More Urban Outfitters free downloads! Music Mondays are AMAZING!!!

Urban Outfitters is giving away five free songs every Monday in what they call Music Mondays. Way better than the free downloads they've been giving out recently on iTunes if you ask me. Here's this week's downloads - sorry about the cutoff, but if the playlist was any bigger, it wouldn't fit on my blog!

Here are the songs:
Alexandra Hope >> Whatever you Want >> album: Manimal
Headlights >> Get Going >> album: Polyvinyl
Restless People >> Days of Our Lives (Light in Mix) >> album: Family Edition
The Phenomenal Handclap Band >> 5 to 20 >> album: Friendly Fire
Mariachi el Bronx >> Quinceniera >> album: Swami

I sort of like the third song, until the part where random electronic sounds start going off and the singers start babbling gibberish. I don't really like the fourth song, "5 to 20," but at some parts of the song, the singer reminds me of one of my favorite Japanese bands, Pizzicato Five.The singers voice, that is.

Here's a Pizzicato Five song, "Happy Sad."



I really like the first, second and fifth songs on this Music Monday's playlist. The first song, "Whatever you Want," by Alexandra Hope, and the second, “Get Going,” by Headlights, are really fun and laid-back. The fifth song, “Quenceniera,” by Mariachi el Bronx, is really cool. A mariachi band playing in the background, and lyrics that don’t seem like they should work with the music, but do.

That's what I think is so fantastic about these free downloads. As opposed to iTunes' one or two downloads that could you would never purchase (recently, the downloads haven't been that great >> too many annoying teen and twenty-something pop-stars), having five downloads to pick and choose from gives you more options. Urban Outfitters has much cooler music, too.

Click on the links below to learn more about the bands:

Alexandra Hope
Headlights
Restless People
The Phenomenal Handclap Band
Mariachi el Bronx

Some music I got from the iTunes podcast, KEXP Song of the Day

Here's a playlist I've put together of songs I've gotten from an iTunes podcast called KEXP Song of the Day. The playlist literally gives you a free song every weekday!!!

My favorite song in this whole playlist is the last one, "I Say Fever" by Ramona Falls. My dad told me he thought it sounded a lot like Depeche Mode. I just think it's a really cool song. You can't tell half of what he's saying, but it doesn't really matter, it just has a neat sound.

Here are the lyrics, in case you're wondering what he's saying (I got these from songlyrics.com):

Before she met me she took herself to wait five years
After I met her, her teacher said best wait five years
I ask my neighbors, they said it's wise to wait five years

I say fever

I tell the friend how I'm feeling and listening her sad (side)
Cause she feels that no man will ever desire her so bad (back)
How dare I feel this and do not but sit on my hands

I say fever

Ow(n)ed my heart like a hot potato
Push the cart for an (ovulata)

This is just to code to decipher
Found the plowman chased the piper

That is up to you
That's all now
These are the one's who talk

Never (leki - lucky?)
Leads her to kiss him


(To close) five years go by and we are no longer here
I blame myself to for not taking steps to drawn her near
Try to decide what to do now based on love not fear

I say fever

Fo(u)r years

__________________________________________________

Crazy right? Even the person who posted the lyrics wasn't quite sure what the guy was saying!

Here's the video of "I Say Fever" by Ramona Falls



Most of the songs from my original playlist are posted above, but here are some that I couldn't find on playlist.com:

Beirut - The Akara
Lusine - Two Dots

Grand Hallway - Raindrops



The Heavy - How You Like Me Now?



I'll probably publish another post within the next few weeks. Probably a movie review or something of the like. !@#$%^&*()

Nous sommes fous!

**I just wanted to share this with you guys! It's just something I made on Paint when I was bored. I hope you enjoy the socks that are telling you --- "We are socks!!!"**

I tried out playlist.com...........

I've been trying to get music on my blog for such a long time!! So I was ecstatic when I found playlist.com. The other day, my friend showed me her Gaia account (for those of you who don't know, Gaia is an online avatar site) and she had a music playlist on the sidebar of her profile page. I asked her where she'd gotten it, and she told me that she'd gotten it from playlist.com.

So today I visited the site, got an account, and put together a playlist. But, unfortunately, the site disappointed me. I realized that the site didn't have half of the songs I wanted to post. (I wasn't that surprised, I guess I'm too indie for them!!) So here's my "Pining Playlist." {Pining, as in, pining for someone.} Here's the playlist, along with the songs that the site didn't have.

A lot of U2 all of a sudden....

For some reason, I’ve been talking a lot about Bono and Edge (or “the Edge”) from U2 recently. It all started when I saw a fantastic documentary, It Might Get Loud, in which the director got Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), the Edge (U2), and Jack White (White Stripes) together to talk about playing guitar and music in general. The film was great.

Well, in the documentary there’s a scene where there’s a video clip of the Edge is doing yoga. It’s funny because he’s checking his messages on his Blackberry while he’s doing poses. He says something like, “This is yoga, the Edge style.” So when I was in my yoga class this week, my instructor – who always starts off the class with a theme, idea, story, or person – started talking about U2 (specifically Bono). While we were in the middle of holding some insane pose, she started talking about how Bono must do yoga, because he seems like such a cool guy. Someone else in the class said, “I bet the Edge does yoga.” Then this girl on the mat in front of me added, “I bet he does it while he’s using his Blackberry.” What a coincidence! I’m guessing she’d seen the documentary because how else would she have come up with that?

I thought that was a major coincidence, so I told my parents and my uncle and cousin (who were visiting at the time). About a day into their visit, my uncle and cousin and I went to the Friends of Library bookstore, which is a used book store at my local library. {I got The Black Dahlia – I’d wanted to see the film when it came out, but my mom said I couldn’t see it, because at the time, I was too young – and a collection of essays by David Rakoff entitled, Fraud.} I was about to go to buy my books, but my uncle stopped me to show me a book he’d found. The book was U2 by U2 – it’s this huge book about the band, it’s really awesome!!

So U2 was a really big thing there for a while. I haven’t listened to anything by them in a long time, so I’m glad that it got me thinking about their music again.

I got to talk with Nancy E. Turner!

An amazing thing happened! I can't believe I haven't found the time to write a post about this. Granted, I've been extremely busy. Recently I've had a fiddle concert, five tests, and applications to fill out for high schools. But still, I should have found the time to write this.

About three weeks ago, my mother/daughter book group met to discuss the book, These Is My Words by author Nancy E. Turner. (According to Publishers Weekly… The book is based on the real-life exploits of the author's great-grandmother. The book is a fictionalized diary that vividly details Sarah Agnes Prine’s struggles with life and love in frontier Arizona at the end of the last century.)


The mother/daughter pair who had chosen the book that week had emailed Nancy Turner, and somehow arranged for us to call her during our book group meeting!

The day of, we called her, and asked her our questions about her book. I’m sorry to say that one of the only things that I can remember about the discussion was when she told us that her “Jack Elliot” is her husband, which I think is very sweet, but extremely unfair. For those of you who have read the book, I’m sure you know what I mean when I say that I’m sure all of us would love to have a Jack Elliot.

There are two other books in the Sarah Agnes Prine trilogy. Book 2 >> Sarah’s Quilt. Book 3 >> The Star Garden.

I didn’t even know authors would do that sort of thing. I was amazed and ecstatic to get to talk with Nancy Turner!

My mom and I just chose our next book for the group, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.(According to Publishers Weekly….Persepolis is Satrapi's autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution.) I would love to have a book group discussion with her, but I’m not sure if she speaks English.