:
"A dollop of Daisy...A dollop of DAAAAY-Sy"

Monica: haha
awesome

me: and 30 seconds of the aardvaark song

Monica: I know you love that damned aardvaark song

me: I do!

Monica: is it two double-as?

me: I do love it

Monica: or just one: "aardvark"?

me: Ahh...I just added it for good measure

Monica: one

me: It's "aardvaaark," actually.

Monica: thankfully, google chat has a spell checker

me: It's three and one double-A actually. Five total.

Monica: and ironically enough, google comes up as a misspelled word

me: no. firefox has a spell checker
not google

Monica: well, whatever

me: haha
i do love that itunes song

Monica: and it doesn't have 5 As...

me: "i ain't freakin I ain't fakin this"

Monica: haha

me: mmmmm that hasn't been proven yet, Moe

Monica: yeah - it's catchy
Uh, yeah it has

me: I should just play all Frank and Dean
and then slip that in randomly
and be like
"what? what's the problem? it's a classic!"

Monica: haha
go for it - it's your party
all right
have to get to work

me: ok ok
you go work

Monica: it's gonna be a loooong night

me: I'm going to blog this.

Labels: conversations, friends, music, parties, Sony Aardvark

Not long ago, blog rockstar I-66 and I met for the very first time in real life. A spectacular lunch (complete with deadly white chocolate martinis) was complicated only by a very strange, very confusing, possibly coded message. A message that we need your help with...

Earlier in the afternoon, I heard a great song playing in the restaurant. It was loungy and jazzy and had a sexy female vocalist. I asked our waitress if she could get me the name of the song and then promptly forgot about my request. A deadly martini later, she wordlessly slipped a folded message next to my plate. I-66 and I looked at it a bit nervously completely perplexed about what it contained. Once we opened it, we were even more confused. The note said this:

Zo MCDE

ONE SELF

"What the...?!" It took us a few seconds to realize that the code was supposed to be the song and artist. It looked weird, but assuming that our beverages were adding to the confusion, I tucked it into my purse for later googling.

The problem. It's been over a week and neither one of us has been able to find this song. The puzzle is compounded by the fact that we can't really tell if "One Self" is the band or the song name. After various tricks and tries (including, apparently, a few spins through an anagram solver), we've decided to open the mystery up to our reading public.

So, your mission (should you choose to accept it): find me this song...

The winner gets a magazine subscription of his/her choice (to be selected from a list of the ones my company publishes). If the winner is in DC, then he/she will also get an added bonus courtesy of block rockstar....

Labels: blogging, friends, music, New York

The e-mail came in around mid-day. “Just driving thru London and listening to Volcano. Thought of you…”

It was my favorite song while I was with him. We listened to it over and over and again while spending lazy, boozy days in bed. At times, the lyrics felt uncomfortably familiar. Damien Rice's moody voice a constant reminder of the 14 years that separated us. It only bothered me because it bothered him. He’d go back and forth, joking that I was more mature than he, but then noting that in just 4 years he’d be turning 40. “Fourty…” he’d repeat, spitting out the word like a piece of sour candy. I’d stay silent and stroke the back of his head, watching him as he wrapped his mind around that reality.

The irony is that he was such a boy. It’s what pulled me towards him; it’s what made me stay. Tall, clever, bookish, and handsome; ours was part-time relationship built on excess. He was never my boyfriend—he was just the one I thought about at night, the one I spent my weekends with. He was selfish, though. Arrogant too. He talked too much and listened little, but it was the way he looked at me that made it OK. He was fascinated by me. Continuously impressed by the way that I lobbed his clever comments right back at him. One morning, as I stood in the kitchen making breakfast in his t-shirt he looked at me from the bed.

“What?” I asked, noticing the bemused smile on his face. “You’re perfect,” he said, his accent drawing out the syllables. “What are you doing with an old man like me?”

“I’m making you tea,” I said as I poured water into the kettle.

He drank and smoked and partied too much. So much that it was a problem. He was like a volcano waiting to erupt. Slurred phone calls, cancelled dates, days when he went missing. I cried a few times. I hated that I’d let him get to me. And so I put up a wall, and slowly got over him.

He moved back to London. He got help for the drinking. The messages started again, but they were different. Friendly, but stilted. I just wasn’t sure what to make of it. I didn’t really want him as a friend, and I’d already shut down the other part.

“Come to London,” he asked me. “I’ll take care of everything…”

Three times he's offered over the course of the past year or so. Three times I've refused—the most recent being a few days ago.

It’s an offer that few would turn down. A trip abroad, to a city I’ve always loved, with a man I once thought I did. But I can never bring myself to accept.

When I got his message today, I searched for the song in my library and listened to it a few times. Memories and feelings rushed back like a wave. Strange how bad ideas can sometimes seem less so when you feel a little bit lonely, a little bit sad…

“I still love that song,” I finally replied. And then I wondered: and him?


The song.

Labels: life decisions, memories, music

I'm completely obsessed with the new Jill Scott Collaborations album and think that you should be too...

Labels: music

I always say that I'm going to try and make it to more shows/museums/plays etc., but nine out of ten times I just end up curled up on the couch with my laptop and a glass of wine. Last night was the exception, however, as I finally motivated and met up with a friend at Pianos in the LES to check out band Mattison's set. I hadn't heard about Mattison until the aforementioned friend linked me to their MySpace page earlier that day, but now I'm really glad he did.

They've got this great melodic sound that swoops around the room and engulfs you like a warm bath. And lead singer Kate (last name Mattison--not a coincidence) has one of those sultry, classic voices that really makes me wish it was still legal to smoke in NY--and this despite the fact that she was battling a bit of a scratchy cold. Plus, she likes my glasses, so you know she's got to be cool...

Labels: music, New York

On Christmas Eve I suffered a massive hard drive crash in which I lost pretty much everything that I've either written, designed, photographed, or listened to over the past two years. Two years of creative work gone in a flash. That damn blue screen of death struck again.

Miserable, I called my friend to share the news and then dove into my bed in a fit of tears where I remained for most of the day until my parents forced me to shower, get dressed, and join them for Christmas Eve dinner. Massive amounts of tequila were consumed and helped ease the pain--if only temporarily--but on Christmas morning I was once again faced with the reality of my lost work.

Before you ask, no, I didn't back up. Stupid and cocky, I know. I of all people should know better. Especially since I suffered a similar crash about 4 or 5 years ago. Dell wasn't very sympathetic. "It's gone," the tech support guy told me. "We'll send you a new one. Did you have important files on it?" "Um yes, of course..." I replied. He suggested that I keep the old drive and take it to a local technician in order to recover some of the data.

I spent most of the holiday season cursing Dell and their lousy computers. In two years I've gone through two adaptors, three motherboards, two keyboards, and now two hard drives. Oh, and my cd/dvd drive is starting to make weird clicking noises and smells a little bit like a Fourth of July hotdog when I try to run programs. The irony is that this computer is pretty fantastic--when it works. But it rarely works. And I am also the first to admit that Dell has spectacular technical support. I just wish their products didn't force me to keep the support number on speed dial.

I'll be ordering a new laptop for work soon. I had the choice of anything that I want and I decided to go with a Mac. A MacBook Pro to be exact. As the office "tech expert" (their words, not mine) I've also been charged with the task of purchasing computers for several other members of our staff. They need PCs, but needless to say, they will not be getting Dells.

The point of this post, however, isn't about my crappy Dell laptop. It's about my amazing customer service experience with Apple. Naturally, when my drive crashed I lost my entire iTunes library. Thousands of songs, gone in an instant, including several hundred that I purchased and not...ahem, "shared." I was trying to figure out if there was a way to recover some of these songs so I spent some time Googling and discovered a few Mac forum posts from users who had e-mailed AppleCare and gotten permission to redownload their purchase history free of charge. Intrigued, I went to the iTunes customer service website and filled out the e-mail form with the following query:

Hello,

My hard drive crashed a few days ago and I lost my entire iTunes library (along with pretty much everything I've written over the past two years--ugh). I didn't back up and so I have no way to recover my files. I was looking around online and saw that Apple has allowed other customers to redownload their purchase history when they suffer a crash like this. It would be so great if you could allow me the same concession. I'd love it if I could at least have some of my music back...Thanks so much for your help and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Alejandra

Within hours, I received an e-mail back:

Dear Alejandra,

I understand that you recently lost all the music in your iTunes library due to hard drive failure. I'm sorry to hear the titles you purchased (along with your writings) from the iTunes Store with account "XXXX" were lost. I know how frustrating that can be, fortunately however, I have reposted your entire purchase order history back to your account for your and Apple will let you re-download (at no charge) all the titles you purchased on this account that are still available.

Please note that you may download your iTunes Store purchases only once, so this is a one-time exception and this option will no longer be available to you in the future.) Your purchases are now available in your account. Check out the steps below to initiate the download:

This was followed with steps to download, along with explanations of how to back up my songs (Ok, I get it. I will back up this year.) There were quite a few songs and it took a while to download, but now I'm back up and running. I figured it would be good to share in case some of you out there suffer (or have suffered) similar crashes.

I'm now tackling the task of hard drive data recovery. Stay tuned for details.

Labels: Grief caused by Dell notebooks, Internet, Mac, music, techy

It's been over two years since my friend Will sat me down and forced me to listen to Damien Rice's first album, O.

"Is this going to be some kind of country music?" I asked Will, who hails from Tennessee.

"No Alejandra, he's Irish," he said in that incredibly patient way he has. "Just listen to it. I want you to listen to it."

I sat on his futon, still wrapped up in my winter coat and scarf, playing with a mesh bag of gelt I'd gotten from a friend's dad earlier that day. We'd just come back from dinner at Chadwick's. I'd had a few beers and had that warm, kind of woozy feeling as I waited to see what the big deal was. Within seconds, one of the most incredible voices I've ever heard flowed out of his iBook speakers and filled up his apartment.

"This is amazing..."I said. Can you...?"

"I already burned you a copy," he answered and leaned over to hand me a CD case.

We sat there for an hour or so, barely talking, just listening.

I listened to that album over and over again that winter. To the point where no matter how much I listen to other songs, iTunes still registers it as the number one most played album in my library.

Over the next couple years, I obsessively downloaded every live and bootleg recording by Damien Rice that I could find. He paired with Lisa Hannigan a few times to create several incredible songs that I managed to track down. But until now, he hadn't released anything new.

His new album, 9, came out in the US yesterday and I'm already crazy about it. I don't know what it is about it that I love so much. It's so different from the music I usually listen to, but there is something about his songs that I can't resist. Yes, his voice is beautiful and the songs have a great moody, story tale quality to them. They range from frail and delicate to passionately angry. He reminds me a lot of a male Tori Amos. But it's something more. It just feels good to listen to. It's winter music. It's warm, sit by the fire drinking hot cider kind of music.

Anyway, check it out. It's wonderful. You can listen to a few tracks on his MySpace page.

Labels: music, reviews

I've spent much of the past week spreading the gospel of New Young Pony Club, a sweet London-based Indie post-punk-funk band with which I am currently obsessed. (Their page isn't active yet, but check out their "space.") They describe their music as "something good from the past and for the future," which is probably one of the best descriptions I've ever heard.

You might know their song "Ice Cream" from that sexy Intel Core 2 Duo ad with all the funky Jamiroquai-like dancing. [It is also currently the featured song on my MySpace page...] The video for the song is even cooler in that makes-me-happy-brightly-colored, New Wave kinda way. And it's dripping with good things like corn syrup and licorice allsorts (which I've always thought of as the prettiest, albeit most disgusting candies ever).

I figured I ought to drop them a little linky so that when they blow up in a few months I can say something along the lines of: "I told you so... Remember when I told you so?"

Labels: music, reviews