Private performance by Paul Potts

I spent most of yesterday at The Shopping Channel, on air at midnight, 7:00AM, 10:00 AM, 2:00PM, 4:00PM and 5:00PM. The product we were promoting, portable massage mats, sold out so we didn't have to do the scheduled 7:00PM and 10:00PM shows. It was a long day, but I managed to get to my pool during the lunch hour and do 3.8K in 1:01:00.

The silver lining though was the fact that Paul Potts made an appearance in the studio (not Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who was responsible to the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970's). Paul is the amateur opera singer who was discovered last spring on the TV show Britain's Got Talent. His unheralded performance of Nessun Dorma blew everyone, including Simon Callow, away and he won the contest.

Paul had two thirty minute shows, with live performances and short interviews, to promote his hot-selling debut CD One Chance. Although the set was cleared for the performance I did have a chance to watch him rehearse from very close range. He's a very unassuming and humble fellow with a fantastic voice. Some Opera snobs sniff at his talent, but he's certainly captured the publics imagination.

Listening to: Nessun Dorma by Paul Potts from One Chance.

You know you're in Canada when...

You know you're in Canada when you change radio stations and they're both in the middle of playing Fifty-Mission Cap, a ten year-old song by The Tragically Hip...

Listening to: Fifty-Mission Cap by The Tragically Hip from Fully Completely.

Tech Music

Recently a web site I like to visit that discusses new gadgets, called Gizmodo, held a competition. Hitachi had posted some MP3 files of the sounds (normal and 'sick') their hard drives might make, presumably for diagnostic use by technicians. Gizmodo's spin on this (Spin. Get it? Spin!) was to see who could make the best song using only those sampled sounds. A hundred entries were received.

The winner, James Postlethwaite, used extremely tiny snips of sound to build tones and then laid larger chunks on top to construct a melody. The result was a beautiful (to my ear anyway) chill track. You can hear it at the Odeo music archive web site. Too bad its just two minutes long...

Oh, there was a football game today too. The rust-belt team beat the tech-town team.

2006/05/14 update: The song is gone from Odeo. Fortunately I saved it: Noriko Version.

Listening to: Hitachi Hard-Drive Project - Noriko Version by James Postlethwaite.