One thing that helps me key up and prepare mentally to give a talk is to a little music running in the room first. For over a year now, my play has been the same darned thing, so it seems like its time for a change. I like to keep the play list at as close to an hour as I can so when the music stops, I know to stop talking. Here's my current list.
- "Running Through Chinese Poems" -- Warren Zevon reading and Michael Wolff accompanying the Jack Kerouac poem. This serves four purposes: to help test the quality of the audio system for vocals, it's poetry, it's Zevon and it's Kerouac. Can it get much better?
- Johnny Cash's "I've been everywhere" -- mostly because it does seem like I'm traveling too much.
- "Patricia," the Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban version -- just to see if any recognizes it as a version of the theme music for HBO's Real Sex
- "Jamaican Ska" from Fishbone -- Just love this song.
- James Brown first recording of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" -- There's never a bad time for James Brown
- "Bo's Veranda" from Morphine's "B-sides and otherwise." -- Pretty much one of the best composed and executed songs ever in the Rock era.
- The Blues Brother's cover of The Chip's "Rubber Biscuit" -- Just a goofy song that I really like.
- "Flight of the Bumblebee." Its a classic.
- Roger Miller's "Chug A Lug" -- for obvious reasons
- Miles Davis's "Miles Ahead" -- slow things down a bit and chill out.
- Hiroshima's "Hawaiian Electric" -- I got hooked on this band thanks to Ming Tsai's show on Food Network (they did the music for it).
- "Trust." Megadeth. Say no more.
- Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper's "Lincoln Logs" -- Its about the only Mojo Nixon song suitable for mixed groups... :)
- "Haberna" -- Yes, its other bit of Classical Music, but I like it.
- "Whole Lot Love" by Dred Zeppelin -- Not many folks know of Dred Zeppelin so I'm just doing my part to spread that love.
- Perez Prado's "Lupita" -- makes me think of and miss Janell, but then I remember how happy this song makes her, so its actually uplifting.
- "For my next trick" -- Okay, so yeah, I've got two Warren Zevon things on one play list. But this song just so makes me think of SQL Server 2005 that I have to have it.
- Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" -- this is just required listening, and at 5:26, the last two songs give me notice that I've got eight minutes to get ready.
- "Don't Let's Start" from They Might Be Giants -- I just have to have this song as last. Its modern sounding enough, its TMBG, it pokes fun at speakers (and has lots of other ironic elements in it, like "no in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful") and its got a catchy groove to it.
So what your favorite playlist?
When Oleg Tkachenko talks, you can be darned sure I'm listening. His recent post "XLINQ Bitter Words" seems to be right on as usual. I especially appreciate the fact that he points out that XQuery can cleanly do today what XLINQ struggles with as far as functional construction goes. The examples alone make this post worth reading.
Saw this (http://blogsearch.google.com/) in my referrer logs for the first time this morning. It's fast, google-y and has both RSS and ATOM feeds of results. Seems easier to use than Technorati.