Three Things

One Thing
I've long thought that AC/DC's music is just a plug-in-the-numbers formula. I mean, they weren't all that original to start with, but it's not like they've done a lot of growing. Well, now we have proof of AC/DC's formula: They have released their latest video in the popular Excel format. YouTube for those that don't want to or can't download.

Two Thing
A mathematician has solved the mystery of the opening chord of "Hard Day's Night," by the most complicated means possible. Seems like he could have just asked the internet. I guess you don't get a grant for that, though.

Three Thing
In an effort to capitalize on this new video fad, MTV has just launched its music video site. Take that, YouTube! When watching your favorite eighties video, try not to think of this. Hey, he's Hungry Like the Wolf.

Bonus Thing
Johnny Mac's campaign is in full melt down. Nothing seems to be working out for him. Not even Joe the Plumber seems to be able to save him. Well, maybe Joe the Rock Star can. It's not too late to call the Nuge, John. I'm just saying.

Week 105: Jarabe de Palo [COUP]

It was two years ago already that I did my first post for this blog. Back then I spoke of Café Tacvba, which are currently on a US tour making stops all over US including Chicago, various places in Texas, and Charlotte NC which is only a couple of hours away for me. They are playing at a small club in Charlotte and I really want to go. However, going implies pretty much going by myself since I’m not sure I can find anyone who wants to spend $30 plus gas money to go see a Mexican rock band, regardless of how much I can say about them. I wouldn’t drive 30 minutes for most bands, but I would drive 2 hours by myself for this guys. We’ll see what happens.

For this 2 year anniversary post, however, I want to bring to your attention to Jarabe de Palo, another monster of Spanish rock music, this one actually from the motherland (that’s Spain to us Latinos, not England).

Literally translated Jarabe de Palo means Cough Syrup from the Stick which would be immediately understood as a euphemism for male ejaculate in most parts of the Spanish speaking worlds. However, in Spain it has a different meaning. The phrase is used generally by parents to their children in the same way American’s might use the phrase “a can of whoopass.” Behave or I’m going to give you a Jarabe de Palo, means behave or I’m going to give you a beating that’s going to take away that illness that seems to be making you misbehave. So like so many other Spanish phrases, you must be careful when using this phrase and take in consideration where you are and who’s listening.

Jarabe de Palo has been at it since the mid-nineties and have

Ok, thats enough of that.

Greetings. We are Judge and Jury of the Blogosphere. Our single self-appointed task is to clean up the blogosphere from unwanted pollution.

After several sideway glances at your blog, we find you guilty of lack of enthusiasm, general negligence, overall dullness, minimal participation, insufficient effort, and multiple other crimes of omission.

Therefore, we, Judge and Jury of the Blogosphere, are bringing forth our judgment. And we judge you guilty.

As punishment, we have taken over all admin rights of this blog and have revoked all rights for all accounts associated with it.

Most of you will be relieved, and will gladly and comfortably go back to your lives. However, if any of you feel our judgment has been in haste and you wish to demonstrate that you are not the poseur poster that we have judged you to be, feel free to contact us at jjoftheblogosphere@gmail.com or leave a comment in the comments section of this post, and we will reinstate your rights so you can prove us wrong. We’ll hang around here for exactly one week and during that time, we will reinstate admin rights to anyone who asks. Except Carlos Anaconda.

We have deemed Carlos Anaconda’s grievances of the utmost gravity and he will never again be allowed access to this or any other blog. His virtual head has been impaled on a stick and placed at the entrance to the blogosphere as a warning to all who wish to pollute our blogair with their caca.

His sentence is final and irrevocable in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Adios Sr. Carlos Anaconda.

Signed, sealed, delivered.
Judge and Jury of the Blogosphere

NE

We've lived through many musical eras - punk, funk, new wave...but we're only living in one, the Time of the Dion. This could change next week.

People like Celine Dion for two reasons. Either because they are nut bags who believe she miraculously embodies the überhuman qualities of her song book. Or because they believe in simple mantras like "less government;" they've believed it for a long time even though they don't really know what it means anymore or who exactly is going to give it to them (or rather not give it to them).

There is one other reason people like Celine Dion. Because they are rich.

The fact of the matter is not enough rich people could keep Celine Dion on stage without the help of the first group of people. The rich people don't really like Celine Dion anyway but she does make them richer. They'd be rich anyway but not quite as rich. Or so they think anyway, they've clung to Dion so long they don't know how they'd fare without her and they don't have much impetus to try something new.

Btw, not all rich people are Dionists. Some have been rich long enough they are bored with the Dion Era; don't find richness to be all it's cracked up to be; and are looking for something "richer." There are also rich people who don't like their daddies. There are also rich people who think they are too good for Celine Dion, these people are called the Elitists and they are also right - they are too good for Celine Dion (they also realize that EVERYBODY is too good for Dion).

The first group has plenty of reasons to try something new but Celine Dion seems so safe and reassuring and they aren't the adventurous type.

But the Dion Era might soon be transformed into the Dionne Era which only adds an extra "n"and a new "e." That small change might not frighten too many people so it just might happen.

It's actually a big change though because Dionne Warwick's music is good and less manipulated than Celine Dion's music. It's also more soothing.

The big problem is - even if we move into the Dionne Era, it doesn't mean people are going to buy her albums. People hardly buy albums at all these days anyway.

The Happy Way

After complaining for a couple of weeks, I finally figured out that, like drugs, it really doesn't help and people just get annoyed at you. It feels good while it's happening, but the goal is not achieved.

Artie likes to tell our children that he can choose the happy way or the sad way. Sometimes I think that choosing the happy way can't possibly get you what you want. It will be fake, or short-lasting.

But I think that frame of mind is not helpful. The point is to kind of stay in the happy way, not choose it just because it leads to this pile of gold. It's the journey man.

Fine to say, but while in the thick of it, hard to remember.

While in the thick of it, visions of broken dreams cross my mind. I always wondered why bands, companies, lovers, broke up as it seemed such a shame and so preventable. I used to tell myself that they should know to just stick through the tough times, I mean come on, people.

But I guess they were all whiny a-holes like me. Sending out negativity, justified in their blah blah blah, letting their perception guide them rather than reality and not staying flexible lead you down the road of the sad way.

I ran across this quote that said that the harder one works, the more opportunities come your way. IThen there was this other quote:

"Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite."
Abraham Lincoln

So there you go. He takes out all the reason to complain. Sending out cold pricklies gets you nowhere and is a waste of time. The only thing to do is move forward and do things over which you have control and responsibility. The possible silver lining is that opportunities will come your way.

This leads us to Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, which others tell me is just one way to look at it, but I like this particular way. I like the idea of envisioning it as a path that you're on because I can feel it. When I'm on it and I can barely see two steps ahead of me, I know I'm on the right path because opportunities come to me. It's so weird when it happens, but I'm telling you that it happens all of the time.

When I'm not on it, things are a mess. Shit happens.

You'd think that working harder would get you where you want to go faster, so you work faster. But this is a mistake. Slow and easy is the way to go.

All of this stuff I know, but apparently not well enough to stay on the path all of the time.

Even Oprah talked about it once on the back of her magazine. The one time I ever look at that magazine, though I do like her, and she talks on this subject, one that I really like. She just had to take a break and even though it hurt some of her friends feelings, and some of the people she said she'd do things for, she had to do it for herself to remain sane.

You think you have to do it all, but you don't.

I don't know how I'm going to work in time to do what I have to do by slowing down, but I'm going to attempt it starting tonight. I'm going to trust in the fact that it is scientifically proven (Guy Claxton, Wise Up).

At the least, I can have a bit of an easier time with it as the store is doing pretty well. Still need to make more money but once people know we deliver, that'll cover it, because instore sales are more than double what we thought.

Breathe deep.

Escape from Ignoreland

I had started writing an off-topic political post, detailing the reasons why I'm supporting Obama and why you should too, but it would've been ten pages long, and my energy has been sapped by eight years of madness. Perhaps if you're reading and you're still undecided, let me know your major issues of concern, and I will try to address them. In the meantime, I think back to what I was listening to in 1992...

lookin' for adventure

Get your motor runnin'
head out on the highway

I'm on another adventure. In preparation for my year in Boston, I am trying to streamline and simplify operations in DC, and yesterday marked two steps forward, one step back.

Step 1 Forward. Large furniture remaining at my friend Kat's moved back to studio.

Step 2 Forward. After 5 hours of wrangling with several different kinds of hand trucks and dollies and 5 strong men (and more brute force than cleverness), we managed to get my Apollo era tape machines (~1000lbs each) loaded into a U-haul truck bound for Bright Antenna in Oakland, CA.

Step 1 Back. I hopped on board the truck and drove to Nashville with the Bright Antenna exec who came to drive it. [Aside: I learned on the drive that he discovered, developed, and managed the Killers through their first records and tour (before joining BA). Just hearing stories about the rock star life makes me happy not to have gone there.] Anyway, the reason for coming to Nashville is to pick up this truck, which is sitting at the Kentucky Division of Forestry in Gilbertsville, KY:



This is a step back in terms of simplification, but if it runs, it will be awesome and perfect for the project I'm working on starting when I return from Boston. My plan is to outfit this truck with some instruments and portable recording equipment, cross out "FIRE" and put "MUSIC," and drive the truck around to after-school programs, scout troups, and youth groups, teaching music technology to kids and working with them on music projects. We will be DC's "Volunteer Music Department." Over the next year, I'll be working on putting together a board and a non-profit organization for the project. When I saw the truck on the govt. auction site, it was perfect and had to be the one for the job.

So now I'm in Nashville (the NASA tape decks having moved on westward) waiting to pick up the red truck in the morning. Tomorrow I will show up with a new battery in hand and will find out how well it runs. I may or may not be stranded in Nashville.

---

In other news, three of my slash-dot-reading friends independently sent me links to this story on data sonification on Friday.

----

Update 10/28/08
In a fit of practicality as I was driving the red truck across Kentucky, I decided that if I was going to have to stop somewhere for the night, it might as well be my friend's house in Nashville rather than a random motel somewhere in the darkness. After 200 miles of running perfectly, it died two blocks from Devon's house and I had to have it towed to their mechanic. I'll be flying back to DC today to get back to work. I'll comb back to get the truck in a few weeks.

Rainbow Connections

Here’s some of this week’s craps:

Love Story: On Pitchfork.tv, for one week only, you can view this documentary on Love and Arthur Lee. For free. My introduction to Love came through the High Fidelity Soundtrack which featured “Always See Your Face,” now one of my favorite songs ever and a personal mix tape classic. Oh, while I was writing this, Metafilter popped up with some swell linkage.

Yellow and Blue make Green: Courtesy of Boing Boing, here’s Big Bird singing at Jim Henson’s funeral.

It’s wonderful to see, but I’m still a little perplexed at the choice of song, for a couple of reasons. First, Big Bird is so obviously yellow. Second, and more importantly I think there was a much better choice:

LaLa.com: Last week I wrote about Amie Street being a great alternative to Emusic.com. This week I discovered Lala.com, which might be even better. This article and this one summarize the awesomeness pretty well, but I’ll quickly give you my own summary:

• Match tracks already on your hard drive to LaLa’s servers, and you can listen to them for free via Lala’s web-based player, which very much resembles iTunes.
• You can add tracks to your Web-based library for 10 cents a song or less. Sure, you can’t burn CDs with them, but for 60 to 80 cents you can listen to any album on Lala.com as many times as you want. If you want to buy the actual MP3s (DRM-free, natch) the prices tend to be cheaper than iTunes or Amazon.
• Your first time listening to any record or song in Lala’s collection is absolutely free. Because Lala.com has deals with all four major labels and a ton of indie labels, this means you can stream just about any new release in its entirety before you buy it. To me, this is the killer reason for loving Lala.
• Lala tracks your listening history, and in that way it’s similar to Last.fm, but Lala doesn’t track songs you play in iTunes or WinAmp.
• Works on Mac and Windows.

I’m not totally sold, because the library upload feature isn’t working 100%, but I love being able to stream any album I choose. And yes, I’ve been listening to Queen.

Anyway, check it out. You can find my account here.

Car Alarm: Sea and Cake have a new record out. I love that band and can’t wait to hear it. Reviews are good, but not great. Meh, that’s pretty much always the case with that band. I’ve enjoyed just about everything they’ve ever done. Here’s “Weekend” from the new record.

Houston Scene Wiki: If there was one great thing to come out of last week’s Bandcamp (which Justin and I attended, along with former NAP-star, Ramon Medina), it was this: The Skyline Network’s Houston Scene Wiki got some badly needed publicity and is finally getting some attention. Bandcamp organizer Matthew Wettergreen endorsed the Wiki as a project that every local musician should embrace.

Sadly, I think the early edits to the Wiki are only serving to reinforce the Houston’s tendency to be cliquish and sarcastic. But the beauty of a Wiki is that it’s democratically designed to overcome that kind of myopia. Houston deserves a group-edited history of music, and I will definitely make my own contributions towards its success.

As for Bandcamp’s attempts to address the problems in Houston’s music scene, I tend to agree with a couple of friends of mine. First, John Sears (a former roommate of mine) thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the scene. I agree wholeheartedly. Houston is Houston. If you’ve got ambition, I suggest you leave or, at least, tour extensively. But if you’ve got some stray ideas and some time on your hands, and you don’t mind people ignoring you…well, Houston is your town.

Second, Ryan Chavez, the man behind Super Unison and one-time drummer for Smoking Popes, offered up a simple notion: to the extent something is wrong with the Houston scene, we could probably cure it if bands actually released more music.

It’s radical, but I think it could work.

Mash Up

I did a radio show for more years than I have fingers (many more) and if it can be said that there is a good thing about that time that would be the amount of new music I got to hear. Lots. And if there was a bad thing about being there it would also be the amount of new music I had to hear. For every good thing, there were ten bad things. Sometimes horribly bad. And doing the local show meant that I got to hear the extra bad stuff that was recorded on some guy's boom box in a basement and deposited in my mail box the next day. It was usually worth suffering through all the bad stuff to find the one thing that I liked. That's something that not everybody got the opportunity to do. Until now.

Sure the internet has the potential to let you hear more music than you ever dreamed of, but the reality is that most of what you can find on the internet is stuff that has been packaged and released similar to the way music has been for the last eighty years or so. You don't hear the random thing made by some teenager in his living room or the up and coming local band who release their own stuff (if they release anything at all). Well, this week I give you Cherrypeel, site that lets you upload songs and then functions as a social media site, letting people vote on and comment about your music. It's true that there are other sites, like LastFM, with similar functionality, but none that bring you things that you are guaranteed never to have heard quite as well. I've been enjoying it muchly this week.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, in a mash-up of both of my topics of last week, John McCain was upset that YouTube took down several campaign videos and has decided to take on copyright law. Well, copyright law as it relates to presidential candidates, at least. Elitist.

I hope this trend of my disparate topics spontaneously fusing into something new continues. I look forward to finding a website this week that lets people write or vote on songs for John McCain's YouTube campaign videos. Somebody make this happen.

Week 104: Piano

We got a piano! It’s been my lifelong dream to learn to play piano, but my nomadic lifestyle has never allowed me to get one, and keyboards, well, even the nicest ones, are not the same.

My grandmother was classically trained, and so was a good friend of my mom’s. As a kid they taught me a few dittys, but mainly I was always amazed watching them play those classical piano compositions. They would play all over the keyboard, crossing their hands, making music that seemed impossible to create with just two hands.

Over the years I’ve played pianos every chance I had. For a whole summer I worked moving pianos for the Aspen Music Festival. We moved over 180 pianos, each one twice, once to take it to its classroom, or professor or visiting musician's home, and then at the end of the festival to pick them up and load them back on the 18 wheelers to send them back to the store until the next year.

That summer I spent a lot of time with pianos, from student uprights to concert grands, and my love for those monster-sized instruments just grew. Every time I sit at a piano, I wish I had taken years of lessons. Even without them, over the years I've learned a few things here and there. I can play some simple songs, and play some simple rhythms and such, enough that I could probably fake my way in a band context. An ex-girlfriend of mine who didn't really know how to play the piano, used to fake her way to free dinners at restaurants that had a piano by improvising on the black keys. Everyone loved it and the restaurant would always give her a free meal. I can play that way too. But I don't want to play piano in a band, and I don't want to fake my way to free dinners. What I'd like is to be able to take the score of a Chopin mazurka or a Rachmaninoff prelude and sit on the piano and play it. And yes, I know that's going to be a tough one. For now, however, I'd settle for making a piano sing. That would make me happy.

So now we are “settled” in North Carolina. We own a business, have a child, and we love the town we live in. And we live in a house where a piano can breathe. And I was told people were giving them away on craigslist if one would just go take it out of their house. So, thinking it's now or never, I started looking for a piano. I looked for a couple of weeks, and although there were several pianos listed on craigslist, they all would say “needs work” and if they had a picture, the picture wouldn’t really give you much of a clue as to what “needs work” meant.

I was considering the difficulty of being able to go examine a free piano and then have to come back with a crew to move it or just politely say, no thanks. And the main problem is that I don't know enough about pianos to be able to fully assess the condition of one if it's not something obvious. So I got in touch with our friend Alex. Alex is one of the best piano players I know. I've seen and heard him play by himself and with others, many times, blues, ragtime, jazz, country, classical, you name it. I've played with him on a couple of occasions and he just recently recorded some piano parts for the New Town Drunks record. So when it comes to me needing a piano opinion I go to him. I was thinking maybe he'd go with me to take a look at some of these free pianos to see if they were at all worth the effort. But when i told him I was looking for a piano, he beamed and said, I have a piano I can give you.

He had recently broken up with his girlfriend, and his childhood piano was in her house, and she wanted it out. We live in a small town but I was still surprised to find out that not only had this been his childhood piano, but it had also been his girlfriend’s sister’s childhood piano. So there were a lot of lessons that had been given on this piano. He told us if we wanted it and could go get it, it was ours. And now it would be my daughter's childhood piano.

Within a couple of days I got together a couple of friends and we went and got the piano. It was an easy move even without all the proper piano-moving tools. It’s a beautiful Lester spinet piano from the 50s, and in great condition. And it sounds so beautiful in our big room! Here's the piano, where it sits now, though it will soon be moved to an inside wall for its final location.

I’m just as happy as can be. Thank you Alex!

Now I have to go find those music scores and get to work. I guess the yo-yo tricks will have to wait.

guest cast

You might think this is a ridiculous cast... and maybe it is. But it's MY ridiculous cast, and I love her.

Please feel free to rip on all but the first song. Ripping on the first song, won't get you anywhere.

Untied from the 90's

Reviewed my recent music purchases with Mrshl's speculation in mind. It's more true than I give credit that my new favorite bands are my old favorite bands or at least it would appear that way if I actually liked the new Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration I just bought. But it's silly - at least it hasn't grown on me yet (I have a way of coming back to albums directly after I shout them down). It sounds like the mighty duo is summoning Simon & Garfunkel, REO Speedwagon and Enya in the scariest of ways.

I also detest the new Stereolab release. Talk about more of the same - this purchase makes me loathe my first love of Stereolab back in the 90's. This is music for people who play it safe all the time and have dinner parties to show off their Crate&Barrel china. An unfun album - they should tour with REO Speedwagon, Simon&Garfunkel and Enya and call it the "I'm Gonna Keep On Boring You" tour.

I picked up the latest from a new band, one not on my radar until now, Okkervil River. Let me tell you something about this band - if you know what it means to be tied to the 90's and you think that's a problem, stay away. To anybody over the age of 30, this "new" band offers nothing but safe and familiar. Anybody younger, well you got to start somewhere and the song writing while totally derivative (all over the map: the Cure, the Kinks, Camper Van, name a folky rock band from the late 80's/early 90's) is catchy. The song writing is also of the stuff only people under the age of twenty-five should give two shits about (e.g. trust-fund hipster envy).

Still dipping into nostalgialand I purchased Jesus Lizard's Liar (release date 1992). Don't have anything bad to say about this album. It's not them coming back from the dead to do more of the same. It's me going back; and I have to say after listening to the previous three releases I just mentioned, I was ready for Boilermaker.

I'm still having trouble revisiting. That's okay, pop is all about enjoying the here and now. Two weeks ago I bought the newish Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam. I still listen to that all the time. Soon I'll grow tired of it I know and will probably never revisit it again. But it's fresh now, hardly draws on anything rock though it's full of nostalgia - harkening to calypso, musicals, children's books, and olde world folk music. Yet Strawberry Jam sounds like something never created before.

I'm still listening to Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers A Night in Tunisia because, though it was released in 1957, it's brand new to me.

And I'm still listening to the grime dub beats of Zomby because this is new music that no one on NAP likes and that makes it rarified to my world.

The thing about digging into any new subgenre, once you've done some research, you're a part of that world. You get the references and things start to make more sense and all of a sudden you're finding some answers there. Won't be long though, I'm sure, in WednesdayWorld until Zomby is back to the dead dead (as opposed to the undead dead).

I am a Resource

I have no conversations anymore. All I have are To Do items based on Priority that are communicated to Resources.

I was thinking of the perfect song for today and was immediately overwhelmed by the number of songs that came to my head. I thought, well, how about by album. All that came to mind were albums from the 70s that I really don't relate to and that's a different concept anyway, not a song, but a musical genre experience.

Thinking over what song would relate to my current existence, a song finally came to mind - No Time For Love. But looking up songs that fit that title, I'm going to have to change my choice as the songs listed are all terrible. Didn't anybody make a great song to go with that title or is iTunes just giving me a terrible selection?

I am now realizing I might have turned into a whiny beeyatch. It's true. Mel Torme is not talking to me, Fury of Five is. Check out their version of No Time For Love on iTunes. Now, back to the bitching...

I'm not happy. I have too damn much work to do.

I never have time to do anything and then things hold me up like my stupid OS is taking up all of my space on my computer. The only thing I have on it nowadays are my pictures and now I'm reduced to taking those off because last night - I had 1mg left on my drive. ONE. Has this ever happened to any of you?

I, of course, blame Apple. They have never failed me before, as I put food in my dog's Moof bowl and dry off my kids with the early-colors (yellow and pink!) Apple beach towel, but this year, mac mail threw down the toilet and used it, the only ipod I ever bought was broken upon opening and now my mac mini can't handle the OS as it's literally too bloated for the poor thing.

As the Goob says, when he grows up on the movie, Meet The Robinsons, why take responsibility for a poor attitude myself when there are others to blame?

Maybe that Fury of Five song will work out just fine.

What I'd prefer, what I want to get to, is that song by Charlie Chaplin, Smile. That should be my song of the day but it is hard and I want to whine and cry and go stick my body under a table that has a long table cloth and hide.

Morphine's Cure For Pain song is a good one at this point. Yeah, that's the one for me.

I'm cringing as I write this as I don't want to write whiny crap and put it into the blogosphere, but it's my day to write and that's just how the cookie crumbles.

Vids We Can Believe In

Thought I'd try to make a video compilation from my most recent ConorMix...

01. AmpLive "Video Tapez" (Rainydayz Remixes, 02)

This video has tons of chicks!

02. Chavez "Top Pocket Man" (Ride the Fader, 01)

Rock. Live at a place called Warsaw.

03. Caetano Veloso "A Little More Blue" (Caetano Veloso 1971, 01)

"London London" off the same album was the closest I could find.

04. Broadcast "America's Boy" (Tender Buttons, 04)

Somebody's film class project.

05. Asobi Seksu "New Years" (Citrus, 03)

Live at Bowery Ballroom, NYC. I'm supposedly supposed to ask before embedding, but gimme a break, this is Web 2.0, baby.

06. Burning Airlines "A Lexicon" (Identikit, 03)

Live somewhere.

07. Elastica "S.O.F.T." (Elastica, 07)

That's cheatin'.

08. American Analog Set "Cool Kids Keep" (Set Free, 04)

From their last show?

09. Pylon "Cool" (Gyrate Plus, 01)

Live 2008-08-08 Revolve Festival, Winston-Salem.

10. Jefferson Airplane "Run Around" (Takes Off, 07)

Cheatin' again.

11. All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors "Saturn Jig" (All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors, 02)

Couldn't find "Saturn Jig", so "Muffin 57" will have to do.

11.5. Killing Joke "Love Like Blood" (Night Time, 03)

Somehow this is exactly what I was expecting it would be like.

11.6. The Breeders "Safari" (Safari EP, 03)

This video is so great, just like the song.

12. Siouxsie & The Banshees "Hong Kong Garden" (Once Upon A Time, 01)

Embedding disabled by request of jerks at Universal, so you'll have to click here. It's a pretty cool video; I like.

13. The Dresden Dolls "Backstabber" (Yes, Virginia, 02)

Gotta watch out for that Tommy Lee.

14. Teenage Fanclub "Everything Flows" (A Catholic Education, 01)

On SnubTV circa 1990.

15. Joni Mitchell "Help Me" (Court and Spark, 02)

Found this and played it, then tried again and it said the video had been removed?! Seems to be working again.

16. Moby Grape "Indifference" (Moby Grape, 13)

Slightly better than a still frame of an album cover... I suppose.

17. The Ponys "Small Talk" (Turn The Lights Out, 03)

Live 2007-10-10 First Avenue, Minneapolis.

18. Paul McCartney "Long Haired Lady" (Ram, 10)

Even Rocky had a montage.

19. Low "Silver Rider" (The Great Destroyer, 04)

Live 2007-09-28 Troubadour, Los Angeles

20. Gnarls Barkley "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)" (The Odd Couple, 04)

Perfect.

21. Echo & The Bunnymen "Rescue" (Crocodiles, 06)

Live 1983-07 Royal Albert Hall, London

Sarah Palin, Jazz Singer Extraordinaire

This was put up a few days ago, so I'm sure you've all seen it by now. But for those who are slow like me:



That's about all I've got for you today. I found out on Friday that I will be going to Boston for a year for the gig at the MIT Media Lab! Wooohooo! So, I will be packing and moving this week and next weekend.

The place I'll be living for the year is in the Brickbottom art studios in Somerville. There are apparently quite a few musicians and even some MIT sound artists (I hear), so I'm really looking forward to it. I'll write all about it when I get there. I start my research at the Lab on the 10th of November in the Responsive Environments group.

Amie Street is an intriguing alternative to eMusic

I’ve been an eMusic subscriber since 2001, and it’s been my favorite place to get digital music ever since. What’s not to like? They’ve had DRM-free downloads from the beginning, I can download songs for as little as 25 cents, and they’ve got a huge library of independent music (4 million songs).

Still, I’ve always wished that eMusic could be a bit more like Netflix. It would be nice to easily “friend” my real-life pals, and see what they’re downloading. Amie Street, which unveiled a brand new re-design this week, might be just what I’ve been looking for. As the name implies, Amie Street manages to add some Netflix-like social features, while providing DRM-free independent music at very competitive prices. But Amie Street also includes a couple of innovations eMusic can’t  match.

Users set the price

First, Amie Street’s pricing is weird. I’ll let them explain it:

[A]ll songs on Amie Street are priced from free to 98 cents. Instead of the arbitrary $0.99 per song, on Amie Street the community determines the price of music. Every song starts free, or very cheap, and increases in price, up to 98 cents, as more and more people purchase it. This variable pricing system ensures that the public gets music at a fair, community-driven price point, and makes it easy for you to find the type of music you want. We then encourage you to talk about the music you like by putting money in your account for more downloads when you recommend songs that continue to rise in price.

The upshot of their variable pricing is that it’s pretty easy to get new releases for between $2.50 and $5.00 a record, because the market function hasn’t yet pushed the price up. Older or more obscure releases are also cheap, because many fewer people are buying them. For example, the latest New Pornographers record is $9.98. But you can get their debut album for $6.22.

In my tests this week, I was getting much better prices on less popular stuff, including Jay Reatard’s Matador Singles ‘08 for 55 cents per song and the Red House Painters Retrospective for 21 cents per track (less than I would have paid on eMusic). I bought the brand new Phil Elverum  / Julie Doiron record, Lost Wisdom, for $2.50.

It’s true that many of the most popular downloads are actually on par with prices charged by iTunes or Amazon. And the selection of barely 1 million tracks is only a quarter of eMusic’s considerable library. Still, I only have 90 downloads a month on eMusic, and sometimes I want more. Amie Street is a good second option when I’m out of downloads or I feel like bargain hunting.

You can take it with you

Amie Street’s second distinctive feature is their Web music player. Like eMusic, once you’ve purchased a track, it will show up in your library where it can be downloaded again free of charge. But unlike eMusic, Amie Street organizes your library of songs into an iTunes-like Web player where you can play your songs—and your friends’ songs—over the Internet. From wherever you happen to be.

This has been great for me. I can listen to all my downloads at work. If I want, I can purchase tracks at lunch, listen to them immediately, and then download the actual mp3 files when I get home.

The player itself isn’t all that sophisticated. It has a random button, and you can sort and search you tunes.  You can also build playlists listen to playlists your friends put together. But I’ve not seen another music service that’s even bothered with something this obvious and cool.

Other features

A few other things I dig about Amie Street:

• No separate program is required to download files. All files are ZIP archives that come with the MP3s and album art.
• There’s a focus on recommending individual tracks. When deciding whether to download something,  you can see which particular songs have been recommended by the community.
• Like eMusic, Amie Street recommends music for you, but Amie Street allows you to refine those results by “fanning” artists and labels (i.e., selecting them as your favorites).
• Your history shows what you’ve downloaded as well as the price you paid for each recording. Your history also shows the songs you’ve listened to recently.
• AmieStreet is pay as you go. No pressure to use up your downloads before losing them. And AmieStreet takes PayPal, which is nice.

To summarize, I made a quick comparison chart:

DRM	None	None
Bit Rate	Variable	Variable
Available tracks	4 million	1 million
Purchase model	Subscription	Pay as you go
Payment Method	Credit Card	Credit Card or PayPal
Free music samplers?	Yes	Yes
Downloader required?	Yes	No
Social Features	Difficult to find your friends, can’t share download history	Easy to share and recommend artists. Can play your friends’ tracks through Web player.
Online Web Player	No	Yes
Cost	As low as 25 cents per song with subscription additional  tracks cost between 40 & 60 cents.	Tracks can range from free to 99 cents, depending on popularity. Average price per track around30 to 50 cents.
Re-download tracks free of charge	Yes	Yes
Content from All Music Guide?	Yes	Yes
Additional editorial content and writers?	Yes	No

Overall, I still prefer eMusic for their broad selection and their commitment to original writing and editorial content. But I’ll definitely be using Amie Street to supplement my digital music buying habit.

Fuck the Police

I have a couple videos this week.

First



Second



Next is Lawrence Lessig's Wall Street Journal piece on piracy.

So. Are the above videos legal? The first doesn't contain any bits of the original song, so the song, at least, is legal. But when paired with the original video and posted on YouTube, it's no longer very legal. The second video comes from a British sketch comedy show, so the original airing probably had its legal ducks in a row when using this song, but this random user then posting the clip from the show violates the show's copyright.

Either one of these videos could disappear without notice if the copyright holder decides he doesn't like what he's seeing and decides to send YouTube a takedown notice. It's not hard to imagine a tipping point when thousands of YouTube videos go away when takedowns become more popular, taking much of the joy of the internet along with them.

Discuss.

Week 103: Lawrence Welk

I used to spend crazy Saturday nights living it up rock and roll style until fifteen in the morning, and then I would sleep all day and wake up in time to watch the sun go down and the Lawrence Welk Show. There was never anything more soothing, humorous, and comforting for my aching head and body than a good dose of Lawrence Welk.

A few weeks ago I posted a Sergio Mendes video with the caption “the Brazilian Lawrence Welk.” That was not a negative comment on Mr. Mendes, quite the opposite. For a lot of people Mr. Welk has come to represent something negative in music. I sort of understand that because many people want a lot of something-to-follow in their music, and Mr. Welk, never gave much in terms of cool stuff to follow, except maybe champagne and bubbles.

I'm more with Tom Robbins, who said that a mockingbird “was heard to blend the songs of 32 different kinds of birds into a 10 minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.” In some movie I didn’t like I then saw Mr. Robbins expand on this idea of pure art as being basically pointless. I didn’t like the movie, and I haven’t particularly liked all that much his books that I’ve read, but I liked what he said in that movie. He was not being negative, he was praising this pointlessness of art as the only way we have to experience the world without the weight of reason (or reasons). To me this is the beauty of art and the reality of beauty, which is ultimately more real than anything encumbered by human reason. (Something like that.)

Something like that is what I feel when I watch the Lawrence Welk Show, which I still enjoy when I can and I always get that pure pointless joy from watching all those polyester suited gentlemen dancing with their blue-hair ladies while listening to that unpretentious band doing their silly numbers. Pure pointless joy.

But I’ve been watching the show for years and years. Until recently, the Lawrence Welk Show seemed like the only consistent good music show on TV that was readily available. It was a show, unlike American Bandstand and most other music shows on TV, where musicians did not lip-sync and fake play along to pre-recorded tracks, and which featured music performance from beginning to end. It was also a show that had nothing to do with superstars or personalities. Sure, Welk was a household name and maybe some of the performers in his show went on to have careers outside the show, but no one ever seemed to be on the show based on their popularity or star quality.

If anything, the performers seemed to be selected for their easy forgetability. In all the 20+ years I’ve been watching the show I never wanted to know anything else about these people, they were all interchangeable, and it was the music that mattered. Until writing this post and actually looking up some info about Welk, I didn’t even know he was from North Dakota, how glamorous. These are all lessons that a lot of rock bands have tried to emulate (though in different ways), from the early Beatles to the Ramones, however in the end their own popularity ends up undoing their attempts at anonymity within the group. Not so with the Lawrence Welk band. Of course these were also the late days of big bands, and the early days of the media machine that today would’ve probably made a superstar of people like Anacani.

And then there’s this SNL sketch.

And even better, this blog.

Wednesday Want to Live

Suddenly I'm playing with three different bands on three different instruments and none of them are the band I've been playing with for the past six years.

Only one of these bands has a gig to look forward to and that's this weekend with Grun-Tu-Molani at the annual Around the Coyote Art Fair. We're playing in the afternoon on Sunday so Clara can come. It'll be the first time she sees daddy on stage.

The phrase grun tu molani may be fictitious, I don't know, but it comes from a Saul Bellow book, Henderson the Rain King, which I recommend. Grun tu molani means "man want to live" and it's something Henderson confirms on a strange sort of African safari.

GTM, the band, names all their songs after animals though not all the kind you'd find on African safari. I play on Penguin for instance. They've also named at least one song (a synth laden prog rock piece) after a mythic creature - the Great Lakes water panther, Mishu Pishu.

GTM don't do a whole lot of singing but I learned in rehearsals that their animals do have complicated back stories nevertheless. Par example, Wolf is a fearsome beast who may or may not eat her young. I don't play on Whale but it should be pretty awesome with a lot of Fender Rhodes bottom end and an electric cello, inside the boomy Plumbers Union Hall where the event takes place.

Anyway all of this is pretty insignificant isn't it? But it gives me a chance to upload this terrific flyer they made. I only play on one of the animals depicted. Rabbit (he's a dub creature fat in the middle and bouncy all around).

New Music for Me

Hallo,
No wise words today, much less the opposite. Almost word less.

I actually managed to listen to a piece of music and remember the name and artist. Here's the video on youtube. I'm sure to get this link wrong, but here it goes...
The video - if somebody would like to show me how to embed this thing, I would be interested to know how.

Additionally, was just led to this blog where people post mixes and music lists. I am rather interested in their technology of preparing the songlist to play. Check out this particular mix - very loungey...
here it is.

Thank you.

Three Weeks To Go

Detox

Last week, I wrote about playing the tenori-on for my grandfather and aunts and uncles. I mentioned that Pa wasn't into it, but my aunt thought it would be great to meditate to. I told her I'd write some meditation music for her and I started on the plane ride home. When I wrote her to get more specific requirements for the music (how long does she like to meditate? Is she listening on earbuds or a stereo? etc.), she said,

"I really liked what you shared with us the other night. As for meditating, I don't use music. However, the patients where I work start every morning with a daily reflection/meditation time (or relaxation for most). They love to listen to music - especially when it starts to get colder and they can't do it outside. I use a wide range of music because people don't like the same stuff. What i use the least is classical. It needs to be something that is not intense as that is too challenging for fragile minds/bodies/spirits in early recovery - all systems are adjusting to not having certain things. So nerves are more raw and concentration is more difficult. Rhythm is good - not too much atonal stuff (not very soothing for our patients) and on the slower side. They meditate for 15 minutes. I have another group that does it for 30 minutes. I rarely play all one thing for the entire time - i play different songs, etc. no words.
We have a wide range of ages but usually have a lot of folks in their 20s. I am thinking your music is something they will be able to relate to with ease. I have a built in sound system that is fairly good for the 15 min folks - the 30 min ones use a boom box. Alas, I work in an imperfect environment!"

She is a senior counselor at a rehab center. I like the idea of writing some non-challenging but still interesting music for people to grab onto in recovery.

I am just going to start sending her mp3s. Would anyone like to contribute some stuff? Maybe we could even post it on the NAP.