Patrick Gage Kelley

Gold lion’s gonna tell me where the light is
Gold lion’s gonna tell me where the light is
Take our hands out of control
Take our hands out of control

Now, tell me what you saw
Tell me what you saw
There was a crowd of seas
Inside, outside, I must have done a dozen each
It was the height I grew, the weight
The shell was crushing you, I’ve been around a few

Tell me what you saw
I’ll tell you what to…

Outside, inside
This is a moon without a tide
We’ll build a fire in your eyes
We’ll build a fire when the colors getting brighter
Cold desire, makes a moon without a tide

Tell me what you saw
I’ll tell you what to…

- Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I can rattle my head off and spit all sorts of pleasing adjectives, as much as I want about what music I liked and didn’t like in 2007, but in some ways it is better if I just show you the numbers. All of these stats are based on Last.fm and their accumulations of the songs I have listened to over the past year. This is of course not totally accurate – sometimes I listen to iPods, I still use CDs in the car, and for most of December I was on a totally unnatural Pandora kick. Ignoring all that, I present my Top Artists 2007:

Also even more inaccurate are my top albums of the year, because well we had a little problem with leaving Cobra Starship on repeat. Also a lot of times when I first get an album I burn it and listen to it in the car or on the iPhone at work, and then listen to older stuff in the apartment. But I figured, maybe you care:

Top Albums:

1. Cobra Starship – While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets
2. Dolour – Suburbiac
3. Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
4. The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
5. !!! – Myth Takes
6. Regina Spektor – Soviet Kitsch
7. Patrick Wolf – Lycanthropy
8. The Academy Is… – Almost Here
9. Laura Veirs – Year of Meteors
10. Linkin Park – Minutes To Midnight
11. Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
12. Bloc Party – A Weekend In the City
13. Björk – Post Live
14. Panic! At the Disco – A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
15. ActionReaction – 3 Is The Magic Number
16. Björk – Vespertine
17. Mirah – C’mon Miracle
18. Björk – Medulla
19. Low – The Great Destroyer
20. Patrick Wolf – Wind in the Wires

My Top Ten Albums of the Year:

10. Armchair Apocrypha – Andrew Bird
9. Infinity on High – Fall Out Boy
8. The Reminder – Feist
7. Neon Bible – Arcade Fire
6. The Magic Position – Patrick Wolf
5. † – Justice
4. Mirrored – Battles
3. Volta – Bjork
2. In Rainbows – Radiohead
1. Boxer – The National

And that is the top ten. Questions, Comments, Complaints?

Things that maybe should have made the list but forgot to: Low, Drums & Guns; Interpol, Our Love To Admire; LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver; Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Is Is (not even an album! just an ep); The Tough Alliance, A New Chance; Bloc Party, A Weekend In The City; St. Vincent, Marry Me; The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America; Kings of Leon, Because of the Times; The Field, From Here We Go Sublime; and St. Vincent, Marry Me; Linkin Park, Minutes to Midnight.

Albums that I was just sort of disappointed in: The Shins’, Wincing the Night Away; Rufus Wainwright, Release The Stars; Wilco, Sky Blue Sky; and Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala.

Albums that I guess I was supposed to love but can’t stand: Amy Winehouse, Back to Black; Band of Horses, Cease to Begin (actually I can stand this, I just think it is really boring and I guess I am supposed to love it); and M.I.A. Kala – which I mostly can’t tolerate at all.

Summary of Noise

I decided that Regina Spektor is really good, especially the album Soviet Kitsch, that I do like The Academy Is… and I don’t know why I didn’t listen to them before, that The National is one of my favorite bands ever, that good electronic music is too hard to find – but maybe getting easier, that music festivals like Austin City Limits are a really good idea (and value for people who like lots of music), and that Patrick Wolf is going to keep getting better.

We took a back road, we’re gonna look at the stars
We took a back road in my car
Down to the ocean, it’s only water and sand
And in the ocean, we’ll hold hands
But I don’t really like you
Apologetically dressed and in the best put on a heartbeat line
Without an answer, the thunder speaks for the sky
And on the cold, wet dirt I cry
And on the cold, wet dirt I cry

Don’t you wanna come with me?
Don’t you wanna feel my bones on your bones?
It’s only natural

The cinematic vision ensued
Like the holiest dream
There’s someone calling, an angel whispers my name
But the message relayed is the same
(wait till tomorrow you’ll be fine)
but its gone to the dogs in my mind
i always hear them when the dead of night
Comes calling to save me from this fight
but they can never wrong this right

- the killers.

Liar! Liar! Liar! And seriously could you stop getting aggregated?

Semi-famous quasi-geek Randall Munroe creator of the webcomic xkcd came to Carnegie Mellon this past Friday drawing most of the people who can’t remember the last time they have left Wean Hall (the computer science building that looks like a mashup between a bunker and a turtle) out into the sunlight. And while the gym was pretty full (though there were empty seats) it was certainly not the largest lecture on campus this semester (Randy Pausch, wins that one). It was also not fantastic. It turns out creating a successful webcomic is not enough to carry a one hour presentation.

It is more likely true that I would describe it as boring or possibly inundated with erroneous facts. Some favorites include when he incorrectly described the rules that question marks follow in quotations or when he either claiming a non-existant office of french standardization existed (which sets rules and governs all French speakers) or greatly extending the powers of the Conseil Supérieur de la Langue Française, which as far as I know no longer exists (and either way they set forth no recommendations on the syntax of quotations nor did they ever claim to govern all French speakers). Or possibly we should stick to him simply saying what a great time he was having here in Philadelphia.

Anyway we had to occupy our time wikipedia chaining (Jesus -> Vagina, 6; Pomegranate -> Hamiltonian (QM), 11; HIPPA -> Trebuchet, also 11) since it was decided that that was more fun than listening to him talk, especially when he got sappy.

For his only defense, I will give him the fact that his comic convinces people to do things, some pretty weird things, giving Stallman the katana, chess on the rollercoaster, meeting up at the playground, etc. And the idea that he can impact reality is cool, my advice for him is to stick to what he knows best though (the dorkier the better).

(image by Danny Rashid more images)

Saturday night back at Weigand Gym was Arthur & Yu, followed by Broken Social Scene (or like 5/19ths of BSS, plus Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set, or maybe he counts now and then it is 6/20). And basically they were really good, and I really enjoyed it, though the crowd I would probably most accurately describe as “limp.” They did look really good though, and as Weigand isn’t that big Danny got some shots that are better than I have ever taken at a concert and you can go look through those (more like the one above).

They mostly played Spirit If… (I think they seriously played all of it), but they did have a few off their self titled album which is easily my favorite, including “It’s All Gonna Break” which is actually my favorite song of theirs (totally reinforced by their live performance of it) as their last song, not counting a singalong to close their just over 2 hour set. Sure it would have been better if Emily Haines or Feist had been present (or for that matter any female vocalist would have helped out) but it was still a really good time.

Actually, quite a few times. According to my profile on last.fm I have listened to 89238 songs since I joined in August of 2004. This means I now have over three years of many of the songs I listen to recorded. I say many, and not all, because sometimes I am listening to songs in the car, or on an ipod, or without an internet connection, or possibly at someone else’s house. But for the most part, I would guess about two-thirds of the music I have listened to in the last three years is recorded here.

Last semester in my Information Visualization course a fellow student, Lee Byron, for one of his projects designed a Last.fm viewer which can be seen here. This is of course very cool and I immediately wanted one of my own.

Enter LastGraph, a web application that if given your last.fm username will generate this “wave graph” for free (and it is pretty fast). All the images in this post are generated from that service. You can read more about it at his website, but there are some major differences as Lee’s work was done in processing this has been converted to python and is using amazonS3 for hosting and a custom graphics library that Andrew Godwin wrote.

So, it has been really interesing to look back at this, and notice trends, like the above shot which is clearly some sort of pretty angsty feminist stage I went through with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, and Jewel (ignoring the Kings of Convenience).

Also, it is good at picking out events in my life. You can see the longest gap of no music was this past July, while I was on my trip with Amy, because while there was music on the trip, there was very little internet and also as you remember a lack of ipods.

While I do think Lee’s implementation of this was a lot cleaner (didn’t have the noisy lines, probably dealt with special characters better than simply omitting them) this is pretty fun, and so I encourage any Last.fm user to go try this.

Also hopefully when I have some time, since there is a huge amount of data here (at least for me) I will work through this and maybe come up with some alternative visualization, because I feel like too many artists are being lost in the tiny lines, the little waves that seem to make up the majority of my graph.

Also if anyone is interested in my graph I have put up the “red” version as a pdf here for you to download here-big! 8MBs if you would like to look at it in more detail.

Though for me it was really last Friday when I dressed as patrick wolf. For those of you are not aware, he is a British musician who I really like.

(p. wolf on left, p. gage on right; his photo by Chiara, mine by Danny)

Anyway I think the costume went pretty well even though my hair was not as red as it should have been, and I was dressed in a style that might have been a mixture of his more angry/goth second album and flashier crazy-pop third album.

As this is the first time I have really gone about making a real Halloween costume I am pretty happy with it, and I will just have to outdo it next year–maybe the goal will to be pick someone that five percent of the party will recognize. More pictures from said party are here – by Danny

But either way the main purposes was served and I can feel like I sold myself out to advertise for him, since I really like his music and you should all go watch and listen.

(It is actually only the last day of October)

I am really enjoying the new radiohead cd, however I have not yet given them any money, because I really want to buy an album. But maybe not an entire discbox, is there no in between? The song videotape is pretty much the best one.

This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can’t do it face to face

No matter what happens now
I won’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.

This past weekend I went to Austin for Austin City Limits. Brian had bribed me to come out to Austin to visit him by presenting me with said tickets at a discounted price. Bjork was headlining (technically second-lining to Bob Dylan).

I saw twenty one bands (or parts of twenty one bands). Most of the links below are to videos of the artists, or their homepages, or other things about them. Also all the photos are mine except Bjork, because I just couldn’t do the night shots with the point and shoot.

Friday started off really well with some sort of giant fire which was either due to propane tanks or portipotties. But once we got past dealing with the giant black cloud in the sky the day progressed.

Peter Bjorn & John, who I do really like, and they gave a great show. They have a dry humor that they play off each other with, and the question you are all asking, who whistled? The answer, all three of them whistled at various time, but Peter did the whistling on Young Folks.

John Ralston was also good but grungier than when I saw him last (opening for New Found Glory in Pittsburgh). LCD Soundsystem need some vocal production. M.I.A. … well I don’t like her to begin with so, I wasn’t impressed. Spoon gave a good show, as usual.

Bjork… oh bjork. We will save her for the end.

Saturday, started off well with Cold War Kids, who really only have that one amazing song Hospital Beds

St. Vincent was really good. I had only just started listening to her a few weeks earlier (at least solo – she has done stuff with Mr. Sufjan Stevens), but I really enjoyed her show. And she made me laugh: “Oh, I am bleeding again, I am always doing that, bleeding all the time.”

Andrew Bird. I think he is the only musical act on Righteous Babe Records that I actually like (not counting Ani, of course — and also I think he is no longer on the label). He gave a really wonderful show, he is just an amazing musician and has some great songs, and I was second row. Damien Rice, was good but I was too far back and he only played like six songs because they did a lot of musical improv and craziness, which extends things so he really needed more time.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, were good but I wasn’t really paying attention as it happens. Now the big disappointment, Arcade Fire. You can all disagree with me here, I hear you complaing already. I know we love their music, but their performance was just uninspired. They stood up there and played their songs, and sure they sounded good, but I expected more, I expected magic, or a vast array of emotion and I got none of it.

So, I walked over and watched the last hour of Muse, and I must say they were pretty amazing. Muse has the kind of music that is just made for giant venues like this, they are gaudy, and loud, and in your face — and with the lights and massive crowd it really works.

And finally after another two mile walk home Saturday night, some mexican food, and a two mile walk back Sunday morning, I was first row for The National. Who I think were quite amazing. It was great energy up in the first row, and his voice is perfect in concert, deep and practiced and really soothing.

Then I saw Ian Ball (lead of Gomez), who was pretty good, gave a nice close show. Then DeVotchKa, from afar, who were neat and I should really listen to them more.

Big disappointment number two – Bloc Party, though we all knew this was going to happen. The thing is Kele really can’t sing, and while this makes us all sad, we deal with it, and if you want to hear a nice voice stick with the albums (You could hardly hear him, if he was singing at all, he neglected to know all the words or at least produce them, it was a pretty big mess).

Regina Spektor was absolutely wonderful. She was so happy to be there, so nice, so kind, and she was brilliant. A one woman act producing wonderful sounds, a great mix of songs, the crowd simply adored her.

Wilco was fine. The Decemberists were also fine. Bob Dylan is a mystery, the only act to play with no conflicts, everyone saw him – but no one could see him. The lighting was done so that it was his hat & his guitar, and his band. He could have not actually been on stage and we would have never known. (He was also the only act for which there was no press pit)

Finally, Bjork.

by Mark @ Paste Magazine

Headlining the Friday night show. She was wonderful. I have no good pictures so I have stolen two from Flickr for you. Wearing a golden explosion she came out and treated us to eighteen songs, including the anchor song (refrain en Islenka second time), army of me, hyperballad, innocence, strangely-cover me. Her voice was amazing and the concert did turn in to a bit of a rave.

by cloverity

As she left for her encore, one of her speakers erupted into flame (not on purpose), we can only imagine it was rejecting to play vibrate the waves of her voice any longer. When she returned to the stage she asked: “Did you notice our speakers were on fire?” Adding, “but we don’t care!” And conluded her performance with Oceania & Declare Independence.

Now, I just want to see her again, and I am trying to decide how to make that possible.

Anyway ACL was a success, I should probably go back next year, maybe take some people with me.

Top 5 Shows:

1. Bjork
2. Regina Spektor
3. Andrew Bird
4. Muse
5. Peter Bjorn & John

rank	artist	number of songs played
1	Kate Bush	1,616
2	Ani DiFranco	1,144
3	Björk	899
4	PANIC! at the disco	805
5	Jewel	683
6	Kings of Convenience	649
7	Fiona Apple	582
8	Patrick Wolf	530
9	Yeah Yeah Yeahs	486
10	Death Cab for Cutie	413

by Low off The Great Destroyer

Before you speak
The words are plain to see
Upon your skin
They sing, they dance and spin
So what, pray tell
Will save you now?
Here comes that cold sunrise

And at the peak
We reach to cue the strings
They ring
So sweet
They lay in plain relief
So what, pray tell
Will save you now?
Here comes that cold sunrise
Here comes that cold sunrise

This is his first love song

In a time of loneliness
I fell into your strong open arms
And in those arms you loved me well
You hid me in your calm

And in that calm we headed south
Knowing nothing of my demons

There were devils in the winds that night
Walking fire among the hills
And many voices called me out to the cliffs
But you held me safe
You wrestled me still

Wiping the black blood from my mouth
Speeding into nowhere

It starts in Penzance where the winds are born
And follows the track of this train
And just like this love coming back for you
It will come back for me again

“What a beautiful town!”
I shouted out.
Oh, but what a terrifying view..
You know I wrestled with my bruised hours
Just to lie there next to you

Deep in the dark heart of the south
Speeding into nowhere

My love, Come stop me
I am haunted and possessed
And with my darkest hour yet to come
It’s only you, only you can stop me

Come back to Penzance where the winds are born
Just follow the tracks of this trains
And just like this love calling out for you
It is calling me out again…

So come stop me
Only you can stop me
Stop me
Now

Sugar, sugar, don’t look now
You’re place is falling apart and how
And all you want and all you need costs money, money
So let’s make the most of your last 20 dollar bill
And hire a hitman to hit your boyfriend
Kissing you is like getting high on someone else’s drugs
Kissing you is like getting high on someone else’s drugs
Kissing you…

Sugar sugar, don’t you cry
We’ll all grow old and then we’ll die
But all I want and all I need is your money, money
So let’s make the most of your last 20 dollar bill
And hire a hitman to hit your boyfriend
Kissing you is like getting high on someone else’s drugs
Kissing you is like getting high on someone else’s drugs
Kissing you is like getting high on someone else’s drugs
Kissing you is like getting high on someone else’s drugs
Kissing you…

(note: this means nothing)

You are my autoharp
I push every button on your body
I push the a minor, the e flat, the f major
And especially the c sharp 7
You are my autoharp
I play every string in your mind
And even when I play them very loud
They keep in tune
But how will they sound soon
You are my autoharp
I bought you in a pawnshop in virginia
You were cheap but in good condition
Longing for someone to take you on an exotic trip
You are my autoharp
I carried you all over the world
In my hard case called the heart
You’re the reason for my blood to keep running
Through my veins every album again—-
This is how I feel about you.

are there no blinders on lights that glare
white noise on the eyes
from gas station lights and reflected ice glare
so that i can walk home by moonlight
alone

or can we go out to where the wind howls and stand to lean up against the trees
they’ve grown up so tall that you can’t see the house
it’s a fortress now but you know how it used to be
i can lie to myself
and say i like it
but i would love it if you were here

these words on paper smell like you
associated in random thought
on my lips the words turn blue
evidence i’m feeling lost
i can lie to myself
and say i like it
but i would love it if you were here
i’m just sad for myself
cause i know you’re clear
but i would love it if you were here

i can just see you show me your garden
i thought you’d grow roses and grapes on low vines
i wanted to know you when we were both older
i thought there’d be more of those wonderful times
i can lie to myslef
and say i like it
but i would love it if you were here
i’m just sad for myself
cause i know you’re clear
but i would love it if you were here
you were here
yes you were
yes you were

Goodness.

That weekend went by real fast, I nearly missed it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (book six) came out this weekend, selling millions of copies I am sure. (Haven’t seen the numbers yet for the weekend or midnight sales – though I believe I saw that midnight sales were above 10 million copies.) I finished it Sunday morning (getting a late start, Saturday afternoon), and it was worth the wait, however I believe book five remains my favourite so far. For actual thoughts I believe we will have people posting reviews soon over at the booknest

Also we now have two kittens living in our apartment. One is actually Tony’s which we are cat-sitting until he moves into his new apartment at the beginning of August. The other is Matt’s and he will be there till Matt goes back to school at the end of August. I was going to put up pictures of them, but I haven’t actually taken any good shots of them yet, so I opted for a concert shot instead.

Last night Sanjay and I went to see June, Days Away, Plain White T’s, and Academy Is play at the 9:30 club in DC. It was a good show, especially the last two. The shot above is Academy Is. It was also good because I got a chance to really put the new camera through the testing grounds (even though we can never expect much from a point-and-click in concert lighting), but there were a few good shots. Now I really need to test it being touristy/artsy somewhere.

This is an old picture.

But I needed something to post. Ha.

So this is the photoblog, still working out the bugs. Let me know what you think, kids.

Anyway, I may just post a few, to get things going.

Well every post needs to be something more. I have been thinking about my website lately. Even with things that need fixing, I have simply been thinking, no doing.

I am not real sure why this is, and I am figuring it will change soon. The bad part is all this thinking has led to little in terms of actual decisions. However, as I am currently writing this, I just came to a decison. Anyway, in the next week or two expect the links page to be re-worked and the long awaited books page to finally come into being.

I am currently reading Henry James, as he has been avoided up to this point, possibly not for any particular reason except for pure volume.

Speaking of, go check out the three new anberlin songs over there at PureVolume. It is on the links list.

With that, I am returning to developement.

So I finally got those pictures up and then I forgot I was supposed to write words up here. I have to remember to do things other than sleep and play video games on weekends.

It turns out that the A.C. Newman cd is quite good; next I want to hear the Linkin Park – Jay-Z effort.

I have one more day of work and then I am home to Buffalo for break. I am excited; I am sure you are as well. I wanted to say more about things but then it turned out I was lazy, so I will write again when I feel inspired.

Matt Pond PA and Ted Leo concert in DC with anna.

good times.

oh my, so it is like 5:00 AM (incredibly late), actually it wouldn't be so bad, except i spent the last three hours doing a circuits I lab write up, i mean sure we only have to do 5 every quarter, but it took forever.

so now it is way too later, and i need to go to bed, because it is getting to be that time of the quarter i am noticing. when all the time seems to disappear becuase it got lost on the way, and i have two labs due tomorrow, and two tests.

that is not to mention the LEAD mentor interview, that i think i will need about 15 minutes of preparation for to get myself into the right mood to appear as amazing as i need to be for them to create a semi-non-existant job for me, mainly because i think it should be there.

(and i have completely ignored flash today)
i suppose perhaps i can work on it tomorrow, if i am not dead when i get back tomorrow night

well we will see…
hmm… and i end with…

—three times

next door
you are sleeping alone
but we in unison awake
and you are lifted out of the window

see the birth
outside in the snow
and wait
until
the blue electricity
is far off into the distance
after the summer night

you are a hero
on the surface
uncovered