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grimelords · 6 years ago

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My September playlist is here, 37 songs from opera to bossa nova to a song about marrying Tom Collins to thank him for the sips. I’m hopeful there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ll enjoy

Been Drinkin’ Water Out Of Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: I love this song because every other version I’ve ever heard sings it as ‘I’ve been drinking muddy water, sleeping in a hollow log’, but straight up drinking out of the log sounds so much better. Also I just found out that this version I’ve loved for years was the original Alan Lomax recording and not a later one like I’d assumed, which is nice!

Tom Collins - The Sloppy Boys: I have not been able to get this song out of my head since I heard it. “I sent an edible arrangement to my travel agent because they had free booze on the carnival cruise” is a masterpiece of rhyme and the way he screams “hold him in my grips!” is just perfect.

What Means Of Witchery - Gospel: This is a perfect song. I think it’s criminal that Gospel aren’t more widely known and I think I’ve decided to make it my life mission to spread the word. The gospel of Gospel if you will. You don’t have to. I had a long daydream a little while ago about transcribing the drums in this song, which feels like an unresolved brain problem but exemplifies just how much I love it.

A Saint Among Madmen - Helen Of Troy: This is the band the drummer from Gospel was in before Gospel and they’re really really good. This sort of spoken word song is hard to pull off without sounding totally corny and I think him being so low in the mix really helps. It reminds me of some early At The Drive-In instrumental wise. The way it finally kicks off, and the sort of yelping desperate tone to the screams in the second half is just so satisfying.

shimripl casual - Autechre: Another cut I enjoyed from Autechre’s immense new album as I work on comprehending it. I like this song because it sounds like a field recording of a prototype mechanical swamp.

New Rules - Dua Lipa: This song feels like it deserves a marching band. There's just so much going on rhythmically, the dancehall rhythm at the centre of it is constantly augmented by all sorts of other percussion, the great snare work throughout, the perfectly formed tiny fill that introduces the chorus, it's just an absolute feast. I only found out the other day that the guy who produced this, Ian Kirkpatrick, also did Bad Liar - what a year for Ian!

My Girls - Tears For Fears: Hey Tears For Fears did a cover of My Girls by Animal Collective and this might be controversial but I think it's better than the original. It tightens up the structure and differentiates the sections a bit, so that it changes from a slow building jam into an odd pop song. They also draw out the harmonies more so that you really notice how funny it is to sing 'my father's graaave' over and over in a big bass under everything.

Crosses - Zero 7 and Jose Gonzales: Sia's career from before she was world-famous Sia is so interesting because she had like a full 15 years of being notable around the world in a bunch of different ways before it all coalesced into Big Sia. She was a backing vocalist in Jamiraquai's band for god's sake. She also was the de facto vocalist of this downtempo band Zero 7 for three albums, but she's not on this song but Jose Gonzales also sang on about half the songs on this album is! This is a remix/cover of his solo song Crosses but this version really shows the song in a whole different light to the original.

Napoleon Solo - At The Drive-In: Years ago in high school one of about 5 videos I had on my iPod was this version of Napoleon Solo from 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nlfmqsx1r0 and I would watch it over and over and over. It's also a good example of why Cedric's lyrics are like they are. He just talks like that. He says things like 'they had the acme weight dropped on them' to describe his friends who died in a car crash and you just have to go along with it.

Act Three: No. 27 - A Real Slow Drag - Scott Joplin: Did you know Scott Joplin, the man behind everyone's favourite song The Entertainer, wrote TWO operas?? Because I didn't. One of them is unfairly lost to history but the other, Treemonisha, was written in 1911 but not properly performed until the Joplin renaissance in 1972. This is the big finale and it's partly because of the performance but partly because of the way he wrote it but it feels a lot more modern than any other operas I've heard from the era. Even though it is mostly a march, it feels like melodically and structurally he's drawing on pre-blues and gospel music in a way that presages rock and roll and the influence it's had on all music since - it feels more like a musical than an opera.

Celia - Cults: Cults have a new EP and it's an entirely different sound for them. Pounding, dark, Ochestral Manouveurs In The Dark type synths under their best lyrics in a long time.

Sharp Dressed Man - Xiu Xiu: Xiu Xiu did this ZZ Top cover for The AV club and I absolutely love it. It sounds like Queens Of The Stone Age if Josh Homme’s charisma stat overflowed and reset back to 0. This recording they did later is is great but the original video is even better https://youtu.be/0SG6yDSbtxULazy

Nina - Greg Phillinganes: This was a recommendation from my friend and yours @megapope and thank god he did because I've had it stuck in my head all month. Written by Donald Fagen from Steely Dan for Michael Jackson's keyboard player's solo album, a true behind-the-scenes hit.

Gobbledigook - Sigur Ros: I was thinking about how after Takk Sigur Ros got so big and famous and rich off advertising money for their beautiful music and then made the best move possible and pivoted abruptly away from ethereal graceful floating melodies hung from the moon by a gossamer string to good old fashioned stompers made of wood. This is another in my very short playlist of songs like this and The Dodos first album where the driving rhythm plus acoustic guitars are the centre of it all. A little genre that I think has a lot left in it to explore.

Betty Dreams Of Green Men - Guerilla Toss: This feels like the energy drink version of Aqua by Eurythmics from last month's playlist. This sounds like BATS to me and I'm excited because there's not enough music like this around. Extremely energetic power music about some kind of 1950s alien invasion.

#NeverUseTheInternetAgain - Homeboy Sandman and Edan: I love this song. It starts out with a sentiment everyone can agree on (facebook sucks, the internet is bad) and quickly veers into 50 year old man gripes (GPS has ruined everyone's sense of direction? you should order pizza over the phone? match.com??) but it's got such conviction in the hook that I'm sold anyway and have pledged to #neverusetheinternetagain.

Vanishing Hour - Helen Of Troy: This is another Helen Of Troy song but it basically sounds like an unheard Gospel song, which is incredible new for me; the guy who will never stop tracking down every cassette and live recording they ever did. I don't know how the membership of Helen Of Troy went beyond sharing a drummer but the vocalist of Gospel is unmistakably in the mix here and it sounds fantastic.

Canon x Love S.O.S. - Justice: Another great cut from Justice's new sort of live album. This whole album has really made me appreciate Love S.O.S. a lot more. It comes back two or three times and I'm grateful every time. It's a perfect glam rock sentiment. Sending a love ambulance because there's a love emergency happening.

Mariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del Rey: I feel like we don't deserve new Lana yet. I'm so grateful but I'm still getting over Lust For Life and she's going to do this to me? Amazing.

I Got Cash - Brooklyn Funk Essentials: Another @megapope find. Perhaps the most powerful song I've ever heard, in the sense that I feel like I'm being personally admonished throughout. The power structures at play here are towering and the beat.. it's funky.

Pray - Jungle: Jungle flat out released five (5) singles before their album came out and they were all so amazing that I was worried they wouldn't have anything left for the actual album but guess what: the whole thing is absolutely gold, and especially this last song Pray. The feeling I get from the hook into the big drop feels like being dropped bodily into a big tub of honey, if there was a way that that could feel good instead of terrifying. It’s just luscious.

Sad Rude Future Dude - Ball Park Music: I googled “haven’t had a friend in years” trying to remember what this song was called and became instantly suicidal at the sheer amount of reddit threads that phrase returned. Which is I suppose exactly what this song’s about: posting on reddit about how the internet has ruined my relationships and brain, but in a very upbeat, singalong way. This song is a good example of how a dynamic drummer can completely elevate a song to another level.

Knuck If You Buck - Crime Mobb: Knuckle up if you're buck wild it's Crime Mobb. The best named crew since Ruff Sqwad. The two women in this (Princess and Diamond) absolutely carry the whole song. Everyone else has got such a mopey boring flow but they both come in so lively and so aggressive you cannot get away from it. Is there a more powerful opener than "I come in the club, shaking my dreads, throwing these bows and busting these heads"? Is there a better line in general than "Crime Mob, it ain't no stopping, it be like Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden"?

Deixa - Toquinho: I'm quickly becoming one of these 'the end is near' sandwich board guys grabbing people on the street and yelling at them except about bossa nova. It is criminal how much this whole genre has been reduced to funny elevator music or The Girl From Ipanema as ironic intermission music when it has stuff like this to offer us. I really recommend this whole album, I've been obsessed with it over the last couple weeks and it's just breathtaking start to finish.

The Way - Friends: This band's spotify page is good because it's full of absolutely no-name recordings of Blank And Friends that have fucked up their tagging. Anyway I have never heard a song like this, and I didn't think it was possible to use big 80s pinch harmonic guitars like this but they pulled it off in an absolutely beautiful way.

Mass Grave - Health and Soccer Mommy: Corrin Roddick of Purity Ring produced this new Health song which brings the degrees of separation between Health and Katy Perry down to a thrilling 1 since Purity Ring did two songs on her new album. This really does sound like Health covering a Purity Ring song and that's excellent news in my book. I don't know much about Soccer Mommy but this song has definitely inspired me to check her out so I'll undoubtedly report back on that next month.

(two circles) - Boredoms: I only just made the connection that Yamantaka Eye from Boredoms is the same Eye from from Hanatarash who famously drove a bulldozer through the back wall of a venue as part of a performance. Which I mention only because it really exemplifies just how much of a change of direction Vision Creation Newsun is from all that, just ten years later he's in a totally different direction of building something beautiful instead of tearing music (and buildings) apart at the seams. Nobody knows how to describe this album, it's space rock it's post rock it's experimental but it has something that a lot of that music doesn't - positivity. This whole album is a sun-worshipping positive fever without ever feeling lost or meandering.

Centreline - Ava Luna: I'm mad at this song. At about 1:15 they do an extremely satisfying thing sing the 'line' in 'centre line' in a deep bass and it sounds great. Then every other time that section comes around they either don't sing it or there's something else going on that obscures it and it blueballs you for the whole rest of the song. Other than that it's good, but i'm at war with this song.

Venice Bitch - Lana Del Rey: I am so excited that Lana Del Rey is finally embracing the most often ignored part of americana and facilitating a jam band. This is the last thing I would expect from Jack Antonoff but he did amazingly. It sounds closer to Ultraviolence era than anything else she's done and I'm just plain excited to see what the album is going to be like if this is any indication.

Act 1 Scene 4: This Is Monstrous, Wozzeck! - Alban Berg: I found an english version of Wozzeck and it's one of the best opera recordings I've ever heard. It's just plain mixed and recorded well, which is a rarity when a lot of opera recordings seem like they just hung a single mic somewhere at the back of the theatre and pressed the button. Anyway here's the good bit from Wozzeck where Wozzeck goes to the doctor and the doctor yells at him for "Pissing! Pissing there on the pavement!" See, opera’s fun!

Pop Roll Flow - Clypso: I heard this song on Unearthed when they had Nick Littlemore from Pnau guest programming and I love it. It feels brand new and very familiar at the same time, every sound in it is in absolute hypercolour, and the verse vocal sounds like a cool insect is singing at me. What's not to love!

I Might Survive - Architecture In Helsinki: I always feel like Arcitechture In Helsinki are poised to make like Portugal The Man and have an international superhit off their seventh album. They have been consistently reinventing their brain of weirdo-pop every single album for 15 years now and it feels like they've still got so much more to give. This song especially deserved to be a hit in my opinion, it's pop perfection and I've come around from hating to completely loving the little 'than alive baby!' adlib near the end.

Angels - The xx: My two best friends got married to each other this month and it was beautiful. What's more, she picked the perfect song to walk down the aisle to. I'm so happy to see two of the people I love the most in love with each other, and also when I drove them to their suite after the reception my phone accidentally started playing Merzbow's new album which was good.

Jesus Was A Cross Maker - Judee Sill: I'm so glad I found out about this album. Judee Sill had a crazy life, and her wiki page is a ride but unlike a lot of musicians with a back story her music stand alone - unique, rich and beautiful. Tightly structured and thoughtfully composed for such hippy-dippy christian mythology themes, and melodically beautiful even when her voice isn't quite up to the task. It really does feel like the spirit was moving through her. This song in particular is amazing I have been straight up listening to it on repeat. The phrasing is insane, the self-harmonised vocals sound like they're phasing in a very cool way, the violins break into a Bach figure halfway through - it's just amazing. I cannot stop listening. I've also started a playlist of this, Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker by John Fahey and Jesus Came To My Brithday Party by The Middle East so I'm absolutely 'on one' as the kids say.

Rappers Convention - Harlem World Crew: another thanks to @megapope for bringing this incredible moment to my attention. A very early rap song that was recorded in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis and helpfully gives a complete breakdown of the situation in the opening verse before getting back to basics and detailing how much they love partying for the remaining 5 minutes. Music is truly incredible.

I Need A Lover - John Mellencamp: I'm learning a lot about John Mellencamp this week. Apparently this song was originally on the album 'A Biography' in 78 that didn't get a release in the US because his first album did so badly, but I Need A Lover was a top ten hit here in Australia and was thusly included on his next album a year later and blew up in the US. The other surprising thing is the album version, this version, has a fully two minute long intro before it gets to the song.

High (feat. Elton John) - Young Thug: The Lil' Nutsack song that makes Dewey Cox famous again in Walk Hard is real now and it's good as fuck.

listen here

#playlists

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dailycamilacabello · 7 years ago

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How Camila Cabello Lost Some Friends and Found Her Voice

MIAMI — Camila Cabello has only been in love once. But when it comes to crushes, she’s a connoisseur. The pop singer and songwriter, formerly of the girl group Fifth Harmony, has filled pages of notes on her iPhone with ruminations on the sugar rush of embryonic infatuation and its aftermath — words of hunger and grit that her fans turn into Instagram captions and scream back at her in concert. A pair of suggestive duets in the last two years, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” with Shawn Mendes and “Bad Things” with Machine Gun Kelly, have been streamed over 520 million times, according to Nielsen Music. Along with her breakout solo smash from last summer, “Havana,” which has led Billboard’s pop radio chart longer than any other song by a solo female artist in the past five years, they’ve helped turn her into an avatar for young girls on the cusp of steeper emotional terrain. On a December afternoon in a leafy neighborhood here, Ms. Cabello, 20, whose name is pronounced “ca-meela ca-beyo,” revisited ground zero of her romantic vicissitudes. Ten years ago, in the butterfly garden at Pinecrest Elementary School, a young Romeo set a date with her among the Panama roses and gave her her first kiss, unlocking the source code for a bottomless trove of love songs. “It was this boy that I was obsessed with my whole time in elementary school,” she recalled, standing in the garden. “He kissed me on the cheek and I ran away — I still do that when someone wants to kiss me. ”Though not yet of legal drinking age, Ms. Cabello has come a long way from the schoolyard. At 15, she was beamed into the homes of millions of Americans as a contestant on the United States version of the reality-singing competition “The X Factor.” The show placed her in a five-woman vocal group modeled on One Direction that the viewers at home named Fifth Harmony. Two albums — on Simon Cowell’s Syco label in partnership with Epic Records — and six tours followed in a span of five years, during which time Ms. Cabello was, if not officially the group’s lead, a consensus favorite, with the biggest voice and those disarming eyes. And then it all went to pieces. As manufactured pop groups tend to do. Only in this case, the split seemed sudden and surprisingly vicious: One day, Fifth Harmony was performing at the final stop of the Jingle Ball tour, smiling and hair-flipping. The next, a series of contentious and contradictory statements were released, and Ms. Cabello found herself on the lonely end of a sharp divide. That was just over a year ago. In the interim, Ms. Cabello has struck out on her own, putting her hands on the controls of her professional life for the first time. Her new album, “Camila,” arriving Jan. 12, will test her prospects as a solo proposition. The biggest stars to break away from groups — Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé — did so from stronger footing, in eras when the music industry was thriving. Today, Ms. Cabello is just one in a cacophony of voices aiming to break through in a harsh, post-streaming environment. “It’s not easy for anybody, regardless of your starting point,” said Tom Poleman, the chief programming officer for the radio conglomerate iHeartMedia, which recently booked Ms. Cabello solo for its Jingle Ball. “The field is so competitive that you really need the planets to align.” At times, sole proprietorship has been overwhelming, with people constantly asking Ms. Cabello for her creative input or asking what happened with Fifth Harmony — a subject she does her best to avoid. “I think there’s a healthy amount of space you need to give certain things,” she said. And so for 11 days in late December, in the cocoon of her hometown, she took a break. She settled into old rhythms at her family home and came to Pinecrest to pick up her younger sister, Sofia, only after wresting herself from a savored “Sex and the City” binge. (“In my heart I’m a Carrie, but sadly I think I act like a Charlotte,” she said.) On a tour of its green, al fresco campus, wearing True Religion overalls with one suspender undone and black hightop Chuck Taylors, she looked at ease and made everyone around her feel the same. An old teacher asked whether she would be going on tour soon and she said she was in no rush. “For now,” she said, “I just want to be a kid.” Ms. Cabello comes from a lineage of strivers. She was born in Havana to a Cuban mother and Mexican father and moved back and forth between Cojímar and Mexico City until age 6. One day, her mother, Sinuhe, told her she was going to Disney World, and the two spent the next month together riding by bus to an immigration center at the Mexican border with the United States. Sinuhe had been an architect in Cuba, but in Miami, where she and her daughter moved in with a close family friend, she found work in the shoe department at a Marshall’s. Alejandro, Ms. Cabello’s father, emigrated later and earned money washing cars at the mall. Eventually the couple saved enough to start their own construction company. “My parents’ story helps me to know what’s important in life,” Ms. Cabello said. “A lot of times you can be here and be on Twitter and you think that the world is the internet. But I know what it’s like in the places my family has come from and the struggles people go through.” It caught Sinuhe and Alejandro by surprise when, for her 15th birthday in 2012, Ms. Cabello asked them to drive her to audition for the second season of “The X Factor.” “She was so shy, so shy,” said Sinuhe, who now travels with her daughter on the road, describing how her oldest child would regularly burst into tears at family parties with large crowds and loud music. “We didn’t even think music was a possibility for her,” Sinuhe said. In Fifth Harmony — with Ally Brooke, Dinah Jane, Lauren Jauregui and Normani Kordei — Ms. Cabello was living a dream. The group performed at the White House (twice) and released addictive hits like “Worth It” and “Work From Home” that alone racked up over one billion streams, according to Nielsen Music, and earned them legions of fiercely loyal fans. But dreams can change. In a statement released at midnight on Dec. 18, 2016, the four other members of the group suggested that Ms. Cabello had turned her back on them, communicating her intentions to leave “through her representatives.” Ms. Cabello, in a subsequent statement of her own, said that she had long been open about her desire to explore a solo career and was blindsided by what amounted to a public excommunication. Over a feast of Cuban food at one of her family’s favorite restaurants in Miami, and in a subsequent interview in New York a week later, she agreed to speak at length about how things fell apart. She said that her collaboration in late 2015 with Mr. Mendes — the first time a Fifth Harmony member released music under her own name — had created tension; t hat she had asked to help write lyrics for Fifth Harmony songs and was rebuffed; that she initially wanted to stay in the group while working on a solo album but the other members shut her out instead. “I was just curious and I wanted to learn and I saw all these people around me making music, writing songs and being so free,” she said. “I just wanted to do that and it did not work.” Ms. Cabello said that after the awkwardness of her collaboration with Mr. Mendes, things further soured when she began attending writing sessions with producers including Diplo, Cashmere Cat and Benny Blanco. Eventually, she said, she was given an ultimatum. “It became clear that it was not possible to do solo stuff and be in the group at the same time,” she said. So she made her choice, basing it on what she said was her conviction that “if anyone wants to explore their individuality, it’s not right for people to tell you no.” Since the breakup, Ms. Cabello has tried to move on from hard feelings, throwing herself into “Camila.” (She changed its name from “The Hurting, the Healing, the Loving” partly to wash her hands of drama.) But it hasn’t always been easy. In August last year, the remaining members took a less-than-subtle jab at their former groupmate with a stunt that opened a high-profile performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. As the camera zoomed in on a dark, elevated platform showing five women in silhouette, one was dramatically yanked off the stage as if hit by a truck. Ms. Cabello’s eyes welled up as she recalled watching it live. She had been at home in the living room with her mother. “It definitely hurt my feelings,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it, I wasn’t prepared for it — especially because at that point I’d moved on from it. I was just like, ‘What? Why?’” She gathered herself. “I have to make space for the good stuff to happen in my life,” she said. “I don’t like holding onto the past, especially when it’s stuff that, in my opinion, is just petty.” Like the pop astronauts who went solo before her, Ms. Cabello is now both a known quantity and a blank slate, caught between an outsize past and an uncertain future. Her first single as a solo artist was an early artifact of this wobbly developmental period. “Crying in the Club” — an arch, dancehall-flecked power ballad released last spring — was produced by Benny Blanco from an original demo written and recorded by Sia. The track underperformed commercially and was left off the final track list of “Camila.” “The reality of that song is it doesn’t feel or sound like Camila,” said Roger Gold, Ms. Cabello’s manager and a former lawyer for Fifth Harmony. Mr. Gold said it took time for Ms. Cabello, free of the army of handlers and tacticians who maintained creative control of the girl group, to feel comfortable asserting herself in front of more seasoned collaborators. “The most important learning in this whole thing was that we were most successful when Camila trusted in her own instincts,” he said. A breakthrough came while she was working with the producer Frank Dukes, born Adam Feeney, who has made his name as a prolific but low-key co-conspirator of self-styled stars like Drake and Lorde. Many potential collaborators had come to the studio armed with sleek, brassy Top 40 munitions in the style of Fifth Harmony hits. But Mr. Feeney’s approach was more nonchalant. Over sushi during an early session with Ms. Cabello last winter, he played her a deceptively simple instrumental with a prominent salsa piano riff. It reminded the singer of her birthplace, and she wrote the chorus for what became “Havana” on the spot. “There’s not another artist in the world who could have done that song — she just owns it,” Mr. Feeney said. Many of the songs on “Camila,” which Mr. Feeney executive produced and includes writing by Ms. Cabello on every track, are infused with tonal or lyrical references to her Latin heritage. Ms. Cabello said she took inspiration from the Latin music that soundtracked her childhood, as well as more contemporary reggaeton revisionists like Calle 13 and J Balvin. Then she blended those sounds with the auteur pop of artists like her friends Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, hoping to unearth her own original recipe. “I feel like the best way to come up with something new and different is just to be the you-est you possible,” Ms. Cabello said. “If you pull from all the different little parts of yourself, nobody can replicate that.” Mr. Poleman, of iHeartMedia, said it is Ms. Cabello’s sensibilities as a songwriter that will define her career. With “Havana” and “Bad Things,” he said, “she has quickly established herself as one of the most important young artists in pop music. “It always comes down to whether or not you have a song that resonates,” he added. “I know she spends a lot of time thinking about that.” In an under-lit, overpriced restaurant in Midtown Manhattan after her break in Miami had ended, Ms. Cabello, who has lately imagined herself as a vegan, provoked a kale salad while bopping along to Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.” The song had been a highlight from a recent Christmas Eve karaoke night with her family (she was the only one who knew its final “Give it to me” pre-chorus), and she grieved for her cocoon. In 48 hours, she would perform before Mariah Carey at “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest” in a bejeweled, ankle-length coat and metallic jumpsuit that made her look like a glamorous conquistador. Then she had a tour to design, and music video concepts to finalize and a social media campaign to figure out. She started to explain why things were trickier now, how she no longer had anyone to pick up the slack. “Even when there’s a day off, there’s never really a day off, because there’s so many decisions to be made and you’re always rushing to make stuff,” she said, as Jackson ad-libbed in the background. The music kept making her lose her train of thought. Finally, after a few vain attempts to catch it, she gave in and stopped explaining herself and sang along.[source]

#camila cabello #interview #ny times

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rollertoasteroflife · 8 years ago

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These Things Are Fun Lets Give It a Go

Tagged by @katyaton heyyyyyyy!

RULES: answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions. (…yeah I don’t know that many people...)

tagging: @deaded123 @showmethestarlight and if anyone that follows me wants to please do but you two are the only ones that actually reply to these things and I can’t be arsed to go through all of my followers when no one does them anyway :D

1. coke or pepsi: coke definitely

2. disney or dreamworks: oh god ummm i love disney cos that was my childhood but dreamworks have done some truly amazing films and they gave me how to train your dragon which i love far more than is probably normal...

3. coffee or tea: *whispers* both definitely both...I drink so much coffee and tea and currently green tea I’m probably 70% hot beverage at this point

4. books or movies: ah fuck. um I have to say finding a favourite book feels so much better than a favourite film but like I literally work in the film industry so I honestly love them too but yeah imma have to say books (that was really difficult D:)

5. windows or mac: windows cos it’s what i know

6. dc or marvel: um I’ve seen more marvel so I’ll say marvel but I’m not particular opinionated on the matter

7. xbox or playstation: I am abysmal at playing games so again not really my question. however i have finally worked out how to use my housemates xbox as a dvd player so woo

8. dragon age or mass effect: I don’t play them

9. night owl or early riser: Permanently tired pigeon here but more of a night owl.

10. cards or chess: Oh god um actually can’t choose because i grew up playing card games and i really love them but i have a massive sentimental personal thing about chess so yeah i can’t choose here

11. chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate what am I? dumb?!

12. vans or converse: Converse

13. lavellan, trevelyan, cadash, or adaar: I do not understand

14. fluff or angst: um in like fic reading or my life?? because my favourite fan fics are often angsty ones but I get wayyyyyyyyyy too emotional about them and yet still tend to read them over fluffy ones. Yet in actual life my life has enough problems please cover me fluffy things i’m tired

15. beach or forest: beach because there’s sea but i fucking love forests so much!!

16. dogs or cats: Cats!! but puppers are great too!!!

17. clear skies or rain: Fucking rain I love rain!!

18. cooking or eating out: I really like cooking it’s what I resort to when I’m having issues with life not working out.

19. Spicy food or mild food: I don’t like massively spicy food but I will fight you over bland food so like somewhere between the two??

20. halloween/samhain or solstice/yule/christmas: I only really started doing halloween like a couple of years ago but i do enjoy it (woo for fancy dress) but i do really love christmas!

21. would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: cold definitely i hate the heat. It was 15 degrees c today (59 fahrenheit thanks google) and i was dying and complaining most of the day

22. if you could have a superpower, what would it be: Shapeshifting!!!!

23. animation or live action: Again with the whole job thing, live action but i love animated films too!!

24. paragon or renegade: eh?

25. baths or showers: i shower more often but my house doesn’t have a bath and i really miss it. also currently with my leg injuries i would love a bath because they ache so bad D:

26. team cap or team ironman: umm i don’t know?? I’m not gonna choose sorry

27. fantasy or sci-fi: Fantasy but scifi is awesome!

28. do you have three or four favourite quotes? if so what are they: Presume not that I am the thing I was - Shakespeare Henry V

The planets and heavens will move for you. - this is a quote from a poem @deaded123/ @breathingtheworldinwords wrote for me which is my favourite poem

I am constantly coming across quotes i want ot remember but i never write them down so yeah...

29. youtube or netflix: netflix

30. harry potter or percy jackson: Harry potter but am currently working my way through the percy jacksons series which i do enjoy and rick riordan is an awesome human!

31. when you feel accomplished: when i remember how far i’ve come from what i was and how hard i’ve fought to be where i am now. Also I once forgot what happened in a battle on an history exam so proceeded to talk about the battle of helms deep and cut the orcs and elves. I got 100% on that paper. ;)

32. star wars or star trek: star wars......it was my childhood and i love it so much

33. paperback books or hardback books: i do love me a good hardback but my paperbacks have kept me company for a long time

34. horror or rom-com: ummm i’m not great at horror but it depends so i’d probs watch the rom com and just be cynically sarcastic throughout...(the fact that i enjoy rom coms when i’m not great and actual romance annoys myself)

35. to live in a world without literature or music: that is just mean :P but i’d have to chose literature as my life is based around stories

36. pastel colours or dark colours: dark definitely!! other people look aweosme in pastels but i don’t like wearing them and honeslty just feel kind of suspicious of them as a colour group (i have no idea why i have such storng opinions on pastels or why i am suspicious...)

37. tv shows or movies: Tv shows as you go through so much more. Also it suits my attention span better

38. city or countryside: can i have like a town?? i love the countryside but i also need to be around other people or i get very morbid

39. if any other zodiac sign could describe you, what would it be: i don’t understand??i’m a leo and honeslty haven’t looked at the others enough to know the traits!

40. if you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life what would it be: i would currently choose one of sia’s albums as just yes

41. cinema or theatre: cinema because i love films but i do enjoy theatre

42. if you could be any fictional character’s best friend, who’d you be: hmmmmmmmm i honeslty don’t know as my favs are people like me but being around someone like me as a best friend is kind of an odd thought...pass?

43. smiling or smirking: smiling to me means just being free and comfortable to be happy and smirking in my mind is the silly little in jokes that tyou have with friends in the middle of a conversation or when you’ve thought of something inappropriately funny both of which i do a lot.

44. are you an ‘all or nothing’ type or are you more consistent: all or nothing probably

45. playlists or your whole library on shuffle: shuffle because i’m too lazy to make playlists

46. travelling or staying at home: Travelling,but i like to have a base somewhere. but yeah i get bored of places easily and am not attached to anywhere as a ‘home’ as a concept i’ve never really got that feeling about anywhere? um it’s hard to explain so i’m just gonna stop cos i don’t know what my point is

47. books or fanfiction: both are literature and they’re both stories and i fucking love stories in all forms! right now i’m reading more fanfiction because when i need to work lets get lost in emotions about fictional characters right?! but seriously i have a bunch of favourite fanfics which i keep rereading and most are novel length so like not much of a difference!

48. If you could live in a fantasy world, what world would it be: the chronicles of ixia world probably but like god there are so many that i’d want to be in!!

49. your favorite cartoon: um i don’t really watch that many cartoons... cacn i claim the Dragons tv series that accompanies httyd? it’s animated......

50. name the weirdest five songs on your itunes, current or past: um ok so i have a bit of a weird thing about my music in that i don’t like talking about it too much...i’m getting better but yeah i don’t want to answer this :)

51. mountains or plains: Mountains!!!!!!! they give me liiiiiiiiiife

52. favorite anime (or tv show if you don’t watch anime): Yuri on ice is the first anime i’ve watched and honeslty have fallen in love with it and it has ruined my world right now (it’s what my anxieties are currently directed out instead of at my work which i’m cool with) and the only other one i’ve seen is ouran high school host club which i actually watched half of yesterday whilst working as a friend loves it, it’s amusing :)

53. which social media platform are you most like yourself on: err i don’t really do social media much. i have facebook to talk to uni people, a couple of group chats with home people and it’s the only contact i have with my dad’s side of the fam as most don’t live in england but i don’t actually post anything except about work i’ve got donea dn funny photos of my friends. obvs i have tumblr which i overshare about myself way too much but this is probs a very accurate summary of my shit sense of humour, tv shows, and everything else in my head! though i do sometimes get concerned about my oversharing on here cos y’know internet safetyand all D: oh i have snapchat too but i mainly use it to talk to 2 friends one is in germany so i can’t ring her like i used to and the other we pretty much just send each other selfies with a lot of heart emojis! i’ve been debating getting instagram but haven’t decided yet...

54. What are some of your passions:anyone that knows me or reads my frequent oversharing will know i work in costume stuff so yeah i can literally talk about costuming and historic fashions for days and not get bored so yeha don’t ask about that unless you ready to learn!! ;) um i’m also an archery instructor, really love drawing, and just yeah the various tv, film and book obsessions that i go through (currently it’s yoi but i do try and keep my obsession from fully taking ove rthis blog-80% of it is still my shit sense of humour

55. Favourite food: I will fight everyone to get a proper roast dinner with yorkshire puddings and also chocolate.....and pomegranates.....and sugar snap peas......

This was fun!!!

#toasterrambles #katyaton #deaded123 #showmethestarlight

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travelguy4444 · 6 years ago

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32 Random Facts About Me

Updated: 02/13/2019 | February 13th, 2019

A few weeks ago I mentioned that this year I wanted to make the website more personal.

Back in 2011, I wrote this post featuring some personal facts about my life. It was a window into non-travel me. Well, that was a loooooong time ago. Life changes. People change.

So I thought one way to make this website more personal was to resurrect this long forgotten post and share a window into the current non-travel me.

So let’s kick off 2011 2019 with some random facts about me and my life:

1. I hate flying. I love airports, lounges, and elite status, but the act of flying makes me sick. I don’t like heights and any turbulence makes me think the plane is about to crash. I’m not a good flier. (Ironic considering how often I fly!)

2. When I was younger, I was obsessed with Pinky and the Brain. I even had a T-shirt collection. I also had one of those bowl haircuts, but I prefer to forget about that fact.

3. I never traveled independently until I went to Costa Rica at age 23. My travel experiences up until then were a series of road trips with my parents and a drunken weekend in Montréal when I was 19. (I also never went west of the Mississippi until I was 25.)

4. When I was younger, I wanted to be an archaeologist because of Indiana Jones.

5. I got really bad food poisoning when I was in Costa Rica. It was so bad that I had to be hospitalized for three days and put on a morphine drip.

6. I went to college to be a high school history teacher. I’m still technically certified to teach high school history.

7. I am a really good cook. I don’t cook much on the road because I hate how hostel kitchens aren’t fully stocked and everyone crowds them at the same time, but once in a while, I like to cook a massive meal for my fellow travelers.

8. I used to be a vegetarian. After reading Fast Food Nation, I decided to give up meat and was a vegetarian for four years. It wasn’t eating meat I was against, but rather industrial farming and the chemicals/antibiotics in the meat that I didn’t like. I gave up vegetarianism when I started to travel.

9. I think it’s rude to turn down food in other cultures. If you go to a village in Mongolia and you are given food, it’s insulting to refuse. “Sorry, your traditional and heartfelt cooking doesn’t go with my dietary needs.” It’s culturally insensitive. But that’s a rant for another post.

10. I’m a huge fan of soul, Motown, blues, and jazz. It’s way better than any of the pop music out there.

11. If I could ever pick what time period I could live in, I’d pick 1920s Prohibition America. I think that would be an exciting time to live in. But maybe I’ve just read The Great Gatsby too much.

12. Speaking of Gatsby, I learned to swing dance so I could throw myself a Gatsby-themed birthday party. I did it for three years in a row. They were epic birthday parties.

12. I am intensely political. After travel, politics is my second love. I live and breathe politics, and it is the only news I keep up with while traveling. I am always ready to discuss and debate the world any time of the day and with anyone, no matter how well I know them.

13. I co-own a hostel in Austin, Texas called HK Austin. You should come stay there!

14. I don’t have a burning desire to visit most Middle Eastern countries. There are parts I want to / have visited (Dubai, Jordan, Israel, Qatar, Oman) but, as a whole, the area is low on my list of places to visit.

15. People always ask will I do this forever? My answer: I don’t know. Forever is a long time. I’d like to travel for the next few years, but who can say what the future holds and where it will take us? For now, I’m enjoying the ride and see no reason to hang up my backpack just yet.

16. I’ve been to over 30 Dave Matthews Band concerts. I’m a super fan.

17. I’m a Japanophile. I love everything about the culture: the food, the history, the etiquette, the landscape, the architecture — all of it. I would eat sushi every day if I could.

18. I’m a workaholic. Maybe because I grew up in New England, I have the Puritan work ethic, and if I don’t have work to do, I think something is wrong and create work for myself. Idle hands are the Devil’s playground!

19. I decided to travel after meeting five backpackers in a shared taxi while on vacation in Thailand. I was so amazed at what they were doing that the next day I decided to quit my job. They were two Australians, a Canadian, and a Belgian couple. They changed the course of my life and have no idea.

20. I’m an unabashed Taylor Swift fan. Not only do I think she’s an incredible businesswoman and marketer, but I also love her cheesy pop songs.

21. I’m also a huge fan of Sia. Incredible songstress and writer.

22. I don’t play any sports nor know anything about them. I couldn’t think of anything more boring than going to a sporting event. In fact, I once fell asleep at a hockey match.

23. I don’t drink coffee. It tastes like shit to me. And I don’t want to put added sugar or milk (or soy milk) in my cup of joe. Drinks should be able to stand on their own! Nothing is going to change my opinion on this. I’ve tried for years to acquire a taste for it. It’s just not going to happen.

24. I drink tea. Lots of it. Especially green tea. That’s my drink of choice!

25. My alcoholic drink of choice is an old fashioned. A few years ago, a few friends turned me onto whiskey and I’ve been obsessed since. I judge a bar by the quality of the old fashioneds they serve.

26. One day, I’d like to learn how to garden. I want to grow my own food. I love cooking and think it’s a logical step!

27. I used to be a professional poker player. I funded a lot of my original trip with poker winnings and lived in Amsterdam for a few months playing “professionally” at the casino in the city.

28. I don’t eat sweets. Maybe once a year I’ll have a cookie or brownie but, for the most part, I don’t do desserts or sweets as I don’t like all the sugar.

29. I have a new book coming out in July (you can pre-order it now!). It’s about my ten years on the road. More details next month!

30. When I’m working, I’ll often play one song on repeat over and over again. It helps me focus because it ends up just being white noise. As I write this post, I’ve been listening to Sweet Annie by Zach Brown Band on repeat for the last two hours.

31. I don’t have a favorite color. I have two. Blue and green!

32. In 2019, I want to take up more hobbies. I want to swing dance more, learn French, take some cooking classes, and try to learn how to play the piano. If I do two of those things, I’ll consider it a successful year.

***

There you have it! Some fun facts about me. Now, you’re turn. Tell me about yourself in the comments below.

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The post 32 Random Facts About Me appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

source https://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/20-random-facts-about-me/

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joshuamshea84 · 6 years ago