You know what? I think a lot of Vienna Teng songs have extraordinarily good parts in them, and then some other parts that I don’t like. “taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth” I really like, but the chorus not so much. “like a phoenix you rise from the ashes” i like very very much, but “heyyyyy” at the end I don’t like so much. I think that “heyyyyeyyeyyyeyyy” kind of thing comes across much better for her live, so maybe that’s why she’s gone with the “I will sing in a whisper, as if I am lying down on the floor” approach with her newest CD. I think this because I perceive that my own singing comes across better live than in recordings, not because I actually know anything about Vienna Teng. No, that’s being unfair to myself, I’ve seen her perform like 6 times. She’s really good live. (As a contrast I think Guster comes across better on CD–well, Ryan’s voice at least. But who knows; maybe the times I saw Vienna live she was really awesome and the times I saw Guster live he was really tired or something.)
Someone random left a comment on my flickr of David Berkeley singing with Vienna Teng, and besides demonstrating my internet savvy by nounifying “flickr,” I went and obediently downloaded the link to the interview she did of him on her podcast/website. Apparently her podcast is … interviewing many many many many different singer/songwriters. The only other one I recognized after a quick glance was Kyler England, whose podcast file was missing alas, and who I only know because she opened for Vienna Teng (and sang harmony on city hall on the album). There are many many many singer/songwriters out there trying to make it in the world. I, being part of the ‘general [ignorant] population,’ only hear about the ones that make it somehow, and thus about the ones that tour with the ones that make it somehow, and this is such a small small segment of all the ones out there that it is depressing. There is so much good music out there, how could you possibly listen to it all? Or even find out about it in the first place? How do people find it in them to create things out of nothing like this? No, of course a song isn’t created out of nothing, you must practice your instrument to be familiar enough with it to play it while you sing, and surely there is a learning process in weaving melodies together, and if you mean to write a meaningful song it must be born of some kind of interesting thought. It just seems so… intangible, not like carting cement somewhere and building a house with it. Obviously.
Now that I know a few rudimentary things about finite groups, maybe I will take “Simple Finite Group (of order 2)” and slo-jam-ify it or something to sing in Spot the Octopus (cuz just arranging it straight would be lame). http://www.kleinfour.com/ (though I’m sure you’ve all seen the video, it’s been a few years) and http://www.stanford.edu/~lekanw/random/music/simplefinite.html for an explanation. Their entire albumful of math songs is on itunes and napster and everything. Furthermore I am impressed by their bottle choir. The end.