Music in 2011

February 10, 2012 Leave a Comment

I realize I don’t post much anymore, although I try to post baby pics and the occasional opinion on Facebook and Twitter.  So this will seem even more random than if I had five or six Braves or Harding posts as a cushion.  With that caveat, I’ll say that 2011 was a pretty good year in music, or at least it was for me.  The lists below are restricted to albums that came out during the calendar year 2011.  I used to do a lot of these kinds of lists, and for some reason I was inspired to do some more.

Five albums I bought and liked in 2011, ranked:

1. Mutemath: Odd Soul. There are few bands I would bother to see live more than once at this point in my life, but I can see myself attending another Mutemath show after having seeing them for the first time in October. Odd Soul is their best work so far, with more guitars, strong melodies, better lyrics (but with room to grow), and Darren King’s trademark out-of-this-world drums.

2. The Belle Brigade (eponymous). You may not want your kids to repeat a select line from “Losers,” but you can only hope they learn to harmonize as well as these grandchildren of composer John Williams. If you enjoy harmony at all, it is a must-listen.

3. Foster the People: Torches. I don’t get the commotion over “Pumped Up Kicks.” Is it really that cool that they made a song with a moderately catchy chorus from the perspective of a crazy person? Maybe it is, I don’t know. The rest of the album is terrific, and if that song can wedge Foster The People into the pop consciousness, I suppose it’s a small price to pay to get something that is actually interesting on the radio.

4. The Black Keys: El Camino. I’m pretty sure that everyone who still likes rock or soul music is obligated to like The Black Keys, and well, I like them too.

5. Manchester Orchestra: Simple Math. He sounds like he might completely lose it one day, but the singer’s introspective lyrics and unhinged delivery give Manchester Orchestra an interesting sound for the rock genre.

Three notable albums that did not meet my expectations, ranked:

1. Coldplay: Mylo Xyloto. Hugely disappointing given their step forward on Viva La Vida. I could only manage one full listen of the entire album, although I do like “Every Teardrop…” a little, so I guess that’s something.

2. Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys. The last three DCFC albums each had several songs that would have topped or nearly topped the next list, but there was nothing memorable to me on this album.

3. Switchfoot: Vice Verses. Perhaps I’m in the minority of Switchfoot fans when I say it has been a slow descent for them, from having albums full of interesting, catchy rock songs with a serious message to something more bland and less moving, but Vice Verses is definitely the latter. There were enough bright spots on their prior album, Hello Hurricane, so hopefully the Switchfoot song well is not dry.

Ten favorite songs of 2011, ranked:

1. The Belle Brigade: Losers
2. Mutemath: Blood Pressure
3. Foster The People: Call It What You Want
4. Manchester Orchestra: April Fool
5. Mutemath: Prytania
6. The Joy Formidable: Whirring
7. Foster The People: Helena Beat
8. The Black Keys: Gold On The Ceiling
9. Gotye featuring Kimbra: Somebody That I Used To Know
10. The Belle Brigade: Where Not To Look For Freedom

Just missed the cut (alphabetical by artist):
Florence + The Machine: Shake It Out
Foo Fighters: Rope
Foster The People: Don’t Stop (Color On The Walls)
Manchester Orchestra: Simple Math
Mutemath: Allies
Mutemath: Odd Soul
Mutemath: Quarantine
Saint Motel: Puzzle Pieces

A note on my musical tastes

Rock with a pop sensibility, or perhaps the other way around. I like music with melodic hooks and beats, so a lot of critically-praised music is just inaccessible to me. It’s not for lack of trying—I just don’t like a lot of it. Also, a creative lyricist usually isn’t enough to get my interest, so you won’t see a lot of singer-songwriter stuff. And for those who think I should listen to more Christian music, I find most of the popular stuff to be boring retreads of pop/rock from a few years prior, but I’m always open to something new (or new to me). As with all genres, there is certainly good Christian music I haven’t heard. Just understand that and take all of the lists above with a grain of salt.

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Announcements

February 20, 2011 Leave a Comment

Blogging has obviously been a lower priority for me lately, but I’m still around.  Follow me on Twitter (@jfw3i) if you’re interested in reading more.  The shorter updates have suited me, since I’ve had other pursuits taking up more and more of my time: longer hours at work, and (last year) teaching Sunday School every week at church.

I’ve been tweeting through the last couple of Harding home basketball games, since the athletic department is now putting the video feed online for free (thanks HU), and this has been a really exciting Bison team.  They’re 21-3, ranked 16th in the country (but somehow only 7th in the region), and they’ll be playing their final home game on Thursday against GSC West leader Arkansas Tech for a chance to share the division title.

In other news, you may already be aware that Melissa and I are expecting twins, due in August/September.  Starting then, I’d say I’ll be even busier.  She’s 11 weeks along and not showing at all if you ask me.  They’re already known as the Wright Brothers among our friends at church, although we don’t know their genders at this point.  I’ll try to post some pictures periodically, but most of you reading this will have already been keeping up with the news on Facebook or Twitter.

Filed under D-II / Harding, Other

Same blog, new host

November 13, 2010 Leave a Comment

November historically has been the time of year when I have to re-evaluate whether I really need a web hosting provider at all.  There are plenty of good free blogging services, so I’ve finally made the jump from a hosted WordPress.org blog to WordPress.com.  You’ll have to sign up again to comment (a regular WP.com sign-in probably will work if you have one), but all the old comments are still on the site.  The address is still the same, although if you weren’t subscribing to my Feedburner feed, you’ll need to update your RSS reader to follow feeds.feedburner.com/jfwiii. Make sure you also follow me on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

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Amazon.com knows me too well

September 30, 2010 Leave a Comment

This morning, I got a recommendation from Amazon.com, which of course is not unusual in and of itself.  Except for the fact that the recommendation is about the doctrine of atonement and is based on “customers who have purchased or rated books by Ron Shandler,” who writes the Baseball Forecaster, which I have purchased in the past.

I’ve bought books about the Bible from Amazon before too, so maybe they’re just confused?

The title of the book is pretty amusing, too, especially when they try to fit it into a larger sentence:

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New England Vacation 2010

June 28, 2010 1 Comment

Melissa and I just got back on Saturday from a week touring the northeast.  It was a lot of driving, but still a fun trip.

Among our stops:

  • Steamtown Mall (Scranton, PA)
  • Freedom Trail (historic sites in Boston, MA)
  • Prudential Tower (Boston, MA)
  • Fenway Park (Boston, MA) for the 6/20 Dodgers-Red Sox game
  • At least 6-8 different Dunkin Donuts locations
  • Legal Sea Foods (Boston, MA) restaurant
  • Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
  • Several Maine coastal towns
  • L.L. Bean store (Freeport, ME)
  • Barnacle Billy’s (Ogunquit, ME) restaurant
  • Several retail stores that were inexplicably playing country music despite not being located in the South
  • Plymouth Rock
  • Cape Cod National Seashore
  • Newport, RI mansions (The Breakers)
  • Hershey’s Chocolate World (Hershey, PA)
  • Gettysburg, PA

We passed through 13 states in 9 days, staying the night in five of them.  (The complete list: Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine)

The highlight for me was (of course) Fenway Park, although it really was one excellent stop after another.  Some of the historic sites nearly take your breath away, while you leave others thinking, “that’s all?”  Regardless, they were each interesting in their own right.  I tend to enjoy visiting places like the Freedom Trail sites (Bunker Hill, USS Constitution, etc.) but not dwelling on them.  There were few sites where I could have spent more time (Gettysburg chief among them), while others left me glad they were just a quick stop (Plymouth Rock).

I put together a slideshow of my favorite pictures below with a bit more detail in the captions.  (It will take a few minutes to go through them – there are 157.)

It’s good to be home now, and I’m going to have to rest up for another exciting weekend ahead, seeing the Braves in Atlanta.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

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Giving Twitter a shot

April 24, 2010 3 Comments

I created a Twitter account a while back to follow a few people I know, but I never really got into it myself because of Facebook.  I’m going to give it another go-round, and this time I’m not protecting my tweets.  Follow me at @jfw3i if you’re so inclined.  You’ll get updates every time I post here as well (you know, every six months or so).

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CauseWorld: Make your shopping count

January 14, 2010 Leave a Comment

I’m back from the dead again, I know.

I thought I’d use this platform, for whatever it’s worth, to mention a new app that’s been released for iPhone and Android.  It’s called CauseWorld, and here’s the basic premise:

Corporations pledge to donate money to charities based on your shopping visits to certain stores.  You don’t have to buy anything at these stores, but you “check in” at the store using the phone’s geolocation feature.  Checking in gets you a certain number of “karma” credits.  Once you accumulate credits, you can “spend” them on charities that have signed up through the CauseWorld program.

Essentially, you get to choose where certain corporations (at the moment, Kraft and Citi) allocate their charitable donations.  Just open the app and check in when you’re out doing your normal shopping, and then spend the karmas you accumulate on the charities of your choice.

I’m all for charitable giving, and the corporations are all about encouraging economic activity by getting you out shopping.  This app leverages those interests, which can certainly be seen as competing interests, into something that I believe is immensely powerful.  It turns over control of these corporate donations to you and I, people who are interested in helping out where we can.  We get to evaluate the charities ourselves and, hopefully, make wise choices on how to allocate this corporate money.

I want to accomplish two things in this post:

First, I want to encourage anyone out there with an iPhone or Android-based smartphone to download the free CauseWorld app and use it all the time.  You don’t even have to change your shopping habits.  Just use it in the normal course of your day.

Second, I want to help you spend your “karmas” wisely.  So, I’m providing a list of the charities, what they claim to do with the karma credits, and their Charity Navigator star ratings (out of four stars).  Charity Navigator evaluates charities based on a number of factors, including the percentage of their donations that directly relate to their charitable activity (rather than administration, etc.).  I’m not necessarily going to rate the particular causes, but I would encourage you to give first to the 3- or 4-star-rated charities, since you’ll get the most bang for your (corporate) buck that way.

Currently there are nine charities associated with CauseWorld:

  • Carbonfund.org (NR) – 1 karma offsets 2 pounds of carbon emissions
  • DonorsChoose (4) – 5 karmas for ??? toward netbooks for a South Side Chicago classroom
  • Prevent Child Abuse America (1) – 5 karmas for ??? toward child abuse prevention
  • Feeding America (3) – 14 karmas for one food bank meal
  • CHF International (4) – 30 karmas for one month of clean water for a Sudanese person
  • American Humane (3) – 50 karmas for ??? support for the care of an injured animal
  • Jane Goodall Institute (4) – 100 karmas for 1 pound of food for chimps in the Congo
  • American Forests (4) – 100 karmas for 1 planted tree in the rainforest
  • Room to Read (4) – 100 karmas for a children’s book for SE Asian kids

There’s a more immediate need than any of these causes today in Haiti, and plenty of good organizations will be supporting that effort as well.  For now, they’re not part of CauseWorld.

I think I’m going to start out with CHF International because of the severity of the water crisis in Africa, although there are a number of highly-rated charities participating.  I’m probably going to steer clear of Prevent Child Abuse America and Carbonfund.org (at least until it gets a rating), and I will probably favor the non-animal charities over the animal charities (even though I love our pets).

Hopefully this kind of thing inspires you to give in the same way it inspires me.  I know I’m always amazed at the power of technology, both good and bad, and I hope you’ll join me in supporting one of its good uses.  Check out the CauseWorld website to learn more and download the app.

Filed under Christianity/Ministry, Other Tagged with ,

Hello Hurricane by Switchfoot

November 11, 2009 Leave a Comment

It’s been nearly three years since the first new studio album from Switchfoot, but Hello Hurricane finally came out this week.  They’ve been busy touring, recording, dropping their record label, and working on side projects.  Frontman Jon Foreman released a series of solo albums for each season between 2007 and 2008, and he and Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins released an album as Fiction Family earlier this year.

I’ve only been a Switchfoot fan since their first “mainstream” album, The Beautiful Letdown, came out in 2003.  Not coincidentally, I became a fan about the time they made a tour stop at Harding in support of that album.  I’ve seen them live four times since, but not since Oh! Gravity came out in 2006.

Switchfoot’s sound has changed somewhat over the years, and they’ve endured some criticism on at least two fronts: (a) for “softening” the Christian message in their songs by essentially dropping direct references to God, and (b) for “hardening” their sound to reach more of a mainstream rock audience.  Personally, I prefer the newer sound as a fan of mainstream rock, and I don’t have a problem with the band’s lyrical content, which I think is second to none.

Anyway, Hello Hurricane is a pretty good album, at least from my early take.  I’ve listened through about four times now and found 4-5 songs I like a lot, with the title track perhaps being my overall favorite.  I generally like the harder songs initially (i.e. “This is the Sound” and “Bullet Soul”) and take longer to come around to liking the slower songs.

Then again, Switchfoot does something great where I think some pop-rock bands fail.  They mix softer and harder songs, but their softer songs all seem to have a unique feel and rhythm, whether through an acoustic guitar or wandering bass line.  As a result, all of their songs are re-listenable, rather than just a few.

On Hello Hurricane, Switchfoot continues that mix, although I think they’ve done it less effectively than on their last three albums, each of which was full of excellent songs.  I think they may have peaked with Nothing is Sound, although it was a very small peak, and they haven’t declined precipitously even on Hello Hurricane.  I enjoy “Mess of Me,” “Your Love is a Song,” and “Free,” but I don’t see them (yet) in quite the same bright light as I did “Stars,” “The Blues,” and “Happy is a Yuppie Word” four years ago.  There are plenty of great lines and hooks, but their quality is down as a whole.

As a parting shot, I’ll note that Switchfoot has supposedly recorded “four albums worth” of material in the last 3 years, and they are currently planning to release another album early next year.  So, it could be that they’ve spread out their best material, in which case I’d say they’ve been truly prolific over the last three years.  I wouldn’t change my ranking from a few years back; they’re still the best mainstream or Christian band for my money.

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An Atlanta Braves-cation

July 20, 2009 Leave a Comment

I think she still enjoyed herself, but Melissa called this past weekend a “Braves-cation.” To me, that sounds like a lot of fun, and it definitely was.

She was right that our trip to Atlanta over the weekend was very Braves-centric.  We only went to one game, the Friday night blowout win, but we made two separate trips to the Braves Clubhouse Store in CNN Center and watched or listened to parts of the other games all weekend.

I’ll save the game details for my Braves Check later, but I do want to mention some of the other things we did.

Thursday

The weather forecast for Thursday was grim, especially in the afternoon, so we nixed our plan to go to Six Flags in favor of a morning stop at Stone Mountain.  We hoped to get to the top of the mountain and back before the rains came, and then we planned to spend the afternoon shopping.

We accomplished that and more.  I hadn’t been to Stone Mountain since I was very young, so it was exciting to see the mountain with a little more appreciation of its history.  It’s a worthy day trip if you’re in the area.

After stopping one or two places to shop along the way, we checked in to our hotel, the Fairfield Inn & Suites in the Perimeter Center area.  We like staying in that part of town because of the shopping and restaurant options, but also because there are several MARTA rail stations close by.  MARTA doesn’t run in Cobb County, which would be the closest suburban Atlanta county to us in North Georgia, so we have to go a little bit out of the way.  If you’ve tried driving through Atlanta much, you’ll understand that there’s some value in using MARTA, even if it’s not as good as what’s offered in other very large cities. The hotel was nice, and it was a pretty good deal online.

Thursday evening, after the rain had held off pretty much all day, we fought our way through the rush hour traffic to Norcross, where we ate at Ted’s Montana Grill with some of our friends who had moved to the area from Chattanooga.  I’m hooked on Ted’s burgers, and we have to stop there anytime we’re in town now.

Friday

This was our busiest day, and we started with a trip downtown to visit the Georgia Aquarium.  We last went there two years ago, and honestly not much had changed.  They’re preparing to open a dolphin exhibit and had actually removed the sea lion and penguin exhibits, which were two of their best.  We also went on a tour of the CNN Center, which is across Centennial Olympic Park from the aquarium.  That was pretty interesting to me, but it’s not really the kind of thing you’d want to do more than once.

We didn’t stick around for Greg Maddux’s Braves HOF induction ceremony, which was to take place at the Omni that afternoon, but we did visit the Braves Clubhouse store long enough to see that Tommy Hanson was going to be there on Saturday.

Lunch on Friday was at the Silver Skillet, which is a 50′s-style diner that has been used as a set on a number of movies and TV shows (most notably to me, Remember the Titans).  The food is pretty good as well, especially the lemon ice-box pie.

We got a fair amount of exercise walking to our lunch spot, so we headed back to the hotel to recuperate for the game that night.  After a quick nap, we left for the game and got there around 6:30.

A few pictures of Friday morning/afternoon:

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Our seats were in left field (fair territory), but we walked up to the upper deck to get some pictures of the new Coke bottle.  The bottle was impressive, but Melissa made a keen observation while we were up there taking pictures: she saw the spot where Greg Maddux’s retired number would be unveiled during the pregame ceremony.  So, instead of going back to our seats, we staked out a spot to stand near the number and watched the ceremony from there.

The Braves beat the Mets 11-0, so it was a fun game to watch once we moved to our actual seats.  Here are a few pictures from the game:

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Saturday

Melissa was gracious enough to alter our Saturday plans for a return trip to the CNN Center to meet Tommy Hanson, and she had the wise suggestion to arrive 2 hours before he was supposed to be there at 11.  There were already 50-60 people lined up when we got there, so that proved to be yet another good move on her part.  She racked up some major wife points over the weekend, needless to say.

The time passed quickly, as we were surrounded by a mixture of crazed fans and some professional autograph seekers hoping to seize upon a free opportunity.  Eventually, our time came, and Melissa got a pretty good picture of Hanson signing a ball for me:

Tommy Hanson Autograph

We made our way back to the Perimeter Center area after that and spent some time shopping (Micro Center, Trader Joe’s) before heading home.

It was good to take a few days off work and get away, even if it wasn’t a far trip.  Our next weekend trip will probably be somewhere other than Atlanta, since Melissa will want to cash in all those points she earned.

Filed under Braves, Friends/Family, Other Tagged with

Getting your baseball fix on an iPhone: Introduction

June 17, 2009 Leave a Comment

When your blog’s readership is as small and focused as mine, you start to wonder if anything of “general interest” is really worth posting amidst the glut of specific-interest content.  It’s a good thing I like writing anyway, because I’m throwing caution to the wind and doing a “general interest” series with only a slight correlation to the rest of the themes on this blog.

There are maybe only a few casual readers of this site who own an iPhone, but the rest of you have probably been inundated with the TV ads proclaiming that you can get an iPhone app for anything, from running a business to identifying poisonous plants.  Perhaps you’ve considered buying one, or perhaps not.

If neither the prospect of paying $30 per month for internet access on a phone nor the realization that you have to sign yourself up to do so for two years can scare you away, then I highly recommend an iPhone.  I’ve owned one (a 3G) for almost a year now and enjoyed it immensely.  My only complaints thus far are the short battery life (I basically have to charge mine every night if I use it for more than just a few quick calls) and iTunes, which is an unreasonably bloated piece of software that’s required for syncing it to your computer.

The benefits of iPhone ownership have, for me, far outweighed the costs.  There really does seem to be an app for just about everything, and when it comes to sports, the options are seemingly endless.

My specific focus for this series will be simple: What’s the best way to get your MLB fix on an iPhone?

I’ll be reviewing the following apps with that in mind:

  • CBS Sports
  • ESPN ScoreCenter
  • FOX Sports Mobile
  • MLB.com At Bat 2009
  • ScoreMobile
  • Sportacular

Perhaps this will sway you one way or the other if you’ve been thinking about getting an iPhone.  (The time to get one is now, by the way, since they’ve just released the latest hardware version – 3G S – and the new 3.0 OS is out today.)  If you already own one, maybe I’ll share something you haven’t seen before, and please don’t hesitate to tell me what I’m missing.

Filed under Baseball, Other Tagged with ,

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