488 - D'Angelo - Voodoo

Throw big portions of Prince, a steady drumbox beat, plenty of self-harmonizing, and mixes of relaxed line delivery with flourishes of vocal gymnastics and you get D'Angelo's Voodoo. It is a good album from the start to finish, but there isn't a big range of sound here. If you are using this as the soundtrack for some love making, that's great. But otherwise you might find yourself tuning out or just using it as background music.

I must confess that what wears on me more than anything is the monotony of the drum beat on nearly every song. For a sound that is put so much in the forefront of many of the songs, it is really uninteresting. But D'Angelo's self-harmonizing helped to distract me from this shortcoming.

Songs I knew I liked: "Untitled (How Does It Feel)"

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Devil's Pie" and "Chicken Grease"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: There isn't anything I dislike on the album. My feelings on the songs vary from "That's smooth!" to "Not a bad groove at all."

So sore

No, not from last night's early-Val Day party in bed. ;) I was very sore before that.

My dad fell a couple of trees around the holidays. On Saturday, he rented a log splitter and we split the wood, loaded it in the pickup, drove over the mtn to my house, and stacked the wood there. It took 3 FULL loads of the pickup. I have two racks that are 8' wide and supports that go up 4'. Technically, a cord of wood is 8'x4'x4', so both of these racks being full should equal a cord. Both of the racks are full...as in "heaping spoonfuls" full. One rack of wood made it through this past winter (assuming the worst is now behind us), so come this winter I should have plenty of wood for our new porch firepit and the fireplace.

Moving all of that wood has worn my body down though. I was grateful to have the strength on Sunday to do sound (I have 5 monitor speakers I have to carry from the A/V closet in the back of the Fellowship Hall to the stage and back). Last evening when doing laundry, each of the laundry baskets felt as if they were loaded with logs. Today, my body still aches and some of my arm muscles even tingle a bit. I need to do more strength training. :P

I keep thinking of what one of my friends at church was telling me yesterday. He said that when he lived in Ohio he had a woodshed in the back that held 11 cords of wood and that he would fill and empty that shed each year. And, no, he isn't built like Paul Bunyan.