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I’ve recently made some readability improvements to my personal site’s template, and made a bunch of updates to my music site, one of which is a total overhaul of the template to make it a lot easier (literally) on the eyes. Check ‘em out!

been jazz-related, as I get to know more about the genre, and get new work from old favorites. One of these old favorites, and one of my favorite musical acts, period, is Cinematic Orchestra, a jazz-electronic fusion outfit hailing from the UK.

I first got to know Cinematic Orchestra (is that a great name, or what?) through their 1999 debut, Motion, “an unequivocally brilliant combination” of jazz and electronica. One listen and I was hooked; sample it yourself, and I think you’ll agree.

I followed it up with pretty much the rest of their discography: 2002′s Every Day, an even more genre-defying feat (and probably my favorite CO album) that included some reimaginings of pieces from their earliest recording (made in 1999, but released in 2003), Man with a Movie Camera. Man with a Movie Camera, intriguingly, is the result of a request for CO to score a silent Soviet documentary originally made in 1929, for the purposes of its re-airing in a Portugese film festival. Pretty neat.

I followed that up with 2007′s Ma Fleur, and most recently, their 2008 live recording, Live at the Royal Albert Hall, which showcases the group as the master musicians they are. Jazz is always best listened to live, and this recording is not to be missed.

Regardless of what type of music you listen to, you’ll probably end up a fan of Cinematic Orchestra. Highly recommended.

I don’t even know how long it took me, but it was a long time—but I just finished rating my entire iTunes music library! Yes, all 6000-odd songs. Now I can rest easy that all my smart playlists are getting the most complete data. Yay! I feel like I should get a diploma or something.

I’m obsessed, but remember how I said that David Cook had done a fabulous cover of the Foo Fighters’ My Hero (my favorite Foo song) on his homecoming trip to KC? Sadly, as I’m sure some of you have found out, all the YouTube videos of it are really crappy. But don’t despair! DC is supposed to perform it tonight on the Tonight Show’s Summer Concert Series segment, right after Magic Rainbow. Not sure if it’ll be posted on the site, but let’s hope.

Update 2008-06-13 00:52—I am such a tool. I sat through the whole stupid Tonight Show (not a fan), and the performance that was televised was Magic Rainbow. The good thing is that My Hero was indeed performed and is available on the website linked above, though I was a bit bummed that it was the original with-electric-guitar version, rather than the killer unplugged version DC did in Kansas City. Well, I guess you can’t have everything, and to be fair, the performance was quite good.

Kobe Bryant’s nostrils, the Lakers cut their two-game deficit to the Celtics down to one last night. I missed most of the second half, sadly, but the first half was some great, great ball.

Fun fact: David Cook, who sang the national anthem to open the game last night, is a die-hard Chicago Bulls fan. Represent!

like John Mayer from the beginning, I really did. Like much of his (largely female) fan base, I think he’s dead sexy—that voice! But I could never get past the lyrical annoyance of early songs like Your Body is a Wonderland (though even at his worst Mayer never had a cringe-worthy lyric like David Cook’s misuse of “contraband” in Analog Heart‘s fifth track, Porcelain). Nevertheless, though I really liked the John Mayer sound (and yes, the aesthetic), I couldn’t bring myself to buy his early albums.

After hearing a few singles from his latest album, Continuum, though, I changed my tune (har!). Continuum is a departure from Mayer’s pop roots and a foray into his deep fascination with the blues, and a more mature, accomplished album you could not hope for. From the album’s first track, Waiting on the World to Change, which pleases and angers me in equal measure^*, to gorgeous blues ballads Gravity and Dreaming with a Broken Heart, it’s a joy from start to finish. It doesn’t hurt that Mayer is a modern day guitar hero, either. The chops, the voice, the songwriting: this is the John Mayer I always wanted to like.

Also be sure to check out his blog, which he (rather than a publicist) actually writes, and which is humorous and articulate.

^* Though I can’t agree with the head-in-the-sand attitude of this paean to futility, it’s a great song, pure and simple.

but what with one thing and another, well. Blink-182 was one of my favorite bands for a while, a band who was getting better and better, their artistry (yes, artistry) culminating in their fantastic self-titled 2003 release. Sadly, that was to be their last release, as the band went on “indefinite hiatus” shortly afterwards.

After a period of mourning, I was very happy to learn that the three former members were still making music, just not together:

• Angels & Airwaves – We Don’t Need to Whisper

  AVA (don’t ask me where the V comes from, but that’s how they abbreviate the name) is the band formed by Tom DeLonge out of the ashes of Blink-182. Whisper is very very good, but a bit self-absorbed and self-important. Fitting with Blink-182′s aesthetic, the lyrics are infantile, the music sublime—moody and introspective, reminiscent of the Cure’s atmospheric darkness and U2′s melodic, reverb-heavy guitars.

• +44 – When Your Heart Stops Beating

  +44 is the other band to rise out of the Blink-182 ashes, this one formed by the other two members, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker. An intriguing blend of electronic and rock, this is a better album than AVA’s debut effort, because it clearly breaks new ground and pushes its envelope—something which Whisper, while accomplished, does not do. Unsaddled by DeLonge’s self-absorption and paranoia, Hoppus’ lyrics are irreverent, smart, but never pretentious. This is a fabulous album, catchy at first listen and with enough depth to keep you coming back for more.

As much as I liked Whisper, I can’t bring myself to buy the new AVA release, I-Empire. Without Mark Hoppus’ comparatively dulcet tones to temper it, DeLonge’s voice is simply too grating to listen to for long. I got annoyed just sampling the album.

Oh, and if you’re holding your breath for Blink to get back together, don’t. Listen to +44′s No It Isn’t—”Please understand / This isn’t just goodbye / This is I can’t stand you”—and you’ll get the picture.

I’d always suspected that I’d be a bluegrass fan, if only I listened to it. That suspicion was proven correct when I purchased Alison Krauss and Robert Plant’s collaboration, Raising Sand, and the O Brother, Where art Thou? soundtrack, both of which have strong bluegrass influences. In an attempt to increase my exposure to the genre, and directly after being blown away by a televised concert of theirs, I recently got a couple of Alison Krauss and Union Station albums: So Long So Wrong and Lonely Runs Both Ways.

I’d already been a Krauss fan from Raising Sand and O Brother, on which she’s heavily featured, but these albums really show her depth as a musician and vocalist, and reveal the band as the group of master musicians it is. What’s great is that Krauss isn’t the only great vocalist in the band; Dan Tyminski, whom you may recognize as the voice behind the Soggy Bottom Boys’ Man of Constant Sorrow on the O Brother soundtrack, is fantastically talented as well and really rounds out the band’s sound. Highly recommended.

E! Online has this interesting tidbit about why Analog Heart was pulled from Amazon in April:

At the behest of Idol producers, Cook says he pulled the album pulled from Amazon’s MP3 downloads section last month shortly after topping the site’s charts, due to “fairness issues.”

Fairness issues? A-HA. I knew it was only because he was selling more than the other contestants who had albums out. Though it only sold about 1200 copies in its last two weeks on Amazon, this was apparently significant enough to cause the producers alarm, even though the voting was in the tens of millions every week.

If the producers were really interested in being “fair,” they should have blocked sales of any existing records by any contestant, but of course they couldn’t do that, because the vast majority of those had legal ties to other recording companies. Cook got screwed there because AH was solely his and the producers could lean on him.

Semi-good news, Cook fans! Amazon again has a page up for Analog Heart, though it is not available at this time—you can sign up to have them email you once it becomes available. I’m assuming that, now Cook’s won Idol, he’ll be free to release it for sale again, unless, of course, his contract with 19 Entertainment somehow forbids him to do so.