Wicked Music: Leslie Hunt’s “Wait for It”

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I’ve been a fan of Leslie Hunt ever since her too brief stint on American Idol.

Since Idol she has released two albums. The first album, “Your Hair is On Fire,” was released in 2009 and is incredible. I’ve been listening to it for three years now and I’m still able to find new and exciting things in each song to keep my ears happy.

Leslie released her second full-length album, “Wait for It” on May 11 of this year and I had the pleasure of going to her CD release show. The amazing Treehouse opened for her and they were fantastic. Check them out here!

“Wait For It” is the album you wish you were witty enough to come up with yourself. Lyrically this album speaks to me and I’m sure it will you. It’s like Adele heartbreak music, but less in your face, and you’ll be way cooler for referencing Leslie because no one will know what you’re talking about and you can be like, “Leslie Hunt is freaking amazing! Let’s listen to her album right now because I convenientlybrought it to this sleepover and we can eat ice cream and talk about boys,” or something like that.

For a free download of the title track, “Wait For It,” sign up for Leslie’s mailing list on her website. You will immediately get a download of the track! It’s well worth it and Leslie doesn’t blow up email boxes!

I’ve been listening to the album for a little over a week now and I can’t stop. I find myself constantly humming her tunes. I don’t know the lyrics yet but I’ll get there soon enough. I do know the important ones though!

“Your Hair is On Fire” was a poppier album and is something that I would typically listen to, but “Wait for It” has Leslie stripped down to a much simpler sound. I would almost say that it borderlines on a country feel, but in the best way. The songs are all pretty slow, but the bridges allow Leslie’s vocals to really shine.

My favorites from this album are definitely “The Air Left,” “In My Shoes,” “To Me, You’re Everything,” “Soon Enough,” and “Right to My Heart.” Okay, actually all of them are my favorite. Did I mention that she learned how to play guitar right before recording this one? Awesome.

The album is available through a number of channels. You can buy it on iTunes, but if you are going to digitally download I suggest buying it straight from this site. Leslie will see more of the money that way. For a physical copy of the album order it here. For you low commitment people, or to hear the album in its entirety before you buy, you can check the album out on Spotify.

OR to be a Leslie Hunt SUPER FAN, like me, you can send $13 dollars via PayPal to Leslie (lesliehuntmusic@me.com) she will sign your copy and send you an additional signed promo photo! Totally worth it!

If you enjoy Leslie, you can keep up to date with her by signing up for mailing list, or by checking out her Facebook and Twitter.

What do you guys think? Tell me in the comment section below!

Artists That Changed My Life: Marina & The Diamonds

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From Marina’s Website

Well, who didn’t see that coming?

Let me first explain that my love for her goes much deeper than my love for her catchy tunes and amazing wardrobe. It has nothing to do with my sexuality, which has actually been said before. It has everything to do with how she presents herself as a human and the content of her music.

A few years ago I found a free download of “Seventeen” on a blog somewhere that I can’t even remember. The MP3 had “The Crown Jewels EP” cover that came along with it. I remember listening to it at first and thinking to myself, “This is nice.” Then kind of forgot about it. I always have iTunes on random so I can surprise myself, or be completely disgusted in my taste in music. Every time “Seventeen” would play I would get very excited because I forgot that I had it and it was so good. Eventually it moved from my iTunes Library to my “Songs of the Moment” playlist.

Read the rest after the jump!!

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What I’ve Learned

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This is my last post for my Communications and New Media course. Thank goodness this is over. This isn’t me complaining, this is just the honest truth about what I feel like I’ve learned in this class.

Nothing.

The semester started out fun enough with the blogs and the ideas, but none of the assignments we did for class felt like I was being productive. Asking students these days to sign up for Twitter is a tad on the ridiculous side. We’ve already made our decisions on whether or not we want to use this new medium to further our careers or for any reason. This class isn’t going to change anyone’s opinion.

My generation is a rather stubborn one. We like what we like and we don’t what we don’t. This class isn’t going to do anything to change that.

Also, we viewed some pretty useless sites. LambdaMOO was probably of the strangest. I don’t see how the class would benefit from this type of website. It’s not something we can use for our future. If anything LambdaMOO could be a new distraction for us. It was fun to explore, but felt altogether pointless.

I did enjoy our textbook. Rushkoff dived into what we’ve all been fearing about technology and told us how it should be used. Technology really could consume us if we’re not careful. The way we’re using it now is not always healthy. Yes, it’s a wonderful means of communication, but it’s not always the best means. We’re so attached to our devices. As I write this post my friend is sitting on my bed playing with her iPod Touch, probably on Facebook. Obviously I’m not really engaging her by writing the post with her in the room, but I’m not even on Facebook!

It was cool to learn about the development of new media. Emails used to not be sent as instantly as text messages. Forums had snarkier and well thought out responses that aren’t seen today. Using the Internet was too expensive to be on all the time like we are now and I agree with Rushkoff that we use it too much, as I’m obviously guilty of it. There’s a reason that almost all of my work is done the night before (okay so it’s more like mere minutes) it’s due.

I liked the idea of the digital artifact, here is my group’s, but I still don’t know what a digital artifact is. Wouldn’t my blog be one? I’m not entirely sure!

I think the most exciting thing we discussed in class was music and rights and people remixing songs. It was interesting to hear how the rights to music work. Considering my blog is part music blog, this was something really interesting.

I also very much enjoyed when Amy from Chicago Street Style came into our class to talk about how she uses her blog to get her careers in the field she wants to work in. That’s really amazing and I hope that I can do the same with my blog one day!

The Future… of Technology

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This is the second to last blog for my Comm New Media class!

This week’s prompt has us predicting the future of technology.

What I Want from New Technology:

I think it would be really awesome if technology worked more toward making necessary things efficient. Yes, I love my iPhone, but it would be awesome to see technology doing more as far helping people in life and in workplaces. Obviously I’m not a scientist so I don’t know how to go about making any changes for the better. I do think that maybe if the people who are creating this amazing technology were using their brains to work together instead of focusing on what new features on a phone will allow them to sell their phone at $300 our world would be completely different.

Since I don’t believe that this is what is actually going to happen I’m going to predict the future of technology in a more realistic manner. I do believe that since we live in such a competitive world that the future of technology will produce some petty, pretty, but unnecessary things.

What I Think Is Actually Going to Happen With Technology:

I think this is difficult. I don’t think I can name specific things, but I think cell phones are going to be our everything soon. We already do most of our daily activities on their. We check Facebook, text, call, and Skype on them. We have thousands of useless apps to choose from and the number will keep growing. Our lives are “over” whenever they disappear or break.

Technology will probably allow us to be even more public with our lives than we already are. We share much of our lives on websites such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. I can only imagine that technology will have us being even more open. Like maybe a daily poop count or something ridiculous like that. I don’t know why that’s the first thing I thought of that’s kind of personal. I imagine that people use today’s technologies for stupid purposes such as that.

I think it would be nice to see what technology can do in the music industry. Not as far as the purchase process or making it easier to steal music. I mean as far as producing music. Music is sounding better and better and the means to listen to it are also getting better. I think the future of technology is going to play a big role in music.

Lastly, who would ever wear that atrocious looking Google device on their face? If you have anything to say about the future of technology leave me a comment!

LambdaMoo

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As much as this name sounds like a sorority or fraternity, it is neither.

Photo courtesy of LambdaMoo

LambdaMoo is an online community unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s like a role playing game, but it’s not really a role playing game. It’s more of a novel that you live.

During my time on the website, or, whatever it is I did not run into any people. I was in fact kind of clueless as to what I was doing. I asked for help more times than I probably should have needed to. If you haven’t experienced LambdaMoo, I suggest you try it out. It’s really interesting, but it was definitely not my thing. In fact, it kind of freaked me out a little.

I’ll try to explain why. I didn’t like not knowing what was coming next. When I read books there’s always a good guess of what is to come next, but not on this site. Anything can happen!

While I was in the LambdaMoo world I didn’t come across any other people to communicate with. This may have changed my experience as well. I was also very uncomfortable to being new. I didn’t want to run into someone who’s been on LambdaMoo for years and make a fool out of myself. Even though I read the proper etiquette rules, I feel like there are unspoken rules between longtime players. It happens on every website. I hate making a fool out of myself so it was probably best I didn’t run into anyone.

I’m sure LambdaMoo is awesome for making online friendships and long lasting ones. I know that I have friends from forums that I used to visit years ago that I still talk to today. Though I probably won’t ever visit the world of LambdaMoo again I think it’s a really creative and wonderful piece of the internet.

Wicked Music: Spook

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Chanel Cole (Photo from Last.fm)

I used to have an unhealthy obsession with American Idol. Alright, scratch that, I had an unhealthy obsession with Idol shows from numerous countries.

Yes, numerous countries. I would sit at my computer for hours at a time watching performances from Idol shows all across the world. It started about five years ago when I realized that America wasn’t the only country with an Idol show. There was Canadian Idol, Australian Idol, West African Idol, and even other shows like The X-Factor. I was obsessed with the idea of mass-karaoke. Or maybe I was more obsessed with watching people’s dreams come to fruition. Either way I had this thirst for Idol and I was committed to watching as much as I could.

While I was on my Australian Idol kick, I was amazed to find out that the people on this version of Idol were exceptionally more interesting than those who were on American Idol. Australia wasn’t scared of different and interesting like America. For example, the first season of American Idol was a bunch of divas/pop singers and Nikki McKibbin. People didn’t like Nikki because she was different, but the girl made it to third place for a reason.

I’m trying to get to the point, but I felt the need to have a little rant about Idol. While watching season two of Australian Idol I fell in love with Chanel Cole. Chanel is probably my favorite contestant to grace any Idol stage because she was just so unique. Her audition alone made me love her.

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CAW CAW!… I mean, Tweet Tweet!!

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(If you have Twitter followers like that, you should immediately unfollow them)

I love Twitter. I think it’s mainly because I like attempting to be clever with most of my tweets. I’m sure some of my posts come off rather cryptic and others it’s just blatant what I’m talking about. I like the challenge because I tend to rant in real life. Another thing I love about Twitter is that you can just breeze through tweets so fast and it’s so mindless.

Wicked Glitter’s Twitter is more based on sharing things I like with the world. I also use it in attempts to promote the blog. Things get iffy once I try to add links to Tweets. Luckily I use a browser called RockMelt and it shortens my links automatically. If not I’d have to go to websites like bit.ly to shorten them.

Like all social media, Twitter can be used for evil. We frequently see famous people using the site to bash each other. I find this to be ridiculous. You only get 140 characters so why wouldn’t you use them to be nice, or my favorite, hilarious?

Dibbell is more curious as to why most of the world is falling in love with Twitter. I personally don’t care to think that much about it. I believe the more you think about things the worse off you are because, who really cares if it becomes the next AIM, television, or cell phone? It will happen whether or not we ponder on it or try to prevent it. We just have to take it as is.

Like all other social media sites, Twitter is making people’s social lives look more exciting. It allows easy interaction between fans and celebrities. Celebrities retweet and respond to fans, though I have yet to figure out the perfect formula for getting my tweets retweeted.

Whose posts do you like best on Twitter? Kristen Bell, Alyssa Milano, and Marina Diamandis are just a few of my favorites.

Wiki-Glitter

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GET IT!?

It’s almost like Wicked Glitter, but not! Hahaha! I’m so funny, but not really.

Wikipedia has been saving/ruining college students’ lives since 2001. I know I’m personally tempted to use it as a source, but I’m sure you know by now that it’s probably not a very good idea. I always need it for science because science never seems to make sense to me, and Wikipedia normally dumbs it down enough for me so I can have some sort of clue as to what’s going on.

My favorite thing to do on Wikipedia is to read about my favorite musicians. It’s strange what you will find whether it be true or untrue. I’ve read through Marina Diamandis’, Janelle Monae’s, and Gwen Stefani’s just to see if I could find anything new and interesting. I know that some of the material may be untrue, but it’s interesting either way.

This article by Stacy Schiff was required reading for the class that some of my blog posts have been related to recently. The article was published July 31, 2006. Even at almost six years old the article still holds true. Yes it’s awesome that Wikipedia allows collaboration with everyone in the world, but it sucks that people are able to throw untrue and useless information into articles.

Looking for something to edit for this assignment made me nervous. I don’t particularly like correcting people on their work, but I had to for this assignment. I first checked the Dead Like Me Wikipedia page, but it was spotless. Keeping with a Bryan Fuller (if you don’t know who he is then you should really start watching better television) themed topic search I moved to Wonderfalls. On that page I found a few grammar/nitpicky things that annoyed me. I changed them and skidaddled out of there. I hope no one gets made that I changed the word “toys” to “objects” or that I elaborated on the shortening of “’sode.” We’ll see.

I can’t imagine having a Wikipedia page about me. That would be annoying to have other people making an image for you by telling the world things that you may not want them to know or that may not be true. Also, what PICTURE would they use?! There are so many to choose from and about 90% of them don’t even look like me anymore.

I hope they would use this picture (hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge)

I found this sign on a bridge.

Would you edit your Wikipedia page if you had one? Have you ever edited a Wikipedia page? How do you feel about Wikipedia? Do you feel like you’re being interrogated yet? Are you still reading?

Love you!

PS: WICKED GLITTER IS NOW 1 YEAR AND 17 DAYS OLD. I missed it’s birthday. I suck, but I will have some celebratory posts up soon for you guys!