The end of this blog… and moving on to other things!
June 27, 2013
Dear readers,
I’ve come to the hard decision that it’s time to put Steve Cross Loves Music and Science to rest. Don’t worry, I still love music and science! I just don’t have time to blog about it anymore. The natural progression of life, relationships, commitments, etc… has forced me to re-organize priorities. That’s not a bad thing, it just means that blogging has to take a backseat to more important things. So, this is the end of this blog! I’ll keep the domain for the foreseeable future, and everything will remain archived as-is. Everything has a a life cycle, and this blog has reached the end.
This is not the end of me sharing this type of content on the internet, however! I do intend to share more science articles, links, tidbits, etc… on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, so follow me there. This will allow me to still share my interests and love of music & science with whomever is willing to listen. I’m also on Instagram, so follow me there for more visual content.
I also have other blog ideas that I’ve been milling around for a while, but I’m keeping that under wraps until I officially decide what I’m doing. If and when that comes to fruition, it will be made public via my Twitter and Facebook.
Whether you’ve just started following me or have been for many years, I hope you learned something, gained something, or otherwise benefited from this blog!
Peace out.
-Steve
Welcome to 2013, now go see Django Unchained
January 2, 2013
Welcome to 2013. The world didn’t end and we’re all right back in this together. Back to the grind. Everyone loves to grind, right?
I really don’t have a lot to say at this point, as I’m still getting myself out of vacation mode and back into grind mode, but I will say this quickly: GO SEE DJANGO UNCHAINED. This film is one of Quentin Tarantino’s masterpieces. It has all the trademarks of his greatest films. In many ways it echoes Inglorious Basterds, but I enjoyed it even more for some reason. Tarantino takes the satisfaction of watching the revenge of an oppressed class of people and weaves it into the framework of a classic spaghetti western. The result is as satiating as a big juicy hamburger loaded with all your favorite toppings. Yum.
Tristen needs your help to press a Christmas 7″
November 10, 2011
UPDATE: Tristen made her goal not long after I posted this, but you should still buy the 7″ when it comes out!
You’ve probably already seen this in a few other places, but it’s a cool thing that deserves repeating:
Nashville’s budding startlet Tristen loves Christmas, so she recorded her own version of 3 of her favorite Christmas songs and needs your help to put it out on vinyl. As awesome as vinyl is, it’s really damned expensive to produce, so many lesser-know bands/artists have a hard time coming up with the dough for the up-front costs. So Tristen has started a Kickstarter campaign, and is asking for your help in making this Christmas 7″ a reality. Check it out, and help her out. She’s a rad gal and is one of the best local acts in the game right now, so let’s make this thing happen, eh? Watch the video below and click here to donate.
My former bandmate and friend Seth Graves is hosting his 2nd quasi-annual Rock & Roll Science Fair tonight at Mercy Lounge, and it’s gonna be a blast. I’d like to think this blog was the original inspiration for Seth’s idea a couple years back, but that might a bit presumptuous. Regardless, obviously this is something I’m 100% behind. The lineup is fantastic and quite diverse:
Bad Cop
Sam & Tre
Thelma & the Sleaze
Leslie Keffer
Look What I Did
Hobbledieons
Spiderfriends Siberian Traps
Gay Vibes (Seth’s new sludge-core band.)
All bands and attendees are encouraged to bring some sort of science fair project. As with all 8 off 8ths it’s 100% FREE, 21+, and starts around 9pm. Get your nerd on.
Shows this weekend
March 25, 2011
There are some good shows to be seen this weekend in Nashville:
FRIDAY:
Jessica Lea Mayfield w/ Daniel Martin Moore @ Mercy Lounge. 9pm $10
Siberian Traps EP release w/ Casa Castille, Westfolk, and Jesse Payne @ The End. 9pm $5
SATURDAY:
The Coolin’ System album release w/ Unkle Skeleton @ The Basement. 9pm $5.
SUNDAY:
Surf City, Bare Wires, and Big Surr @ The End. 9pm $5.
That’s all I got. Have a great weekend.
Weekend stuff/the return of Nashville Nights
April 9, 2010
In my humble opinion, Nashville Nights is one of the best dance music blogs out there, and I was elated to find out that he finally re-launched yesterday with a new look and his own domain- nashvillenightsblog.com. Bookmark it, subscribe to the feed, etc… Welcome back, Joseph, we missed you!
NN was one of many music blogs hosted by blogger that got inexplicably deleted with no warning. Let that be a lesson if you run a music blog, GET AWAY FROM BLOGGER AS FAST AS YOU CAN! Even if you post fully legit, artist/management approved mp3s (as Joseph always did) they will probably still delete your blog.
This weekend is a bit dry in terms of awesome shows… but here are some interesting things:
Tonight Denny & The Jets return to the stage at Springwater along with Aquariums, Vermicious K’nids, and Fuck Show.
Saturday Bad Cop, Ill Patriot, Look What I Did, and Modern Hell will be at the End, and Zeitgeist is happening at University School of Nashville. This year’s Zeitgeist will feature a TON of bands, culminating with De Novo Dahl, Daniel Pujol, the Looking Glass, How Cozy!, and some other prominent names in the local scene. The End show sill start at Rock O’Clock as usual, but Zeitgeist starts at 7pm sharp!
Have a great weekend!
JEFF Nashville pics on BV/Cash Rich
October 22, 2009
Image via Brooklyn Vegan
Local Infinity Cat flagship band JEFF the Brotherhood got some blog love from Brooklyn Vegan today, and the pics are actually from a house show they played in Nashville on Oct. 13th. Turns out their photographer Paul Birman happened to be in town that day. Their new album Heavy Days is out now. They’re also playing a plethora of shows this week/weekend in NYC for the CMJ festival.
If you read this blog there’s a good chance you’ve already seen this Nashville Cream post, but I must mention the hilarity of the comments/jokes about a new restaurant called Pitchfork in Chicago. This is the restaurant’s website, so I haven’t a clue if it has anything to do with the music website we all love to hate… but it’s hilarious nonetheless. Just make sure you read the Cream comments, and props to Dave Paulson for winning best comment/zinger on Idolator.
Speaking of the Cream, they’ve teamed up with LimeWire to create a special Nashville edition of LimeWire’s “Ear To The Ground” series. It’s got all kinds of great local goodness spanning from How I Became the Bomb to Caitlin Rose to Jensen Sportag. Best of all: it’s FREE.
And The Relatives are the latest local band to join the ranks of Theory 8 Records, and their forthcoming release (apparently yet-to-be-titled) will be a joint effort between Theory 8 and yk records, one of many side projects for local web guru Yewknee. yk will be handling the artwork and packaging, while Theory 8 handles marketing and distribution. That’s a winning combination if I’ve ever seen one. Be sure to grab their last EP Animals for free at their Bandcamp. Read the official press release here.
As if his ugly tower-mansion/bar/travesty on Love Circle wasn’t bad enough, Nashville’s greatest embarrassment, John Rich, is reproducing. The kid’s name? Cash. Not that there’s anything wrong with having Cash as a first name, but his name will be Cash Rich. I feel so sorry for that child. Maybe his middle name is something he can go by and not be hated/made fun of in school. (Via Nashvillest)
Water on the moon/Stargate Universe/We are all made of germs
September 28, 2009
Image via Stargate Universe blog
Ok first of all I have to get out my excitement about Stargate Universe, the third show in the Stargate TV franchise. The 2-hour series debut will hit your screen this Friday at 9pm (8pm Central) on SyFy. io9 posted a fairly revealing clip from it today. Don’t get me wrong, no real spoilers there, just a good idea of the vibe and overall tone of the show. This series will be a much more serious take on the Stargate saga. I’m thinking it’s going to end up taking on a similar mood to Battlestar Galactica.
Ok now that’s out of my system….
I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines about how water was discovered on the moon recently by NASA’s mineral mapper instrument aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 probe launched in 2008. First of all, this does NOT mean that water is swirling around on the surface of the moon. The moon has no atmosphere and therefore water can’t even exist in a liquid state at all. What’s happening is that the incoming solar rays are reacting with the material on the surface to create a thin layer of hydroxyl (OH) and normal water (H2O) in the very top milimeter or so of regolith. This layer is so thin that it would amount to 1 liter of water per ton of surface soil. That’s a VERY small amount, but it’s a lot more than we ever thought would be there. What does this all mean for the future of human exploration on the moon? Read this Universe Today article to find out.
Here is a great Daily Galaxy article about something that I had honestly never even heard or known before. I hadn’t the slightest clue that there are more bacteria/microbes in our bodies than there are actual human cells. That’s to say that if you counted the number of human cells and the number of microbial/bacterial cells in your body, there would be more bacteria/microbes. In fact it’s utterly awe-inspiring (and slightly terrifying) to think that some of the species if bacteria actually don’t exist anywhere else outside our bodies, and that we could NOT survive without them. Essentially they’re as important as any organ. We’re literally more germ than we are human, and it couldn’t exist any other way. Of course, we look more like us because human cells are MUCH bigger than bacteria cells. The crazy thing, as the article points out, is that doctors still don’t know anything about most of these bugs that live inside us. But they’re trying to change that.
My Macbook Pro died
July 1, 2009
Soooo, my macbook pro died today. I’m posting from my work PC right now…. thus no good stuff today or really until I get my laptop fixed. I have pretty much everything backed up in various places, save for a few mp3s I downloaded today. I really hope it’s not too expensive… (the laptop was bought in late 2006, so it’s way past the warranty).
White Stripes doc/Cats/Sonic Black Hole
June 18, 2009
Some cat humor to lighten up your day. Cats Are Always Doing Shit. Via Yewknee.
Remember that Canadian tour the White Stripes did a couple years back? They made it into a documentary, and it’s coming out this fall. It also finally has a title: The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights. I’m looking forward to footage from all those impromptu, intimate/acoustic shows they did. Via PFK.
Last summer a new band straight out of high school called The Turf burst onto the local music scene. These kids instantly caught the attention of several Scene critics and local music fans with their catchy brand of dance-rock. I remember seeing them at Mercy Lounge once and was impressed by how tight they sounded at such a young age. They disappeared just as quickly as they appeared, though, and several members went in various directions to pursue college. This summer they’re back, and they’ve got a brand new album called Fascination of a Sort. While the dance-rock wave may have crested a few years ago (at least from a commercial marketability perspective), that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love them. I haven’t yet heard if they have any shows booked this summer, but keep checking their Myspace page for updates. Here are a couple of tracks they were kind enough to send my way for posting:
I came across some truly unique and gorgeous landscape photography today. Tim Simmons has a slightly different take on landscapes than most. He uses artificial light along with what appears to be HDR imaging to accentuate certain aspects of the natural beauty of his surroundings. You can’t go wrong with any of the galleries, but the snow gallery was especially intriguing to me. I’m still not exactly sure how he lit some of those scenes…. Via Joshua Blankenship blog.
Scientists in Isreal have created an artificial black hole. Not the kind that sucks in everything, just the kind that sucks in sound waves. They used Bose-Einstein condensates, which are clouds of atoms that have been cooled to almost absolute-zero. Using two of these, they created a tiny area of extreme low density which allows the atoms between the clouds to flow at nearly 4 times the speed of sound. As with most amazing scientific discoveries of this nature, the event was incredibly small and lasted only 8 milliseconds, but it’s still pretty cool because this is essentially a small-scale analog to “real” black holes in space. Via Discovery News.
steve cross loves music and science 