As you may have noticed, there's a new look to the CPF Blog. This New Year's thing - with its fresh starts, blank slates, resolutions and such - has me revved to make some changes and, hopefully, get back to regular posting. This is not the final look; I am going to revisit and possibly even switch to WordPress as I go, but at least you know I've been here!
As the new year began, I put the musical year 2010 to bed, as it were, by cleaning up my iTunes library for the past year. My trusty old laptop is short on memory, so I bought a big ass hard drive to hold music and put all the new music that publicists sent to me in mp3 form onto that beast, pulling material back to the laptop as needed. Though it's not a totally reliable count (some old material slipped in and various singles and compilations were lost in the tally), that drive ended 2010 with 4528 songs on it, and I eyeballed some 279 albums or EPs total. This year, I intend to add each new CD (physical or digital) as it arrives, in the infamous O/CD Tally.
Speaking of which, while I never left the house today and there was no mail delivery, I did grab an album from an old email which offered a download link to something that struck me as intriguing. I'm a sucker for the sound of a cello, so a release from November, touting a collaboration between Ballaké Sissoko, a traditional kora player, and Vincent Ségal, a French cellist, called to me. It's called "Chamber Music," and my first listen tells me it was a lucky choice, gentle world music with a Penguin Cafe Orchestra vibe. A good first acquisition to start the year.
I also happened upon a link to a story about Stereogum's 50 Most Popular Downloads for the year, which is full of free, legal mp3s. The one I was most excited to hear was Phoenix, covering Dylan's “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”
In other music news, today I confirmed that I'll be acting as a judge again at the upcoming Mid-Atlantic Battle of the Bands IV, taking place at Jammin Java later this month. The whole shebang runs from January 10 to 13, with the finalists coming back for a night in February. I'll be there on Tuesday (11). Wednesday (12) and Thursday (13). (Monday is reserved for family time with Grad Girl before she heads back to England).
The club asked for a bio to run on its site, so I was in that strange position of having to talk about myself in the third person and make me sound important. So I gave them this:
In her long career as a freelance writer, Marianne Meyer has written music and arts previews and features for The Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone and other publications. She has both an Emmy and a Peabody award for her television and radio work. Marianne currently blogs at ClosePersonalFriend.com and writes two columns for Examiner.com, one about digital music and another featuring reviews and photo galleries of DC area concerts. You can follow her twitter feed @mariannemeyer.
So, for those of you stumbling upon this blog for the first time, that's me.
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