Posts tagged “Order of the Crimson Wizard”

One thing you might not know about me is that I don’t listen to a lot of music, by which I mean I tend to focus on a small selection of music and then listen to it over and over and over again.

One of the things I do is I make Mix CDs that I listen to while I’m driving around—to and from work, to and from Fools Play, etc. Thing is, I only make one Mix CD about every three months and that’ll be pretty much all that I’ll listen to until I make another one.

Traditionally I go iTunes and organize my music by most recently added, then start pulling the best songs over to a new playlist as I work my way back in time through my music collection. This way my Mix CDs tend to have a handful of songs that I’ve acquired recently. I also try not to put in too many songs that were in my previous Mix CD. But I don’t add much music to my collection very often, so doing it that way only fills up a portion of the CD. So then I delve into my list of all-time most listenable songs. Y’know, the songs that I don’t really ever get tired of listening to (the playlist that I call “Ultimate Flawless Victory” in iTunes) and toss in a few of those. Then I look at all of the songs in my collection that I’ve given four or five stars and toss in a few of those.

These Mix CDs are both reflective and projective. I try to incorporate how my musical tastes have changed over the past three months while at the same time trying to predict what I’ll want to listen to for the next three months.

Here are the last two CDs I created:

August 2009:

1. Always Been There Anyway – Julia Massey
2. Around the Bend – The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
3. Brain Problem Situation – They Might Be Giants
4. Buddy Holly – Weezer
5. Cellars by Starlight – Kay Hanley
6. Golden Blunders – The Posies
7. Good Fish – Julia Massey
8. Have a F*****g Baby – Three Ninjas
9. Headphones on Your Heart – Leeni
10. House of Mayors – John linnell
11. The Last Thing On Your Mind – Lights
12. Little Fighter X – Fighter X
13. Lollipop – Mika
14. Lovebite – Order of the Crimson Wizard
15. Me + Yr Daughter – Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
16. Over and Over – Leeni
17. Red Underwears – Three Ninjas
18. Say It Ain’t So – Weezer
19. Shut Up and Let Me Go – The Ting Tings
20. Soft Rocked By Me – Jonathan Coulton
21. Somewhere on This Couch – The Crazy Boy Floyds
22. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
23. You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds (featuring Regina Spektor)

November 2009 (there is one repeat song from the August CD—see if you can spot it)

1. Dance, Dance, Dance – Lykke Li
2. Dirt Bike – They Might Be Giants
3. Doll Partz – Order of the Crimson Wizard
4. Heading Out at Dawn – Terrapin Productions
5. Jenny Towner – Julia Massey
6. Los Angeles – They Might Be Giants
7. Mario’s Café – Saint Etienne
8. Powers – Three Ninjas
9. Pride & Strawberry Wine – The Wastelanders
10. A Quiet Room – Tangentbot
11. Secret Skin – Busdriver
12. Spin Around – Josie & The Pussycats
13. Stairs – Locust Street Taxi
14. Starry Eyed Surprise – Oakenfold
15. Stop – Spice Girls
16. Sun Shower – Busdriver
17. Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
18. Theme from “Greatest American Hero” – Joey Scarbury
19. True Affection – The Blow
20. Ugly Girl – Fleming & John
21. Vancouver – They Might Be Giants
22. Veronica – Elvis Costello
23. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
24. What’s Golden – Jurassic 5
25. Your Love Is a Drug – Puffy AmiYumi

I have no idea what these songs say about me, so feel free to psychoanalyze me to your hearts’ content based solely on the content of these lists. Enjoy!

Link of the Month:
Ponoko
A terrific service: upload your vector-line files to this website and they’ll laser-cut your designs out for you and ship them to you—or your customers! There are a variety of materials (with a variety of thicknesses) to choose from, including multiple colors of acrylic, bamboo, and felt, and most of them can also be engraved as well as cut out. A brilliant way to mass-produce your ideas.

Album of the Month:
Order of the Crimson Wizard: Secrets From the Far and Distant Hills
These guys are a hoot. A local Bellingham band, the Order of the Crimson Wizard were described to me as “Castlevania Rock.” That’s not a terrible description; OCW infuse their high-energy rock with large doses of classical motifs and gothic lyrics, but they’re not in any way a whiny emo band. These guys rock. This is their debut EP of seven fun, fast, dramatic, kick-ass songs. If you have a chance to see them live, I also highly recommend doing so. More OCW at their MySpace page.

Book of the Month:
Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
A simple, beautifully-drawn, nearly wordless graphic novel about a lonely dog who builds himself a robot friend. A very intelligent musing on the fragility of friendship and the nature of loyalty, guilt, loss, and redemption. Shockingly moving and at times very funny, this wonderful story will stick with you for a long, long time. More Sara Varon at her website.

Last Friday evening the wife and I headed on up north to go to the Skylark Café & Club because our good friend Three Ninjas was playing there. Also there were @rabbiddogg, @tangentbot, @HeartFeltRobots, and @angierox. You can see most of us in this photo that Three Ninjas took from the stage during his set!

Three Ninjas dee-jayed about 42 very entertaining minutes, then had enough time to perform “The Ecstacy of Mallard” at the end.

I also finally picked up a copy of the Three Ninjas album, Welcome to Boy Zone. It’s been out for a while, and I feel bad for taking so long to get my own copy!

The 2nd band was The Order of the Crimson Wizard. They were a fascinating classical/metal/fantasy blend. Carrie & I enjoyed them tremendously, but I’d spent all my moneys on the Three Ninjas CD, so we couldn’t pick up a copy of their CD.

They said they were from Bellingham, so I emailed Ryan (of The Wastelanders and Chuckanut Drive) to see if he knew of them. He said that they used to practice next door to them, and “it always sounded like someone was just playing Castlevania out of a PA main.” He also described them as “Hobbit Rock,” which I thought was funny.

The third act was French Miami, a weirdly psychedelic rock trio from San Francisco. They got really into their music while they were playing it. They had a cool setup: the guitarist and bassist both had keyboards that they’d play as well, sometimes even at the same time as they were playing their guitars. Interesting stuff.

But anyway, Three Ninjas recorded his entire set, both audio and video. The audio is available for you to download AND ENJOY. Here is the audio recording of the performance.