a pretty impressive website for anyone interested in 80s music or having inexplicable fits of nostalgia:)  :

in the 80s

A great article on unwanted emotional memories (and whether we can suppress them)

It can be from trauma or an intensely painful break-up or just someone in general you want to forget forever, but the concept (as shown in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) of finding a way to purge someone from your memory has always fascinated me.

This article on suppressing unwanted emotional memories is really good: read here

Another incredibly sad and tear-inducing song is "I've Been in Love Before" by Cutting Crew.  I remember crying like a baby to it the first time I heard it back in high school in '87. To this day, whenever I hear it, I remember exactly what was going on in my life (though thankfully the pain and melodrama that went with it have completely disappeared.)

There are some songs you revisit that just don't sound as good or as vulnerable as you remember them, but this one sure sounds as emotionally powerful as ever!

been listening to Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite and Hits Plus a lot lately and still wonder why Kylie didn't make it bigger over here; I think she's every bit as talented as Madonna (more, even!) but maybe Madonna's bolder and more experimental in what's she willing to do to reinvent and further her career?

I like Amazon's review for Hits Plus:

Between her late 1980s reign as the "I Should Be So Lucky" Aussie soap star turned pop princess and her iconic re-emergence, Kylie Minogue had an altogether different kind of pop career. In the mid-1990s, she released two exquisitely sophisticated albums, both simply titled Kylie Minogue, for the dance label Deconstruction. The best tracks from that period, plus a handful of previously unreleased songs and remixes, fill Hits +. Although the title is somewhat misleading given that the albums from which the tracks come were commercial flops, it's not overstating the case to say that with the likes of "Breathe," "Did It Again," and "Automatic Love" leading the way, this collection contains some wonderfully stylish pop. But it's the haunting singles "Confide in Me," "Put Yourself in My Place," and the Nick Cave duet "Where the Wild Roses Grow," graced by the sumptuously breathy vocals that transformed bubblegum-pop Kylie into a seductress and institution, that are the jewels of this retrospective and her career. --Dan Gennoe

"Alphaville" is my favorite track off the new Bryan Ferry album Olympia (featuring Kate Moss on the cover.) It has hypnotic grooves and an awesome 80s thing going on and it's also sort of creepy in a completely okay (and even delicious) kind of way. "You Can Dance" and "Heartbreak by Numbers" (oh so very, very sad) are also complete knock-outs!!


Pitchfork has some good things to say about it; here's their review:

There was a point at which Olympia was intended to be a new Roxy Music album. It would have been the band's first since 1982's Avalon, and there even seems to be a sly nod to that two-decade gap on album opener "You Can Dance", which opens with a brief musical passage that is pretty much a note-for-note reference to Avalon's "True to Life". Somewhere in the process, though, this became another Bryan Ferry solo album, featuring original Roxy Music members Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera, and Brian Eno, and Ferry brought in a raft of collaborators, some old, some new, to round out the record, his first to feature original songs since 2002's Frantic.

The funny thing is, if Roxy Music had released this exact album in 1983 as a follow-up to Avalon, I don't think anyone would have batted an eye. It spills over with the aesthetics and sounds of Ferry's 80s work, which has the strange effect of also making it sound very current. The synths, fluid beats, wiry guitar parts with just a bit of chorus, and electric pianos are all things you can hear on any number of indie rock records today. Ferry puts them together in a very classic rock way, residing at the center as the charismatic front man. The FM-rock approach to the emphasis on vocals is mirrored in the lead guitar contributed by Manzanera and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour-- that kind of playing is one of the few elements of 80s album rock that hasn't made a significant comeback, which may partly be down to the proficiency it requires.

The first half of the album is as solid as anything Ferry has done under his own name. "You Can Dance" and "Alphaville" have their roots in a late-90s session that ultimately produced about half of Frantic, and they're both very centered on grooves. "You Can Dance" grinds along on a creeping bass line and heavy drumming, guitars hovering in the wings as Ferry underplays his signature vocal quaver. "Alphaville" is more slippery, cut through with nicely phrased lead guitar by Gilmour, and it's good pivot to one of the album's standouts, "Heartache By Numbers". The song features the Scissor Sisters as backing band, and their studied grasp of disco and New Wave suits Ferry well-- the echoing piano intro is almost cheeky in its easy anthemic fluency, but it's very much of a piece with the singer's classic songs.


Elsewhere, Ferry indulges in a couple of covers; one is a completely disposable take on Traffic's "No Face, No Name and No Number", but the other is a pretty stunning transformation of Tim Buckley's epochal "Song to the Siren" into a sweeping, synth-soaked pop ballad. Ferry has always been fond of interpreting others' songs on his albums, and like his very best covers in the past, this one reveals a real connection to the song. The album does falter a bit in its second half--"BF Bass" just has a sort of generic fashion-rock sheen, aiming for something high-class and hitting something more like the oddly sterile cover image of Kate Moss, which basically looks like a perfume ad. Still, it's a good album, and without the pressure of making it under the Roxy Music name, Ferry has made a confident and remarkably fresh-sounding record simply by doing what he's done best for over three decades.

— Joe Tangari, October 27, 2010

There are certain songs that are almost too beautiful to bear. You want to listen, but you don't know if your heart can take it...you're going through a bad break-up, you've gotten caught up in an intense bout of unexpected and rare loneliness or the song is just too damn sad!

"After the Fall" by Cary Brothers is such a one.  Some of my most favorite songs are the ones that make me yearn for something that is inexplicable, yet somehow still has to do with love. There's this great quote by Australian artist and writer Norman Lindsay that goes: "the best love affairs are the ones we never had."

Music, especially emotional music, wrecks havoc with my imagination and with all those possibilities, both missed and still out there waiting...

So I've seen ads for this pill that's supposed to help you have better dreams, better dream recall and more REM time.  One bottle is about forty dollars a pop so I looked up the ingredients (as seen here) and I discovered I actually have all of them in supplement form in my cupboard.

Maybe this isn't a good idea, but I'm going to try and see if the combination does improve your dreams and help you remember them more.

I've been experimenting with herbs and supplements with sleeping for a while now and have been keeping a dream journal for years. Since I've always been a troubled sleeper I know pretty much every sleeping aid out there and have discovered some weird things over time...(more on this later)

Sometimes I just marvel at how dreams often seem to be taken for granted and reduced to little else but a pat and generic explanation filed under "dream interpretation."

I want to know more about the science of dreams, the beauty of them, what other people dream and how is it dreams can be about people and places we've never met or seen before. How are our minds capable of making that up??

I hope I haven't blogged about the TrashCan Sinatras before. I double-checked and didn't see any old posts on them, but if I somehow missed a previous one, I apologize for any repetition.

But these guys are amazing...so peaceful and surreal and one of the artists I think of when I think how music is capable of completely altering your mind in the most spiritual way possible. The Big Takeover called this (back in 2004) "twinkling and soulful....it ebbs and flows like a slow, steady river on a quiet day." I couldn't agree more!!

More recently Trashcan Sinatras released a beautiful and very dreamy song called "People."

"All 4 the Betta" by C.C. Adcock.


I don't drink and I don't smoke, but damn if I don't want a cigarette and some whiskey after listening to this smooth and smokey song that just begs to let it wrap itself around your waist and never let go. Ooh, where's the fire extinguisher? On second thought, maybe I just need the car keys and a little time to just get out and have some fun dancing. Being cooped up inside during this weather is making me go crazy!:)

I have found my new coping with a bad day song. "Skinny Little Bitch" by Hole. Take that, mean people of the world!:) But, practically speaking, silently counting to ten and taking a deep breath is better suited during the middle of the day, especially if you're nowhere near music!

There's a Gary Jules song called "Mad World" in which he sings, "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." At the risk of sounding freaky or self-destructive, I've got to say that I find this to be a very easy-to-relate-to line.

Some people say you can't die in your dreams, but I think they're wrong!  I died in mine last night and it was so weird and amazing and beautiful...in the dream I die in some kind of ##% accident (don't want to write it down since I feel like it would jinx things) and my spirit survives.

...I'm invisible (which is something I've always wanted to be)...My sister and niece are the only ones who can see me which is sort of odd if you ask me, but oh well...I'm happy and I can still enjoy things like eating (but now without any calories or consequences) and reading...and I get to see how people I've always liked are doing, too...and can help them out in tricky spots.

Ever since I was a little girl I've had the weirdest dreams...but in the years since my insomnia has gotten worse I've discovered that I sleep best and have the most intense dreams only when I have a cold and take NyQuil and magnesium together....

To me, it seems dreams are taken for granted or not even thought much of at all. But how can something that happens to you while you sleep, that feels so real and often so beautiful, be dismissed as "just" biological or (worse) reduced to a ridiculously pat ( and patronizing) theory like Freudian interpretation?

The mysterious song title that no one seems to be able to find on the web...

In our age of instant discovery and apps that can tell you right away what that great song that just caught you by surprise is, no one  (on message boards...answer websites...anywhere!) seems to be able to figure out who is singing this amazing song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOpj06MP0Ao

IF you have any idea, please let me know because no amount of lyrics searches or "Smallville" forum board discussions can unearth the answer to the force behind this song...

The haunting sounds were featured on the latest episode (called "Icarus") and was one of the most fitting placements of a song in any tv show in recent memory!

iTunes recently offered this stripped down version of  John Lennon's "Just Like Starting Over" (off Double Fantasy) for free. I downloaded it to my iPod and love it even more than the way it sounded in its original release in the early 80s.

Goldmine's website offers this wonderful book in honor of John Lennon's fabulous musical career and life:

here

  
I won't go into the details, but I just wanted to write a quick post about how easily open online personals websites like match.com can be when it comes to "romance scams," a longer and more elaborate type of the infamous 419.

This month I had a potentially harrowing experience of my own with online fraud and when I researched the subject more I was astonished to discover 1 out of 3 profiles on sites like match.com are completely fake.

I have to give credit (not really!) to the person who tried to rope me in...the scammer came up with an intriguing and interesting background for their personal history (complete with very convincing photos that most likely were stolen), but they still tripped and fell. They mistook yearning on my part (to meet someone nice and hopefully sincere) for stupidity.

For more info read here. It's one of the best sources on "romance scams" and amazingly close to what happened to me. I have to say that match.com was great about giving me a refund and helping with the situation, but I can't help but worry about particularly vulnerable people out "there" in cyberspace who may not realize what's happening to them until it's too late...

What a cute little thing this is; I saw it advertised in this Sundays' paper, in a Kohl's ad. It plays cds, cassettes, vinvl and even MP3s...

So when I was sick a couple of weeks ago and my viewing standards considerably lowered I watched a lot of  "I Dream of Jeannie." In one very likable episode ("Jeannie, The Hip Hippie") I couldn't help but find the "fake" music group Jeannie put together very catchy.

I didn't realize that two of the guys she blinked into her living room were actually Tommy Boyce and Bruce Hart, often associated with the sound of the Monkees. They had a huge hit with "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" (a song I used to love as a little girl.)

But a bit unnerving (and unexpected) was the sight of a young Phil Spector playing himself and nodding enthusiastically to the "new sound" of the group Jeannie slipped in to his office.