Rainy days and Mondays

I listen to my iPod at work. I have always listened to music when I have work to do. Music helps me focus and helps me be more productive. I can't explain the "why" of it--it just does. When I was in college, I had the radio on (or CDs playing) for almost the entire four years.

Today is a rainy day in the StL. I don't have a window that faces outside, but I can see outside from my office. I work underground, so I can't see the rain falling, but I can hear it and I can see that it is gray.

For some reason, the weather is dictating the music I'm listening to. I've been listening to dreamy, slightly melancholy music. So far I've listened to all of Recovering the Satellites by Counting Crows and I'm midway through Under the Table and Dreaming by DMB.

Listening to DMB is strange for me because I don't really like them all that much. It's nothing personal, I just don't like jam bands. Well, okay, I do like the Black Crows, but I don't like it when they jam in concert. I don't like Phish. I don't like The Dead. I don't like jam bands.

I do keep Under the Table and Dreaming on my iPod, though, for days like this.

More podcasts

Since my last update, I added:
Speaking of faith
The splendid table
Filmschool
Intelligence squared
On the media
The sound of Young America
The Diane Rehm show

I love my iPod, Frances. It's a black iPod and I call it Frances. Get it? Black Frances? Anyway, my only big complaint with Frances is that when I download podcasts to him, I have no idea what the podcasts are about. In iTunes, the podcasts have descriptions, but not on my iPod. Right now, there's an episode of 'The sound of Young America" with an interview with Brendon Small. But I don't know which one, which sucks because I really wanted to listen to it.

UPDATE: Jesse Thorn, America's Radio Sweetheart, let me know that for 'The sound of Young America' podcasts, the subject of the show appears where the song title does for music. And lo, he was right. Jesse Thorn, awesometastic? You decide...

Fun with Black Frances

One of the fun things about The Dude working from home during the winter is that he is always hard at work putting our music collection on iTunes and, therefore, on our iPods.

At Whatsamatta U., I'm allowed to listen to music while I work (I couldn't at my previous POW), so I'm always flipping through Black Frances to find something to listen to. And, admittedly, I get tired of listening to the same five things. So, I've started listening to stuff that I've never heard before.

So far I've liked:
Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-titled disc
Radiohead's OK Computer
Cat Power's The Greatest

The most remarkable out of all of these is the Radiohead disc. I have had a strong distaste for them for quite some time. This is amusing because The Dude loves them with the passion of a thousand firey suns. So imagine my surprise when it turns out that they aren't as bad as I'd previously thought.

*sigh*...I hate it when he's right :)