Spin Cycle 03/29/07 (Happy Birthday Rob!)

Music this morning provided by Papa Stinky.

He took Max to see Happy Feet when it came out, and then went out and bought us the CD to listen to at home. I used music primarily off the soundtrack today.

Good size class, 25 students, all pretty eager to get going this morning. Me on the other hand, was a bit slower to get moving. Still, the class was good and they really seemed to like the music, even though, 1 speaker in the room was not working.

1. The Song of the Heart - Prince, Happy Feet

2. Hit Me Up - Gia Farrell, Happy Feet

3. Crazyhorse Mongoose - Galactic

4. Tell Me Something Good - Pink, Happy Feet

5. Extra Special Guy - Gomez

6. Voodoo Doll - Fergie

7. Wonderful Night - Fatboy Slim

8. I Wish - Patti Labelle, Yolanda Adams and Fantasia Barino, Happy Feet

9. Somebody to Love - Brittany Murphy, Happy Feet

10. Rodeo Clowns - G.Love+Special Sauce

11. Jump N'Move - The Brand New Heavies, Happy Feet

12. The Joker/Everything I Own - Jason Miraz and Chrissie Hynde, Happy Feet

13. Pink Wedding - Mark Vidler, GHP Productions

14. I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

Spin Cycle 03/22/07

Sorry for the lack of posts. Just not too much to say right now. I'm a firm believer of not making conversation to just make conversation, you know, and I don't like people who do that, so therefore, the lack of posts....

Spin was good this morning. Good music, taken from the soundtracks of The Beach and Trainspotting.

Enjoy.

1. Trainspotting - Primal Scream, Trainspotting
2. Snake Blood - Leftfield, The Beach
3. On Your Own - Blur, The Beach
4. Yeke, Yeke - Mory Kante, The Beach
5. Pure Shoes - All Saints , The Beach
6. A Final Hit - Leftfield, Trainspotting
7. Woozy - Faithless, The Beach
8. Brutal - New Order, The Beach
9. Beached - Orbital & Angelo Badalamenti, The Beach
10. Deep Blue Day - Brian Eno, Trainspotting
11. 2:1 - Elastica - Trainspotting

Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Induction 2007

I tevo'd the 2007 Rock N Roll Induction ceremony, and just sat down to look at it last night. Among the inductees were Patti Smith, REM, Van Halen, James Brown and The Ronettes.
I thought the ceremony was good, but thank good for the fast forward button, because it was 4 hours long!!!!
Velvet Revolver inducted Van Halen, and then got up to perform a Van Halen song. It was AWFUL!!!!!! In the past I have really enjoyed Velvet Revolver, but for this performance, Scott Weiland was god awful. His voice sounded flat, and he danced around like a really white James Brown. Awful.
I spied Chris Martin (from Coldplay) in the audience, and thought that he might induct REM, but much to my surprise and glee, it was none other than Eddie Vedder (purrrr). He gave a wonderful speech that was light and funny. As a budding teenager, I LOVED REM. They were big in my music world. I never did see them live, though.....Anyways, at some point, I became disenchanted with REM, and sort of just stopped listening to them. I never loaded them into the ipod.....I went and grabbed all of REM CDS and brought them into work with me to listen today to do an REM Marathon. Good stuff.
REM performed and they sounded great. Peter Buck really is an accomplished guitar player, more than I have realized before. Patti Smith sat in with them, as well as Eddie Vedder and they all rocked out. It was awesome (though I didn't need to see Smith hump Michael Stipe and had to look away at one point...).
I saved the program so I could go back and watch again, because they showed some amazing footage of past Hall of Fame Inductions, including Prince shred a sick solo on While My Guitar Gentley Weeps - probably the best version of that song that I've ever heard. Watching the show just confirmed how important music is to me, in my life, and how glad I am that I have started that ball rolling with my kiddles already.

Spin Cycle 03/15/07

It is so interesting the way things work out in terms of timing. I made the playlist for this weeks class, early last week. I decided it was time for some rock-n-roll. So timely, as the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame 2007 induction was just this week. Also so timely, for over the weekend, Brad Delp of the band Boston commit suicide. Very sad.

The biggest problem with putting together the list was that I had too many songs to choose from; I quickly had 20 songs and an hour and 20 minutes worth of music. Gradually throughout last week, I moved songs around into the ride for this mornings class.

Enjoy!

1. Shoot To Thrill - AC/DC
2. Baba O'Reilly - The Who
3. Rock N Roll Band - Boston
4. Glass Onion - The Beatles
5. Scenes from an Italian Restautant - Billy Joel
6. Should I Stay Or Should I Go? - The Clash
7. Police on my Back - The Clash
8. Young Americans - David Bowie
9. Time Loves a Hero - Little Feat
10. Good Times, Bad Times - Led Zepplin
11. Saturday Nights Allright for Fighting - Elton John
12. Don't go Breaking my Heart - Elton John w/Kiki Dee
13. Communication Breakdown - Led Zepplin
14. Empty Pages - Traffic
15. Tuesday's Gone - Lynard Skynard
(On the cutting room floor:
16. Love Ain't For Keeping - The Who
17. Light My Fire - The Doors
18. Down to the Waterline - Dire Straits
19. L.A. Woman - The Doors
20 Freeway Jam - Jeff Beck)

Food Find! PB2

I learned about this product, PB2, a powdered peanut butter, that you reconstitute yourself not too long ago.

The Bell Plantation, in Georgia, has come up with a way to roast the peanuts, press them and strip them of 75% of the fat. What is left is a reduced fat peanut powder, that can be reconsituted with water. If I remember correctly, the total fat content in 2 TBS is about 2.8 grams, as opposed to what is it, 16 or 17 grams in full fat peanut butter.

I ordered some from BEll's website; the minimum order was 4 jars. So, I thought, yikes, 4 jars, what if this stuff is gross?!?!?

When it was delivered, I opened it up square away, and made myself 2 TBS of the stuff.

It was amazing.

It tastes just like peanut butter, a bit sweet, a bit salty.

You control the consistency, so it can be as thick or as thin as you want it to be.

I put it on celery, and topped it with raisins (you know, Ants on a Log, from when you were a kid??). Delicious.

I put it on my homemade english muffins. Delicious.

I stirred it into steel cut oats with banana. Delicious.

I eat it plain. Delicious.

My next order of business is to use the powder in cookies to come up with a low-fat

Nutter Butter. Let me remind you how good Nutter Butters are:

Yumbola.
Who doesn't love Nutter Butters???
I'll let you know when I perfect the recipe....

Spin Cycle 03/08/07 (Happy Birthday Anney!!!)

Brrrrr. It is FRIGID out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's why I was so shocked to have 25 students this morning. Great turn out, great energy, great class, all set to MOBY.

I like Moby. I think he makes some great sounding music. Very easy to spin to him.
He has a million and one releases - just check out his discography here.

I used songs mainly from Play, 18 and Go. The students really enjoyed the music, especially the songs from Play.
Play was interesting as Moby mixed in the soulful recordings collected by Alan Lomax, a musicologist from the 50s. He collected field recordings of many different artists, particulary from the South. Moby used these recordings and worked around them to create down tempo songs. Good stuff.

Here is the setlist:
1. God Moving Over the Face of the Waters
2. Natural Blues
3. Go2006 Mix
4. Porcelain
5. We Are All Made of Stars
6. New York, New York
7. In this World
8. South Side
9. In My Heart
10. Lift Me Up
11. Extreme Ways
12. Whay Does My Heart Feel So Bad
13. Honey
14. Beautiful
15. Dream About Me

Gomez, Avalon, 03/06/07

I caught Gomez last night (yes, again!) at Avalon.
It was a double bill with Ben Kweller. I had not heard of him before last night. We got there in time to hear him play 4 or 5 songs. A couple featured him solo, the others were with his band - a total power trio. While I can see why people like him, I need to investigate him a bit more before I can make a definitive decision on whether or not I like him.
He reminded me of Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and at times (at least vocally) of Jerry Garcia.
Jury is still out.

Gomez was good, not great. They are still the masters of the "composed" jam, and they do rock.
There was a definite shift in their song selection, weighing heavily on material from their latest studio release, How We Operate. They recently released a "B" sides double disc, which I thought did not contain new material, but I was wrong. It has some new stuff on there, and last night I heard 2 new songs I did not recognize. We got a "First time played live" song, so that was good.
I liked the show, and thought they played well, but at times, the music sounded thin, like I could punch a hole right through it.

Here is the setlist:

Rex Kramer
Nothing Is Wrong
Silence
See the Wrold
Cry on Demand - First time played live
?New Ben song - She Falls Between maybe???
Notice
girlshapedlovedrug
?New Ian Song
How We Operate
Charlie Patten Songs
Here Comes the Breeze
Hamoa Beach
Devil Will Ride
Encore:
Chasing Ghosts with Alcohol
Fill My Cup
Whipping Picadilly

Spin cycle 03/01/07

Do you ever have premonitions? You know, fleeting moments when you say to yourself, I wonder if so-n-so will be there, and low and behold, so-n-so shows up. It get these alot. So, this morning, when driving to class, I had a fleeting thought, oh wouldn't it be funny if my CD didn't work in the CD player. Because yes, I was using music on a home burned CD, that I haven't put onto the ipod yet. The thought entered my mind and then floated away again, until I put the CD in, at the beginning of a class of 22 students, and guess what, it didn't play.
I apologized up and down and back again, and had to run out to my car to get the ipod, as well as do a mental inventory of music to spin to. Luckily for me, I had picked they type of class that works to music with a continuous beat, and so I picked the following music to spin to:

The Dub Tribe Sound System, Bryant Street.

The Dub Tribe Sound System is a duo, Sunshine and Moonbeam Jones (I know, totally corny) and their music is a mix of hip-hoppy backbeats and funk lines. Most songs on Bryant Street are instrumental, but some have words that are totally cheesey. I almost felt bad playing it because the lyrics almost have a high cringe factor, but the music is too good to pass up.

Here is the track listing for the album Bryant Street:

1. Hasta Luego Mi Hermano
2. Samba DUB
3. No Puedo Estar Despierto
4. El Regalo De Amor
5. Wednesday Night
6. Feelin' Alright Now
7. Equitoreal
8. Loneliness in DUB
9. Ain't Gonna Do You No Good
10. Holler!
11. Breeze...
12. If You're Not Coming Back To Me

It was good class despite being shortened by 5 minutes, and my students were totally understanding.