Anyway, that sort of went on a tangent. What i love about Ani’s first two CD’s is that they are bare. The first cd is only Ani’s voice and her guitar, and the second one uses just a few overdubbed harmony vocals and rhythmic instruments. On both albums, especially the aforementioned Not So Soft, Ani’s voice comes through like the clearest day you’ve ever seen in your life. Perhaps this was a symptom of her music being more folk than folk-rock at the time, or perhaps it had something to do with the way the album was recorded, but her voice just doesn’t carry the same luminous glow all the way through Imperfectly. By Out of Range she sounds as though she’s employing a totally different technique, and on her newest recordings her voice is alternately road-weary or used in tricks of pronunciation and enunciation. Or maybe i’m wrong. I love all the albums, anyhow, so i don’t think it makes much of a difference.
off-topics
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For some reason i am crushing hardcore on old Ani DiFranco CDs this weekend. Many people just starting to listen to her want to get the ‘best of’ of her first two cds, her live cd, or a newer one. I don’t think any of those impulses are correct if you intend to embrace Ani’s entire creative cannon. You really have to start on Out of Range or Not a Pretty Girl so that you see both where she comes from and where she is going. I started right before Living in Clip, and this was the order i bought in: Out of Range, Dilate, Living in Clip, Not a Pretty Girl, Little Plastic Castle, Puddle Dive, Up^6, Imperfectly, Ani DiFranco, Not So Soft, To the Teeth. While i don’t endorse that specific order, i think it helped me to appreciate both old and new music by Ani. However, when i bought Dilate it was the newest release, so that skews the equation a bit. However, under no circumstances should Little Plastic Castle be your first buy, no matter what your friends tell you.
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Two things i was reminded of in the last 10 minutes: 1 – Ani DiFranco’s voice is recorded so clearly on Not So Soft that you hear it rather than the underlying rhythm of a song when you turn the volume down very low. 2 – Microsoft products highlight in the most backwards, idiotic, and counter-intuitive fashion possible. But, that’s par for the course, really.
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I think i may begin to use this little place as a breeding ground for other things. For example, i usually work from my aforementioned draft folder in Messenger on almost everything from research papers to posts for shafted. I am trying to get away from that practice, so that i am not reliant on the crash infested Netscape for all of my writing. For now this might act as a workshop for developing posts for Shafted, the essay part of the Crush section, or something else entirely. For example, i think i am going to post that little nugget of love about Viktor to Shafted in a few minutes. However, every post i make to Shafted has a picture and a song lyric to accompany it, so i’ve got to go find something about socks…
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With exactly one week until i move into my apartment, i would like to re-emphasize that i HATE my current roommate Viktor. At first i just thought i was having some culture-clash issues with him, but after an entire season of togetherness i now know that he is an inconsiderate, smelly fuck (while i am only an unmotivated, sedentary, territorial bitch). Two particular items bothered me today, both in the “i do them too, but you do them worse” category. 1 – My dear roommate left his socks on the floor. Now, i leave my socks everywhere, but not only were they on the floor, but they were sitting right under our HVAC unit. Futhermore, these socks were the nastiest socks i have ever witnessed, and i didn’t even want to nudge them with my foot. So, while Viktor was out and about for the day, i had the smell of his feet to comfort me. 2 – I listen to music. Viktor listens to the radio. Big difference. Another big difference would be that Viktor turns on the radio whenever he walks into the room and leaves it on until i get up and turn it off, whereas i turn down my music to a whisper when he first walks in. The kicker is that Viktor turns the radio on when he gets up around 8am, which happens to be two hours before i get up on days i don’t have work. In comparison, he just asked me to turn down my already lowered Ani DiFranco cd because he is “sleeping now.” Happily, this form of psychological torture for the fair and rational will only continue for one more week. And believe me, i am overjoyed.