cos

I found an old cardboard box of CDs that I hadn't gone through since several moves ago, that contained mostly CD-R's, demos, show recordings, pre-release albums from friends' bands, and the like, from the mid/late 90s. Unfortunately some of them were damaged - I think this box was in my trunk on a road trip a long time ago and soaked up some automotive liquid (antifreeze? wiper fluid?) from a leaky container. I've been able to restore some of them by washing them, though even most of those have some damaged tracks.

One that seems to have survived completely* (after washing) is "Bad Release: The Dead Opossum Sessions" by Oxytocin High. Which was their performance at WBRS that I recorded, and they possibly re-mixed then burned onto CD with track names and titles, and a nice printed label. Someone even entered all the track info into CDDB.

So I'm sitting here listening to lyonesse and ceelove singing songs they wrote, with instrumental accompaniment by coraline, nacht_musik, and a few of their friends. I can hear chaiya in the audience, and I know iabervon and veek are there.

I haven't listened to this in probably nearly a decade. But I used to sit in on some of their living room practices, and it's surprising how completely familiar every single song is. I didn't think I remembered their songs, and if you'd asked me yesterday I probably wouldn't have been able to recall any of them except maybe a title or two.



[ Some of the other finds in this box: An early 4-track demo from January, and an early 4-track demo from Fluttr (before they became Fluttr Effect) which has some damage causing pops and hiss in the first ~10 seconds of each track ]

cos, watching Jessie-cat wash herself: "I wonder how I can get her to wash herself more often?"

Valerie: "Put butter all over her fur! That's a horrible idea, don't do that, I take it back, I dreamt that a rat ate a mouse."

Near the end of Arisia last weekend, I ran into shadesong and ktpinto in the "Hot Chicks with Books" room on dealer row, and somehow the topic of urban fantasy came up. I asked ktpinto if she'd read anything by one of my favorites in that genre, Holly Black (thanks, mzrowan, for introducing me to those books!). K had not heard of Holly, but shadesong piped in to say that she and Holly Black were going to appear in the same anthology soon, and handed me a flyer about Ravens in the Library.

There's here name, on the same list as Holly Black's - that was enough to make me want to buy it. But look! Featuring Tales by: Neil Gaiman! Charles de Lint. Francesca Lia Block!

It's a limited run, to raise funds to pay off s00j's medical bills (she's also got story in the book), and they will only sell enough copies to cover those expenses. If you want a copy of this book, preorder it now.