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Marcy planned a super awesome surprise for me last night.. She took me to Concrete Frequency: Songs of the City at the Walt Disney Music Hall.. It was an amazing lineup with 14 musicians, each of which sang two songs. The songs were supposed be around the theme “Songs of the City,” and each artist was encouraged to talk a little bit about each song. Nobody had a full band — most just had a guitar or piano as accompaniment, and when they weren’t performing, everyone was just sitting around the stage on a bunch of sofas.

It was a really awesome show — my favorites were Sondre Leche, Money Mark, Marc Bianchi, and Zooey Deschanel…

Before the show, I was berated for taking a picture of the stage, but alas, someone was able to snag a recording of Zooey’s song and posted it to YouTube.

hooray for the internets!

Zooey is supposedly working on an album with M. Ward, that should launch sometime this year… In the meantime, here’s a few songs from seeqpod:

Anyway.. thanks Marcy for a super super night. xoxo.

This was a good year for me musically, me thinks… I took a look at my Last.fm chart, as well as my iTunes to gather some data.. here are my top 11 tracks of 2007..

1. Your Hand in Mine – Explosions in the Sky
2. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
3. My Favourite Book – Stars
4. I Defy – Joan as Policewoman
5. Foundations – Kate Nash
6. Your Red Dress – Alaska in Winter
7. Sky Blue Sky – Wilco
8. My Eyes – Travis
9. New Young Pony Club – Ice Cream
10. To Build A Home – The Cinematic Orchestra
11. The Salmon Dance (feat Fatlip) – The Chemical Brothers

Well, I guess these were not necessarily all released in 2007, but, these tracks came to my attention in the past year…

Here they all are, in a Seeqpod player, for your listening enjoyment:

mahna mahnah from sinned on Vimeo.

dance party from merpeck on Vimeo.

Yay, it’s 19 versions of my favorite holiday song…

SeeqPod Music beta – Playable Search

Stay warm, everyone.

Woohoo!

So, my buddy Brian has created this awesome podcasting solution (that anyone who is audio or video podcasting should definitely check out…)

Anyway, I’m giving it a try for my holiday mix…. This way, you don’t have to download all of the tracks, and you can listen right through your browser! Castfire rocks.. I’m gonna start making more shows, methinks.

Thanks Brian!!

Enjoy!!

Woohoooo.. with the passing of Thanksgiving, we’re officially into the Holiday season… And what does that mean? Christmas Music! Yay! So, the fourth annual “Dennis’ Christmas Mix” is now complete… Tell me if you want a copy, and I’ll send you the link. It’s a 109mb download though, so it’s gonna take some time… If you want a real CD, just let me know and I’ll burn you one.

I tried to make a seeqpod playlist, but like most of these songs aren’t even on there.. oh well. Here’s a tracklist..

Let It Snow Let It Snow – Dean Martin
The Christmas Song – The Ravonettes
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Chris Isaak
Sleigh Ride – Relient k
Fairytale Of New York – No Use For A Name
Baby It’s Cold Outside - Built For The Sea
Santa Baby (Alexkidd Remix) – Eartha Kitt
I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You – Claudine Longet
Holiday Twist – Los Straitjackets
Holy, Holy, Holy – Sufjan Stevens
The Little Drummer Boy - Jackson 5
Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas) – The Decemberists
A Great Big Sled (Feat. Toni Halliday) - The Killers
Merry Christmas Again… – The Young Republic
Christmas (baby Please Come Home) – 1980
Mele Kelikimaka - Luke
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – Billy Bob Thornton & The Boxmasters
O Holy Night – Jewel
Please Come Home for Christmas – Yachts
My Grown-Up Christmas List – Kelly Clarkson
All I Want For Christmas Is You – Mike Viola And The Candy Butchers
Silent Night – Sinead O’Connor
A New Year (Live) – Stars

Happy Holidays!

The days are rapidly getting shorter. Even here in SF, the fall air is crisp and nips at your nose… Last night, a bunch of us got together and had our traditional “pre-thanksgiving dinner” at Kim’s house, and it was sooo tasty.

So, in honor of my favorite eating holiday, I’ve created a little playlist for your enjoyment whilst lying on the couch in a turkey daze..

SeeqPod Music beta – Playable Search

So, curl up on the couch, snuggle up and enjoy.

Thanks Marcy for the inspiration for this post.

So yah… There has been a ton of awesome music comin’ round town lately. Insane. Woohoo. Good stuff.

So my week of music started off with a FREE Chromeo show at Mezzanine… I figured it was a Monday night, so it wouldn’t be THAT crowded, despite there being over 3,000 people on the RSVP list.. I was wrong. Dana and I got to Mezzanine around 10:30pm, and we made it to the front of the line and then… DENIED. We were the NEXT people in, and they cut off capacity. Poop. That kinda sucked. But, at least I got a picture with the bouncer.

But, whatever.. cuz my week of music continued on Tuesday.. Jude joined me, and we headed to Z-Trip at the Independent. He’s touring with Gift of Gab and Aceyalone, and they apparently did the soundtrack to some video game. Z threw out a copy of the video game at the show, which hit me in the head. I don’t have an xbox 360, but at least I got a free game. Woo. In any case, Z-trip ROCKED the house. And I love the Independent. Such a good venue.

So yah.. I missed the Chromeo show on Monday… But… Marcy was on the list for the Thursday night show in LA.. Hmmm.. this.. just.. might.. work…. And.. I like road trips.. So… I headed down to LA. Woohoo. Chromeo was actually only just ok, but, the openers were quite fantastic, including the kids from the Low End Theory party that was usually at the Echoplex that night. And I got to hang out with Marcy. Super bonus happy fun time..

But wait, there’s more… Friday night, I had tickets to the Daft Punk show at the Greek theater in Berkeley… so yah, I drove back up to SF, just in time to join up with the party bus that Julia arranged.

Yah.. Daft Punk was off the hook.. The French duo was able to get the entire place up on their feet, and I’ve never been to such an energetic show there. Incredible. The visuals were absolutely amazing. Good times.

I took a little break over the weekend (who goes out on weekends anyway), and then the week of music came to a close on Monday… Matt Kenny had an extra ticket to the Smashing Pumpkins show at the Fillmore… The Pumpkins were playing something like 14 shows there, so I figured.. why not? I mean.. it was the super crazy week of fun music, afterall.

The Pumpkins played a 3.5 hour set. Yah.. that’s a long time, especially for ADD me. And honestly, not being a huge Pumpkins fan, I only recognized a few of the songs — although honestly, I think a lot of the stuff they played hardly anyone really knew. In the middle of the show, Billy gave a little speech about how this was a new band or something or other and that they were going to be moving forward. All I can say that is he is one tall dude. I mean, the guitar looks like a toy in his hands. Yah. I’m glad I saw them and all, it was a decent enough show, but yah.. once is enough (but not for Matt Kenny, who went like 6 times)…

And with that.. my baker’s week (8 days) of music came to an end. Yah.. good times. I like music. A lot.

Kekeke.. Andy sent me this page about beatbots and it’s so frikkin cool. Watch the beatbot dance to Spoon — it’s not just a simple “move to the beat” algorithm either — the little guy has a few different dances as the song progresses. Kekeke. I want one.

(Kekeke is very appropriate here cuz the robot, Keepon, is Japanese.)

Kekeke.