Soundtrack to a board game.

I think this should be a thing, finding the perfect soundtrack to a board game to heighten the drama. I had a quick google and of course a few other people on the internet have noticed it. I played Cluedo with friends a couple of weekends ago and I think an iPod was playing the soundtrack I call Gabriel's Oboe, which has lots of suspense. But it would have been quite different playing with the Gosford Park soundtrack which is a bit more vintage and Miss Marpley. Soundtracks are all about background music and creating mood. Tension and release and general drama. It really enhanced the game experience.

Look, you can get Sherlock Cluedo.

Giftcards on sale.

This is a website that tells you what gift cards are on sale. I subscribed to the rss emails, which is good because every week or two, not often, I get told where the iTunes cards are on sale and what percentage off they are. It's really useful and not spammy. I told my flatmate and she loves it.

Music lover.

Listening to Tom Odell on Spotify. If I needed to go to more gigs I'd go to his. But I find gigs noisy. I can enjoy music better through my headphones sometimes.

Single anthems

A conversation between me and Jess:

E: Do you know John Mayer’s song Perfectly Lonely? It’s my singles anthem.



J: I don't know it. Actually it sounds a bit familiar (spotify hooray!) My singles anthem is The Carpenters' Goodbye to Love. It's very melodramatic. Not as cool. Yours is good.

E: You’d think Single Ladies by Beyonce would be an obvious one, but I think our choices reflect our personalities and musical preferences.

The lyrics I love from Perfectly Lonely are:

Nothing to do
Nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do
No one but me
And that's all I need

I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely (Yeah)
'Cause I don't belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me 

Edit from Jess:
Here is my song! How awesome is this karaoke version. All the lyrics you need. But here's the first verse to give you a taster.

I'll say goodbye to love. 
No one every cared if I should live or die.
Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by
and all I know of love is how to live without it
I just can't seem to find it.

Enjoy!

The best kind of band to love

The best kind of band to love is one that is popular enough to tour smaller venues in your home country, but big enough overseas to do all the stadiums and arenas. It's much easier to get up close without having to fight the thousands of other fans. Bonus too, if the band has longevity because you'll get to see them a few times (hopefully!). I've loved Manic Street Preachers since '96 or '97. They make me feel old, but they still put on a fantastic live show.

This is the lead singer and me. He's got the best voice in rock'n'roll. Melodic yet sreamedelic. I reckon he'd be really good at singing power ballads. I imagined him auditioning for The Voice, what he would sing, and whether the judges would turn around for him.

Last night reminded me of my dream job when I was a teenager: to be one of those photographers below, working for the touring company or media and taking photos of bands.

Hope in a jar

Jess and I both suffer from ezcema, or as we both like to call it, xma rage. Whenever I pop into the chemist or walk down the grooming aisle in the supermarket, I see a lot of products claiming to relieve the symptoms of xma. As I look at these products, they make my hope soar. Maybe this one, will be THE ONE, the one to stop the crazy itching and dry skin. They're little jars of hope.

But they never work. Nothing makes the xma go away, and nothing beats steroid cream.

Speaking of steroid cream, let me make two tangential points:

• Roid rage is when you can't find your steroid cream. [Road Rage is Catatonia's 90s hit. Such lovely Welshness].
• A true friend shares her roid cream with you when you desperately need some.

The Song

There's something about studying for exams that leads me to discover new music. When I studied for my last set of uni exams a couple of years ago, I stumbled upon Two Door Cinema Club.

I have an exam coming up and my song of the moment is Keane's Somewhere Only We Know. Truth be told, I only discovered it after watching Michael Paynter cover it on The Voice:




I love it when he starts wailing from 1:12 onwards. You can purchase his cover from iTunes and listen to it non-stop, just like me.

The Voice.

I love singing shows. The blind auditions for The Voice are the best of the genre. I wish nobody had to be eliminated and you could just have talented people doing covers on TV every night. The battle round doesn't entertain me, I find it stressful, people singing a duet in competition rather than in unity. It is the complete wrong thing to do with a duet. But the rest of the singing is great TV.

I do feel that a good voice is a pretty small component of a music career, though. It's important, but… not everything. Compared to, say, a good song. It's not often a voice that gets stuck in someone's head, it's a song sung by a voice, and able to be sung. You don't buy a voice, you buy a song. And then, also, work ethic and confidence, and in a small music industry like Australia the ability to cross-over a lot, and be good on TV and all that. Because there are SO many good voices that a good voice just doesn't cut through. And think how many catchy songs are sung by average singers. Joel Madden has experience in this area.

I become such a cliche of a woman who rips into other women whenever Delta comes up. I don't know what it is about her, she's just… off. So much potential to be classy, so much natural beauty, but somehow such a fake. Unless posing is her natural state. The funny thing is it's not just me that can't help ripping into her. I've had a lot of company. And today I was lying in the ortho chair listening to the dental nurses on the other side of the room having the exact same conversation.

The black backless and frontless jumpsuit.

I see red

Jess is a nail polish woman. She loves 'em. I'm a lipstick woman. I love 'em. We can't get enough of our respective loves. Here is what I've observed about wearing red nails or lips. Wearing red nail polish or lipstick will emphasise any red already present in the skin.

Image from http://www.kaboodle.com/

For example, if your hands are red from eczema (aka xma rage), wearing red nail polish will draw attention and emphasise the redness in your hands. It doesn't look as good as someone with an even skin tone on their hands.

This is the same with wearing red lipstick. Unless you have very good skin, you need to wear foundation when wearing red lipstick, in order to minimise the redness in your face (usually around the nose and chin for me). Otherwise, it will make your face look splotchy. As much as I love red, I don't wear red nails that much because of xma rage. I love a bright red lippy, so I make sure I wear foundation before I wear it.

Image from http://ie.rimmellondon.com

While we're on the topic, here are my picks for a red lipstick:

• Rimmel London Lasting Finish by Kate Moss in no. 10. This is possibly my favourite red lippy. It's incredibly bright and really makes your lips pop. Not for the faint-hearted. It makes my skin look even paler when I wear it. For some reason, there is no no. 10 on the website, but I checked my lipstick and it's definitely a 10.
• Nars Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Dragon Girl. Gorgeous, bright and bold. I tried this on at Mecca and loved it.
• Hourglass Femme Rouge Velvet Crème Lipstick in Icon. 

MAC is also famous for their red lipsticks and most brands will have a good red in their range. If you want something a bit sheerer, but still with a reasonable amount of colour, try Revlon ColorStay Ultimate Suede in 095 Finale.  If you want super-sheer and moisturing, try Face of Australia Sheer Gloss Lip Crayon in Macaron.

Final tangent: I'm currently loving Butter London Primrose Hill Picnic Nail Lacquer. It's see pleasing to see a bright fuchsia pink on the nails!

Gratuitous link to Split Enz video clip for I See Red here.

Albums.

I like albums where all the songs are very similar. So that I can listen right through without changing mode, from the really good song to the angry song to the ballad.  But some people like an album to showcase variety.

Music for 17 years time

Jess and I very much enjoyed the recent Neil Finn and Paul Kelly gig. Most of the crowd were, at least a good ten, if not twenty, years older than us. I joke that Jess and I have "old" taste in music - I mean, we've know The Carpenters and we like them!

It's fine for us to have "older" music taste now because the musicians are still touring, but what about in seventeen years time? Who are we going to listen to and enjoy going to? We need to find someone CURRENT with potential longevity and mild popularity that we can look forward to seeing live in seventeen years time! Someone who can play a back catalogue of hits and favourites. Someone Aussie or Kiwi would be cool too.

Who who who who who who who?

(Talk about planning ahead!)

And we danced to a melodica.

This is a song I like. Nothing amazing about it, but one night, ages ago, it came on the radio and I danced around my bedroom. Yes, I was quite surprised. It was a nice moment though, so I've liked the song ever since. Anyway, what I didn't know until watching the music video today that there was such an instrument as the melodica. I had to google "little piano that you blow through". Now I want one.

http://www.amazon.com/Hohner-37-Key-Performer-Melodica/dp/B0055DAC1O

Different Christmas carols and songs.

I can't really understand people who say "I hate Christmas carols". Those people must hate all music. If they don't hate all music, they must mean that they hate the poorest specimens of Christmas carols—cheesy muzac carols in the shops, or singing them at church with a band that hasn't played the music since last year and hasn't thought about transposing them down for the congregation let alone simplifying the chords for themselves. And some carols are bad songs and only get played/sung because they are carols.

I think carols are grand. I hate cheesy versions in the supermarket, and I hate singing them too high — crimes against music which should be hated. The poor carols themselves are often nothing to hate. Except Jingle Bells.

I do enjoy non-Christian Christmas songs a lot too, you know, pop songs about going home for Christmas, being alone for Christmas, and so on. It's nice to have a soundtrack for a particular season to enhance the sadness or happiness. And hearing the same songs every year builds memories and associations into them.

I'll leave you with something different. 'All I ever get for Christmas is blue'. Available from Noisetrade by Over the Rhine.

Avoiding iTunes.

I like to buy music, but I like to make my money go further. So buying an album full price on iTunes is my last resort. Partly because I don't like the fixed prices when the exchange rate is so different, and partly because I don't like a monopoly and Apple is just a little bit too big for its boots. Here are some other resorts I investigate, before spending $16.99.

1. Direct from the artist. A quick google might turn up an artist or record label website where you can buy direct. If it is an artist from the US, you get the US price which is usually at least 30% cheaper, and the artist doesn't miss out on the cut iTunes takes. Even if they don't have a webstore, they might point you to their preferred retailer like bandcamp.com. Indi artists and labels seem more likely to sell direct or bypass iTunes. Big names not so much.

2. Check if JB hifi has the physical album for a good price. I wanted the Paul Kelly album Foggy Highway, it was $13 at JB which is a few dollars cheaper than iTunes, plus you get the album art.

3. Wait for an iTunes sale. I ended up getting Foggy Highway for $10 cos he released a new album so iTunes did special prices on the back catalogue.

4. Bigpond is slightly cheaper than iTunes. If it comes down to the principle of the matter, avoiding iTunes and saving money, it's a good option.

5. If I'm buying on iTunes, I only use iTunes cards which I buy on sale.

Newbie guide to Spotify.

I hate being recommended things sometimes. I don't know if I just prefer to discover things for myself, or I like to be minimalist and stick with what already works ok for me, or just be different. I still don't have a smart phone. But I joined Spotify anyway, with much resentment and doubt. I was hooked by the second day. Luckily the new office bandwidth is large.

Requirements: Internet, a facebook account, thirst for music.

What it does: streams music off the internet. It's like itunes crossed with the radio with a little bit of facebook. In fact, the radio application is what I love the most, you can click on a song that matches your mood and then start a radio station from it, and all the songs fit the style/mood. If you get something dud you click next. But also, you can have playlists, like in itunes. So once I've found a new song I like, I save it to a list so that I can thrash it obsessively for 3 days. The facebook part comes in when spotify occasionally tells all your facebook friends what you are listening to.

Is it fair to artists: well, some musicians opt out, which is fair enough. But I reckon if they get almost nothing from each listen, that's more than many of them would have ever got without spotify, because I'm listening to lots of people I would never have heard of on mainstream radio or anywhere. So now indi folk and folktronica artists from all around the world are getting something where before they got nothing, because I wasn't aware of their existance at all. Randoms go on high rotation for a few weeks, then on to somebody new. And there are songs that I've discovered that I do plan on buying once I get an itunes card, so there will be a percentage of artists that get a return beyond spotify. Because after all, owning is still different from just listening. Frankly, I would buy more on itunes if it was not so expensive in $AU but that's another rant.

Privacy: I used to use the private sessions thing, but then I realised, I don't care what other people are listening to, therefore I bet they care zero about my music taste too. Also, if anyone is stalking, my music taste is 90% awesome (in my opinion), so the bit that is daggy is clearly in an ironic context. (Not really, but that's what I want people to think.) Also, if the artists get more publicity out of it that's a good thing for them, I'm happy to help.

My tip: If you care a little bit what people think, you want to be careful what the last song you listen to is. That is the one that shows up to your facebook/spotify friends as what you were "recently" listening to, forever and ever and ever, until you listen to spotify again.