Walking By The Moon

On the way home from work ...

Six Car Pileup

This is Toby's new band, 6 Car Pileup, playing "Can't Stand The Weather".  Toby is Nik and Ivi's Cape Cod cousin (same age as Ivi), son of Gabrielle..  Toby is on drums, the other five are not ID'd yet.

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Thanks to Kim, and now Ivi, my interest in dance as an art form and an entertainment has greatly increased -- though I remain highly dance-challenged in terms of physical activity.  So I came upon this delightful piece recently, "Dance With Me" by Nouvelle Vague, to be shared herewith as a Valentine to my favorite ladies, Kim and Ivi ...

Shelby Discovered

For me, one of the great pleasures is blowing away an assumption or belief in the light of new evidence.  Especially with people.  From time to time, someone whom I initially disliked, even strongly, turns out to become a fast friend.   (This may have something to do with my early experience as an investigator for the US Congress; we were always expected and required to go beneath the surface to find the reality.)  But that doesn't mean to expect any abrupt reversals in some heavily-considered areas like religion or politics!

Anyway, I have never been much of a fan of country music -- although I spent a winter listening to a lot of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings when I lived with the White Mountain Apaches in 1973-74 in the mountains of eastern Arizona.  Well, a friend pointed me in the direction of Shelby Lynne, who I am told is a mostly-country singer who makes forays into jazz and blues, and does Dusty Springfield covers.  Check this out:

Here's a studio version, though not over-produced at all, that improves on the lo-fi qualities of the above:

A Film to Watch For?

This morning I was turned on to a film (by a colleague who saw it over the weekend) that looked appealing: see trailer here or here

Maybe I will suggest this to the LHS Band Director after I see the whole thing.

Digital Photo-realism

Most of us photographers who use Adobe Photoshop see it as a tool to refine our cameras' digital output. Bert Monroy is an artist who uses Photoshop to create original art that appears to be photographic in origin until you look a bit closer (remember the photorealism movement in painting a number of years ago?). For example, his digital painting, entitled "Damen", is described by Monroy as follows:

This is my latest and most ambitious digital painting of a Chicago scene unveiled at Photoshop World in Miami on March 22, 2006.
It is a panorama of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority.
Adobe Illustrator was used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the buildings in the Chicago skyline.
The rest was created in Photoshop.
• The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes.
• It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create.
• The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers.
• Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects.
• Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.

Holy cow! Take a look here: http://www.bertmonroy.com/index.htm.

Steven Cantor Is Back

As reported by OregonLive, Steven Cantor is back at another Portland radio station.

The Oregonian's classical music critic, David Stabler, had this to say:

Steven Cantor, the fabulous DJ who messes with our sonic sensibilities, has taken his "Beats and Pieces" radio show to KMHD (89.1 FM). If you didn't hear his show on OPB, you missed a treat.

His new show on KMHD airs from 9 p.m. to midnight Sundays.

As for the content, Cantor has tweaked it a bit because KMHD is a jazz station, after all.

"I've decided to begin each program with something by Miles Davis," he says, "something I
had actually wanted to do for some time at OPB, but I was unable to do so. What this means for this new incarnation of B&P is that it does give the show a jazz-related launching point each week."

To see why he's so good, here's the playlist of the final hour of last Sunday's show, followed by his rationale:

andrew hill - california tinge
mercan dede - engewal
jz - rooftops of vienna
karim ziad - el mouima
assad bros - agua e vinho
upper left trio - scriab-ish
scriabin - prelude op. 17 no. 1
sco - down d
sinikka langeland - treet som vekser opp-ned


so what you have here is andrew hill playing solo piano (i had just played angela hewitt performing a mvmt from one of the english suites to conclude the previous hour), followed by
turkish musician mercan dede (mixing elements of traditional turkish music w/electronics), followed by a joe zawinul tune (i've played a lot of his music in my first few shows, as tribute....he passed away quite recently.....) with north african elements, followed by a wonderful
moroccan musician (and former employee of mr. zawinul) who is creating this fantastic jazz-like contemporary music with a moroccan tinge, if you can imagine such a thing, followed by the assad brothers performing a very pretty little piece by egberto gismonti, followed by portland's own upper left trio (clay giberson, is the pianist in this group....in fact this tune i played is written by clay and, as you can gather from the title, is inspired by scriabin), followed by a scriabin prelude (for obvious reasons, but also in the same key.....that was a nice little segue) followed by a beautiful tune from john scofield's most recent album (also in the same key as the scriabin prelude), and concluding the set with another gorgeous song, this from the recent ecm album by norwegian singer sinikka langeland (also in the same key as the scriabin.....hey, it's one way i'm able to connect these seemingly disparate bits of musical beauty!!)

Now there's a DJ. Email him with your own suggestions, comments at beatzandpieces@gmail.com.

Now I just have to find out if I can catch him on Internet radio, as I can't pick up that station from here right now ...