Randle_Revar's Journal: OSCon and Steely Dan

Tomorrow should be all sorts of fun! First I am going to spend some time at OSCon. I am just going to the expo, because I don't have the $ for the main part. But it should be fun anyway, what with all that Open Source around :-)

After that, I am going to see Steely Dan and Michael McDonald at the Clark County Amphitheater! I only "discovered" SD last fall, but it has become my favorite band, as one glance at my last.fm profile will tell you (wow, last.fm changed the look of the website). When I discover new music, I always listen to almost nothing but that for several months and then it just becomes another band that I like. However, this seems different because I have been listening to lots of SD for 9 to 10 months, with several interruptions for other music. I keep coming back to SD, which is why it is officially my favorite band. Kind of like how my "default" reading material is Tolkien + the Valdemar series + Pern (no, PERN, not Pr0n) + Wheel of Time. If I don't have anything new to read, I re-read one of those.

I really need to get as much live music as I can, because most of my favorite bands/musicians are a fair bit older than me, and I am afraid they will retire before I have a chance to see them live. So far I have only seen the Doobie Brothers and a couple local Montana bands live. Actually, I saw the Doobies twice but the fist time I was in... Junior High, I think. Anyway, I was young and had a much stronger social phobia back then, so I didn't enjoy it properly. But this summer is great, I get to see this concert and in August Blue Oyster Cult is coming to the county fair.

That seems so strange

[Engineer-Poet]

I almost cannot comprehend not having heard Steely Dan before. It has been such a part of the atmosphere since I can remember, on both commercial (when I still listened to it) and public radio.

But not everyone who hears it becomes a fan. The cerebral style of Becker and Fagin is something that most of us have to grow into, I guess... and some, whose expectations are shaped by country or "Christian Rock" (gag) will turn it off before giving themselves a chance to try to grok it.

What a loss that is, and not

Re:That seems so strange

[Randle_Revar]

For a long time I knew I liked classic rock, but I hadn't heard much of it, and a lot of what I had heard, I didn't necessarily know the name of (song or artist). When I moved and started college I started listening to the classic rock station and began to learn names of songs and artists and I heard stuff I hadn't before. I had heard "Don't Take Me Alive", "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Reelin' In The Years" etc. but I hadn't paid much attention (I don't know how I missed the guitar solo in "Reelin' In T

Dying public radio

[Engineer-Poet]

You used to be able to hear it out of Detroit, but that station killed an award-winning lineup of daytime alternative music programming and became 100% network news and talk shows. What an incredible waste. Now I have no idea where you'd hear it. Maybe if you Google for playlists?