Author: Stephen Quirk

Tom Mix

My wife and I are giving our 4-year-old daughter an old iPod shuffle.  In the process of looking for music to give her, I found a few mixed CDs I’d made for people over the years.  There’s one that I don’t think ever got to the person, so I’ve compiled it on Spotify to send to them.  There are a few substitutions from the original, but I’ve found what I can on YouTube.  That’s still missing a few things, listed here:

  • The Beatles’ cover of The Band’s ‘To Kingdom Come’
  • A cover of Dylan’s ‘Tonight I’ll be staying here with you’ by Mark Erelli

I also added Lady Lamb’s cover of Cher’s cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All I really wanna do.’

It’s full of in-jokes and randomness, but then again, isn’t that what mixed CDs and tapes were for?



Appendix:

THEM!

I’m frequently amazed by what you can do with a cell phone.  If you told me 20 years ago that a phone could do macro photography, I would have laughed in your face.

Here are some recent photos made with my iPhone and processed through Instagram (I’m a sucker for their vignette tool):

 

Blurred Lines

I heard Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give it Up on the radio today.  I’m still hesitant to say Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines was an intentional copy beyond Pharrell’s “woo!” noises.  However, I’ve been listening to Shawn Mendes (what, it’s surprisingly good!) and think his song Nervous sounds A LOT more like Got to Give it Up (starting around the :33 second mark).

There are also some similarities to the Blurred Lines video, namely the white backdrop with strong pops of red, a slight sepia tone, and women as props (have you seen the uncensored version of Blurred Lines, for sure NSFW!).

What do you think, am I wrong?  Will he be sued by the Gaye estate too?

California Loco

My kids are obsessed with a short film included with “Moana” called “Inner Workings.”  An important part of the movie is a song called “California Loco.”  It’s one of those songs you can’t get out of your head, no matter how hard you try.

Looking into its background, the composer, Ludwig Göransson, is someone you may not know by name, but you’ve certainly heard his music.

I’d first heard of Göransson through his collaboration with Childish Gambino/Donald Glover.  Genius has a great breakdown of their recording process of “Redbone,” which started with Donald playing drums and Ludwig layering many, many instruments to build the sounds they wanted.

Not a Gambino fan?  Well he also scored Black Panther and Ryan Coogler’s other films, “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed.”  Similar to his work with Gambino, much of the music was built by layering contributions from others, in the case of “Black Panther,” Senegalese artist Baaba Maal.

He also scores “New Girl,” contributed to music to “Community,” and many other films and TV shows.

Lastly, I love this and I’m tossing it in for the heck of it (song starts around 1:16)…

Dirty Old Town

The last time I was in Ireland was December 1999 at the end of my study abroad, around my 22nd birthday.  I’ve written a lot (maybe too much) about my time in Ireland, but now I get to go back for the time in nineteen years!

Working at Automattic, we gather with our teammates on a trip or two each year.  Being a distributed company, my particular team has members in Australia, New York, and South Africa.  We’ve decided on London for meetup this year and I’ll extend my trip for a few days in Dublin.

I’ll fly into Dublin on a Wednesday night and sleep in a hotel near the airport.  In the morning I’ll make my way into the city and do some exploring.  Afterwards I’ll stay with a college friend and her husband about 40 minutes south of Dublin.  We’ll spend Friday hiking and exploring Glendalough or other areas nearby.

Embed from Getty Images

That leaves a little time left on Saturday before I fly out that afternoon.

While not exactly the trip I’d envisioned for my return, my hope is that’ll recharge my Ireland batteries for a bit.  Here’s to making it back before another 19 years pass!