beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Today: mostly listening to a lot of music.
Shouty music.

I should figure out how to get my CDs into my phone but all the instructions I've seen so far say to either use an apple computer or install itunes on your windows computer and big nope to that.

I used to think I knew how to use computers but every time I learn a task the how to do it changes before the next time I need the task. I used to put my music in each new playing device no problems. Plug it in, drop it in a folder, simples. But all things are now dedicated to being proprietary and complicated.

Also I know there are a number of ways to acquire music that do not involve CDs but that combines the 'they changed all the all' problem with the 'and now I have to buy it again' problem.

That said it would probably be long term simpler to learn how online music works.

When it is not youtube. Youtube only works in firefox with the adblockers. otherwise it's ads every two minutes and you can't listen to an album that way.

I realise the internet wants to make money, but it lately wants to make more money by not in fact letting me do the thing I am there to do, which is pants.

Shouty music is not much of an answer, but, today, is what I've got.

I dreamed an irritatingly catchy pop song. Which is still stuck in my head. Thanks, subconscious.
I'd write down the words, which are also stuck, but they neither rhyme nor scan, because it was a dream.
In it the annoyingly perky girl starts out singing about how last time she got really drunk was ages ago because apparently all the best things happened yet she can't remember.
And then there was a great big list of things that (a) you'd really want to remember and (b) you'd really want to see on the video.
After we'd heard it in the dream people started getting in an argument about if it said "sang in front of rock stars" or "sang like fucking rock stars", which would be an obvious radio edit issue except we'd all just heard the same live performance.
It emerged that we'd all heard something different, like it was tailor made.
The line I'd found most memorable was "made out with Karen Gillan"


This song should totally exist. Except since we can't make it do magic lots of different people would have to do different lines. For the video.


In the dream I then started close reading the song, focusing on the tension between it being explicitly a song about not drinking any more, and yet most of the lines being about awesome things that apparently only happen while too drunk to remember.

You could sort of fix that with the video, like you're singing about Karen Gillan but then in the images you're drunkenly all over a poster or a standee or something. Or it switches from glamour drunk view to the view your sober friends remember. Because then you'd get both the video people want to see and the undermining of the drunk is fun message.

Yes I dreamed all that. My dreams are analysing my dreams and proposing fixed versions.



Also, either, when I woke up at 0600 and decided more sleep could happen, I fixed my essay and didn't get up to write it all down, or I dreamed about fixing my essay.
Today I am going to finish this essay. And then preferably stop dreaming texts and go back to dreaming actual stuff happening.

You know when a song comes on and you go all tingly right up to your hair?

On the radio right now is 'Open Up by Leftfield / John Lydon'
(it says so on the screen: I like digital TV)
and apparently today that's one of those songs.

What's your song today?

I was sitting here giggling uncontrollably because Don't Stop Me Now came up on the random playlist.
Guess what film I've watched recently?

... Now I'm sitting here giggling because it's funny I was giggling ...


... also, I ate too much chocolate.

... these things may be related.

... is deeply strange reading someone write how they were 2 when Take That were famous.
And realising how old that makes them now.

I read a thing someone linked to that said in passing "music is universal", and reckoned that everyone hearing the same bit of music would read it the same way (nobility of human spirit or something, in that case).

I've been listening to more classical music lately, because the guy that drives me to college listens to it, and what I have learned is I've completely forgotten how to read the stuff. Or, okay, maybe not completely. I can start by figuring out what bit of a movie it would go with, though I often get sort of contradictory ideas. But that right there is why I question that 'universal' bit. Music, like any other text, is part of the web of associations, connotations, built up through and between all the texts of our lives. You can't just pull out one bit of music and say 'this means this'.

If music was universal I could listen to chinese music and hear whatever the makers thought it meant, instead of just hearing it and going 'huh, plinky music on a funny scale, weird'.

I guess that maybe some things - like slow or fast, or loud or quiet, or something - would translate as less/more excited or whatever, but I think the specifics are very local.

Not that I've studied music. I heard a talk about the music in Angel once and it made a lot of sense. If a TV show has different themes for different characters I listen for that now, a bit. But still mostly I'll ignore the music unless it has words.

Which, also because I often have the sound off and the subtitles on, but that's just me.

Music I listen to on my own is usually from TV or films or conventions. Connotations, connections, why *I* want to hear that music, not just what that music means in some weirdly unconnected way.


/random

random music player just came up with the wedding march from Flash Gordon

so now I'm thinking about fannish weddings

and which films have nice copyable weddings in them

... I'm mostly coming up with the forced by evil overlords kind...

which aren't really good for to copy, even if they had nice dresses.

(which wouldn't stop me using the Queen version of the wedding march should it ever be relevant. guitars and campy sf fun, or boring old churchy music? no contest.)

Forced into marriage by evil overlords actually comes up a lot. Huh.


I'm sure there are some decent alien weddings or whatever... I remember the next gen one that was going to be naked. or on B5 when there was that ceremony and only afterwards did it be mentioned it was a wedding. Firefly, married by accident, was fake so probably doesn't count. Also not alien.

Anya's wedding vows were... interesting... but the wedding didn't actually happen.


Many times my own height of DVDs in the house, and I can't think of happy shiny weddings from any of them. Weird...

Okay, someone with more musical knowledge of me- I need a song for Ripper to sing. It is the first time Ethan has heard him sing, so it is back in 1975 (by my timeline). Which rules out all my tiny small knowledge of music completely. It needs to be something angry and shouty and all about how the singer needs to say something that nobody else has said before. Which probably doesnt rule out much music ever. It also needs to be something popular and mainstream, because Ripper is not as cool as he'd like to think.

Anyone with relevant knowledge or suggestion of where to get same?


edit:

okay, I googled UK music 1975, and that pointed me at the BBC site. So then I felt daft, because of course. Duh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/years/1975/music.shtml
has a little popup which plays bits of all the UK number 1 singles that year
Oh dear...
REally. No. *shudders*
There is a reason I've never heard of any of this...

here lists all UK #1 for 75-59

okay, ones I can listen to without shuddering-
18 Jan 1975, Status Quo, Down Down
22 Feb 1975, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me), which I actually quite like. Hmmm.
8 Nov 1975, David Bowie, Space Oddity
29 Nov 1975 Xmas No 1, Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody
but those two are too late in the year.

'Stand by your man' was a 1975 #1 too
I have bad, bad soundtrack in my head...

70-74
stuff that would be older by then, therefore he could know
I read now.
and listen on BBC.
oh. dear.
*shudders a lot*

er, no offence to anyone that actually likes this stuff, just... my ears are unhappy...