Steve Recommends...

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Hi I'm Steve - http://www.stevelawson.net is where I live most of my life online, but I like recommending things, and this seems like the perfect format for posting embedded players from BandCamp, videos from YouTube, and recommendations for things to listen to, look at, watch and read from elsewhere.

Enjoy, and please forward on the links to the things you find - this is meant to be a launch pad not a destination...

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15 Albums That Changed My Life - the Spotify Playlist.

Back in February, I wrote a blog-post on my main site, entitled '15 albums that changed my life…'

It's a great intro to the music that has shaped my life for the last 37 years. 

Now I've done the Spotify Playlist to go with it. so you can hear them all, if you happen to live in a country that has Spotify. 

Enjoy.

(And here's my list of favourite albums from the last decade on my stevelawson.net blog ) 

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Posted 1 day ago

We Are The Banzai Buddy Band!

Comedy music is a REALLY tough thing to do. If it's not funny, you fail. If it's crap music, you fail. You have to win twice to win once. But when people get it right, it can be awesome. Frank Zappa often got it right. Flight Of The Conchords get it right. Rosie Thomas separates out the two and manages to be an incredible singer songwriter AND a genius stand-up. 

Enter The Banzai Buddy Band. Think Zappa updated for an internet generation. Actually, it's pretty much half way between Zappa (especially Mike Outram's insane guitar playing) and Flight Of The Conchords (geek references, pastiches, cheesey drum programming). 

It works, it's fab, go and buy it. (pay what you like on Bandcamp, via the widget below.) 

http://theelectriccampfire.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-the-banzai-buddy-band">In The Lair Of The Dungeon Master by The Electric Campfire

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Posted 1 day ago

Debbie Davies' British Council video

Over the last few months, I've been involved with an amazing collaboration between the Tuttle Club and the British Council (via their thinktank, Counterpoint) to look at ways that the work, ethos and message of the British Council can make use of social technologies. 

My part in it was to do some training/explaining/inspiring of BC staff relating to what's made possible by social media (along with the genius that is Christian Payne, AKA @Documentally)

One of the other projects was making videos that tell stories about the BC, that look at what the BC does and how people understand that. There are a few, and they're all fab, but this one made by Debbie Davies is particularly funny. 

Enjoy 

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Posted 2 days ago

Things that happen now that couldn't happen before...

So, my friend Kate (@radiokate on twitter) saw this a she was coming up the escalator last night. This morning she posted it to the web via twitpic, tweeted about it, loads of us saw it, shared is, and in just a few hours it's had over 4000 views.

No magazine, TV, media involved. Just an amazing pic, captured on a phone, shared with friends, and re-shared a lot.

Imagine if she'd taken this in the 90s. On film. Had to wait to get it processed, decide it was worth submitting, work out how to, get a second print, send it in and leave it to some magazine picture editor to decide it was worth sharing.

Not any more.

This my friends, is a very good thing.

via twitpic.com

 

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Posted 3 days ago

John Moulder - Bifröst

Yesterday was eMusic-refresh-day for me - 50 virgin downloads waiting to be used on all kinds of hitherto unknown musical delights.

One of those unexpected pleasures is this album by John Moulder - I found via a list of ECM albums, which lead to be searching for albums by bassist Arild Andersen, this was in the list of albums he was on, I liked the cover, had a listen and loved it.

I know very little about John Moulder - his own website is pretty crappy, his record label site is even worse... Maybe you know him - if so, let me know interesting things about him below.

I also can't find any proper full track previews of his music (duh!), so the ones on eMusic will have to do til he gets smart and lets us actually hear his music...

Anyway, it's fab, worth a listen and dropping a few downloads on.

via emusic.com

 

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Filed under  //  downloads   emusic   guitar   jazz   john moulder  
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Posted 3 days ago

Renaud Garcia Fons - Berimbass

There's a truism in music that the greatest technical exponents of a particular instrument are rarely its most engaging composers or improvisors. There are a handful of glaring exceptions to this rule - John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Michael Manring... And Renaud Garcia Fons. 

He's a French double-bassist, who was around on the esoteric French jazz scene for a while before forging his own path playing a beautiful mixture of jazz, chamber music and middle-eastern flavoured folk. His compositions are outstanding, his choice of musical associates is exceptional, and his bass playing is genuinely beyond anything I've ever heard anywhere ever on the instrument. Few bits of music have ever made my jaw physically drop. His tunes regular induce that reaction. 

Here's a vid on youtube, but pick up any of his albums - Entremundo, Oriental Bass and Arcoluz are all outstanding. 

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Posted 4 days ago

REALLY looking forward to Slingers

I love seeing my friends do well. I like to watch them learn and grow and progress through life, especially when they're awesomely talented and it's just a matter of everyone else catching up with the facts.

So it is with Slingers - a sci-fi series written and created by my friend Mike Atherton, AKA Sizemore, that could well be the next Firefly, but please God without the getting inexplicably canceled mid-season... 

here's the sizzle for it. It looks like magic to me :)

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Filed under  //  friends   sci-fi   sizemore   social media   television   tv   video   vimeo  
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Posted 6 days ago

Cover versions that are AWESOME but shouldn't work...

Some cover versions really sound terrible on paper, but something about them is awesome. Makes them magical. 

One of my favourites is this - Cyndi Lauper's version of What's Going On: 

What are your favourite unexpectedly awesome cover versions? 

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Posted 6 days ago

The Cure - Hungry Ghost.

End of year best-of lists usually pass me by. Partly because it's often tough to weigh the merits of new music in such a short space of time, and partly because my music buying rarely has anything to do with when it was released, so I'm just as likely to have bought all 70s music or 80s music as I am to have bought anything released this year. 

As a result my favourite records of any particular year tend not to be defined by the music that was released that year, but by the things I've listened to the most. And one of my most listened to albums of 2009 is 4:13 Dream by The Cure. It's so great to hear a band this far into their career still sounding like they mean it. All credit to Robert Smith for maintaining a sense of vitality in his music. 

Here's Hungry Ghost, recorded live at the NME Poll Winners gig earlier in the year. We were there when this was recorded. It's awesome. 

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Posted 7 days ago

The music we played in the delivery room

Here's an exhaustive list of the music leading up to, during, and the 5 or 6 hours after Baby Flapjack was born. All completely awesome. 

Alan Pasqua - Russian Peasant
David Torn - Lars And The Real Girl (soundtrack) 
Tracy Chapman - Crossroads
(back to Lars And The Real Girl - was playing as he was born) 
Steve Lawson and Lobelia - Live In Nebraska (I played it too him about half an hour after he was born)
Theo Travis/Robert Fripp - Thread
Rosie Thomas - These Friends Of Mine
Rob Ickes - Road Song

Then this morning, we listed to Pat Metheny's 'One Quiet Night'. 

There you go - all brilliant natal and post-natal music. Highly, highly recommended. 

Here's a Spotify playlist of as much of this stuff as is on there...

...our live in Nebraska EP isn't on there, but it is here - 

Oh, and what's also a MUST for the delivery room if you want music is an Altec Lansing Orbit speaker - incredible quality sound from a tiny tiny speaker, connects direct to iPod, or anything else with a headphone out (I use it with my Nokia N97 around the house) - best gadget I've bought in YEARS.

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Posted 11 days ago