February 05, 2008
My album cover...not quite Evanescence, but it will do.
Posted by Jess in
Day to Day
There is a fun new thing going on the blogs, et al.
It's called "My album cover".
Your album cover can be randomly created in three easy steps:
To find your artist name, go to Wikipedia's random article page. In my case, it was UIT.
To find your album cover picture, go visit Flickr's Last 7 Days of Interesting Photos page. The third picture in is your cover, in my case, I got this gorgeous shot.
Finally, every album needs a title. Go to the Random Quotations page, and use the last four words of the last quote. In my case, it was a Virginia Woolfe quote: For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Here is my finished album cover:
So I have the album cover. Sigh. The timing of this meme is more than a little interesting to me. At Lotusphere, I was able to get to Kimono's one night. I wanted to sing, but I wasn't sure what would happen for two reasons. I had done Speedgeeking the night before, and had no voice. Also, I hadn't sung at all since way before Zoë was born. Really, the only time I ever get to sing is once a year at Lotusphere. I decided I wanted to take it a little further, and awhile ago, I started taking voice lessons. I had to stop when Zoë started pressing against my diaphragm!
For whoever was there that night, it was obvious at first I couldn't even remember how to find my voice...it was shaky, unsure, and truthfully, I didn't even fully remember how the song went - until I got to the chorus.
"WAKE ME UP INSIDE!"
Life imitates art, so much. I'm not even sure what made me pick that song (I was actually expecting a disaster), but when I got to the first chorus, something magical happened. I remembered how it was supposed to work. It felt real, and it felt right. The entire lyrics were something I needed to hear. I could never hold a note before, but thanks to the voice lessons, not only could I sustain a note, but a vibrato seemed to appear out of nowhere (I had always wanted to do that!).
Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life" made me feel alive again. Now I just need to do that more often.
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Comments
as a meaningless aside, this fake album cover meme is a lot less engaging when you've actually wasted hundreds of hours of your life designing actual album covers with actual bands you've actually been in which then hardly anyone actually bought. ;)
LOL... hey, it's the digital era. Go convert your albums into MP3 and get em up on iTunes!! What kind of music?
I was there at Kimonos... she rocked! One of the non-business highlights of Lotusphere (which beats any of the business highlights any day)
jess i was completely blown away that night. it was without doubt the most amazing performance i have seen in a long, long time, professional or otherwise. you infused that whole room with a powerful energy. everyone felt it. we were all looking at each other in astonishment. i love hearing the story behind that moment. having a family can be distracting and exhausting. it is easy to get to a place where you don't recognize yourself in the mirror any more. you have to keep having these "wake me up inside" moments, really pretty much every day, to stay sane.
keep singing jess. the cool thing is, when you do that you bring everyone else around you to life too.
Hmmm... I thought the band was supposed to be "Lazlo Hollyfeld". Good concept otherwise, though -- I'd buy it on sight if I were on a bin-riffling adventure (which is how I found most of the best music I've ever purchased). Random or not, that WORKS. Now write and record.
And while I can't quite picture the pan-galactic xenophopic destructive rampage part, I'm still pretty much convinced your home planet is Krikkit. Not sing? Not possible.
putting music on iTunes is actually quite difficult. it requires a label's backing - one with a contract with Apple. the only work-around is via CDBaby.com and the only way to get into their system is via existing, physical CD's. the only way to get CD's pressed is to sign wavers with the pressing house that not a single blip or crash on your material is a copyright violation of any kind. when you do sample-driven music, this is of course impossible to do.
even if it were possible to get onto iTMS, that doesn't create sales. you need demand to make sales. besides which, people on iTMS buy songs, not albums. and you don't really need cover artwork anymore, either, since there's no jewel case to prevent from looking naked.
the CD is dying, sadly. sales are down over 15% this past year, and that's the seventh double-digit drop year.
Thanks Jamie! Thanks Jonvon! You hit the nail on the head with the mirror analogy. There is so much pressure to make everything seem like it's perfect and wonderful all the time.
Stan - Damn, good memory. Yup, it was Lazlo Hollyfeld, or Checksum. I'll take any band at the moment...I've only ever done karaoke, I've always wanted to experience singing with a live band, and to be PART of a band, which I think would be great fun.
And I never knew you couldn't just license music up on iTunes. I'll admit - I rarely buy CDs anymore. It's not a rebellion against bands, it's just the way I discover my music. I don't listen to the radio. I mostly hear new music from movies and the occasional television commercial. I'll go online to IMDB, find out who it was, and get the song from iTunes. I can also sample other tracks of theirs. I also find new music through Yahoo's LaunchCast, because they play me new music through others recommendations of the same genre. I hear a lot of new stuff that way.
Ah, just as well -- it seems there's already a band calling themselves Lazlo Hollyfeld:
http://www.lazlohollyfeld.com
Signal to noise looking for Checksum is a little low, though. You'd need to check with the AFM, probably. Yeah, being in a band is way fun -- especially if you don't need to make a living at it. Otherwise it can be the most expensive job you'll ever have. Still fun, though. I'd rank it right up there with autocross (and yes, I've done both).
Hey Jess, I completely agree with JonVon and Jamie. You BLEW AWAY everyone in the house. My only recent singing has been lullabies, certainly not karaoke, since before being pregnant with Ian. I only had the nerve to get up and duet with Greyhawk that night, and doubt I would have done that if you hadn't paved the way first. So thank you, and again- well done!
Thanks Kristina!! It was SOOOOO great to see you again at Kimono's... and your picture of your little guy. :-) I loved Summer Nights, it was so fun watching you both up there!!!
I CAN'T believe there is already a band called Lazlo Hollyfeld. I didn't know you autocrossed, Stan!! What did you drive?
hi~nice blog, keep the good work and i will visit again to see what new update, stay cool
I had a couple of cars over the years -- one was a modded FIAT X1/9 (suspension heavily reworked and stupid-wide tires, body work to make room for the tires, and upgraded carburetion and exhaust) that saw mostly Solo 2* action, and a showroom stock Mini that only ever saw Solo 1. No, not like yours -- the old one that would fit inside of yours. And no, not a Cooper -- a '63 850 Mk I with rubber-cone "springs". The trick was to keep the right foot planted, since the car didn't much care whether it was going straight or cornering (you could always break the tail loose if the corner was really tight). The cones were nearly as big and heavy as the Mini, so staying on course was pretty much life-and-death.
It was huge fun, but then I discovered beer and, well, things happened, you know?
*I don't know how well the old CASC classifications translate to today's SCCA equivalents. Solo 2 was two head-to-head races per heat on mirrored courses -- one run on the right and one on the left for each car -- with a class handicap head start if the cars weren't matched. Winner was the combined shortest time.
SCCA still calls it Solo2. All cars are grouped by class according to size, weight, HP and mods, of course. Class handicap is called the PAX index ("professional autocross", I think), which takes the scores nationwide. The index gets multiplied by your run time. The only time it's not so great is when the weather changes on the course over the day, so if one heat gets a rainy course, and other heat/class gets a dry course, the PAX index get messed up, but there you are anyway. I almost have more fun in the rain because then I can really see how the car handles in a controlled environment. :-)
