Category: music

Random 10 tunes

An idea stolen from Bob @ FlackLife, who posts his gems just about every Friday. My take is a bit different, because I’m playing mp3s on Winamp and using Predixis MusicMagic, which creates a playlist of tunes from your collection that are similar to a tune you pick. The song I selected was Wilco’s “War on War,” and here are the first 10 of the random 20 songs that MusicMagic’s formula somehow connected to that tune:

  1. “Take A Walk,” Spoon
  2. “Neighborhood 2 – Laika,” The Arcade Fire
  3. “Hotel California,” Less Than Jake (Eagles cover with a ska flavor)
  4. “I Will Follow,” U2
  5. “Take the Fifth,” Spoon
  6. “Go,” The Replacements
  7. “Sad Song,” Blue States
  8. “Just Desserts,” Chumbawumba
  9. “Plea from a Cat Named Virtue,” The Weakerthans
  10. “Cool’n’Out,” Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros

What’s in your playlist? Why not play along and share your own random 10 on your? If you do, please let me know and I’ll post a link from here.

Friday film: ‘Beneath the Southern Cross’

Have I ever told you that I work with a real live rock star?

I do. And he isn’t just any rock star. He’s the co-writer of one of the anthems of the late-’60s/early-’70s counterculture. (For you younger readers, you might have heard this tune on the soundtrack of that Johnny Depp vehicle, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.)

I’m referring to Tom Shipley — he of Brewer and Shipley, “One Toke Over the Line” fame.

Tom works in our communications department as a one-man video production unit. Tom makes videos for our campus. Not those hokey, scripted videos for which universities are renowned, but mini-documentaries about campus life, research and, yes, the occasional promo video (which Tom insists must be minimally scripted).

His latest video chronicles members of the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders as they traveled to Bolivia last August to assist two communities — one in the Amazon, where a school is in need of a safe and sustainable water supply, and another high in the Andes, where EWB students helped build a sanitary latrine system a year ago. Tom tagged along with the group and captured many of the activities on video. He’s posted one version of the pod on Current TV, where it’s getting good reviews and is currently ranked second among user-generated flicks. (It was No. 1 until recently. It should never have been bounced off of there.)

Watch “Beneath the Southern Cross,” Tom Shipley’s latest video.