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Today, I had a little free time, so I decided to go and catch Hellboy. I've thought about seeing this movie for some time, as it qualifies as flick with enough visual eye candy to warrant a big screen viewing.
I didn't think all that much about this film. It was pretty standard sci fi action kind of stuff. The visuals were good, but not great. Not too much to really say about it, though. It was just a perfunctory flick.
Watch time :49
Once or twice in my life, I've tried the online dating thing. It went okay -- some good, some bad. Not too long ago, one of the sites posted some warning tips to consider when meeting people on line.
- RED FLAG #1: Won't show you current or full body photos.
- RED FLAG #2: They do not have any solid contact numbers.
- RED FLAG #3: Reality VS. Fantasy
- RED FLAG #4: Asks for money.
Things like that.
Anyway, Mickey came up with a parody of the list:
RED FLAG #1: Offers to show you current “full body photos.” What sort of maniac sends naked pictures to total strangers? The sort who is sending naked pictures of other strangers to strangers. That’s right. It’s not him. It’s his neighbor, son, mechanic or something he downloaded from the internet. And, to be perfucktly clear, it is certainly not her. There are no “hers” sending you pictures, my friend. It. Is. Always. A. Man. At any given moment there are thousands of online lesbian relationships being conducted between pairs of hairy little men with damp palms and salvia stained beards. If looks are very important to you—and unless you are a recent parolee, they better fucking be important—I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to meeting people in reality.
Good for a chuckle.
Thanks to Lindsay for tips to both.
In other music cancellation news, Chrisitina is abandoning her North American tour due to strained vocal chords.
I'm taking a day off from my day job tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I should sleep until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. So, there won't be all that much blogging for the lion's share of the day
At 6:00pm, both myself and Chris from NGB pulled up to the crack den neighborhood that held the Thunderdome venue. To say that it was in a sketchy neighborhood does a disservice to all the crime ridden holes of the world. Thunderdome itself was actually much nicer on the inside than it was on the outside. Of course, given the broken and boarded up windows of the outside, this really isn't saying all that much. Needless to say, I was already starting to have a bad feeling about this show.
While we were loading into the club, I met the workers in the club as well as some of the members of the other bands. And that's when I noticed something about these kinds of clubs that bother me.
Thunderdome -- like a number of other clubs that cater to both local bands as well as "B"/"C" level national acts (Jaxx comes to mind) -- treat local bands with the very clear attitude of "we don't need you." On the one hand, this is absolutely true: there are almost always bands that want to play at the venue -- any venue -- so they can find a replacement act for almost any band. But that doesn't mean that you have to be jerk about it.
During load-in, one of the bands placed some of the equipment in front of a door that was very clearly marked "Do Not Place Equipment In Front Of This Door." When the sound guy noticed this, he walked over and said "Who's the asshole who stacked their shit in front of the door that's clearly marked don't put your shut here?!?" As opposed to "who put this equipment in front of the door?" The band was in the wrong, but there's no reason to go all ogre over it.
Anyway, the opening two bands were pretty much hard, hard rock/death metal. Apparently, Thunderdome tends towards that genre. In fact, it seems to be the place in Baltimore to go if you want to see old hair metal bands before they die and/or death metal (witness the Maryland Death Metal Fest that will be playing there at the end of May). The best thing I can say about either opening band is that they were loud. And rather young. In fact, the entire crowd skewed very, very young. Like high school or so. And this ended up causing a problem.
According to the contract of the show we were playing (it was a Battle of the Bands kind of deal), there was a set formula for determine performance order:
ADVANCE TICKET SALES WILL ALSO DETERMINE IN WHAT ORDER THE BANDS WILL PLAY. EXAMPLE : IF A BAND SELLS NO OR THE LEAST TICKETS IN ADVANCE THEY WILL RECEIVE THE OPENING OR LEAST DESIRABLE SLOT. BAND WHO SELLS ALL OR THE MOST TICKETS WILL RECEIVE THE HEADLINING OR MOST DESIRABLE SLOT OF THEIR CHOICE. ( IN EVENT OF A TIE, A RANDOM DRAWING WILL DECIDE THE ORDER.)
Based on the pre-sales that NGB had amassed at the reckoning time, we were 3rd out of 5. Accordingly, we were scheduled to go on stage at 9:35pm. While I was sitting over by the gear (because I'm just a little bit paranoid about the safety and security of my gear around bands that I don't know), I noticed the sound guy (Darryl) walk over and change the schedule. NGB had moved from the 3rd to the 5th slot, taking the stage at 11:45pm.
This change of events didn't sit all that well, and we tried to negotiate with the club manager to remedy the situation. We all went round and round the situation, with the manager contradicting himself a few times and generally having a rather dismissive attitude towards the band.
A small digression. I can understand this from the manager's perspective. He has to get the underage kids out of the club by a certain time to comply with the liquor laws of Maryland. A band that he has never heard of is trying to negotiate with him to change his business practice. In his shoes, I would have tried to work something out, but I don't know how receptive I would have been. </digression>
Finally, we came to a proposed compromise. The manager made a verbal promise to reserve an opening slot for an upcoming show of a national act on a to-be-named Friday evening. The four of us stepped away to talk about the situation. We basically concluded that his verbal promise was worth the paper it was written on, and, after some intense discussion, we voted. The band decided to declare the club in breach of contract. Accordingly, we packed up and left.
There will be consequences to this decision; of that I have no doubt. I do not expect to be playing at the Thunderdome anytime in the near future (not that I'm crying about that), and this might end up hurting NGB's reputation, but I suppose we will see what happens in the future.
Apple computers has sold around 70 million tunes through iTunes.
The company, which struck a landmark deal with record companies last year to permit iTunes users to download copyrighted music, had originally said it believed it would sell 100 million songs during the first year of the service.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said the company, based in Cupertino, Calif., is now selling 2.7 million songs a week, charging 99 cents a song.
While some might say that selling less than the expectation might qualify as a failure, I wouldn't be one of them. I'm all in favor of expanding avenues of musical sales for the consumer.
The RIAA files suit against 477 more.
Boooo.....
Then this site is for you.
The Spice Girls may reunite to at least one new song for the album.
If only this is true, I could die happy.
-- Update --
And, right on schedule, here comes Simon:
Mel B is talking up the chances of the Spices getting back as a five-piece to "write a new song" - so, not like old times at all in any sense, then. Good god, maybe Victoria would even sing on it.
An article about astronauts not being allowed to have sex. I love this quote:
He noted the comments of one Russian cosmonaut about time spent cooped up in the Mir space station that "when you have two people locked up in a very small environment for months at a time, all the conditions for murder are met." Mix in sex, and you almost have the script of Othello in space....
Thanks to Eugene for the tip.
I'm sure you've probably heard of this guy; he's become an overnight internet phenomenon. But, just in case, here he is.
You, too, can have an imaginary girlfriend.
What is an Imaginary Girlfriend?
This is a service provided by a real life girl where she will pretend to be your long distance girlfriend by sending you personalized love letters, emails, pictures, leave phone messages (if you want), and provide other girlfriend-like services. This relationship appears real to others that may see these things, but it is not. There will be no actual real life meetings or relationship between you and your Imaginary Girlfriend other than that specified in your order. ...Why would I want an Imaginary Girlfriend?
There are many reasons. Some guys are tired of being told by friends and family to get a girlfriend. Maybe you would like to make someone else jealous when they see how enamored your new girlfriend is by you. Perhaps you are wondering what it's like to have a long distance girlfriend?These are all good reasons, and it really depends on your situation. Having an Imaginary Girlfriend can be a lot of fun. What guy (or girl) wouldn't enjoy being showered with personal love letters and affection of an Imaginary Girlfriend? Having an Imaginary Girlfriend can be a great confidence booster!
What kind of personalized love letters do I receive?
Each Imaginary Girlfriend is different, but with most Imaginary Girlfriends, every week you will receive a one to three page handwritten letter, personally addressed to you, on pretty stationary sprayed with perfume. Most girlfriends also send pictures and/or other special gifts (ie: lingerie). ...What happens when the time is completed?
When the stated time period is over, you can break up with your Imaginary Girlfriend for any reason you wish. She will write you a final letter begging you to take her back. Of course you can continue your "relationship" by renewing, or start over and find a new Imaginary Girlfriend of your choice!
I tried to come up with something snarky and pithy to say here, but words just fail me.
Thanks to Will for the tip.
Take 6 will be playing in DC on May 8. If you haven't seen these guys, you might want to check it out. Six part harmonies, heavy jazz feel -- it's a good show.
I've been a fan of South Park for some time. Their movie was absolutely brilliant -- both as a parody and as a satire. No less than the Grey Lady herself has noticed the sublime writing of the show:
This sounds almost ingratiatingly sane. If "South Park" is one of television's great comedies, it's not great for being reckless; it's great for being a series of funny, topical parables.
Take the end of "The Passion of the Jew." After the holy war subsides, Stan tells fans of the Gibson movie: "If you want to be Christian, that's cool, but you should follow what Jesus taught instead of how he got killed. Focusing on how he got killed is what people did in the Dark Ages, and it ends up with really bad results."
-- Update --
Eppy has some thoughts on the NY Times review.
Cirque du Soleil will be coming to the DC area this year in late summer, early fall.
I've caught several of their shows (Dralion, Quidam, Allegria) and I can heartily say that whatever they want to charge you, it's worth paying. Just go and see it. You will not be disappointed.
Johnny Rotten wants to be portrayed by Justin Timberlake in soon-to-be-shot film about his life. In other news from Bizarro universe, Jessica Simpson took time out from her busy schedule to thank the Nobel commitee for nominating her, saying that she just didn't have the time to accept the physics prize, what with the whole jumpstarting of the hydrogen economy.
-- Update --
Emma has a slight update: "Timberlake had agreed to the request provided Lydon stays away from the film set."
Online music file-sharing and other forms of piracy haven't gone away, but a gradual turnaround in U.S. music sales that began in the fall has picked up in the first quarter of this year, resulting in the industry's best domestic sales in years.
Overall U.S. music sales -- CDs, legal downloads, DVDs, etc. -- were up in the first three months of the year by 9.1 percent over the same period in 2003, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Album sales were up 9.2 percent. Sales of CDs, which represent 96 percent of album sales, rose 10.6 percent. For the first time since 2000, two recording artists -- Norah Jones and Usher -- managed to sell more than 1 million copies of their albums in a single week this year.
Yet more evidence that the good folk at the RIAA are just full of crap.
Thanks to Wendy for the tip.
It's not just Britney faking it. Christina Aguilera has made a commercial for Virgin Mobile in which she fakes an orgasm much like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.
As this video clip shows.
Still, I have had the occasional brief flight of fancy to strap on a pair of rollerblades, hop on the metal barristers at the Metro station escalator and ride all the way down. Of course, it's the near certain death that would await at the end that usually convinces me to think of another way to pass the time.
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
Tonight, the four of us got together to work through some tunes for the show on Thursday. Having gone through each song about eight or nine times, I'm not as uncomfortable as I was before. Towards the end of the evening, I was starting to get relaxed enough to start goofing around with Chris and Mike, just being in the song as opposed trying to play the notes.
The time for the Thursday show has changed a bit, too. We should be going on at 8, 8:30pm or so. We hope to see you there.
I had said wouldn't do the "would you believe that ____'s on tour..." updates anymore, but this one is special to me. I actually saw these guys play at a private party last year, so I can tell you that they sound pretty much the same as they ever did, and their show is about the same as it ever was (make what you want out of that). Anyway, if you want to see them, here are the details.
Norah Jones will be singing on Jesse Harris' latest album. Harris is the guy who wrote Jones' runaway hit Don't Know Why, as well as a few other tunes on both of her albums.
Britney Spears has let down her fans in London when she lip synched throughout the entire concert.
...[T]he 12,000-strong Wembley Arena crowd — who had paid at least £30 [around $45 or so] each for tickets — could not believe it when she started lip-synching to a backing track.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.
-- Update --
In related news, Britney is cleaning house with merchandise sales.
Britney Spears' cumulative concert merchandise sales total reached more than $30 million, according to Signatures Network Inc., a merchandising and licensing company that handles Spears products. ...
The Onyx tour alone, which begins its European dates today (April 26) in London, is expected to gross more than $10 million in merchandise revenue.
In the 25 tour dates of the North American leg, Spears' merchandise sales averaged $150,000-$170,000 a night, reaching a high of $180,000 during the Los Angeles show March 8, according to Dell Furano, CEO of Signatures Network Inc.
Fakin' it or not, she's makin' some serious cash.
No, really, he does.
This is one of the reasons I'm really loving Courtney these days. These are the kind of complaints artists make all the time: I lost creative control, the label isn't doing enough to promote it, etc. But you'd usually either make it in private, to friends, or make it in public, but quietly. Courtney does it in a Rolling Stone story while she's promoting the CD, and says she's going to follow it up with a press release. Now, don't get me wrong: this does happen. I've certainly been on the semi-receiving end of a few of these sorts of missives, but it was never quite in this context. There's something different about it, and what's different about it is everything else.
Dave Matthews Band had planned to play a show in NYC on the 4th of July. It doesn't seem like that will be happening now.
Tonight, the three of us (Ryan, Rich and myself) got together to do aquick run through of some iffy tunes. We didn't so much of work through a set as to revisit some of the songs that we either haven't played in a while or we haven't played well in a while (sometimes, the same tune). It was a short rehearsal, just about two hours for ten songs.
The JoS show on Friday is going to be memory walk for me. I'm more or less going to be cruising through most of the tunes, just rolling on what I've done before.
I also have two upcoming shows with NGB, with only one rehearsal over the last two weeks. I'm not as familiar with the tunes as I would like to be, not really being comfortable with the material. I would prefer to have the music down cold so I could do more entertainment than just playing bass, but that will come in time.
"End of the Century," a documentary about punk rock's founding fathers, the Ramones, has been shown at major film festivals in New York, Toronto and Berlin. It has attracted a following among influential figures like Nicolas Cage and the director Jim Jarmusch. It has been praised in Variety, Entertainment Weekly and The Los Angeles Times for its unflinching portrayal of the dysfunction that both fueled and undermined the Ramones.
About the only thing the film hasn't gained is a release date.
The filmmakers, Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields, say the movie has not been released after nearly seven years of work because of the very same tenuous relationships they hoped to document.
With their super-fast, two-minute, three-chord songs, the Ramones almost single-handedly created punk rock in the mid-70's, inspiring bands from the Clash to U2 to Pearl Jam along the way. But while the Ramones presented a united front on their album covers — black leather jackets, canvas Converse sneakers and bowl haircuts — the band was fraught with tension and jealousy among its members. Johnny Ramone, the guitarist, ran the band like a dictator. Dee Dee Ramone, the bassist, was a heroin addict (he died of an overdose in 2002). A cast of drummers came and went because they were either too drunk, too opposed to constant touring or too upset over not getting a larger share of the money from T-shirt sales. And Joey Ramone, the singer, was dumped by his fiancée, Linda, for Johnny in the early 80's. Joey and Johnny did not talk to each other during the 15 more years the Ramones toured until they retired in 1996. Joey and Johnny, in fact, never reconciled before Joey died of lymphatic cancer in April 2001.
This makes it sound like a heck of a movie. I'd like to see it. Here's to hoping that they can work out their differences.
Thanks to Mark for the tip.
Marcus Miller will be doing some US shows this summer. Including one in Richmond VA on the 18th of June. Hmmm... a road trip might just be in order...
Thanks to Rob for the tip.
-- Update --
And, as I browse around on the Richmond site, I also see that Me'shell Ndegeocello is playing there about two weeks later. Some of you might recognize the somewhat unpronouceable Swahili name from her duet remake of Wild Nights with John Mellancamp. She's a monster bass player, though, and I'd recommend her show.
The interesting thing here is that her website doesn't have the Richmond date listed. I wonder which one is right...
I've been noodling around, trying to come up with a pithy little slogan that I can use (email signatures and the like). So far, I've come up with:
As you can pretty clearly see, I don't have a future in advertising. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Busted has been voted as the worst band in the world. Darkness was #2, followed by Avril Lavigne and Courtney Love.
All I have to say is, "Who or what is Busted?"
The Darkness, that British glam rock band with the ridiculous singer (who knows it and has make his ridiculousness his schtick), appeared recently on Loveline, the radio call-in show for younger people to talk about sex and such. Apparently, the band was unaware of what kind of show it was. They freaked out and left after a caller started talking about her being sexully assaulted.
...[T]he band arrived at the studio clearly unaware of the kind of questions they could be asked.
Hey, I'm sorry, but if your manager booked you on a show without researching what kind of show it is, you might want to think about new representation.
As usual when it comes to musical things that involve acts from across the pond, Simon's got the good angle on this:
It's probably an indication of how long it is since there's been a British band doing well in the US that the Darkness apparently had no idea the sort of questions they were going to be asked when they were guest panel members on American radio show Loveline - back in the 90s there was a small rash of Shoe and Britpop acts who appeared on the show giving advice on how to deal with small rashes and broken hearts - but it's kind of hard to sympathise with them for not finding out beforehand. Instead, they were taken by surprise by a caller who rang in to say she'd been sexually abused, and just walked out. (According to the Mirror, anyway.) Which seems a bit of a shitty way to deal with someone who's asking for help - would it have been too much to say "talk to a professional" before ripping off the headphones?
Hear, hear.
Michael Jackson is changing attorneys.
-- Update --
Jacko rejigs his defence team; pledges to sort out on-deck seating arrangements on Titanic by mid-afternoon.
From who else?
Tonight, I caught Belá Fleck and The Flecktones down at the Performing Arts Center in Charlottesville, VA. This is the, well, I actually don't know how many times that I've seen these guys live, but I've pretty much seen them every chance I can since 1991. They are one of my favorite jazz bands and have been for quite some time.
Tonight was the first time that I have ever been to the Performing Arts Center. I was rather surprised to learn that it was in a high school. I suppose the location would account for the exceedingly high number of rather young kids who were in the audience. Not that it's a bad thing, it just contributes towards my feeling old.
We got to the show a little late (thank you ever so much, MapQuest), so the show was already started. The crowd was rather sedate. I'm not sure how much of that can be attributed to the median age of the audience, or how much can be laid at the somewhat heavy security presense, but there wasn't a lot of energy in the crowd.
And that affected the performers. While I rather like the Flecktones and will absolutely catch the next show I can, this show didn't feel quite up to the normal Flecktones standard. Perhaps it was the fact that they had driven all night from Vermont. Maybe it's that they have been on tour with only a few months here and there off since March 1994. Possibly it was the crowd being as slack as they were. I don't know why, but I've seen shows with better energy than this before. And I know that I'll see better in the future.
Don't take this to mean that I didn't like the show; the Flecktones on a bad night are better than most bands on a good one. Vic's solo was amazing (as usual), the interaction between Futch and Belá was worth the trip. They also changed the way that the solos occurred. With the exception of Vic's solo starting off the second set, the entire band would segue into one of the musician's solo. Then one or two of the member would come back out, play with the soloist and then the rest of the band would hop in.
Afterwards, we hung out for a bit, chatting with the members of the band. If I heard correctly, the Flecktones are considering taking about a year off from touring (a well deserved rest), so if you get the chance to catch them, you really should make the time. To that end, here are their next shows (as of right now):
| 5/1/2004 | Alys Robinson Stephens PAC | Birmingham, AL |
| 5/2/2004 | Beal St Music Festival | Memphis, TN |
| 6/14/2004 | Liberty Hall | Lawrence, KS |
| 6/15/2004 | Blue Note | Columbia, MO |
| 6/16/2004 | Rococo | Lincoln, NE |
| 6/18/2004 | Telluride Bluegrass Festival | Telluride, CO |
| 6/20/2004 | Hollywood Bowl - Playboy Jazz Fest | Hollywood, CA |
| 6/26/2004 | Saratoga PAC Jazz Fest | Saratoga Springs, NY |
| 6/27/2004 | Cape Cod Melody Tent | Hyannis, MA |
| 6/28/2004 | Hampton Beach Casino | Hampton Beach, NH |
| 6/30/2004 | Downtown Jazz Toronto | Toronto, Ontario Canada |
| 7/2/2004 | Ottawa International Jazz Fest Confederation Park | Ottawa, Ontario Canada |
| 7/3/2004 | Symphony Hall | Montreal, Ontario, Canada |
| 7/4/2004 | Love and Music | Acme, PA |
| 7/25/2004 | Oregon Zoo Amphitheater | Portland, OR |
| 7/27/2004 | Stewart Park Music on the Half Shell | Roseburg, OR |
| 7/28/2004 | Woodland Pak Zoo | Seattle, WA |
| 7/31/2004 | Deer Vally Resort - Utah Symphony | Park City, UT |
| 10/2/2004 | State Theater | Easton, PA |
As you can see, not too many shows anywere near the DC area, so I think I might be hosed. Maybe one of the PA shows.
Not a lot of photos from the show (didn't have the best of seats), but what I took you can find here.
Today, I got together with Shahin, formerly of Aref & Shahin. As a number of you have already deduced, A&S is not together anymore. Creative differences and all that.
In any case, Shahin and Brett are still playing together and they have asked me play with them again. That's something that I'm all for; I enjoyed playing and writing with Shahin, and I've always liked locking in with Brett. I think that we have a private party to play at the end of the month for a group of lawyers, so there's already some cheddar in the works.
More on this as it develops.
The 14th release of the French Flamenco-style band marks a return to a more traditional style of playing. Gone are the synth arrangements, absent are the drum kits, leaving only guitars, vocals, a double bass and the occasional hand percussion. Roots marks a nice change of pace for the Gipsy Kings, moving away from the accessible pop style they have been doing for the last several albums back to a down home feel.
Some highlights from this disc:
The above listing might make this disc sound like all sunshine and light. That is not the case; quite of a few of the tunes are bittersweet and melancholy (Amigo and Como Ayer, for example).
If you like flamenco (or flamenco style) music, I'd recommend this album. These guys have been doing this since dirt was invented, and they're very good at what they do.
This is a page by a Japanese artist who creates optical illusions. It's images of discrete objects, but with the color schema and the placement of them, they appear to move. They don't, actually, because if you stare closely, you can clearly observe that no movement is actually taking place in your direct vision. Your periphial, that's another story.
Thanks to Marty for the tip.
Kylie Minogue says she deliberately made herself feel faint so she could sound raunchy on her new track.
The 35-year-old singer starved herself of water and fresh air to reach a near orgasmic state on the track entitled Chocolate.
Wow, I guess she was trying to suffer for her art sales.
-- Update --
The inimitable Simon has something to say on this as well.
Apparently Kylie confuses 'orgasm' with 'choking', which is, in itself, interesting - that's what you'd get after dating [Michael] Hutchence [from INXS]: It was all about timing - how long I could go with little oxygen. I think it was worth it. It sounds really beautiful.
We'd really suggest that you don't try this for yourself. Unless you're Dannii, of course, in which case: it's gotta be worth a try, hasn't it?
It got a snicker from me, excepting the whole making fun of a dead person thing.
A couple of thoughts on how to revive a dead band successfully.
So now MoB [Mission of Burma] offers another template: how to resurrect a long-gone band.
First off, keep the initial breakup fairly civil. "There was no bad blood," Prescott says. "It was just time for people to move on and try something else. And Roger [Miller, guitarist] had tinnitus, which was the biggest factor."
Second, keep working. Prescott has stayed active with three different bands...
Furthermore, don't rest on your laurels. "Another big factor was Roger was completely uninterested in playing again unless we wrote new songs and were active like a band," Prescott says. "Otherwise it's kind of stale."
But nothing else matters if you can't deliver both the old and new material live. ...
Digging on cool music isn't about bowing down to it ten years later. It's about moving on, making your own, and finding the next geniuses to stack the canon. Even if you have to plow through the old geniuses first.
Thanks to Frank for the tip.
Mel C, of Spice Girl and UK Older Poeple Idol fame, is starting her own record label. She has chosen this tack rather than reunite with the rest of the Girls.
I don't know whether to be happy for the lack of a reunion or sad for the new wave of bad music about to be unleashed on the world.
Today, the four of us went out to play a fund raiser for Cystic Fibrous research. It was hosted by the Yellow Jackets Motorcycle Club in preparation for their main benefit held in conjunction with DC101 in the summer. Or, at least, that's what we were told.
As I got there, the first band had mostly already set up. I talked with their bass player about me dropping my rig in behind his (I didn't want to move his gear with talking to him first. I know that I'm rather picky about people and my gear -- particularly when I have a show to do). He was cool with it, though, and I finished setting up my gear.
It was a beautiful spring day, though. Not a cloud in the sky. A good thing, too. We were playing on an outdoor stage. But playing in the rain while strapping electronic gear on my body is not my idea of a pleasant day.
I had never heard of the opening band before (and, for the life of me, I can't recall their name). Having listened to them, I don't particularly expect to hear them again. They played (at best) average hard rock. The major critique I would have for them is to work on their vocals. The band was more or less together, but I have absolutely no idea in what key the singer was -- and I tried. Needless to say, the key of the vocalist bore no resemblance to the key of the music.
We got up and started through our set. The crowd seemed to be enjoying what we were doing, but they were far more focused on their own activities. And what might those activities be? Why, biker games, of course. The slow race, in which the winner is the one who can drive their motorcycle through the course the slowest (which is harder than it might seem) and the weiner bite -- in which two people on a bike drive under a hot dog suspended from a string with the person riding in the rear trying to take a bite from the dog while moving. Trust me, it was pretty interesting to watch.
Still we had a pretty good set. Ryan and I were locked into each other, and Mark and Rich both played well. As it turns out, the show was actually not for fund raising, but rather just an execuse to party. They had a good party, but I'd rather they just told us that up front.
The sound guys (who were excellent, by the way. I wish I had their information so I could pimp for them) recorded the show, so I'll upload excerpts of the performance later. For now, here and here. are some photos from the show. Set list can be found in the usual place. And thanks to everyone who came out!
The other day, I was wandering around Best Buy, and I decided to pick up the latest release from Hoobastank. The Reason is their second outing. I kind of liked their first release, so I thought I'd give this a shot (particularly since Best Buy was loss leadering them at $9.99).
This CD stays within the same vein as the first album, and that's neither good nor bad. On the one hand, they stay true to the sound that won them their fans the first go 'round; on the other hand, they aren't showing all that much growth.
Highlights:
Some not-so-high-lights:
This was a pretty decent rock album. Their vocal harmonies probably serve to be their strong suit, and they use them to the furthest extent they can.
Maverick Records says that Warner's statement is "hogwash". Well, that settle it.
Although you would have thought that the wannabe Brit Madonna would have hired a barrister who would have dismissed the claim as "poppycock" (or some other Briticism).
To me, the best part of watching SNL (actually, the only part) is the Weekend Update segment. Fey's writing style tends to make for good jokes.
Frank, I feel your pain on this one.
For some unfathomable reason, I turned on my alarm last night despite the fact that it is, indeed, Saturday. Worst part is that I hit snooze nine times this morning before it occurred to me that I could just turn the damn thing off. It's interesting, however, just how much dreaming you can get accomplished in nine-minute increments.
I've done this myself quite a few times.
Suge Knight has been released from jail. Hopefully, he'll stay out this time.
Well, we as a band didn't actually play. There were some scheduling conflicts, so we weren't able to get together for enough time to play through any material. Mike and I sat around for a bit, improving through some free flow, sort of jazzy kind of stuff. The four of us ended up chatting about our schedules and what we are going to do to get ready for the next round of shows.
Aimee Mann will be on the road this summer as well. She'll be rolling through DC on June 19th, playing at the 9:30 club.
Chris Ullman can whistle.
None of that paltry squeakiness, and no using those fingers to bend that tune. Ullman is strictly a professional.
As the Alexandria resident heads south to North Carolina this weekend for the International Whistlers Convention, he's optimistic that he will walk away with the top prize, and it's not as if he's whistling in the dark.
This story comes from today's Washington Post. It feels like one of those "gosh, aren't people sorta silly" articles that sometimes make the human interest sections of the local news. I, for one, didn't know that there was an international whistling competition to win. But I wouldn't mind hearing Mr. Ullman's work.
Thanks to Lynn for the tip.
Let me start off by saying I don't watch American Idol. It rewards style over substance and is all that is everything bad about karaoke writ large. But I have sat through this season once or twice, so I feel I can speak to this just a bit.
John Stevens is still in the running? Why in God's name is he still on the show? Actually, why was ever on the show? I'm sure he's the nice guy that everyone says he is, but the show is supposedly about who can sing well, not who has the best manners. The times that I have suffered through his work, he was atrocious. That he's gotten as far as he has is almost an indictment of democracy. (Yes, I know this isn't true democracy as one person can vote multiple times, but you get my point).
Simon has a thought or two on this as well:
Surely its the first time a vote has been so stupid that even the host starts to berate the people who called in? Ryan Seacrest started to admonish the audience after they kicked out Jennifer Hudson and left in Charles Kennedy [e]rm, John Stevens.
And what would form did that berating take?
America, don't forget you have to vote for the talent. You have to keep your favorites in the competition. You cannot let talent like this slip through the cracks.
For now, let's leave out whether or not the "talent like this" that AI has is so worth saving. I think I would pretty much chose the dulcet tones of cats humping over Mr. Stevens, um, singing.
Alanis Morissette and Barenaked Ladies are coming down from the Great White North to tour the states.
DC dates will be:
Aug. 8: Philadelphia (Mann Center)
Aug. 10: Columbia, Md. (Merriweather Post Pavilion)
Beyonce is hiring body doubles to confuse the press so she can sunbathe topless. Didn't she learning anything from Janet? It's the exposure of the body part that gets the press, not the attempt to hide it.
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
Or, the guy who did his voice (as well as the distinctive laugh) has moved on to other things.
Just a little English paper for a chuckle. I can remember students like this when I was back in high school. Sometimes, I might even have been one of them.
But what really makes this funny to me is not the, um, inventive descriptions and factual assertions. It's the handwritten note on the bottom of the page. I can just hear the conversation that must have followed -- "Pete, your parents and I are a little concerned about your direction...."
Thanks to Eppy for the tip.
Simon Cowell, best known to Americans as the acerbic British critic/meanie on American Idol, has started his own talent show.
The millionaire music entrepreneur's new show, which is being called The X Factor, will scrap upper age limits.
Inspired by the success of older artists in the charts, the Pop Idol judge has decided that anyone over the age of 16 can audition to become the next star.
The show will also see Cowell, who is famed for his put-downs, compete with two other judges - tipped to be Scary Spice Mel B and Westlife manager Louis Walsh - for the public's vote for the winning artist.
Allowing people who are over the age of thirty to compete is a welcome idea, and, if nothing else, I'm glad to see that Mel B is getting work again.
Eric over at BlogCritics was nice enough to name me "BLOGCRITIC OF THE DAY". Thanks, Eric, and please visit his site (on the off chance that you haven't dropped by there a few times already). And welcome to all the BlogCritic readers who are dropping by.
NGB didn't rehearse tonight (I think Mike couldn't make it), but I headed out there anyway. Nick and I have talked a time or two about me teaching at his new academy. Well, he's opened his doors, so I dropped by to check out the place and work out the details.
It's a nice place, located in Dunkirk MD off of MD Route 4. Formerly inhabited by what I think was a medical firm, Nick's starting out with a pretty good place. It's a bit of shoestring effort right now, but the grand opening's not for a while, so I expect things will even out by then.
It looks like I'll proabably be teaching one or two days a week at the Academy. I guess I'll have to add a lessons section to the site, but that's probably going to take me some time. More updates on this as it develops.
Michael Jackson's jailtime adventure moves one step closer.
And, in an act of cosmic synchronicity, Comedy Central ran the Michael Jackson South Park episode last night.
An visual way to see how the music of one bands is related to another. It just might lead you to find a new, cool group.
Wendy has some good stuff on the RIAA as well as online copyright issues.
Pat Boone, never one of my favorites by any stretch of the imagination, has achieved the rank of full blown doofus.
I don't think censorship is a bad word, but it has become a bad word because everybody associates it with some kind of restriction on liberty. ...
Censorship is healthy for any society, and that goes for arts, entertainment, anything.
There's not much I can say to this. Actually, there is.
Censorship: The institution, system, or practice of censoring.
Censoring: To examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. [My italics]
Hey, idiot!? If you suppress or delete something, it is a restriction on the liberty of the person who had said/done the thing in question.
If you think something's bad -- so bad that it shouldn't be allowed to escape into the world -- then do what you can to try and stop it. Protest, write your congressman, hold your breath until you turn blue, boycott the offender; whatever you think appropriate to do so long as it is legal. I'm almost certainly going to both disagree with you and fight against you (because I believe that the answer to "bad" speech is to raise good speech against it). But be honest with yourself (and with everyone else) as to what you are doing.
Thanks to TMFTML for the tip.
Some tips that might come in handy, should the crew from MTV's Cribs drop by. Some examples:
- It's not a "room". It's an "area". Ex: "Dis here the pool area." or "Here go the kitchen area."
- They are not friends. They are dawgz.
- On the day of taping, you must have a minimum of 8 to 10 dawgz kickin' it in your pool, studio and theater areas.
- Consider trading a Lexy for a pit bull, Rottweiler or other menacing dog.
- If possible, breed or buy a chrome Rottweiler.
Thanks to Frank for the tip.
Tonight, we got together with Mark and worked on the songs for the upcoming show. For the most part, we just blew through about twenty songs.
For the show, I think that we are going on second out of four bands, but I'm not completely sure of that. It should be a good time, though.
Following up with the announcement of their new tour, The Cure will be releasing in mid June.
Maverick, Madonna's label, has lost 66 million since 1999.
-- Update --
And Madonna herself owes $20 million.
Stuart Benjamin has a few things to say about the FCC and indecency.
The House has passed legislation that increases the maximum monetary penalty to $500,000 for each violation and that provides for revoking the license of broadcasters who are penalized three times. Other legislation would (to the delight of George Carlin) define the statutory term “profane” to include any form of eight objectionable words. ...
The bottom line for broadcasters is that they are much more likely to be penalized, and that the penalties will probably be more severe – and as a result a judicial challenge is more likely.
In recent years broadcasters have refrained from bringing judicial challenges to the regulation of broadcast indecency precisely because the fines were small, and rare, enough that broadcasters decided it was not worth the costs of antagonizing the FCC and Congress. Now, with heavy fines (and maybe even license revocation) on the line, broadcasters are more likely to do so. Indeed, that process began yesterday, when both NBC and a coalition of media groups filed petitions asking the FCC to reverse its decision. It looks like those groups are girding for a judicial challenge to the indecency regulations.
This is significant, because the Supreme Court probably would – and in my view should – find these indecency regulations unconstitutional. With respect to newspapers and magazines, telephones, and cable television, the Supreme Court has held that the government may not reduce the adult population to viewing only what is fit for children. As the Supreme Court noted in the 2000 Playboy case on cable indecency, a core principle of the First Amendment is that "The citizen is entitled to seek out or reject certain ideas or influences without Government influence or control."
A random site full o' trivia. Some examples:
I'm not the only one who found Mel Gibson's opus a little on the violent side. It doesn't look like TV's much in the mood to display the film in the living rooms of John Q. Public.
Suge Knight, in prison for punching someone and violating his parole (again), wants to do a benefit for the families of solider in Iraq. Giving the benefit of the doubt, this sounds like it could be a good idea.
The sound that you might be hearing are all the unsigned bands rejoicing. MP3.com, once the haven for unknown bands good and bad, may be returning, more or less.
If you were one of those bands (or if you know someone who was), go to this site and transfer over the old files to the new site.
The aforementioned union of Real and Apple doesn't look like it's going to come to be after all.
Thanks to Mac Diva for the tip.
The singer Pink is upset with the foreign minister of Austria.
Pink is suing Austria's foreign minister after she used her name on leaflets handed to fans at a recent concert in Vienna.
Thousands of leaflets were handed out by supporters of Benita Ferrero-Waldner who is standing for election as President of Austria this weekend.
What I want to know is why anyone would think even the faked endorsement of Pink would be an asset to a campaign. Or maybe I'm just woefully out of touch with the pop music tastes of Austria. Again.
Natalie Merchant (previously of 10,000 Maniacs) will be hitting the road this summer. I caught her opening up for Sting a few years ago. She had a pretty good show, even with the crazed Gypsy dancing she did on throughout her set.
THIS ISN'T IRONIC: When Alanis Morissette wants to know if a relationship is doomed, doomed, we're all doomed, she takes a trip to Paris, sits under the Eiffel Tower, and waits for the metal structure to tell her. Alanis, sweetness, if someone dragged us halfway across the world, and sat under a monument listening to hear if the affair was at an end, we'd be already mentally working our way through our contact book to choose a new date for the weekend. It's no wonder you think la Tour has got it right every time - we're betting each occassion has been a "Yes", hasn't it?
To be honest, I didn't even know that the RIAA was doing this program, but hey had been previously promising not to sue people if only they pledge to not only stop downloading, but promise to go forth and sin no more. That act of mercy has ended today.
The program required individuals to acknowledge in writing that they shared music files online and then remove the files from their computers. In exchange, the RIAA pledged not to target them in its lawsuit campaign.
According to Simon, there wasn't a whole lot of activity in the process anyway (about 1,108 pledges out of the entire US), so this probably isn't going to amount to much.
As a man-on-the-street survey found when they were in England.
...71 percent were willing to part with their password for a chocolate bar.
The survey also found the majority of workers would take confidential information with them when they change jobs, and would not keep salary details confidential if they came across the details.
Here's the porn version of the Musings. Pornolize runs the text of any site through a text parser and spits it back out with dirty words interspersed throughout.
While I think I've figured out a good bit of the way it works (it parses the text, inserting from a list of words based on either two capitalized words one after the other, what would seem to be a verb or some other kind of process (it's not quite important enough for me to spend real time on it), here's an example of how it translated one of my articles.
The original:
New problems for Michael Jackson
For those who care, it seems like there are more charges filed against MJ.
The newer version:
New problems for Michael "Bonebagger" Jackson
For those who care, it seems like there are more charges shafted against MJ.
For the record, this was pretty much one of the only things I could find on the "translation" that would still be safe for work. That it still works as being pretty accurate was just a coincidence.
Thanks to Lindsay for the tip. And, for those who might be wondering, it's almost certainly not safe for your worksite.
We don't really know who Michael Buble is (and, to be honest, he sounds like a grade-a chump) but, nevertheless, we're impressed with his trumpet player Justin Ray, who blew his instrument so hard he passed out and fell off the stage. That's commitment.
There a website that can help you find the art work that graced the covers of most albums over time. It's quite nifty, if you're into that kind of thing.
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
Kurt Cobain's guitar sold for $117,500.
There are those people who don't particularly want to leave the wonderful world of dial-up.
In fact, she is part of another big group, the tens of millions of Americans seemingly immune to the lure of more speed and satisfied with dial-up services. A majority of Americans who surf the Internet still do so by dialing in on regular telephone lines, despite the rapidly narrowing price gap between high-speed and dial-up connections.
People like Ms. Jenkins are neither Luddites nor laggards, but consumers content to pay for a service that is less than optimal, and at times even frustratingly slow, because they say greater speed is not worth the trouble of starting over with a new telecommunications provider and getting a new e-mail address, even if the added cost is small.
I don't particularly understand this myself; I've become so enamoured of broadband that it has a large factor when I make my decisions on living arrangements. But, to each their own.
There was a lot going on at my day job, so I wasn't able to get much blogging done today.
As Joel Achenbach found out.
At one point I passed a stretch of mansions, high on the bluff. They revealed no sign of occupants. The rich in America purchase lives of invisibility. They don't hang out on the porch, waving to strangers, shouting, "Howya dune?" They don't whittle in the back yard, or boil up a tub of peanuts and ask everyone in the neighborhood to come over. They stay inside, doing rich-person things, like eating pâté, and thinking about how fluffy their monogrammed towels are. As I looked up at these castle dwellers I realized they would likely never know the joy of hiking along the towpath, soaking wet, heading toward a dismal campsite and taking notes for a book that no one would read. How I pitied them.
I love DC this time of year. The weather is almost perfect; just the right amount of heat, a nice breeze to keep things cool and the nights and days have a good amount of balance to them. The tourists haven't yet overrun the place, so you can still make your way around without resorting to bodily threats.
When I first moved here, I didn't like the city. At all. In fact, I went way out of my way to avoid setting foot over the border. After a while, I started to go in from time to time, but I didn't make a habit of it. Then, as I was driving up to a bookstore to listen to an author talk about his book, I realized that I was starting to like the city, that it really had a beauty to it.
Since then, I've pretty much started an out and out love affair for the city. I really like living here. Of all the cities that I have been to in the US, I like returning to my home. NYC has the tall buildings that careen the heavens, SF has the hills, the Bay and cable cars, Philly has some of the best Italian food I've ever eaten, Miami's got beach and scene and LA is all show, glitz and sparkle, but nothing's quite like DC.
This is one of the greenest cities that I know of; there are parks everywhere, Rock Creek winds it's way through the heart of the city (yeah, I know, Central Park is bigger, but it's all in one spot. Rock Creek connects one half of the city like an artery). There are trees and gardens everywhere you look, softening any rough edges that might be around.
There are people from every walk of life and every place in the world. Not hyperbolé -- I'm pretty darn sure that every country in the world has some number of people here (in the embassies, if nothing else). I know that I've personally met people from probably at least a quarter of the recognized countries of the world. Even when I was in college, I didn't meet this broad a spectrum of people. For a guy like me who likes drinking in new cultures and new musical styles, this is nearly heaven.
There aren't a whole of of places where a white guy from the mountains of Appalachia play Latin music with two Persian guys? And then break for Ethiopian food? (Yes, I know that there are other places, but you get my point.)
There is so much to do in this city, too. I try to take a few days off each year just to go to some of the offerings. Not the major ones -- everyone who wanders through here goes to the Smithsonians, but there are a whole host of other places of a similar ilk -- the Holocaust Museum, the opera, film festivals, just to name a few.
I know that this isn't the biggest media market in the nation (NYC and LA have that honor), but DC doesn't do all that badly. With few exceptions, we pretty much get all of the major acts through here, and most of the not-so-major ones, too. Even when someone's only going to be in NYC, it's a short train ride up there. A trade I'm more than willing to make.
If you live here, you probably know what I mean already. If you don't live here, drop by sometime for a visit -- you won't regret it.
Sony has yet to find the magic song on Brion's latest production, Apple's new record. The album has been finished for months but sits on the shelves at the label as, Brion says, execs search for a single.
Eppy has an interesting take on some of the reasons why Fiona Apple's latest album may end up being shelved by Epic and a few of the business concepts that go into that decision process. It's worth a read.
As far as the album itself goes, Billboard gives a street date of July 22, while Rolling Stone lists "winter" in an article written in October 2003. Your guess is as good as mine as to when it might ever see the light of day.
I rather liked Apple's first album, and the second was disappointing (in that typically sophmore jinx sort of way), but I'd be open to giving her third outing a try.
In what has to be one of the longer titles I've ever reviewed, Justin Goldberg's The Ultimate Survival Guide To The New Music Industry (Handbook For Hell) weighs in on a more than a few topics.
The book is primarily structured around a number interviews with noted people from all walks of the music business. There are some good nuggets of information buried in the text for those who might be thinking of trying to make some headway in the industry.
I'm not sure who it was that first pointed out the analogy, but somewhere along the path of my first year of experience in the music business someone said to me, "The music business is high school with money." An odd thing to say, I thought at the time, but eventually, a revelation -- the gossip, the cliques, the In Crowd on the fast track, the backstabbing, the egos and the pettiness...it really is high school with money.
p. 152
But I don't know if the value of the information is worth the read. I would probably characterize this work as a second tier resource. It's good to read when you've been through the A list, but not so good that I would drop everything just to finish it.
A closing quote from the book, though, that does bear repeating:
...if you want to get paid for maing music, you are going to have to start compromising immediately. It doesn't matter if you are standing on the street corner singing "The Times They Area a Changin'" for quarters -- someone's going to come along and say, "Can't you play 'Maggie's Farm'?" It depends how bad you want that quarter.
p. 344
From the desk of Simon:
On reading the Guardian Review charts page today I learn that Now 57 would have been the biggest selling album this week, but is ineligible for the chart. So then, Mr Record Label blames the drop in single sales on all the kids who are DLing or getting the ringtone (yeah right). Yet somehow a compilation of all these singles (which everyone presumably already now owns thanks to Kazaa) is outselling all the other album chart drivvel.
It just doesn't make sense...
Hmm, and, of course, compilation albums have been doing so well for so long, they had to ban them from the charts because it's not just the Now franchise, but for years everything from New Woman's All Woman W-O-M-A-N album to the second Trainspotting Album has been outstripping sales of 'proper' albums. It is curious, isn't it? But surely the record companies wouldn't have been the architects of their own destruction, would they? It can only be coincidence that the tanking in US single sales came at the same time as America belatedly imported the Now Thats What I Call Music masterplan back in 1998, can't it?
Ryan's in Texas, so I get a day off. I went hiking out in Great Falls for a bit. Sorry no photos -- I wish I had remembered to take my camera, but I'm an idiot like that.
The Cure are heading back out on tour. I actually don't care about this, but I'm including it because of where I found it and the quote that adorned it:
People whose wardrobe consist entirely of black rejoice - The Cure are going on tour this summer with a bunch of their dewy-eyed (or is that mascara-eyed?) followers in tow. Consider it an Ozzfest for the kids that the people who go to Ozzfest beat up at recess.
So, thanks to Frank for the tip.
Computer geeks have a reputation for being a bit overweight. And before you flame me, I am one of those geeks, and I could definitely stand to loose a few pounds. In any case, things like this really don't help all that much.
Thanks to Marty for the tip.
Tonight, I went to my first ever Mitzvah. Yes, I know I should probably specify if it was Bat or Bar (in this case, it was for a girl), but since it's my first period, I didn't want to be exclusionary.
It was an interesting experience. I didn't go to the religious ceremony (what with it starting really early in the morning), but I did make it there for the party. And if that doesn't make me a musician, what will. By all accounts, the young lady in question acquited herself quite well in the ceremony, though.
The reception started with a gaggle of thirteen year olds gathering around the guest of honor, congratulating her and telling her how wonderful she looked, while the adults mingled and made small talk. There was a DJ who played bland, inoffensive bubblegum pop while promoting karaoke for which the partygoers could sign up. That probably should have been a warning sign to me, but I pressed on.
The food was actually pretty darn good. More or less Chinese/Japanese in nature, it was much better than the meals I've had at quite a few other parties that I've attended in the recent past. I had meant to find out who the caterer was (for future reference), but I suppose that it slipped my mind. Oh, well.
Then the dancing started. I had been dreading this moment from the moment I saw a DJ. While I'm sure that the kids were going to enjoy it, I had far too many memories of my own DJing experience. I knew what was coming.
The lead off tune? The Electric Slide. Followed closely by Grease, the Macarena, I Will Survive as well as the other DJ stand-bys/work horses. You really have no idea how completely tired I am of each and every one of those songs. Ten years of DJing, hearing almost every one of those tunes almost every night, I can recite the words to any of them from memory at any prompting.
The only thing that could have made the music activities worse was, of course, there. Karaoke, which as far as I am concerned is proof that there is a hell, was available. And avail themselves, the kids did. There's nothing quite like hearing a throng of off key thirteen year olds singing Motown tunes to tug at your hearstrings. Mine were tugging. Tugging me to hunt for an exit.
But the kids had a great time. Particularly one of the younger boys. He was about eight years old and very, very active. So active that I'm hoping he doesn't bruise very easily. All I can say to him is that I hope he focuses on learning to dance. He's a cute kid, and if he learns how to dance, he's going to grow into a real stud muffin in about eight, ten years or so.
And the young lady was the centerpiece of attention for the whole night. The DJ regularly called attention to her, as did her friends and family. That was nice to see. I've been told that a number of mitzvahs turn into a love fest for the power and reach of the parent, with nothing for the kid.
So this was my first time at a mitzvah, and it was o-kay. I ate some good food, spent some time with nice people, danced the Hora to Hava Naglia and got to watch a nice coming of age ceremony.
A film clip in which Lolita talks about it's owner, the Amateur Gourmet.
Thanks to Roger for the tip.
When I picked up the Rush DVD, I also grabbed a copy of Sade's Lovers Live DVD. There are more songs on the DVD than there on the CD, so that was one of the reasons why I decided to pick it up.
I've never seen Sade live, so I have no comparison point here. The shows seem to be nice, with nice arrangements and a nice stage show. In fact, "nice" is the most appropriate word that I can really say about the show. It's nice, innocuous and completely cuddly and non-threatening. I think I enjoyed the live CD more when I was envisioning the show rather than actually watching it.
Her backing band was competent and well tuned, supporting her every step of the way. I didn't get much of a feel for any of their abilities, other than their playing their parts well.
I grabbed this DVD for about $10. It's worth that price, but I don't think I would pay all that much more for it.
Unfortunately, it looks like Michael Jackson's planned trip to Africa will not be happening.
Namibian government officials were surprised to learn today [April 16] that Michael Jackson would not be arriving in the country, as they had thought.
Sorry, Mikey, but that continent full of kids that you haven't molested yet will just have to wait for a while longer.
Bootsy Collins will be releasing a new CD on the Thumper label (as a bass player, I'm diggin' the name of that company). Street date is scheduled for June 8.
For those who can find the time, applications to Bass Camp for 2004 are now available.
That's right, you read correctly. Jessica Simpson will now be one of the headlining acts for VH1's Diva's show. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the line up for the show this time around isn't all that "get-you-out-of-bed-in-the-morning" -- Patti LaBelle does just a bit of the oversinging thing, Josh Stone is good but not enough seasoning as of yet, Debbie Harry doesn't have the best of pipes (even in her own zip code), Eve's a rapper (a rapper. not a singer. bring her back for Rap Divas with 'Lil Kim after she gets out of jail) and Ashanti's still on training wheels -- but there's still going to be some talent there (Cyndi Lauper in particular).
Even the folks at VH1 admit they didn't really consider Jessica Simpson diva material when they put together their annual "Divas" extravaganza last year.
"At that point, she was geared a little toward a teen audience," Rick Krim, a VH1 executive vice president, said delicately. More bluntly, Simpson was widely regarded as a C-list Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera with diminishing record sales and questionable star power."
Now, one might think in reading this site that I'm starting to get a little obsessed with Ms. Simpson. For the record, I'm not; I just can't believe that someone with so little talent is doing so well. More power to her, I'd do the same thing myself if I could, but I'm still a bit incredulous.
Stevie Wonder is going to be honored by the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. Way to go Stevie!
Just speaking personally, Mr. Wonder has been one of the more prolific and consistent writer of quality pop songs over the last fifty years or so. It's nice to see him get his due.
Some new shows are on the books. Hope to see you there.
Tonight, I made the hike out to Maryland to do some playing with NGB. We went over one of the songs that I played with them before (Why Must I Hide), taking it apart, reworking the parts to improve the tune. There are also some upcoming shows that I'll be playing with them.
Spongebob Squarepants is coming to the big screen.
AT&T Wireless is piloting a program that will allow users to
hold their cell phone close to a speaker for 15 seconds, and then a song's title and recording artist is sent via short text message to their phone.
While this seems like a good idea, I'll believe it when I see it.
And, in a drug dealer -like display of corporate greed, "It's free of charge for now, but in the future AT&T plans to charge 99 cents for each use, the company said."
Someone -- anyone -- please help out here:
Buoyed by the success of last week's ABC variety show, The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour, the camera-friendly pair is set to return for a Christmas special.
...Also on the horizon for TV's most goofily endearing (or is it annoying?) couple:
- A new season of MTV's Newlyweds is set to debut in June. The Lacheys just wrapped the second season of their dysfunctional domestic reality series.
- Last fall, Jessica inked a solo sitcom deal with the Alphabet net. (The show's currently in development.)
- Nick recently signed his own deal with ABC, snagging a role in a sitcom pilot starring Gina Gershon called Hot Mom.
- She's considering possible roles in The Dukes of Hazzard, I Dream of Jeannie and Marvel's Mort, the Dead Teenager.
- He's considering running for mayor of Cincinnati, where he grew up. The job, once held by TV talker Jerry Springer, "would be an interesting role to play," Lachey told People magazine.
There must be an end to this madness. Use of claymore mines are hereby offically authorized.
DAMMIT, WHAT'S WITH YOU PEOPLE - WHICH PART OF 'PAY OFF' DO YOU HAVE TROUBLE WITH?: Despite having (supposedly) tried to buy her silence with a couple of million bucks, and the case reaching an apparent natural end last year, Celine Dion's husband hasn't heard the last of the sexual assault case against him. Yun Kyeong Kwon Sung now thinks she can prove her claim that Rene Angelil forced himself on her in the Imperial Palace, Las Vegas, because she believes she's found his spunk all down the front of her dress. Now, that's something we'd have thought you might have spotted before, ourselves - "how embarrassing... there's dried semen on this dress. No wonder Miss Tibbs was looking at me so oddly when I wore it to the summer fete" - but a judge has given them the OK to give the dress a going over.
Tampons, which I have foolishly thought were just for, well, women, seem to be branching out:
"Foxy Lady" Harisu will be the first transgender individual to appear in an advertisement for menstrual pads.
From the middle of next month, Harisu will be appearing as a model in television and magazine ads for imported "UFT" sanitary napkins.
She'll get a guaranteed W100 million an ad for three months. The selection of Harisu, a transsexual, as the model for menstrual pads is setting the advertising world on fire.
Up till now, male stars like Go Su and Gam U-seong have appeared in sanitary napkin ads, but never has a transgender individual appeared in an ad for such a feminine product. The Taiwanese firm UFT really tried hard to cast Harisu in its ads. In fact, when the singer first learned what the company wanted her to market, she was quite hesitant to agree to the project.
The part that really strikes me is not that a transgender person is hawking tampons, but rather than male stars have been selling them for sometime. I can't quite see this one. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not going to buy something for my prostrate that Britney Spears or Janet Jackson flacks, no matter how good a job they're doing at it.
Thanks to Mark for the tip.
For all of those who thought the only place in the music business for hamsters was indulging strange sexual needs, here's a new story about using six hamsters to create music via a MIDI sequencer.
Guided by inputs based on hamster movements, Markov chains were used to perform such beat and note computations. In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers. Each voice was controlled by two hamsters: one that was responsible for adjusting the rhythmic qualities of the melody and another that modified the note sequence. With all of these elements in combination, an output was produced with very musical qualities
I would be scared for my job, but not quite yet. Medical science and genetic engineering haven't quite been able to create the hamster big enough to play a bass guitar.
Thanks to Mark for the tip.
For those who might have thought otherwise, playing your instrument while driving might get you in trouble.
Real Networks and Apple computers might be joining up.
RealNetworks made a direct appeal last week to Apple Computer, its Internet music rival, suggesting that the two companies form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business.
And, in a related story, Apple is now selling more iPods than iMacs.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, [said] "We sold a lot of Macs, but we've sold more iPods in the quarter than all the Macs put together."
Off the top of my head, that kind of change in Apple's focus should have some pretty interesting implications to the industry.
Eppy over at Clap Clap is heading into the studio to do his own spot of recording. Drop by and check out his experiences. If you want to see some of mine, go here
SLim and I hooked up tonight to do some writing. She's got some ideas for a tune or two that she wanted a little bit of help with. The last time that we got together, we worked out the chords for her words, but what we came up with was so truly bizzare that I don't know if anyone would have been able to play it (lots of inverted chords in the key of A flat).
Here's the strange thing. Courtney's daughter -- the one that she's so concerned about -- is far more mature than her mother, even when allowing for the 28 years in difference in their ages (11 and 39, respectively).
"Janet Jackson was inappropriate," Frances Bean tells Love during an intimate mother-daughter chat published in the May issue of Blender.
"But I've shown my t - - s in front of people, honey," the blond rocker tells her daughter.
"But [what Janet did] was in front of children," Frances Bean replies.
In the bizarre give-and-take that's bound to get Love, 39, in even more hot water, she also laments to her only child that she's man-hungry and fantasizes about getting a new squeeze.
"Sometimes, mommies need to get laid, too," Love tells her daughter.
"But Mommy," the girl shoots back, "You intimidate men!"
Strange, but it's remarkable which one is the voice of reason.
From yesterday's Washinton Post, a few questions and answers about tinnitus.
This is something that I presently suffer from -- a tribute to my own misspent youth as a DJ in 120 decibel bars four nights a week for ten years. No one to blame here other than myself. I got myself checked out a while ago, and things are going as well now as I can expect them to be going. The custom earplugs I picked up a while ago are helping things stay that way, too.
Thanks to Lynn for the tip.
I elected not to watch the Nick & Jessica Variety show. Not that I'm surprised, but it seemed to have been a rather bad experience.
"Variety Hour" was straight from Desperation City, a show that aimed merely to achieve so-bad-it's-good status. But as Susan Sontag warned long ago, you can't be camp on purpose. "Variety Hour" is just so bad it's terrible.
"There's not going to be any singing or dancing on this show," Jessica told the audience near the beginning. She was trying to be facetious but it turned out to be truth in labeling. Neither she nor Lachey showed much musical ability, whether trilling special lyrics to "Up, Up and Away" and "Aquarius" or closing the hour with a Sonny-and-Cher tribute, "I Got You, Babe."
Pretty as she is, Simpson brings to mind a braying mule when she goes for those really loud notes and opens her mouth as wide as it will go. Her face distorts into a parody of "The Scream."
Ouch.
Clay Shirky, a writer who I have praised before, has a new article out dealing with writing software for groups. Specifically, on creating software for social groups and online communities. As always, he's well worth the read.
Simon has made an excellent point with regards to the RIAA and file sharing.
The RIAA has made it a point to pursue anyone who does file sharing and trading of music. In yesterday's NY Times, there was an article about how the American troops in Iraq bring their own music with them.
The songs came from a European satellite music channel and a communal computer where 12.8 gigabites of tunes had been downloaded for sharing on MP3's. The rule was simple: Take some music, add some music.
"Any time anybody on the team gets a new CD, they load it in, so we stay pretty current," said Sgt. Thomas R. Mena.
As the new CD from Tool blasted in the barracks, Sergeant Mena scrolled through the computerized music library, which ranged from Abba and AC/DC, through Limp Biskit and Metallica and on to Van Halen and ZZ Top.
So, what I want to know is when will the RIAA be filing the lawsuit against these troops to stop this blatant file sharing?
For those who care, it seems like there are more charges filed against MJ.
Tonight, I hiked out to Chesapeake Beach. Since I usually study with Anthony on Tuesdays, it's not that far out of my way to drop by Nick's on my way home. We did some playing, talked music a bit and then just hung out for awhile.
They had a show at Jaxx on Friday night. From what they tell me, it was a pretty good show, not as many people as the last time there, but okay enough.
In the morning, I ususally listen to NPR while getting ready. I like the news and entertainment more than some of the other schlock that's played at that time on the day.
This am, there was a story about an annual award for people who try to stop free speech. Here are this year's "winners".
Paul McCartney has told an online chat at msn.com that he hopes his work with the Frog Chorus will absolve him of guilt for experimenting on frogs when he was a kid. Macca claims that he was cruel to frogs when a young boy to prepare himself for "when he'd be conscripted into the British Army." Yes, things were different back then, when Britain was at war with Atlantis. So, McCartney feels that helping some animated frogs to have a top ten hit will encourage real frogs to forgive him for the torture they endured at his hands. So far, he's not revealed what he intends to do to apologise to us for the torture we endured at the hands of the Frog Chorus.
Last night, I was watching VH1 while doing some work around the house. The video for Hangin' Tough came on, and I was almost reduced to uncontrollable laughter. The image of the New Kids On The Block trying to be rough and ready homeboys was ludicrious enough in 1989; now, it's a combination of pathetic, sad and bizzare humor.
In any case, one of the New Kids (Joey) is trying for a comeback. Although, I don't know if a comeback is the right term (this is his third album), but good luck to you anway.
Combining the goodness of Britney Spear and the wholesomeness of reality TV, a new reality show featuring Britney may be in the works. One can only thnk that the Littlest Bachelor is concerned about this run at his dignity.
While I was at work today, I had an idea for a drum groove. I've had more than a few of these segments plop into my head over the years, but they tend to scurry away before I can do anything about them.
This time, I scored out what was in my head on a sheet of paper. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to hold the idea. When I got home, I used my drum machine to capture the pattern.
Having finished the loop and listened to it quite a bit, I don't think that it would be a good rhythm to use for the basis of an entire tune, but I think it could be a pretty cool groove for a B section to a tune.
Something Awful's own Your Band Sucks solicited demos from struggling bands.
Firstly, I’ve learned that I’m very, very glad I’m not a recording industry talent scout or A &R Man, because if the demos people sent me were any indication, their job must be a lot like digging through septic tanks in search of gold nuggets. Secondly, I’ve learned that people who can sing are at a goddamn premium. 90% of the demos I’ve heard have singers that make Mark E. Smith sound like Celine Dion. Thirdly, I have found that if a band has no talent, they often think they can make up for it with either good-humored cleverness or atonal “experimentation.”
Being one of those people who does demos, I don't know if I'd want to send him anything that I've played on. Not that I think what I've done sucks, but he has rather different tastes that I do.
Suprising to, well, no one, the RIAA has come out with negative comments about the recent study showing that file sharing does not hurt sales.
Amy Weiss, RIAA senior VP of communications, calls the Oberholzer-Strumpf study's results, released March 30, "counterintuitive." The study appears to absolve illegal downloaders of negatively impacting the music business.
Weiss also says the study is "anomalous" in that it contradicts the findings of five other studies of P2P activity conducted in 2002-03. All suggested file sharing as a major element in the decline of industry sales.
Simon does a masterful job fisking the RIAA's response. Some highlights:
First, she dismisses it as "counter-intuitive" - in other words, it runs contrary to what the RIAA needs to believe. But a lot of people have been saying for a long time that downloading helps, not hinders, music sales, so it's not counterintuitive to what our gut instincts believe. Besides, even if it was - since when has a scientific study been without value because it doesn't prove an assumption? That's what science is for, isn't it?
Second, the report is "anomalous" because it doesn't agree with "five other studies of P2p activity." Now, we've spent some time poking about the RIAA website - it's actually online at the moment - and can't find any figures relating to this, so we're assuming that Weiss is talking about opinion poll type surveys, which aren't as rigorous as the sort of investigation undertaken by Oberholzer-Strumpf. (For example, the ludicrous BPI poll from a couple of weeks ago where a sliver-thin sample group, and a bunch of leading questions still produced "facts" that need to be spun more than buttermilk in a churn to try and help the BPi justify it's planned bullying of its customers.)
Read it all.
Sophie B. Hawkins is taking a guy to court over selling her as-of-yet-not-released CD on EBay. She's suing for $324; the first CD was sold for $300, the next two for $12 each. Any money she recovers are going to be given back to the people who bought the CDs.
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
-- Update --
She won.
Places like iTunes have been offering individual songs for just under a buck a pop. That may be changing, if the major labels get their way.
For months, digital-music services have been touting albums for $9.99 to entice more people to buy online. But Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. Both prices are higher than the $13.49 that Amazon.com charges for the CD itself. The same pricing shifts are showing up on albums by a growing slate of artists, from Shakira to Bob Dylan.
Unburdened by manufacturing and distribution costs, online music was supposed to usher in a new era of inexpensive, easy-to-access music for consumers. In many cases, buying music online is still cheaper than shopping for CDs at retail outlets. But just a year after iTunes debuted with its 99-cent songs and mostly $9.99 albums, that affordable and straightforward pricing structure is already under pressure.
All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases - to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49. It isn't clear how or when such a price hike would take place, and it could still be months away. Sales of such singles - prices have remained at 99 cents - still account for the majority of online music sales.
The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks. Another possibility is charging more for a single track if it is available online before the broader release of the entire album from which it is taken. There is also talk of lowering the price on some individual tracks from older albums.
If this is something that matters to you, read the whole thing.
Some people aren't all that happy about this turn of events, though.
Remember how online music stores were going to route around the music industry? The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more. The Wall Street Journal reports that the major five labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song.
The current tariff is too much for most people, as saggy sales indicate. "99 cents a song is a pricing model designed to protect CD sales, and not one designed to move people into a new digital music marketplace," senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Fred Lohmann told us recently. "If an iPod has room for 4,000, does Apple think people are getting to spend $4,000 filling it with music?"
As it is, online music stores are a loss leader, or barely cover operating expenses. Apple alone can consider its online store a success: it has driven demand for its iPod and given itself a toe-hold in a valuable new consumer market. Some analysts reckon Apple's cut is as high as 33 cents, but once the bandwidth, manpower and marketing are counted - and let's not forget that Apple pays Thomson an MP3 licensing fee on the iTunes software it gives away - there's very little to the bottom line. What it does do is indirectly help the iPod.
Dead Kenny over at Parallax View has given me a nice little plug.
Chromatic Musings is a new and noted blog from a self-deprecating musician from Tennessee.
DC, Tennessee, no biggie. He's over across the pond anyway, so we'll call it close enough and give out lotsa forgiveness all around.
-- Update --
Actually, I must apologize to Dead Kenny; in my bio, it does say that I was raised in the mountains of Virginia near the Tennessee border.
Nick Sceats, a bass guitarist from New Zealand, found a bass worth quite a bit in the used pile of his local guitar shop. Rather than keep it for himself and/or selling it on EBay, he has returned it to it's rightful owner, Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones.
With the guitar's history confirmed, it could be of considerable value. But Sceats air-freighted the bass back to Wyman on Thursday. He expects nothing in return.
"I'm just kind of doing the right thing in closing the loop," he said. "I don't see why he should pay for something that was stolen from him."
-- Update --
A reader asked me what I meant by "more evidence." Okay Tom, here's an example of what I'm talkin' about.
I recently picked up a copy of the DVD Rush: Chronicles (it was on sale for $9.99). I'm glad that I didn't pay full price for it.
This DVD is a collection of various Rush videos from over the last few decades. The earlier videos are either live shoots (more or less) or studio footage. The latter ones are at best average (from today's perspective), with some being downright embarassing -- Time Stands Still in particular.
AMERICA APPARENTLY RUNS OUT OF WOMEN: The staff at Maxim have drawn up another list of 'the 100 hottest women' and, somehow, have come to the conclusion that Jessica Simpson is the hottest star in the States right now. Jesus, even Avril Lavigne - currently reduced to plodding round shopping centres, like the scouts do when they pack your shopping (badly) for you in return for a (grudging) donation - even Avril has more star quality in her stupid tie than Simpson has in her Milky Way flipped head. They put Simpson ahead of Beyonce. These are people who have little more to do with their lives than draw up lists, you know. It's not like they had to squeeze coming up with 100 women in between a shift at the Frisco Burger drive-thru window and hitting the books for a history test. They don't spend the nights fighting evil. The maxim team are able to just sit down and spend a whole month thinking about the various merits of females of note in the continent, and even so - they put Jessica Simpson first.
It never ceases to amaze me how little the music business has changed in the last 20 years. Independent labels have been around forever. The godfather of guerilla music marketing, Russell Simmons, has taught well to those who are willing to listen. We independent minded folks learn and innovate. The majors buy... and well, they just buy. No matter how many records you sell, your business plan is just a fad and can be bought, or so they think.
I don't know when it started... It probably was Russell Simmons, but now independent labels are stronger than ever. In the last decade they have become a force to be reckoned with. They embraced the Internet revolution and pinched their pennies while majors squandered their fat bank accounts on lawsuits and competitive startups.
Good advice from a good source.
Victoria Secret's has elected to not show their "fashion" show this year.
The announcement came less than three months after the Jackson uproar and a week after federal regulators proposed $495,000 in fines against Clear Channel Communications for sexual material on the Howard Stern show.
I guess they have decided that the semi-soft porn they have showed in the past might not be all that well received this year.
Tonight, Nick and Jessica will host their own variety show on ABC. Despite having some readers asking me to review it, I'm not going to do so. I think I can safely say I'd rather peel off my eyelids with a pair of fingernail clippers than watch that show.
Tonight was one of the better performances I have had with JoS since, well, joining up with Rich.
Load in was uneventful, and the venue was pretty nice (a clubhouse at an apartment complex). The first set was a complete loss; we were basically at a paid rehearsal. Some party goers milled around, talking amongst themselves and pretty much ignoring what we were doing wholesale.
The second set, however, that was a completely different issue. We led off with the Commodores' work horse Brick House. People got on the dance floor and started to groove. Well, to be more accurate, the ladies got on the dance floor, dragging a few men with them. Once they were up, and staying up, we started to cannibalize the remainder of both sets, looking for upbeat, danceable tunes that would keep them dancing. And we pretty much succeeded.
Nights like this one show me one of the reasons why I play music. The three of us were locking together pretty tightly, and we started to produce some good energy. The dance floor filled up, and they picked up on our energy, which made brought them higher. That in turn fed back to us -- a feedback loop of sorts.
All in all, one of the better nights I have had playing out recently.
The geniuses that brought you Survivor have come up with a brand new show: Recovery will focus on kidnappings.
Individuals and organizations that work on behalf of missing children, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, say the show's premise runs contrary to the commonly held principle of relying on legal authorities to handle recovery cases. They also were scathing in their criticism of using such cases for any entertainment purpose.
"The idea for Mark Burnett's new reality show of snatching children sickens me," said Lindsey Brooks, investigating manager for Child Quest International in Campbell, Calif. "These children he plans to recover have already been extremely emotionally damaged by being abducted. Now Burnett wants to exploit them by being on a TV show."
My condolences to Al.
-- Update --
Al has announced that he will continue his tour without any cancellations.
In a heartbreaking press release, Yankovic said he hopes to draw some comfort from performing, but added that he will not conduct interviews or meet-and-greets while he's on the road.
Tonight, Jar of Souls returned to Classic Café for the first time in some months.
Set up was an interesting event. We had probably three or four times the gear that we need to do this show (not an entirely unheard of thing with JoS), so I didn't load in as much as I might normally use (leaving the fretless and the six string in the car). Mark took up a good bit of real estate to my left, Ryan on my right with Rich far over to my right.
But the entertainment had already started. There was an abyssmally drunk girl on the verge of her own wardrobe malfuntion who was very eager to get the attention of each and every member of the band. To the point of offering total strangers fifty bucks if she could just sing one song. I found it rather amusing, for about fifteen minutes. Then it was just annoying.
The show was pretty good. We had a little difficulty getting the levels set appropriately for the room. The first set of the night went rather well; we had a number of people up and dancing through some of the songs. We ended the set on the Rush tune Freewill, one of my favorites that I used to play in college.
About two thirds of the way through the first set, we had lost a number of people (for whatever reason -- it's late, music too loud/didn't like it, had to be somewhere else, etc.). However, we pretty much finished off the rest of the crowd with the opening number to the show. 2112: Overture/Temples of Syrinx is one of those tunes pretty much for the diehard Rush fan and/or serious musician. And it would appear that we didn't have all that many of either in the audience tonight. We worked our way through the rest of the set and then called it a night.
I think that Mark will be rejoining us for a few shows in the future. I hope so, it was fun playing with him. Rob also sat in on a few tunes. I'll upload the photos from the show (and the set lists) sometime later. After pretending to get at least some sleep.
Marylin Manson is getting married. It's has to be for love; god knows this guy doesn't have any money. What was the last show he played, a liquor convention in Outer Pentavia, MI?
There's an interesting survey which should make some grim reading for a music industry desperately trying to convince the world that CDs aren't a format designed purely to maximise profits for record companies. Even children - famous for happily encouraging parents to pump their cash into ridiculously overpriced novelty items featuring pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar in her pants or poorly animated robots - have twigged that the music industry charges ridiculous prices for CDs and DVDs. Children - children, dammit, who would tell you that a bloody tin of Steps spaghetti shapes is cheap as chips at two quid fifty - think that the price of CDs is way out of what I believe they call "whack."
AOL will be opening it's closed domain to the public for a limited set of data.
...[T]he struggling Time Warner unit plans to publish a growing portion of its news, sports, music and other content on the open Internet, making it available to any online user, AOL executives say.
The strategy, which has started to a limited degree, is a nod to continuing defections of millions of AOL's dial-up subscribers to high-speed Internet providers and discount dial-up services. Fewer pay an extra $15 for AOL content in addition to a phone or cable broadband subscription.
...AOL officials say they have not determined what content to move outside its walls. And they stressed that AOL will always save its best stuff for subscribers. For example, AOL has become the top music site by offering exclusive concerts and unreleased songs by major artists. The company, with 24.3 million members, also shows video highlights of major sports.
As one of those millions who has left AOL over time (one to many disconnects for my own tastes, not to mention the trolls and general garbage that was part and parcel of the AOL experience), I don't recall the content that was there to be particularly superior to what's freely available on the general web, but perhaps I can be shown otherwise.
Thanks to Kurt for the tip.
"One of the ways to be successful in that game is to accrue a lot of social capital," he notes. "The way you get social capital is by being good at playing a social game. The direct analogy is to junior high school."
[Peter] Ludlow [professor of linguistics and philosophy at University of Michgan] offers a broader criticism. "I think the problem is that the game itself is mind-numbingly boring," he says. "It’s an axiom of these games that the less there is to do, the more people gravitate toward cybersex." And maybe the occasional mob war.
I never did really get into the Sims all that much (it seemed a little slow to me), but some guy liked it enough that he started a newspaper dedicated to it. And then got thrown out of the game for his trouble.
Avril Lavigne's stalker has been arrested. I guess this takes her number of fans down to ten or so.
For those who might want to see graphic evidence of the sessions, the photos are up.
Given the amount that I've been writing about online music and what I think should or shouldn't happen, I thought it'd be interesting to see how well I understand the law. I did okay, only missed two.
Feel free to see how well you do for yourself.
Penn & Teller have their own show on Showtime. It's a sardonic look at various trends in the US (environmentalism, health food, psychics, etc.) with a very skeptic approach, pointing out, well, the bullshit of it.
They can be rather pedantic, heavy handed and overbearing, but they can also be pretty amusing. I'm glad that they're back on the air; it's a good time.
As some may have noticed, I usually put a thing called "Watch time" on my reviews. What it indicates is how engrossed I am in the film, the characters, the story, the visuals. The less I'm into the movie, the more I start to wonder how long I've been sitting there.
For some really strange reason, Burger King is running this website. It doesn't even pretend to make sense to me.
Thanks to Fark for the tip.
-- Update --
Okay, I sorta get the site now. You can tell the "chicken" to do something and he will. I entered "Play the trumpet", and almost immediately the guy in the chicken suit pantomimed jazz player doing a trumpet solo.
I have no idea if this is a live site (it would seem to be -- but it could also be a fairly large database of clips using a lexical parser for search matches) and what Burger King would hope to get out of this, but it's interesting.
-- Update 2 --
The good folks over at Boing Boing have done some research on the chicken.
Jimmy Buffett has made a restuarant change its name - it had been called Cheeseburgers N Paradise, but now has, following a letter from Mr. Buffett's lawyers, become Beef N Buns N Paradise. If it was our place, we'd then have introduced an all you can eat Jimmy Buffett. But we have a habit of talking ourselves into trouble.
From the NY Times:
We were in a Brooklyn basement full of artists and sound-poets gathered to watch musicians throw down extreme noise improvisation. One performer played records with two customized tone arms on his turntable; the discs broke and scratched, creating shards of hyperfractured beat play. He was followed by a quartet of young women scraping metal files across amplified coils mixed through junk electronics. I was to perform a spontaneous guitar/amp feedback piece with a stand-up bass player on loan from his teaching post at Berklee College of Music and a free jazz percussionist who had traversed through New York's downtown underground in the 60's. Not your typical night of alternative rock.
I like weird. I like avant-garde. "Scraping metal files across amplified coils..." that doesn't sound like the result is going to lean towards music (other than the fact that it will presumably play something in the frequency range that can generally be considered notes).
Sometimes, a boring old 1-4-5 is good enough, you know?
I guess all the controversy that she generated just wasn't worth it. Her latest CD isn't doing all that great.
Eric Clapton has elected to head out on the road for a limited run of dates this summer.
DC area shows:
June 21: Washington, D.C. (MCI Center)
June 26: Philadelphia (Wachovia Center)
Thanks to Jeff for the tip.
Eminem decided to drop his trousers on German TV.
Eminem then complained flashing is always censored in America, before getting up and mooning again.
Ah, the First Ammendment. Defending the rights of asses to show their asses since 1786.
Today, I slept in a bit and went to work late. When I arrived at my building, it was cordoned off with police tape and there was a small army of fire, rescue and police cars all around the area. After walking around in the rain for a few minutes, I managed to James Bond my way into the office.
According to the building management, the local deli received a package with a "strange substance" on it. Because of the proximity of the deli to several federal government installations, the police (over)reacted accordingly.
I caught this one over at Snopes. Apparently, it's another sorta ad like the Nokia spot, but involving a British Ford car for this go around.
In any case, it's morbidly hilarious. Maybe it's just that it's three in the morning, I'm sitting at work and starting to get really loopy, but this is just really funny to me. I can only assume no cats were actually harmed in this filming. It's in the same vein as the Nokia ad.
So, can anyone tell me what beef advertising people have with felines?
And, it seems that some have it in for other animals as well. For the record, this is the one that Ford offically released into the public.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), record sales all around the world have been have a bad run.
Worldwide music sales fell for the fourth year in a row in 2003, dropping 7.6% year-over-year to $32 billion, adding up to global losses of 20% in the past three years, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said Wednesday.
All the major markets except Australia and the United Kingdom suffered, though there was an improved second half in the United States, thanks to releases by such artists as OutKast, Alicia Keys and Ludacris, the IFPI said. Sales of CDs, which represents 86% of the market, fell 9.1%, and sales of singles plunged 18.7%.
When I read something like this, what comes to mind is me asking to see the drop in sales in comparison to the overal economic situation of the country in question. If music sales were to drop, say 20% in Finland for 2004, that would seem like a bad thing. But, if in the same year, Finland's GDP dropped by 40%, then it would seem to me that the music industry did gangbusters, by outperforming the overall economy by 125%.
While it is true that Wonderfalls is being yanked off the air, it also appears that obligatory web effort by some group of demented/dedicated fans are trying to save the show with the ever-so-feared online petition. I'm sure this will have the executives at Fox quaking in terror.
I'm a little disappointed (but only a little bit)....
Tonight, the four of us (Mark will be joining us for the Friday show) got together for a little last minute cramming. It was a good thing for us, though; we managed to tighten up a number of the songs sufficiently that I'm much more confident in them than I was before. I think that Rob may be sitting in with us on a few songs for the Classic Café show as well.
This should be an interesting set of shows. We've played Classic Café before, so I sort of know what to expect. The private party, however, that could end up being either a lot of fun (like the last one JoS played), or it could be a disaster.
Stay tuned....
I had heard about this the other day on NPR as I was driving to and fro. It seems that there are some groups that believe the Neilsen system will underreport their activities.
Neilsen has proposed changing from a diary method to an automated electronic monitoring system that will track what people actually watch (as opposed to what they say they watch).
The people meter is designed to record what channels are being watched at any time. It allows individual family members to identify who was watching a particular show by punching a button on a remote control. Nielsen already uses the system to tally national network viewing habits. It wanted to extend the system to determine how shows fare in local markets, replacing a practice that relies on viewers who write their selections in paper diaries.
Nielsen said the diary system takes more effort and depends on viewers remembering what they watched. In an ongoing side-by-side test between the new device and diaries conducted by Nielsen, several shows featuring black casts, such as "Girlfriends," "Eve," "Half & Half" and "The Parkers," showed ratings drops when viewership was recorded by the people meters. The drop-off in February ranged from 27 percent to 62 percent.
One of the things that was mentioned in the NPR article is that some of the groups opposed to this change have actively sought to persuade minorities to not participate in the process, thereby ensuring that the minority groups will be underrepresented.
The Simpsons are going to be made into a theatrical release movie. While this might be a good thing, I'm cringing a bit. I don't know if the writers can keep up the level satire and humor for ninety minutes instead of their normal twenty-one. I'm just concerned that there's going to be some ridiculous plot device to try and drag out the story for an hour or so (The Simpons go to Europe and have wacky adventures with Frankenstein's monster! and Dracula! etc...).
Just some thoughts on the DC real estate market. Hmmm... maybe it's time to sell my place and move somewhere a bit cheaper.
-- Update --
One of the guys that I work with who lives in the same neighborhood as me sold his condo over the weekend. He bought it three years ago for about $150k and sold it yesterday for $350k. Maybe I really should look at selling my place....
Adding to the music related reality show deluge, Sugar Ray will be participating in one of these things on the Spike network.
It will follow eight contestants who embark on a crash course in the music biz--from learning to be a roadie to dealing with all the trials and tribulations that come with organizing a national tour.
At the end of each episode, Sugar Ray will eliminate one person with the losers forced to "walk the Walk of Shame," a reference to what happens to a band or crew member when they eventually have to exit the tour bus after inviting a groupie on for the night.
The last man standing receives an employment opportunity at a record company for one year and a compact Kia sedan that will be featured at select dates on the trek.
So let me get this straight. I get to humilate myself on camera in front of an audience of hundreds (come on, this is the Spike network, not NBC) for a vague promise of an opportunity to be employed by a record comapny -- an opportunity, not an actual job, nor a promise of a good job as opposed to being a gopher -- and a crappy car that may or may not come with the rubberband to wind it? Wow, where do I sign up?
No matter how much some of us might beg and plead, ABBA is standing firm on their decision to stay apart. It's refreshing to see some people refuse the temptation of money. Although, I have to say that for the sum that is being discussed (2 Billion dollars!?!), I'd probably dress up like Little Bo Peep, sing Verdi's Requiem while dancing the Charleston. And be happy at it. Is that selling out? You're damn skippy it is.
Angelique Kidjo will be releasing her latest album Oyaya! on April 27. At her most recent show, she played a few songs that will be on this disc, and they sounded rather good. I'll be looking forwards to this one.
Tonight, the four of us got together for the first time since our last show. When we got there, we each were really wiped out from our respective days. So not much was going to happen with the energy level that low.
We blew through the same songs that played at Agua, and then we talked for a bit. There had been some concerns brewing in and amongst the band for some time, so we decided to air them out rather than let them fester. I think that the whole process was a healthy thing for the group. I'm just hoping that the others feel ths same way.
I'd quote this one, but it's just a bit on the raw side....
Not too long ago, a well published songwriter wrote an open letter to the file sharers of the world. In it, he said:
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the great majority of you truly feel no guilt about the "sharing" of what I have created and own -- my music.
You have lumped together many professions (artists, songwriters, engineers, producers, publishers, etc.) into one big ugly corporate caricature -- a rich and corrupt industry that can be stolen from remorselessly. Additionally, in your "yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch" mentality, you have unthinkingly devalued songs to the extent that you perceive them as trifles -- something of little value to be partaken and enjoyed at no cost. Moreover, you have unfairly condemned me and my record industry peers for bringing the law to bear against you. In classic "blame the victim" reasoning, you lay the responsibility for my losses at my feet, saying, in essence, that the problem is not your theft, but rather my inability to prevent it.
Well, file-sharers, I righteously say "bull." I, songwriter/publisher, labored for years to create those songs, and I really do legally own them. I -- not you -- have the right to control what happens to them, a right your technology does not trump. You are dead wrong to simply give my songs away and undermine my only chance to profit from my creations. Don't tell me that I should gracefully pardon your hand in my pocket. Don't insinuate to me that, because your thievery is so facile, perhaps I should find some other way to make a living. Your "hobby" is taking the bread off my table, and I have every right to use any and all legal means possible to discourage your destructive practices.
There are a some details in his letter that aren't quite completely right (as an example, he doesn't actually own the songs, but he does own the copyright to them), but I am rather sympathetic to his position. He has worked hard on his craft, and he should be compensated for his efforts. Having said that, it's my opinion that the musical marketplace is undergoing a sea change. His letter rings of a complaint that the world is changing and he has not been able to/is not able to adjust to the brave new world in which we find ourselves.
However, a little bit of hypocrisy rears it's ugly head when it comes to his past. It seems that he was arrested for carrying a loaded revolver onto a airplane in January of this year. Maybe that's what he meant by the means to discourage destructive practices.
Personally, I only find this lightly hypocritical. His error in judgement regarding being armed on a plane does not compromise his position on flie sharing. If he had been prosecuted for plagerism or music piracy in the past, then that would be massive hypocracy. This is just some egg on his face during a public moment.
Thanks to Eric for the tip.
Great, just what we needed. Another show on MTV. That would leave, what, forty minutes of actual music a day that they will be playing now?
This particular small screen sojourn is to be
...the antidote to shows like Pop Idol.
Breaking Point will ignore manufactured pop stars and instead focus on real artists trying to get a break.
I just got off the phone with a total stranger in what was a rather surreal experience.
One of the people that work for me in my day job went home to Pakistan to get engaged. It's going to be an arranged marriage, so he didn't know if things were going to go through when he left. Apparently, there has been some good progress, though.
So, a gentleman rings me up (from a 636 area code; California, perhaps?), introduces himself as the uncle of the potential bride and starts asking me questions about my guy; things like is he a good worker, what's the outlook for the company, things like that.
This was definitely a strange conversation for me, but I suppose that's something that you would have to do with arranged marriages. The two parties don't actually know each other, so I suppose some digging by family members is required to vet the partner (so to speak).
The open source community has made a new entry into the copyright/file sharing conflict. Playfair is a software package that allows a user to circumvent the digital rights management built into the iTunes system.
That this would be developed is hardly a shock. Just like with the fiasco of SDMI, there are too many highly motivated, highly competent programmers out there with anti-authoritarian leanings to realistically expect technological initiatives to be 100% effective.
The only technological foray that might actually work is the Trusted Computing model being pushed by Microsoft and others (for more details, check here). If this is implemented, then the content providers would be able to control how any digital file is managed on anyone's computer (can you say Linux? I knew that you could. I know that I can....).
More on this as it develops.
After a long day at work (nothing quite like three or four interviews to just make the day fly by), I headed back out to the studio for today's vocal work. Nick and Mike were going out at noon to finish up the guitar tracks from the night before, and then switch over to vocals.
As I walked in, Nick was walking around the control room, singing to himself as the music tracks played in the background. He would go through a verse and a chorus, then start over. So it would seem that the guitar parts were done and now they were getting ready to do the vocal tracks.
Mike was on the couch, and he let me know that the three of them had been working on the lyrics and melody pretty much all day, to the exclusion of the guitar parts. Scott did make a few edits on the supporting track (evening out the snare hits, modifying my sixteenth notes in the chorus to use a segment I had laid down with a more even attack).
I really couldn't hear what Nick was singing all that well for the first part of the night; the backing music was up fairly loud and he was singing mostly to himself and Scott. After a while, I was able to pick out what he was doing, and I think that it works pretty well with the song. As I usually do with the vocal line in these situations, I tried to find harmonies that would work for the song (both the placement of the notes as well as the pitches themselves).
After a few more rounds of practices and tweaking the line, we broke for dinner. I had grabbed some food on my way in, so we sat around the couch, munching on burgers and talking shop. Scott was telling us stories about some of his experiences on the road, as well as some of what his clients have been through (both in the studio and afterwards).
Back to the singing, though. Nick practiced it a few more times. It was getting kind of late, so the decision was made to scrap trying to lay down the vocal track for keeps; rather, Nick went into the booth, warmed up a bit, and then put a scratch vocal to tape (or, to disk, I suppose I should say for accuracy).
We'll be heading back to the studio in a few weeks to round out the vocals as well as tweak any instruments still needed. Scott is getting married this weekend (congratulations again, Scott!), so any recording is going to have to wait until he gets back (for obvious reasons).
With his daughter safely off to rehab, Ozzy Osbourne has been taking time to fret about the way the internet is a threat to us all. The Prince of Darkness says that he's shocked by drugs being available on the internet, which is understandable - his vague grip on the modern world would mean that discovering that hooking a typewriter to the telly allows you to do shopping at all would probably give him cause to spend a few hours lying down in a darkened room; he then starts to sound just like someone's Dad: "In this day and age, the availability of getting drugs is incredible. You can get it online. In my day, you couldn't get it online, and thank God. I would have been dead if I could have gotten it online" Okay, someone's alcoholic Dad, but a Dad nonetheless. Yeah, just imagine if Ozzy could have got drugs online - it might have left him permanently fucked, unable to string together a coherent sentence and in such a bad way that he could be lead like a puppy into making a twat of himself on television to help feed someone else's Godzilla-sized monster need to be famous in their own right. We must be thankful that the difficulties Ozzy faced in getting hold of drugs - sometimes, it could be as difficult for him as having to open a door and remembering how to ask for some drugs - ensured he survived into a fit and healthy old age.
Pink has been cast to play Janis Joplin? That makes sense. I can easily see how a teenaged girl with such emotional depth to her songs (I'm comin' out // so you better get this party started) will be able to portray an icon of 60's blues singing.
Somehow, I don't think that Renee Zellweger has much to worry about.
-- Update --
Pink's branching out even more; now she's critizing the lack of political action in today's music scene.
Apparently, this qualifies as news for some people...
Dave Chappelle is heading out on the road. If you haven't caught his show on Comedy Central, you really should make some time for it.
He would hate this. Oh, would he hate this.
He would hate the fuss and the tributes, the psychoanalysis and the pity.
He would fume at the five-in-a-row rock block of Nirvana on "classic alternative" radio stations. He'd be sickened by this essay, sickened by everything that marked this tragic occasion. Actually, the words "tragic occasion" would set him off. He'd find them solemn and empty and he never had patience for solemn and empty.
Kurt Cobain would detest all the re-eulogizing prompted by the 10th anniversary of his suicide. It was 10 years ago today that he put a Remington 20-gauge shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger, and it's impossible to imagine the scene without also imagining him begging us to imagine something else. Anything else. "Just move on," you hear him plead, wearing a shabby wool sweater, his blue eyes moist with fatigue. "Shut up, please, and just move on."
An interesting take on all the morbid fascination.
Writing in The Age, Helen Razer struggles to cope with the Cobain myth. Rather clunkily, she kicks off "In the first quarter of the past decade, any kid with their antennae trained to pop culture knew and understood an object called Kurt." An object? And surely, erm, part of the problem was that while everyone thought they knew Kurt he kind of pointedly revealed that nobody ever quite understood him. But nice to reduce the man to an object as his memorial. It gets worse: "To gauge Cobain's popularity is simple: he claimed enough airtime, ink and eyeballs to be a bona fide celeb." He may also have made a record or two, we hear.
Wonderfalls, a quirky show on Fox that had some potential to be something good, has been cancelled.
Thanks to Jim for the tip.
After rehearsal, I headed back out to the studio to listen to the song after a few hours of activity. The structure of the song hadn't changed (I had thought that it might in some small fashion), and Nick was working on the guitar lines.
I noticed that the syncopated bass lines had been tossed in favor of the straight-ahead stuff. Not a big surprise; I sort of knew that was going to happen as soon as Scott asked me to record it that way. It better serves the song in the forward motion driving thing. While I thought the syncopation was more interesting, it's probably a bit more at home in a different musical idiom.
When I sat down on the back couch, Nick was working on the guitar line for the bridge section. Listening to the drum and bass tracks while he was working on the part, I was really digging the whole mood of the bridge. Mike's part and my line really have a good feel to it; you really can't help but start nodding your head to the groove. I'd almost like to get a loop of just the two of us (for my own nefarious purposes).
Nick's original bridge line was a fairly spare, open part. I could almost hear a hollow body guitar playing the line in my head as we were rehearsing it. Scott had Nick play the part a little more sparsely then before, and then play it twice (on two different tracks).
Once the second part was recorded, Scott started to timeshift the part around, making the second part begin about two beats behind the first. This led to a sort of echo effect, really thickening out the song as well as adding somewhat of a haunting effect to the tune.
After the idea was more or less established, quite a few more tries were made, adjusting the EQ on the guitar. After that, Scott started to work on mixing effects for the guitar sound. First, a chorus was added to the delayed track. Next, he experimented with a Mu-Tron envelope filter. Scott then decided to add some feedback to the sound, first getting the loopback from the studio monitors and then using a SansAmp to reproduce the feedback loop.
The overall effect was pretty darn cool. The feedback line really cut through everything. Once Nick figured out a melodic way to play the tone, it really heightened the bridge. I still liked the groove feel of it, but now it has a new life.
We broke for the night on that count. Mike and Nick are coming back tomorrow to finish out the guitar parts and then start on vocals. I'll probably head out after work; either to warble through a background part myself or to lend moral support for the one's who do sing.
My apologies to Mr. Van Gogh for the title.
So thanks to me oversleeping, I had to hurry on down to Ryan's for rehearsal. We have two shows coming up in the immediate future, and we need to do prep for them. Mark joined in with us again today. He's going to be playing the show on the 9th, but not on the 10th. I'm looking foward to playing with him.
When I got there, the other three were already set up and going at it. I wired up and jumped on in with them, going through as many tunes as we could in the relatively short time that we had together to play. It took me a while to get out of the studio mode and back into performing mode, but I did manage to make the transition before too awfully long or wasting too much time.
After we played for a few hours, we loaded out and broke for the day. At that time, I let Rich know that I would be leaving JoS, moving on to other things. This isn't a knock against JoS; just that I want to go in a slightly different direction.
Rob, a friend of mine, may be joining JoS in the future. He has played with them before, so it wouldn't be a completely left field thing to have happen. If Rich and Ryan get along with Rob, I think that they would be well severed by him. Rob's a good bass player and a good addition to any band.
After last night, I knew that I was on deck for the first thing in the morning. No pressure there. I've recorded a bit over the years, but this was my first time with Scott, so I was starting to get nervous even as I went to sleep last night.
The morning didn't start off all that well. Nick called me at 8:44, asking me if I was at the studio yet. I said that I wasn't, we had agreed upon 10am. Nick then pointed out to me the little Daylight Saving Time thing that I completely forgot about. Damn you, Ben Franklin and your 18th century agrarian reforms!!
Anyway, I threw on whatever clothes happened to be laying about, made a pretense at general hygiene, grabbed a hat and bolted out the door. By sheer force of my will (hey, that's what I'm going to credit it to), there were no police officers to witness my sublight travel from Arlington to the studio (normally about a fifty minute trip made in thirty-five or so).
Once I got there, the crew hadn't been at all lazing around. Scott had been doing further edits on Mike's drum track, so things were all set up and ready for me to go. Scott asked me to record in the control room with him. Which was not what I had expected. I had figured I would be out in the main room with my rig. Nope, I got to stand right beside him as I made each and every boo-boo. Accordingly, my level of nervousness kicked up a bit.
I think that one of the reasons why I was a little on edge about playing right beside Scott was that I have never recorded with someone at his level before. Not only is this my first time working with a new engineer/producer, but Mr. Spelbring is a pretty darn serious, big leagues kind of guy. I was feeling a lot of pressure, a good bit of which was probably self induced.
We went around the tune about three or four times, just to reacquaint myself with the song and the structure. I was feeling pretty confident about how I was going to be playing this one; just trying to get something solid and driving, a good foundation for the tune. Nothing particularly flashy, no swinging for the fences, no "see-how-good-I-am" runs (aka showing off). Simply aiming at getting a quality, driving/grooving track down.
Once we started to record, I started abandoning some of my techniques that I had been doing during rehearsal, trying to simplify my line to better serve the music. As an example, I had been doing a thumb trill at the end of the bridge. I think that it sounded pretty good, but my dynamics were too sloppy to really have it work well (particularly at the end of the run). So, I changed it to using fingerstyle instead, so I could have more control over the volume level.
Scott also had a few tweaks for me. He wanted me to double up the percussion accents in the outro, as well as playing a more straight ahead rhythm in the verses (I had been playing a pretty syncopaited rhythm to back up the guitar part) as an alternate take. But that was pretty much it, other than boo-boo catches (I whiffed a note or two during some of the transition runs) and a few more performance tips.
All in all, I played through the part about fifteen or so times. Of those tries, Scott kept about six tracks. None of the tracks were perfect, but he thought he had enough quality material from which he could ProTool a good result. My total time on the chopping block was about an hour and fifteen minutes.
I think that I could have probably done better; I know that I didn't play as many notes anywhere near as cleanly as I would have liked to, but I'm not altogether unhappy about my performance. I think it will sound pretty good when it's all said and done.
Here's a pretty good analysis of the RIAA's current behavior:
Bulletin boards bulge with calls for RIAA boycotts, literal CD burnings, and pledges from people who claim not to download songs (or even own computers) to stop buying music. They're lashing out against artists such as Madonna who endorse the RIAA's position. There's even a support network. Jesse Jordan, a 19-year-old student sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement, raised his $12,000 settlement (plus $5.67 extra) via PayPal donations from over 900 sympathizers.
Music fans have adopted a stance secretly shared by many in the music establishment. "Remember," a major-label marketing executive e-mailed me, "every time you download a song, you're depriving a senior vice president his expense-account dinner."
As Simon put it,
...[I]t's a timely and concise summation of just why the RIAA's actions over the last three years have made any impartial witness wonder if they were trying to burn down the store and claim the insurance."
So after Mike finished working out his part, we finally got to start laying down tracks. Or, to be more accurate, Mike got to lay down tracks.
I have a lot of sympathy for Mike's job (or any other drummer, for that matter). There are all these mikes around, so if you wiff a snare shot, all the other live mikes will pick it up. Consequently, any single mistake requires a retake.
Mike went in and played around a few times. Then we started rolling tape. Mike got down about six or so versions of the tune, and then he went back and laid down (in isolation) some of the fills and riffs he was doing in various places.
Then the real fun began. Scott went through all of the takes, taking sections from each version depending on which one had the better feel. He edited the segments together into a cohesive whole. Once that was done, he just about went note by note, massaging each note to make sure that it was exactly in the right rhythmic place (but only when necessary). This process took quite a bit of time and was rather painstaking.
If someone would have told me that part of becoming a musician would have involved getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturdays, I would have laughed in their face. Silly me for thinking that.
Today, we got out here and started going over the same song from the night before. After going through it a few times (to remember what we were doing last night), we started to work on the tune again. The pre-chorus wasn't really flowing with the song, so we decided to chuck it. To extend the length of the tune, we're going to double run the last chorus instead.
After this, it was time to introduce the click track. Of course, the initial run caused as many problems as it solved, until we all found our balance between the click and the mix of everyone else. Once that was solved, the correct tempo had to be found. As it would just so happen to be, 93 BPM was pretty much spot on. Coincidently, that was Scott's suggestion.
Once the structure and tempo were settled and we were all feeling pretty good about things, Scott and Mike sat down and had the final run through with tweaks. Scott wanted more fills to mark the turnarounds between sections, as well as one or two other changes.
So, Mike's out in the room right now, trying to work in the changes while keeping the tune otherwise intact.
Kelly Osbourne has entered rehab.
The Backstreet Boys are reuniting for a new album. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
WELL... YES, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT: Courtney Love slowly realises her behaviour might affect those around her:
During an appearance on US TV’s ‘The View’ yesterday morning (April 1), the star said her daughter had been "stigmatised" because of her recent behaviour.
"That's why I'm here. This is the first time she's been stigmatised because of me," she said. "And I just snapped. I'm ready to pop them." She told the show’s hosts her recent antics were the reason Frances Bean, who is 11, had been refused a place at an exclusive girl's school.
"They didn't say it, but I can tell," she said. "I just know. They dissed her bad. And [Frances] called me, and she said, 'Mother!' Where did 'Mother' come from? It's not 'Mom' anymore? And she said, 'I'm outraged!' She tore up the rejection slip, and she put it in her dog's bowl."Let's just park for a moment the delicious irony of Kurt Cobain's daughter even trying to get in to a cross between the school in 90210 and Roedean, and focus instead on this:
"If I need to dye my hair brown and come on this show every morning [to help Frances], then yeah, I'll do it... My kid is my first priority."
We're just looking back through the last eighteen months or so of press cuttings, and trying to spot exactly what form this prioritiziation has taken.
My, my, my, this has been a long day. It's been about eight or nine of hours of pretty continuous playing.
Here's my understanding of the situation. Nick sent Scott a rough copy of the song on which he was working (it was previously titled Party Girl). Scott liked the overall tune, but wanted to change some aspects of the song. So we have been reworking the tune, spending the better part of four hours playing and replaying the piece, reworking the tune, rewriting parts and restructuring the music. Once we had more or less done that, we basically rehearsed the song nearly continuously for the next five hours. No recording (at least, no recording for release, just something scratch to listen to overnight).
For those who like math, the tune is about 3:15 seconds long. You can safely assume that we discussed, argued, cajoled and generally complained about the song for another three minutes or so each time around. Call it six minutes per go 'round. We played this song for about eight or nine hours. So, as a ballpark estimate, we played the same song for 80, 90 times.
This might sound like I'm complaining. Actually, I'm not. This is pretty lightweight for a serious recording session. There's a reason why it takes months and months for some artists to produce an commercial album.
I've done a fair bit of recording in the last few years, but most of it has been in little Mom&Pop studios. Working with Scott is definitely a rather large step up. I'm just hoping that I'm up to the challenge.
And what challenge might that be, you may be asking? Well, one of the reasons why it took five hours to rehearse is that Scott can be very picky about the playing. He regularly went over every section -- almost every note -- critiquing performances. I understand why he was doing this; he's attempting to get the best possible performance out of each of us, while trying to direct the focus of the song towards a commercially viable product.
So tomorrow's my turn. Should be fun. When we get in, we'll go over it a few more times to make sure that we haven't forgotten anything and then hopefully lay down the drum tracks. Then, it's my turn on the hot seat.
Scott showed us this site. It's absolutely hilarious, and I'm told even more so when you're half baked at three in the morning.
Sorry for not getting back to everyone sooner, but it's been both a busy morning and a boring one -- all at the same time.
I got here on time, but some of the other members of the band were held up in traffic (which has happened to me on more than one occasion, so I completely understand). Scott and I did some minor setup stuff, and we talked about music and recording while he positioned the microphones around the drum kit. Scott's a good guy with an interesting history; played drums for a few national tours, recorded lots and lots of people, worked with the music industry at AOL. And, as it turns out, he knows Rich from JoS. The music business really is a place where personal connection are probably more key to success than anything else.
After Nick and Mike arrived, quite a bit of time was spent tweaking and dialing in the drum sound. Nick and I chatted about some of the songs that we are going to record, as well as going over some possible ideas for vocal harmonies. Outside of that, I'm spending as much time with Scott as I can, trying to learn things about producing, engineering and mixing. He's very approachable and easy to talk with (always a plus).
Updates will be sporadic at best today; I'll try to do the news thing later on tonight.
Ozzy is talking about a possible Black Sabbath reunion.
Ozzy Osbourne has reportedly confirmed that in a radio interview [on Rockline] that talks are underway for a possible Black Sabbath reunion.
Asked during an interview if there was any truth to the rumours, Ozzy replied: "I believe so."
I can only assume that this quote was produced after running the tape by several NSA translators.
Marilyn Manson is planning on releasing a best of CD and DVD in the fall. Wow, I can remember a time when people might have even cared about it.
I decided to head on up to DragonFly East to do load in tonight rather than waiting until tomorrow morning. My thinking was to go ahead and take care of the stress and drudge of muscling around the gear so I could show up tomorrow morning and focus strictly on turning in the best performance possible.
Having never been to this studio before, it was a bit of hike to get there. I'm glad it's not winter and there isn't any snow on the ground; the driveway to the studio is rather winding with something like a 30° angle. But it's secluded and private.
The facility itself is pretty darn nice. Several iso rooms, all the rooms appointed with slate and wood for what should be a good warm response.
Scott also seemed to be a pretty nice guy. We didnt' get to talk for much, though. He was working with Nick to track a scratch guitar line for a new tune.
The Judiciary intellectual property subcomittee of the US House of Representatives sent the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA) on to the floor of the House for a vote.
The PDEA--the result of intense lobbying from large copyright holders over the past six months--has emerged as a kind of grab-bag that combines other proposals introduced in the past but not approved. One section that first surfaced last year punishes an Internet user who makes available $1,000 in copyrighted materials with prison terms of up to three years and fines of up to $250,000. If the PDEA became law, prosecutors would not have to prove that $1,000 in copyrighted materials were downloaded--they would need only to show that those files had been publicly accessible in a shared folder.
One part of the PDEA that did not appear in earlier bills would require the FBI to "facilitate the sharing" of information among Internet providers, copyright holders and police.
This time from Harvard and UNC. PDF can be found here.
Thanks to Rob for the tip.
There's a site out there that lets users share their playlists for legal, publicly available mp3 files (i.e. files that an artists has chosen to share with the general public). It's a good place to check out some music about which you may not have otherwise heard.
Thanks to Lucas for the tip.
The FCC seems to be having some second thoughts about the new fine structure.
"I understand it," [Michael] Powell [Chairman of the FCC] said, referring to Congress' desire to make performers pay. "But I have some reservations with the FCC going after performers."
Powell said artists have always enjoyed protection under the First Amendment governing free speech and slamming them with large fines would be "a very touchy area for the FCC."
Thanks to Jesse for the tip.
Tomorrow, I'll start what promises to be the first of several days in the studio. I'll be recording a few tracks with NGB up at Dragonfly East.
I have to say that I'm a little nervous. For one thing, I'm going to be recording two of Nick's songs that I've played with them twice. This won't be the first time that I've walked into a studio cold only to have to pick up the tunes on the fly. That part I'm not so worried about.
In this case, it's the producer. Scott Spelbring has worked with some of the bigger names in the field (Mariah Carey, Jason Mraz, Crystal Method, just to name a few). If there's one thing that I have learned about the industry, it's really not what you can do or what you know, it's who you know. Scott could be the kind of guy that could really help me grow professionally.
Anyway, I'll try to blog the sessions as best I can.
Mp3.com was a great place for struggling bands; you got a centralized place to house your online music, you got visibility and someone else handled all the plumbing for you. Too bad they're no longer around.
However, there's another group that's trying to make a go of it. They are still beta, but it could turn into something interesting.
Thanks to Eric for the tip.
The voice actors for the Simpsons are on strike.
Michael Jackson is apparently considering touring Africa to raise AIDS awareness. Hmmm... This couldn't possibly have something to do with his, um, legal issues, could it? Like him wanting to get out of the country, perhaps?
A whole host of independent music labels are joining together to provide an alternative to the RIAA.
Executives from more than 150 independent music companies have discussed a preliminary framework for the association, which has a working title of American Music Independents.
Those labels account for almost $2.5 billion of annual music sales in the US, or 19 per cent of the country's near-$13 billion music sales. But they have a far larger proportion of online music retailing at closer to 30 per cent of the small but growing market, executives involved in the negotiations said.
Hopefully, the addition of this new group will allow for a more representative view of the music industry, instead of bought and paid for allegiance to the majors.
FROM TITSCRAPE TO MIXTAPE: To be frank, if someone had snapped us sucking Courtney Love's left one, we'd be trying to decide if we could wipe out the shame by dedicating the rest of our life to helping blind, orphaned kittens, or if it would just be a case iof a sharp knife and a farewell note. However, Kofi Asare is clearly made of stronger stuff and is attempting to bounce a career out of being photographed with Courtney's tit in his gob. He's releasing a rap mix-tape off the back of it, called either Milk Money or All I Wanted Was Some Chicken Nuggets. We'd have gone with "Mmm, you can really taste the uppers."
Anil, a native of NYC has this simple plea -- a plea that we all can join in, singing in harmony (I know that I'm chiming in my two cents):
My friends, let us all come together on the one day of the year that unites us all, regardless of color, creed, or nationality, and join voices in harmony to sing the message that stirs all of our hearts:
Stop with the goddamned stupid April Fool's jokes on the web, already. Nobody wants to waste all day tomorrow looking at that crap.
