Singing in your sleep - "Hallelujah"

I'm here in San Diego over Fall Break with Emerald and Lauren. We are in the motel and I just woke up - Emerald and Lauren are just waking up now.

I woke up with a song stuck in my head - "Hallelujah", the Jeff Buckley version. I always wonder how I can have a song stuck in my head when I haven't heard it played. Was I dreaming the song?

Paul McCartney wrote some of his best melodies while he was asleep. He would often wake up in the morning with a familiar tune in his head and swear he made it up, like a higher force brought it to him during the night.

But why do I wake up with somebody else's song in my head?

Different songs will remind me of a different time in my life, so it makes sense that if I'm thinking about a certain instance in time, a song from that time will pop into my head. It's also true that sometimes I'll hear a song and it will remind me of an instance that may or may not actually have anything to do with that song. For example, every time I hear "Sound of Settling" by Death Cab for Cutie, I remember driving in the car with my high school journalism teacher on the way to a Journalism convention in Ellensberg, Washington (about four hours from Seattle), over the summer going into junior year. He drove a stick shift on a little black car. I remember the song came on on the mixed CD he brought for the car ride as he was explaining to me how a stick shift worked. I always remember that trip when I hear that Death Cab song

The Jeff Buckley version of "Hallelujah" reminds me of a couple different things. Mostly it reminds me of the show The O.C., since the song was in the soundtrack for that episode. I know a lot of music snobs have a big problem with the O.C., but no matter what one's feelings are about the show, I have to give it credit for what it did for the music scene during its first season. It introduced a new generation of adolescents to underground music, and actually got them excited to hear something new. At the end of each episode, right before the credits, the show would list the music heard in that episode. After a while, the show got out of hand, and they just made soundtrack after soundtrack of songs that I couldn't keep up with, but I will always love the first soundtrack to the show. My favorites on the mix are "Just a Ride" by Jem, "Honey and the Moon" by Joseph Arthur, "The Way We Get By" by Spoon, "How Good it Can Be" by The 88, and "Dice" by Finley Quaye. The music on the mix goes really well together, and gives me this certain calm, sunny, feeling.

I have to admit that I absolutely loved that show the first couple of seasons. It was exciting and let me into a world that was different and separate than the world within my small, sheltered, college prep high school walls. I remember it being cold and rainy in the winter, and I would be in a down coat and wearing a scarf and soaked from the rain, and then the O.C. would come on and it would take me to sunny, southern California where everyone was in their swimsuits down by the beach.

I can't even count how many different versions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" have been sung. Besides Jeff Buckley's, there's versions by Imogen Heap, Rufus Wainwright, and Ryan Adams. Obviously the song means a lot to a bunch of different people.

I don't know why it was in my head this morning. But, it isn't unusual. I wake up every morning with a song stuck in my head - it just shows how important music has become to my life. I mostly go around every day singing songs in my head. I don't mind. It makes my life musical.

Genius!

If you haven't already, you must must MUST update your itunes so you can add its new feature, Genius.

Genius automatically creates playlists for you from the songs you have on your itunes, based on the song you are currently listening to. I decided I really wanted to make a '60's British Invasion mix, so instead of going through all 3,432 songs that I currently have on Itunes and honing out the ones that would fit in with the playlist I wanted, I clicked the song "Play with Fire" by the Rolling Stones and then hit the "genius" button - and voila! A playlist of 1960's rock appeared. Among the songs on the mix are "She's Not There" by the Zombies, "Season of the Witch" by Donovan, "Back Door Man" by The Doors, and "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin.

Not everything ended up being from the British Invasion (kind of weird the Beatles didn't pop up - since I have 216 Beatles song on Itunes), but you can edit the playlist Genius creates as well. You can take off songs that you don't want on the mix, and you can also ask it to add more songs to it. Once you have your ideal playlist, you can save it and add it to your I-pod, if you so desire.

I collect music. I'll hear a song on the radio I like while I'm driving, and the second I get home, I'll download it from itunes. Any CD I buy (yes, I still buy CD's - I like physically owning music, and I like supporting artists who make great music), I'll put directly onto Itunes. Yet, after a while, it's hard to keep track of all the music that I have in my collection. Oftentimes a song will get lost amongst the thousands of others and I'll forget all about it. I don't often use shuffle because there are just too many songs, and I'll end up skipping over most of them because I won't have the patience to listen to a song I don't recognize when I'm in the mood for a particular song. Genius is great because it will add a song I forgot I had to the mix it has created, and it will be a song that I'll be able to listen to because it will be the same genre as the other songs on the playlist. I made a Genius mix based off of the song "West Coast" by Coconut Records, which is the actor Jason Schwartzman's side project (indie rock is the best way to categorize it), and I rediscovered the song "Skinny Love"" by Bon Iver.

My dad heard "Skinny Love" on satellite radio on a station called "Left of Center" that plays underground mostly alternative and folk rock music, and he loved the song so much that he downloaded it. When he sent it to me, I listened to it once as background music when I was busy doing something else, so I didn't give it my full attention and then dismissed it. When it popped up on Genius, I heard it again and really liked it. The opening acoustic guitar rift has this mellow, melancholy sound that just sucks you in. Iver starts out singing quietly, kind of moaning, and then picks up volume and speed by the bridge. He sings angrily, "And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be fine, and I told you to be better, and I told you to be kind. And if all your love was wasted, then who the hell was I?" It's pretty amazing - check it out!

I'm leaving for San Diego tonight for a few days, so I'm going to make a Genius mix of good music for traveling. I'll base it off of the song "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead off of American Beauty - probably my all-time favorite song. Ever.

Peace.

First post!

Today at lunch, my two friends Emerald and Becca suggested I create a blog dedicated to music, since I want to go into music journalism or music business (or maybe even both!) after college. I spent summer of 2007 working Promotions for a classic rock station back in my hometown of Seattle, and this last summer went back to work there and also interned at Experience Music Project (EMP), a museum in Seattle dedicated to rock 'n' roll music. Plus, here at college in Claremont, I work for our underground radio station doing Promotional work.

I told Emerald and Becca about how I wanted to start a project where I would basically write about everything I experienced this summer - all the concerts I went to, all the concerts I worked at, all the musicians I met, etc., and also the music events I get to be a part of here at college working for the radio. However, I wasn't really sure how to go about starting a project like this (especially being as busy as we college students are). They suggested a blog because it seems to be the easiest way to express yourself in our now internet-crazed society. As soon as I figure out how, I'll make this blog open for other people to post (comments and posts must be approved first) and maybe we can start a new internet phenomenon! (Yea..wishful thinking, right? Oh well...)

Stay tune for ramblings about music. Because, really, music is just awesome.