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[eor]

In music, for my birthday derien got me the new extended enhanced version of Michelle Shocked's "Captain Swing" and Save Ferris's self titled album.

The Shocked album contains 27 songs, where the original contained 11. The songs still retain their characteristic core but even on cheesy headphones you can tell the difference. The highs are much more distinct and clear. The sound overall is more clear and crisp. The material, that I've been familiar with for a decade and a half, lends itself well to this treatment. It has plenty of horns, acoustic guitar, and a sultry swing. A lot of the extra tracks are demo versions of the songs included on the disc, but there are 8 new songs, some of which are live. For me the standout of the new stuff is "Barefootin'", performed live at Newport. Wish I'd been at Newport for that one. The original disc was pretty well produced so you won't see any radical changes in the studio version on this one, but it's like looking at your car after a pro has just cleaned it, wax it, and buffed it.

The Save Ferris disc is a lot of fun. Like many ska bands the songs can be clunky in places and some feeling just a little bit unfinished. But they have a nice big band horn section which is well placed in the songs. They mix it up within the genre playing with swing and reggae on different tunes. The outstanding tracks are the remake of "Come on Eileen", "Lies", and "Under 21", but the more I listen to the disc the more I'm groovin' to the other songs.



I finished the Asimov's for this month. I generally liked the stories in this month's issue, but it wasn't as outstanding as some. The exception being Samantha Ling's "Waking Chang-Er". I don't usually enjoy retellings of Chinese fairytales. Often they are Americanized too much and loose there flavor or they depend too much on knowing the culture and original story. Somehow Ling skated right down that fine line in the middle. It was new but old. It was strange and unknown to me, but had reins so I could hang on for the ride.

I haven't finished anything else yet. This week hasn't been very good as far as reading. Too many other things to deal with.