For Squirrels: What a shame

I loved this band from back in the day. They were solid songwriters.

From Wikipedia:

The band’s original lineup consisted of vocalist (Jack) Vigliatura, bassist (Bill) White, guitarist Travis Tooke, and drummer Jay Russell. Explaining their name, the band had said that they were so committed to being in a band, they would play music “for squirrels.” The group played jangly alternative rock akin to R.E.M., one of their prime influences, with heavier moments alluding to the sound of grunge rock and Nirvana. …

On September 8, 1995, while returning from playing the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City, the band was involved in the auto accident that killed Vigliatura, White, and Bender. Griego and Tooke suffered multiple injuries but survived the crash. The album was released as planned. The single “Mighty K.C.”, about the death of Kurt Cobain, was a minor hit and continued to drive album sales.

Here is my favorite For Squirrels song, “8:02 PM”

And my second favorite, “Disenchanted:”

So much potential lost. But it’s all in God’s good plan. Keep believing that.

The planets, An artist’s view; or Neptune Winter redux

It’s funny how a project I worked on a decade ago anticipated the recent work of a space artist, Ron Miller, who has created a series of images that depict what our sky would look like here on Earth if some of the planets were the same distance from us as our own moon.

For instance, here is the moon in its relative smallness as it appears one night over Death Valley:

Credit: Ron Miller

Credit: Ron Miller

Here is Venus:

Credit: Ron Moore

Credit: Ron Moore

The gigantic Jupiter:

Credit: Ron Moore

Credit: Ron Moore

And the rendering that really fascinated me, Neptune:

Credit: Ron Moore

Credit: Ron Moore

As you can see, this looks strikingly similar to the image below, without the people. In 2003, I finished an amateur-ish self-recorded album of original songs, and one of the songs was called, “Neptune Winter.” A fellow Counting Crows fan, Oshyan Greene, graciously agreed to create the artwork below after I gave him an idea of what I was looking for. As you can see below, Oshyan did a pretty good job of estimating perspective for the album cover way back in 2003:

Credit: Oshyan Green

Credit: Oshyan Greene

Here is the song that inspired the above artwork:

If you are interested, you can listen to more songs from this album by going to this YouTube account. It’s definitely the work of an amateur, but I still go back and listen to those songs to reminisce about the place I was in during that time in my life. But pointing out this coincidence of artistry, I couldn’t pass up.

Read more about Miller’s work here.

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Life in the major key

Evidently, some enterprising people with too much time on their hands have been creating remakes of songs, this time in rendering minor-key songs in the major.

Here is a major key version of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” which was originally written, and for good reason, in A minor:

Yuck. Yes, there’s a reason why it was written in a minor key. This is the original by comparison:

Here is another bizarre ear-bleeding tune:

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Music musings

This post is mostly unrelated to the type of content that I typically post here, but I wanted to take a minute to highlight some music that I have recently found to be quite exceptional. Within the last couple months — I wish it had been sooner — I have become acquainted with Spotify, which makes available nearly every recording ever produced, with a few notable exceptions like The Beatles and Pink Floyd, etc.

I “came of age” when grunge was cool, so my favorite bands are from that early- to mid-1990s era: Nirvana, STP, Pearl Jam, Bush, Dinosaur Jr., R.E.M., Counting Crows, Green Day, etc. But for 30-somethings like myself, there is still plenty of new stuff to appreciate and dive into. Here are some selections that I have been enjoying as of late:

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Feeling gravity’s pull

Here is a map showing the wide fluctuations in gravity concentrations on the surface of the moon:

compared to gravity levels on Earth:

ESA's GOCE mission has delivered the most accurate model of the 'geoid' ever produced. Red corresponds to points with higher gravity, and blue to points with lower gravity. CREDIT: ESA/HPF/DLR

For further reading:
Best Gravity Map Yet Shows a Lumpy, Bumpy Earth
Violent past revealed by map of moon’s interior

And now for R.E.M. on the subject:

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