I have a habit of looking for new and unusual music, strange mixes of songs already loved or just blending of genres that come out well. Recently I found a CD at my local library that mostly fell into the Celtic music category except the song that starts off the show.
The first song on the Austin Celtics album created by the Austin Celtic Society is yet another rendition of Scotland the Brave. I know, I know, you've heard it. You can hum it. It comes free with every bagpipe purchase ever and you're pretty well fed up with everlasting Scotland The Brave. Yeah, but have you heard it with samba drums? You read that right, samba. Brazilian Carnival music. The group is called Samba Thistle, I think they are from Brazil, and I've got to go find more of this stuff. Anything that makes me actually want to listen to Scotland the Brave has got some serious amusement factor to it.
I played the song for a few people and have since been informed that I melted a few brains. I need to see if these folks have an album of their own I can buy. Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!
There are other excellent songs on the album including a slightly funny, slightly sad song about a bagpiper called Amazing Grace (Again) by Wolf Loescher and a seriously goofy drinking song called No Place For Drinking by Hair of The Dog. All in all, I'd say this is a good sampling of the kind of Celtic music you can find in Austin. Which, I suppose, is the whole point.
The other cool find I wanted to share with you is from my own bookshelf. Everyone has a few books that they keep going back to after they read them. Most books are good once or twice but some you just keep reading over and over. This is one of mine.
A few years ago I was desperately short on new stuff to read so I toddled on over to the Baen Free Library on-line and started looking for something new.
MINOR SIDE NOTE: You don't know about the Baen Free Library?! Where have you been the past few years??
But I digress, often. I started reading March Upcountry by John Ringo and David Weber and I really liked it. Then I read 1632 by Eric Flint and David Weber and that was good too. I went over to the local bookshop to buy them and there was a whole shelf of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, which was very tasty indeed. I started picking up anything with the man's name on it, I didn't want to miss a single book.
Then I found a book called Path of The Fury. Oddly enough, this is the one I come back to over and over. It's a stand-alone book, no series to it. It's space opera of the highest sort and there's plenty of Navy-jargon and ambitious space travel science. There's also a pretty amazing body count, with 25 pirates and the main character's entire family getting taken out in the first scene, but it's not exceptionally gory.
I've often enjoyed Mr. Weber's female characters who seem equally competent and modest about their abilities, but in the past I've sometimes cringed a little at the almost constant "right woman in the wrong place" coincidences that occur. In this book if you can get past the original weird plot twist then the rest of it makes perfect sense. This book is an action movie waiting for the right director and a sympathetic screen writer. Its got the explosions, the espionage, the witty patty, and the possible hint of a love interest.
As a card carrying member of "If It's Printed, I'll Read It", I find it refreshing to have a book I can enjoy re-reading over and over again. I must recommend it.
Weber, David. Path Of The Fury.
Riverdale, N.Y.: Baen Publishing Enterprises 1992
Austin Celtic Association. Austin Celtics
Austin, TX: Produced by David Armstrong 2000
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