BPTC

Sunday, January 29, 2012

“Stone” — Ronnie Lane

The Ronnie Lane celebration at The Awl is excellent, but I’m a little disappointed the experts weren’t consulted.

Anyway, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance is total gold when you’re trying to pick up the mandolin because of Steve Simpson’s crazy British folkiness and it includes this song, which is the best and my favorite non-Chuck-Berry-cover Ronnie Lane song.

Facebook’s ad tracking system lets you change the timeframe of the results you’re viewing. There’s a dropdown menu for this and the options are:

Last 7 days
Today
Yesterday
Last 28 days
Custom

Oh good, “custom.” That opens a little calendar icon… with another dropdown… where the options are… “1 day / 7 days / 28 days”

Thumbs up.

“Call it the Burning Man of the Midwest: a temporary city, built around artistic expression. Only this one takes place in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minn., in the middle of winter.”

National Public Radio takes a look at the Art Shanties.

(via mprnews)

“Empty Threat” — Kathleen Edwards

I’m looking for Kathleen Edwards videos to send to my boss and I just found this one of her playing in a field in Berlin.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

“Purple Rain” — Tapes ‘n Tapes, with Alan Sparhawk and the Current DJs

This was great.

[via]

“The original score for Spartacus was composed and conducted by six-time Academy Award nominee Alex North. It was nominated by the American Film Institute for their list of greatest film scores. It is a textbook example of how modernist compositional styles can be adapted to the Hollywood leitmotif technique. North’s score is epic, as befits the scale of the film. After extensive research of music of that period, North gathered a collection of antique instruments that, while not authentically Roman, provided a strong dramatic effect. These instruments included a sarrusophone, Israeli recorder, Chinese oboe, lute, mandolin, Yugoslav flute, kythara, dulcimer, and bagpipes. North’s prize instrument was the ondioline, similar to an earlier version of the electronic synthesizer, which had never been used in film before. Much of the music is written without a tonal center, or flirts with tonality in ways that most film composers would not risk. One theme is used to represent both slavery and freedom, but is given different values in different scenes, so that it sounds like different themes.”

On the music of Spartacus

(via seanfennessey)