Female singers who are okay to like

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

It takes a lot for me to like female singers.  I’m know I’m not the only one who feels this way.  With the abundance of good, solid male musicians leading bands the girls still have a hard time holding their own.  However, there are only a handful of bands who have a female play an essential role of musician, not just a singer.  Still, there are some female music artists who are okay to like.

 

Meg White

Band: The White Stripes

Cool points: Part of the best American band of my time (imho).

While Ms. White maybe isn’t the talented Mr. White, she still is quite, quite cool.  She was chosen for a reason and you can’t help but admire her for that. Just too bad that they broke up this year.  I’m really going to miss seeing her.

Alison Mosshart

Band: The Kills, The Dead Weather

Cool points: Part of a couple of very cool bands, edgy look/music, funky lyrics

While “VV” isn’t playing an instrument most of the time, I give her credit for being a funky singer with the ability to hold her own among very good rock musicians.

Karen O

Band: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Cool points: edgy lyrics, funky outfits, unique voice

While Karen O has allowed her music to be on the horrible teenage musical television show which shall not be named, and she did music for a horrible movie, Where The Wild Things Are, her music with the band is awesome.

Courtney Love

Bands: Hole

Cool points: Kurt Cobain married her, Billy Corgan liked her enough to write songs for her, the whole look she had going.

No, this is not the best singer or band or even celebrity to listen to.  However, given the grand scope of grunge music in the day and her desire to be famous and do whatever it took to get into the ring, I give her credit.  Ugly plastic surgery and insane stupidity aside, she’s still on my iPod.

Siouxsie Sioux

Bands: Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Creatures

Cool points: amazing band, unique voice, trendsetting music, plus every hip female who wears back with too much eyeliner can thank Siouxsie for their look

Siouxsie doesn’t have to play an instrument for us to like her.  We look at her and think she’s amazing and cool.  She is in a category all her own.

Tori Amos

Bands: solo artist

Cool points: plays piano, writes her own music, unique, completely wacky (as are all of the above)

While I lost interest in Tori Amos a long time ago, I still appreciate what she does and her talent.

Liz Phair

Bands: solo artist

Cool points: plays the guitar, writes her own songs

Now remember, this is Liz Phair before her horrible “Why Can’t I?” radio friendly music.  In the 90s she was the grunge girl for everyone to appreciate.  We’ll just remember her that way.  She doesn’t have a strong voice or the most innovative lyrics but that’s what makes her interesting.

Bjork

Bands: The Sugarcubes, solo artist

Cool points: awesome wardrobe, awesome voice, awesome music

What else do you need to know about Bjork? Iceland has brought us one of the best female musicians of our generation.  Not all of her music is spot-on but when she gets it right, man, is it good.  Surely she is the inspiration for Karen O’s look and style as well.

Fiona Apple

Bands: solo artist

Cool points:  plays piano, writes her own music, developed lyrics

I do like Fiona Apple a lot and her antics are mild compared to a lot of female musicians.  I’m not a fan of the washed-out anorexic look or her dramatic speeches but she’s a good artist.  The overly emotional lyrics get to me after a while but all in all I like what she has to say.

Honorable Mentions

With the above big-name ladies that needed mentioning, I have to include to the list: Beth Gibbons of Portishead (awesome), Alison Goldfrapp of Goldfrapp (new stuff is awful but the Black Cherry and Supernature stuff is amazing), Emily Haines of Metric (good stuff, just wish they weren’t on the Twilight bandwagon), Beth Ditto of The Gossip (girl’s gotta voice on her), Tegan and Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara (hip, cute songs – good enough for White Stripes to cover). Plus Debbie Harry, Stevie Nicks, and last but not least our First Lady of Female Singers: Janis Joplin.

Anyone I’ve missed is unintentional. Or is it?

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Blogging 102

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

This is why I cross-post: I like the techie side of going in to self-host a WordPress blog because I can have a personalized template and I like the free, easy interface of the Blogger site. But now that I’ve played with WordPress.com, and while the site is very nice looking, there are a lot of scripts you can’t use. With a self-hosted WP blog you can do pretty much what you want but when you have unreliable web hosting issues as I always have (I’m not willing to pay a ton for this) then the site can go down and no amount of backup guarantees you can restore the blog in MySQL.

So that brings up back to Blogger which I used back in the day. I’m honestly surprised that it’s lasted this long and is that popular. I’ve asked online why people use it so much more than WordPress and I’ve that it’s easier. Granted, I see that, but it’s the look that bugs me. The template designer is nice after I played with it for bit. It’s definitely much better than the old school templates they had before. I’ve also heard that since Blogger is tied into their Google account, then users can stay logged in for GMail, Google Reader, Blogger, and the other tools offered. I, personally, haven’t used all that Google has to their credit, but I understand why users want to keep this up.

My guess is it’s a work-based situation where they can log into Google. We never could at the public schools but maybe with the impending need for Web 2.0 resources, teachers and school librarians are allowed to have openly running Google accounts at their work computers.

WordPress has also been tagged as “tough” or “for professionals” which I don’t really agree with entirely.  Granted I’ve messed with the installation side of it and it’s quite easy once you’ve done it a couple of times.  Especially with so many people needing to be web designers as part of their profession, I’m not sure why it’s not used by them as much.  It’s the top rated blog service but I see tons of bloggers not using it.

Blogger has a “easy” look about it that puts me off a bit.  It doesn’t scream “authority” to me.  It looks like it is what it is:  a free blog.  Again, however, it is way, way better than it use to be.  I still remember that pink template they used for years – how I loved that!  At least now I have a revamped version of my beloved pink blog template.

With this all said, I’m going to link myself up to the site through Blogger for a while. The minute I ever update I get a comment either on this site or the Unfinished Book Reviews site. With WordPress it’s once in a while for comments and a bunch of spam related references bringing traffic to the site (thank you, Wassup Stats).  So the ability to have actual readers, commenters and followers on my site will happen in Blogger, it seems.  I had a whopping 11 followers on Endeavours of Librarianship before I stopped using it in May.

Granted, I still don’t absolutely love the site on Blogger but it’s growing on me.  At least I can run the scripts I want (most of them at least) here and I don’t have to worry about backups. I’m curious if all this work will be worth it.  I’ll get back to you on that.  Until then please read, follow, subscribe, share and most importantly: enjoy!

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Blogging 101

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

I love blogging.  I always have.  Not only the content writing but the puzzle of designing them as well.  But the main reason to have a blog is to have fun and share your fun.  Yes, you need a readership or some capacity.

Now, I’ve played with blogs and websites for years now and it’s cool to have people comment on what you’ve written.  Hence the popularity of Facebook and Twitter where you socially interact with people.  It’s fun. 

Since I’m writing about books and journaling life’s daily events, I tend to have more content in my posts.  I use to use Geocities way back in the start of personal web pages on the Internet (yes, grandchildren, I’m that old).  Then the idea of an online diary was what users really wanted so you could update your site much easier and we had good ‘ol Live Journal and Blogger which both showed up in 1999. MySpace was soon after.

Then the idea of having a nice designed weblog came up and people started putting money into domain names and styling their own blogs with self-hosted software. It used to be Moveable Type until they stupidly decided to charge for services. Now most big name companies use WordPress for their blog.

I use to like Live Journal a lot because of the social networking interface.  However, it wasn’t easy to find people unless you knew them and they knew you.  With Facebook you’re able to search for the person you went to elementary school with, which works much better for connections.  Plus, users don’t have to write long blog posts.  Twitter doesn’t make you do much more than link share or say something clever. 

Now that we have the social networking capability of Twitter and Facebook available, the ability to share your blog posts is much easier.  But which one should you use?  For the librarians, teachers, writers, book reviewers and such who have blogs I read, they mainly use Blogger, as I am now.  However, WordPress makes such sleeker, more modern looking blogs and I hate to leave it as my main blog service. 

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Starting the week

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

It’s sunny here and I’m ready for the day.  Yesterday Steve and I went to the park.  When we walked outside, immediately I felt that familiar heat and I was so excited to be outside.  We went down to the park, had some ice cream, fed the ducks, and then sat on the green and listened to a live music at the bandstand.  What a nice day and a great way to end the weekend.

I got myself up early today but there was no call for a teaching job (yet).  I’ve been watching BBC Breakfast since 7AM and I watched a piece about how the teachers are going on strike this week. The debate was that while teachers are going on strike, the parents should just come in and help.  The teachers argue that everyone who deals with children needs a Criminal Background Check (CRB) and this wouldn’t be fair to just let anyone, albeit concerned parents, to come in and take over for a couple of days.

I figure that’s why the education agency asked what my schedule was for this week.  I wonder if I’ll be stepping in while the teachers are out.  No matter.  I’m excited to go back to work.  It’s fun to be home and do my own thing but doing something else with my time in the name of productivity is nice too.

With that said, Steve is up and ready for breakfast so I’ll be walking in with him this morning.  Since my ankle isn’t ready for jogging yet I’ll head to the gym for the stationary bike.  A nice trip to the library will be in order too.  I don’t visit there nearly as much as I use to.  I’ve been reading Twilight so I’ve not needed to exchange books just yet – that one is fairly big.

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Sunny Summer morning

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

I took this picture yesterday on our way to the grocery store.  It was down at the (high/Secondary) school near there. It says “it’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.” I quite like that.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day this morning.  I’m sitting here typing away while Jake sits on the printer next to the window, sunning himself.  I was up an hour earlier than Steve because I fell asleep about 30 minutes before he was done on the Xbox.  We planned on going to the park today and having a nice, relaxing Sunday – looks like the weather is perfect for it.At this moment in time it’s only 3 degrees cooler than Titusville, Florida.  Wow.  It’ll get up to 78F today (I’m still not sure about the Celsius temperatures. I just know that 26C – 30C is pretty dang warm.)

Tomorrow starts my first week of maybe, probably starting back to teaching in some capacity.  It will be nice to have a pay check again, needless to say.  I have lunch makings and my coffee pot timer set to 6:30 instead of 7:30 in the morning.  I didn’t realize that there are plenty of Secondary (high) schools in the area so I should be set for substitute teaching.  I also have Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham where I could run down to (with a day’s notice at least due to my lack of car).  I should be set for the wonderful world of substitute teaching!

But for now I’m going to enjoy my Sunday.  Steve is up and making his tea.  It’s breakfast time and then on to the park.  I have plenty of bread for the ducks today.

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