20 posts tagged “music”

My cousin Erin introduced me to Pandora about a year ago.  It's an amazing Internet radio site that utilizes something called the Music Genome Project to create customized stations for you tailored to a particular artist's style.  You feed it an artist and it then gives you a succession of songs by other artists who are similar.  It's a great way to find new music that you'll probably like.  I never got into LastFM.  I get all the social connectivity I need from Facebook (I'm only on MySpace to read a few friends' blogs).

I was a regular Pandora user for a few months, but like many other things on the Web I stopped using it because I couldn't be bothered to navigate to the site and keep it open in Firefox all the time.  I'd close the browser and forget about it.  Upgrading to Leopard has solved this problem.  The webclip app is pretty remarkable.  I already have Toothpaste for Dinner and Creased Comics widgets going, but I didn't think that it would be able to handle something like Pandora interface.  But it worked, much to my surprised to delight.  Now I can keep it going in the background and access it with a single keystroke. Score!

I really like music festivals, even though I've only been to two (Bumbershoot and ATP).  There's usually loads of awesome music to choose from, great atmosphere, funky vendors, and loads of weird and wonderful characters running about.

I just came across the lineup for the Langerado music festival.  It's in Florida, and I had never heard of it before, but here's a sampling from the lineup: the Roots, the Beastie Boys, REM, 311, Matisyahu, Thievery Corporation, Ben Folds, G. Love & Special Sauce, Les Claypool, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Arrested Development, and a buttload of others.

Why doesn't New York have anything like this?  Is it because so many concerts happen in the city already?  Sure, they have a horrendously over-commercialized "revival" of Woodstock every now and then, but didn't the last one turn into mud-caked anarchy?  With five-dollar bottles of water and overflowing portable toilets?  Maybe the original Woodstock brought a curse upon the state, dooming us never to have a great music festival ever again.

It's quite possible that I'm just ill-informed.  I was never a Warped Tour or Family Values guy.  There is the CMJ Music Marathon, but that's down in the city.  You can't camp out or find cheap lodging.  And from what I've heard, it's more like a trade show.  Loads of unknown bands looking to get signed.  And at $295 for students (five hundy for everyone else, which now includes me unfortunately unless I milk my Cambridge ID), it seems hardly worth it since it's spread out over something like fifty different venues.  The beauty of music festivals is that there are only three or four venues that are quite close together.  So you can drift around comfortably, check out unfamiliar acts, and drift on if you don't dig what you hear.  Not so easy to do if you have to trek the city streets.

There are a bunch of great-sounding annual festivals that I'd love to check out, but they're scattered throughout the country and beyond: Langerado (Florida), Coachella (California), Bonnaroo (Tennessee), Sasquatch (Washington, along with Bumbershoot), Burning Man (not really a music festival, but I want to go because it looks like a total mindfuck out in the desert), Glastonbury, ATP......and who knows how many others.  I suppose it's inevitable that these things all become horribly expensive corporate affairs.

I just wanna rock.

What's worse: the adaptation of a book to the screen or the adaptation of anything to a Broadway musical?  I'd have to go with the latter.

I thought that the Onion A.V. Club was pulling another one of its fun sarcastic jokes when they mentioned a Spiderman musical.....especially when they claimed that it would feature original music by Bono and the Edge.  It came at the tail end of an announcement about other Marvel properties that are in various stages of development.

But they weren't kidding.  I wasn't the only one who was fooled, judging by the talkback.  I got the feeling that the poster found the news ridiculous to a degree to which attempting to make it sound more so would be an exercise in futility.  While this would have worked well as a gag, it is instead a rather discouraging reality.  A Spiderman musical?!  Come on!  "With great power comes great responsibility" may be the most hackneyed motto in the vastness of the comic book superhero universe.  Do we really need Bono turning that into an anthem, with the Edge's signature (and by that I mean tiresome) delay pedal tagging along?  I suppose it'll be interesting to see how they translate webslinging and swinging into choreography, but this just smacks of opportunism.  Marvel has milked an awful lot of money out of this franchise, and they're going for every last drop.  They have an admirable stable of characters, but the recent glut of superhero has proven once again that every barrel has its bottom (evidenced by the announcement of the upcoming Ant-Man adaptation).

The Marvel nerds barely even seem to be aware of the existence of Broadway theater; only one of the twenty comments on the announcement page made reference to the musical.  This appears, however, to indicate a cultural divide rather than an intellectual one; the rest of the posts were devoted to the neglect of black superheroes (there are several notable examples) in film adaptations.

On an unrelated note, how crazy is this casting call for the upcoming Star Trek flick?  I'm not at all surprised that they're looking for fit people, but some of the language they use is hilarious!  In an obvious bid for people who look like aliens, they encourage actors with facial deformities to audition.  Along with anyone who looks very plain, perfect, or ugly.  And my personal favorite: "emaciated talent."

I wasn't one of the six....but I was pretty darn close.

If I didn't already possess all of their stuff, and if I had an extra eighty pounds burning a hole in my pocket, I might throw down for the memory stick version of Radiohead's catalog.  It's a pretty cool and unique way to package a box set, especially in a Web 2.0 world (that was inappropriate, I apologize now).

I just want that memory stick.  It would look wicked sticking out of my computer.

I've only been reading it for about six months or so, but this is definitely my favorite xkcd yet.  Because I totally want that song playing in the background when my next epic showdown erupts.

Portishead is reforming, putting out a new album, and curating the next installment of ATP (All Tomorrow's Parties, the music festival I attended at the surreal Butlins Minehead).

I DESPERATELY wish that I could go back for this!  Portishead is one of my all-time favorite acts.  This will be their first full set of new material in ten years.  Beth Gibbons' voice is seriously one of the sexiest things ever.  I'd listen to her sing just about anything.  Since they're curating the show they'll probably end up playing at least two or three sets, and show up at random sets to perform with the artists they've selected.  For those who aren't familiar with ATP, the curating artists invite acts that they dig, have been influenced by, or have been associated with.

I was pretty much entirely unfamiliar with the Dirty Three ATP lineup, but I still had a wonderful time (here's the lineup for the upcoming installment; perhaps you'll have more luck with it that me).  Groups like Portishead usually have pretty good taste in music.  If I were in the UK I'd be there in a second just to see Portishead, even if the rest of the lineup consisted of buskers and middle school marching bands.  But Aphex Twin is also going to be there <drool>.  PORTISHEAD AND APHEX TWIN!!!  To me, they represent all that is good about electronic music.  You never know what you might get with an Aphex show.  He might spin some hardcore DnB tracks, mix it with some tripped-out acid stuff, and then finish the set off with some of the most beautiful ambient music you've ever heard.  Or he might just get bored and make some weird noises.

The bottom line is that I really, really, REALLY want to go to this festival.  Too bad I'm not in England.

This subject hasn't been covered much, or at all really, in this blog.  Mostly because it's been a source of great frustration for me, and it's the main reason why my posts were so sparse for a while (not because I was writing nonstop; rather I just spent a lot of time worrying about it).  But it's due on Friday, and after that it'll be over.

In honor of my recent post about Daft Punk, I thought I'd regale you, dear readers, with what I bump to as I type.  I love listening to music while I write, but I really need stuff without lyrics (songs with lyrics that I know are out of the question).  Classical usually does the trick, though I tend to use that more when I'd reading.  For the writing, I turn to ambient techno.  One album in particular has fueled practically all of my late-night sessions (because let's face it, that seems to be the only time I can work for real) since my sophomore year of college:

I picked this album up when I was out in Seattle for Thanksgiving that year and never looked back.  It's beautiful, haunting, sprawling, inspiring.  I found that I was able to become completely enveloped by Aphex Twin's sonic landscapes yet still work inside them; I was fully aware without having to give my full attention.  Really amazing stuff.  I credit much of my success, as it is, to this album.

Aphex is still one of my favorite artists to this day, but recently Selected Ambient Works 85-92 has been supplanted as the writing music of choice by two of his brothers in arms:

I have been looking for more great ambient music ever since I picked up SAW, and have met with little success (Brian Eno's Music for Airports being a major exception).  Ambient is a bit nichey, even for the over-taxonomied glut of a beast that is the world of electronic music.  You won't really hear it in clubs because most people wouldn't dance to it, and it certainly isn't played on mainstream radio.  So you have to seek it out.  I haven't made it my mission, though I have wasted plenty of time scouring Wikipedia and AllMusic.com for something that might compare to the generally incomparable Aphex Twin.  Autechre is the group that seemed to be mentioned the most, so I finally picked up their debut album a couple of months ago.  And it's awesome.  A bit more dynamic than SAW, heavier on the beats, but still wonderful.  It has become my dissertation trail buddy, a companion in the lonely desolation that is the room of a graduate student trying to write a thesis.  SAW served faithfully for four years' worth of term papers; it has received an honorable discharge, but retains reserve status should a time of great need arise.

As usual, here are some samples.  The tracks are only on my iPod, so I am forced to resort to YouTube videos set to the songs.  Xtal (which I only recently realized is probably pronounced "crystal;" Aphex has a penchant for unpronounceable titles, so I just assumed) is the lead track from SAW, and one of my favorites.  Ignore the visuals if you like, it's some weird experimental stuff (it was either that or an upsetting reel of disaster footage including shots of the plaza in front of the WTC with bodies of those who jumped to their deaths on 9/11).  Kalpol Intro is the lead track from Incunabula, and it's set to some good clips from "Sunshine."  I blogged about that one earlier in the year, it's finally out in the States.  You should see it if you haven't yet.   Ignore the bit at the end; it's dialogue from the "Pi" soundtrack.

Apropos to what I just posted, the proliferation of concert bootlegs is definitely one of my favorite things about YouTube.  Along with catching news broadcasts that I can't see here and videos of funny cats or crazy children.  Bootleg recordings used to be the exclusive domain of music fetishists who spent all of their spare time tracking down tapes of the precious and elusive Grateful Dead or Phish shows that they hadn't managed to catch while they were following them on the road.  Which isn't to say that the internet has enabled those people to develop social lives; they've simply added this to the list of things they can now do from the comfort of their homes while sitting in their underwear eating Doritos.

I'll let you be the judge of whether that last statement was one of the confessional segments of this blog.

And yes, I did use the reprehensible "<3" emoticon in the title of this entry.  I honestly have never used it before; it seemed appropriate since I was addressing internet geekery.  It would be interesting to perform a study of how often people use the less than key for its intended purpose on keyboards these days.

I love live music, but I'm really not a regular concert-goer.  It's mostly a money thing.  A movie ticket is probably going to be cheaper than a ticket to a show, at least for a lot of the bigger acts I'd like to see.  It's also about opportunity.  I don't make it my business to find out who's going to be in town when.  And I'm not always willing to take chances on groups I've never heard of.  So I don't end up seeing too many shows.  And I've never been to a live electronica show.  I've heard plenty of crappy DJ's in bars and other places, but no live performances of original electronic music.  And I LOVE electronic music.

Which is why I really wish that I had a) been in the United States on August 9th and b) been willing to cough up the cash to see Daft Punk perform at Coney Island.  I read about it on the Onion AV Club site and subsequently sought out some bootlegs on YouTube.  The entire concert is up there, shot from a variety of angles to varying degrees of audio quality.  It looked like an incredible show, and pretty much every comment I've seen seems to agree.  Pretty rare from the YouTube community, which is usually full of haters or people looking to cause trouble.

People who aren't into electronic music probably think that such a concert would be pretty boring.  I mean, the artists could conceivably just push play, sit back, and let people dance.  But great electronic artists find ways to improvise with their compositions just as any jazz or rock musician would.  I've watched a number of videos from other dates from this Daft Punk tour, and they mix the songs in different ways just about every time.  You never know what might come next and it's amazing to see how they make all of this stuff work together.  Plus they dress up like robots and perform from a neon pyramid.  Who else does that?!

So let's go to the videotape.  I'm posting two.  The first one is the best-sounding bootleg that I've found.  The guy must've had a pretty nice camera.  They start off with "One More Time" and blend into a funky rendition of "Aerodynamic," which is probably my favorite Daft Punk tune (I think this is actually from their Coachella show).  The second clip is my favorite remix from the concert, and the one that I really wish I had been there to hear.  It begins with "Around the World," and then they build up to a rather epic inclusion of the line from "Harder Better Faster Stronger."  That one must have been a real beast live.

Note: I've checked the actual post, and Vox seems to be actin' a fool.  The videos don't seem to want to play here.  If this is the case, just click on the video while it's playing.  That'll instantly take you through to the source at YouTube.  Please do, I think they're killer clips and hopefully you will too.

Wow, I haven't posted anything in a while.  I blame the second half of May Week, which totally wiped me out.  I'm still not ready to sit down and blog about it just yet, so now for something completely different!

After ATP I wrote about how Yann Tiersen showed me a glimpse of his vast musical genius by turning his cutesy-poo Amelie songs into rock monsters.  Here's a YouTube video to prove it.  He gave us several of these show-stoppers.  Enjoy.