Tag: music

SOUNDS

She’s Quite the Mediator

X. Jupiter Hart

Figured out how to fully adjust the settings on the new Google Chromecast sometime after the first week of having it. By that point it had become a regular part of my network, with least two other devices frequently talking to it. I immediately reckoned it ought to be bestowed with a proper name, upon learning that the name actually can be changed. For easy identification on the network. Just like I do with all my other devices. “Chromecast” (the factory default) is just not a memorable network identifier. It’s the technological equivalent of naming your dog “Dog”.

After weighing the pros and cons of several worthy options (and at least one completely inappropriate one), I named the Chromecast after a song Bob Seger once wrote in homage to a certain Windsor radio legend. Although it was Thin Lizzy’s better-known cover version of said song that ultimately inspired the name.

Further investigation revealed that Rosalie’s remote control is a Bluetooth-enabled gizmatron that can also be given a name. So I called the remote control Eddie Willers, because it’s been pretty much abandoned and left for dead since I figured out how to control it all with my phone. Which I call Little Suzi.

There’s a story behind all those neglected Facebook notifications…
SOUNDS

The Great Pumpkin Has Been Kind To Me This Year

X. Jupiter Hart

I never win anything, but I won a big screen TV. Being a student still has a few perks, I guess. While it’ll certainly be something to watch the Leafs get their asses handed to them in spectacular hi def this season, I’m totally loving the fact that Sweet Lorraine (my laptop) can talk to this thing and tell it to play my music in such a way that the notes shatter my bones.

SOUNDS

The Only Song I Ever Shazammed Behind The Wheel

X. Jupiter Hart

Yeah, you read that right. In my defense, I was travelling on a country road off the main highway where eighteen-wheelers dare not tread and is generally not considered an important economic artery by any stretch (I could’ve just taken the highway to the beach, but where’s the fun in that?). At that particular hour there were no other vehicles in sight, the only sign of non-corvine motile life being the swarm of flies I saw laying their eggs on that dead skunk a few clicks back. So I figured I could probably get away with slowing the vehicle down to a near-stop for the five seconds it would take to unlock my phone and hit the big Shazam button.

Greatest. Invention. Ever.

That song playing on the radio was one I’d never heard before. Couldn’t put my finger on what it was about it that piqued my interest. Perhaps it was the atmospheric quasi-Harrisonian chord progression, or the harmonic interplay between the guitar and vocal lines, or the artful use of what initially sounded to me like the choir setting on a synth (but was probably just plain ol’ backup vocals) towards the end. It certainly wasn’t the main hook, which sounded like an afterthought in the songwriting process, like something one of the band members let his five-year-old kid have a go at writing because he had no more fucks left to give. The inappropriate Frankie Valli impression employed by the lead singer during said hook only increased its Whiskey Tango Foxtrot quotient. But I still had to know what that song was in spite of its warts, and had precious little faith in the likelihood of the on-air talent’s announcement of such after the song was over.

I wouldn’t find out what the song was until after I arrived at the beach, as there was no cellular service in the area I was in when I initially Shazammed it. But once the result came in, it turned out to be an evidently lesser-known hit from a Vancouver quintet I’ve heard of. A band that broke up well before I started growing hair on my nether regions, yet seems to get a significant amount of airplay on this station in particular. Mere days ago I became aware of the fact that the drummer of said band has been dealing with some unfortunate medical issues lately. Not sure if that’s the reasoning, or merely because the program director is a fanboy.