"They lifted the curse."

Today, Pearl Jam is releasing a remastered edition of their first album Ten.

Every time I hear anything off that record I can't help but be reminded of that time of my life, around 1991, when Pearl Jam and my burgeoning love of music coincided which ultimately created in me a mental autobiography marked by songs as much as events.

One of the seminal tracks from Ten is the song "Alive." Below is a clip from a few years ago when PJ did an episode of Storytellers on VH1, and Eddie Vedder tells a really beautiful story about the meaning behind that song and its transformation over the years.




Incidentally, Pearl Jam make the list below at #60 with a bullet. That's above average, but like I said, it's not a strictly scientific study.

Music that makes you dumb.

I love this. A guy named Virgil Griffith did this little study, comparing favorite musicians/bands (compiled from Facebook) with SAT/ACT scores (gathered from CollegeBoard) of those who listen to them, which ultimately is good news for folks who like Beethoven, Sufjan Stevens, Counting Crows, U2 and Radiohead - bad news for fans of Beyonce and Lil Wayne.

Go to this site, musicthatmakesyoudumb, to see how he did it, as well as a couple more interesting visual representations, like the one below, of the data.

While understanding that this is far from pure science, I am more than a little pleased that I have so many faves in the upper tier. Click here to see the straight list. Click on image below to embiggen.

Working on the world wild web.

I just noticed there's been no updates for a month. For shame on me (Leeanne I think has given up all together, but perhaps she just needs some encouragement?).

Part of the reason why is that I am working hard on getting my online portfolio up and running. Jeff is helping me out big time on this. First and foremost, he & Linde secured the domain name for me and staked out the little corner of the internet where it will be residing. Plus, he's helping me with all the dots & dashes/bleeps & bloops that make the internet work. So, hopefully, we'll be launching it soon!