Carving up some Cured Ham: Random Thoughts

It's March 29 and there was a full eclipse of the sun today, partially visible from here in Barcelona. However, I didn't wake up early enough to catch it. Since I just recently got DSL in my funky little gothic flat, I stayed up till 3 in the morning last night shopping for music on the iTunes store. Some the treasures I found: DJ Krush/Jaku, The Electrolux Decade, Bill Laswell/Imaginary Cuba, Cream/Disreali Gears, The Best of Lou Rawls, Muddy Waters/Electric Mud, The Jazz Influence/Kevin Yost Compilation, Nightmares on Wax/In a Space Outta Sound, and Jazzflora: Scandinavian Aspects of Jazz. Of course I didn't buy the whole albums - I just love that you can buy individual songs for only 99 cents a piece without getting the whole album. Perfect example is the DJ Krush album Jaku. Most of the songs on this album don't do much from me, but 2 in particular are masterpieces - Beyond Raging Waves and Pretense. Beyond Raging waves blends traditional Japanese shamisen music with modern, dark trip hop, in a way that only DJ Krush can pull off. It's superb, click this button to link directly to the song on the iTunes store where you can have a listen:



Aside from surfing the Web, I've been spending a lot of time lately shopping at the 1 Euro store. There's lots of 1 Euro stores in Barcelona and they are the equivalent of 99 cent stores back in the states. When I first found out about them I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread (actually better, since I don't eat bread). I must have spent 30 Euros in the past week buying stuff, most of which has since fallen apart. It seems that nearly all of the stuff you buy in these stores comes from China and is manufactured to the absolutely lowest quality standards you can imagine. I guess they think, and probably somewhat rightly so, that it's cheaper to keep buying a new tape measure or other household doodad every week than making a better quality one that lasts longer than a week that you have to charge more for. I have mixeed feelings about these places (kind of like the Walmart conundrum one faces in the good old USA). The other day I bought a phone for 7.5 Euros which is about $9. Actually it hasn't fallen apart yet but the funniest thing about this phone is the instructions that came along with it. So funny that I had to include it here to share with the rest of the world. Click on the image below and check it out, it's NOT TO BE MISSED.