Day: June 22, 2011

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It’s a Good Thing These Kids Are Italian

They’d never have had a chance getting started with the music industry/media *gag-spit* here in the USA. But now that they’ve gotten a start via a sort of Italian version of “[Wherever] Has Talent” (“Ti Lascio Una Canzone”–something like, “I Leave/Sing/Give a Song for/to You”) in 2009 and a follow up hit album (Gold and heading for Platinum in Italy, since its release there last year, and just released in the US) it’s a tad hard for the media to overlook them here. And of course, the big shake-up at American Idol caused someone to say, “Hey, let’s have these kids on for a spot!” (Probably because Geffen Records pulled some strings to coincide with their album release here, of course).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbfuYUy3Org

There are plenty of these kinds of YouTube videos posted, including more than a few of their recorded performances before live audiences in their home country a couple of years ago (fun to watch folks singing along at places :-))

But if you enjoy their performances, don’t just leach off low-fi YouTube recordings. Buy their CD or the MP3 album.

At a little over half “classic” songs like “O Sole Mio”, “Un Amore Cosi’ Grande” (a 70s-era Italian ballad–great song) and “Smile”, and just under half new stuff, I could’ve just bought the “classic” songs as individual downloads (since the new stuff isn’t quite as good as the older songs), but I’d not have saved any money, really, and I’d not have been able to make a fair assessment of the new stuff. (Assessment: not crap, and in fact pretty good just overall less worthwhile listening than the older, better-crafted songs, although Notte Stellata, a newer piece, is saved by its musical derivation from a Saint-Saëns tune. And “El Reloj” is very good, despite being written and performed in a language I’m mostly boycotting. *heh* “Painfully Beautiful” is almost painful to listen to, though. Bo-ring. *heh*)

I’d buy more recently recorded music if more of it were this musical, but no. The “recording industry” in this country has its production line and “artist” plantations and absent a revolution, it’s just going to keep feeding crap to folks, making sure the masses are kept musically dull.

*sigh* I’d not downloaded mp3s from Amazon for a lil while here. Amazon is apparently becoming another #@^*$# tyrannical Apple clone, dictating that one MUST use its downloader to download mp3 albums and then f’n associating everything with the crappy M$ Media Player AND, as it downloads another mp3 in an album, starting up the crappy M$ Media Player and bringing it on top of any other app.

What utter crap! Frankly, crap like this makes me want to pirate music instead of buy it. I don’t, but this crap is way,way beyond annoying, all the way into, “I’d like to go to Amazon’s corporate offices and burn the thing to the ground!”

Sure, AFTER it’s downloaded the album, I get my first chance to go in and change preferences, but there’s only one thing to change that will alleviate ANY of the bad behavior–and changing just one of the bad behaviors is not good enough. If I wanted to have someone dictate to me what app to play music with put on an Apple straitjacket, get an Apple-performed lobotomy and use iTunes.

Asshats.

I will give Amazon this: at least it’s still allowing plain old everyday mp3 downloads.

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Quick-n-Tasty Coffee Addition…

…and a bonus tip or three.

Use a stick of cinnamon (it’s just a lil dried roll of cinnamon bark) as a coffee stirrer. Nah, you don’t have to add cream and/or sweetener (sugar or other). Just use a stick to stir your coffee for a subtle cinnamon kick.

Update: forgot to mention that if you don’t just use the cinnamon stick as a stirer but leave it in the cup as you sip (you do sip, not gulp, right? hmmm? ;-)), it’ll continue to add cinnamon flavor and it’ll soften enough as it soaks up some of the coffee that you can actually nibble on it. Chewing a wee nibble of cinnamon stick along with a sip of coffee is… nice. And cinnamon is good for both weight control and boosting brain functions, particularly recall.

Bonus hot weather drink: Do add some cream (the real stuff) and some sort of sweetener to some hot coffee in a thermos. Add a stick of cinnamon and leave it in the fridge overnight with the lid cracked open on the thermos. Or, instead of the cinnamon stick, grate some nutmeg into the coffee (I’ve done that into the brew basket when I was making some for just my own consumption). I normally do not like cold coffee, but this lil tip makes it drinkable, even enjoyable, for me. While it’s not “coffee-coffee” in my mind, it’s still tasty.

Try other “bright” spices that come to mind, or add some cocoa powder or whatever for your own unique cold coffee-based drink.

Beats the snot out of buying some refrigerated coffee drink crap from Starbucks or whatever.

BTW, do make sure you buy “food grade” cinnamon sticks/bark. Apparently some is available that’s some sort of manufactured crap for “decorative” purposes (whatever that means). I generally get six-ounce bags for a buck. YMMV.

Oh, and when you think you’ve sucked all the flavor out of your cinnamon stick, think again. Let it dry, then put it through your coffee grinder (we have three: a burr mill for coffee and two blade grinders, one for “sweet” spices and herbs and one for “hot” spices”). Even with the flavor pulled from it by several cupsa coffee (or the equivalent), ground up it’ll probably be more flavorful than the pre-ground crap that’s been sitting, losing flavor, on some grocer’s shelf for who knows how long. Ditto for just about any spice. Buy whole and store well, then grind however much you need a bit at a time.

And (tightwad tip!) always buy bunches of whole spices whenever they go on a blowout sale. If you’re really concerned about preserving them, use a vacuum sealer and mylar bags and store ’em in your freezer (or, with the mylar bags and O2 and H2O absorption packs, just store ’em on a pantry shelf–most folks say the O2 absorption packs are unnecessary with vacuum sealed mylar bags, as in the linked video).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU8W92U37PU