From the letters to the editor in the Sept 24 issue of the New Yorker, a letter from John Yohalem, New York City:
I enjoyed reading Tim Page's essay on living with Asperger's syndrome: the insomnia, the social puzzlement, the obsession with various subjects to the exclusion of more common ones -- all are very familiar to me. ("Parallel Play," August 20th). Then came this description: "In the late nineteen-seventies, I saw a ragged, haunted man who spent urgent hours dodging the New York transit police to trace the dates and lineage of the Hapsburg nobility on the walls of the subway stations." I was the gentleman in question; although I didn't care about clothes, I don't think I was that ragged. I want to assure Mr. Page that I was never homeless or institutionalized (as he guessed), and I got only one ticket. Mr. Page and I had other things in common; like him, I was at the première of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" at Town Hall. Unlike Mr. Page, I did not find this particular music's structure all-engrossing; I preferred to dance to it. At one performance of Reich's music at the U.S. Custom House, I danced alone around and around the central musicians. For someone as acutely self-conscious as I had been, this seemed a moment of glorious emergence, of living my own life in everyone else's world.
So preoccupied are we with our inner imperatives that the outer world may overwhelm and confuse. What anguished pity I used to feel for pinatas at birthday parties, those papier-mache donkeys with their amiable smiles about to be shattered by little brutes with bats. On at least one occasion, I begged for a stay of execution and eventually had to be taken home, weeping, convinced that I had just witnessed the braining of a new and sympathetic acquaintance.
Of course Yohalem has a blog -- the 21st century equivalent to scribbling Hapsburg lineages on subway walls -- which has a more complete version of the above posted there.
So just to explain a little further, yes, it is the actual high voltage sparks that are making the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a "long" piece of fiber optics. What's not immediately obvious in this video is how loud this is. Many people were covering their ears, dogs were barking. In the sections where the crowd is cheering and the coils is starting and stopping, you can hear the the crowd is drowned out by the coil when it's firing.
In a great illustration of the sometimes odd path that innovation takes, Robert Moog found inspiration in the theremin after it had fallen out of favor in serious musical circles:
After a flurry of interest in America following the end of the Second World War, the theremin soon fell into disuse with serious musicians, mainly because newer electronic instruments were introduced that were easier to play. However, a niche interest in the theremin persisted, mostly among electronics enthusiasts and kit-building hobbyists. One of these electronics enthusiasts, Robert Moog, began building theremins in the 1950s, while he was a high-school student. Moog subsequently published a number of articles about building theremins, and sold theremin kits which were intended to be assembled by the customer. Moog credited what he learned from the experience as leading directly to his groundbreaking synthesizer, the Minimoog.
Partial lyrics for New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down from LCD Soundsystem's latest album, Sound of Silver:
--
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
Like a rat in a cage, pulling minimum wage
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
New York, you're safer and you're wasting my time
Our records all show you are filthy but fine
But they shuttered your stores when you opened the doors
To the cops who were bored once they'd run out of crime
New York, you're perfect don't, please, don't change a thing
Your mild billionaire mayor's now convinced he's a king
And so the boring collect, I mean all disrespect
In the neighborhood bars I'd once dreamt I would drink
New York, I love you but you're freaking me out
There's a ton of the twist but we're fresh out of shout
Like a death in the hall that you hear through your wall
New York, I love you but you're freaking me out
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
New York, I love you but you're bringing me down
Like a death of the heart. Jesus, where do I start?
But you're still the one pool where I'd happily drown
--
Meant to note this a few weeks ago, but the Baltimore post put it back in my mind.
Is there a song for summer 2007 yet? Something along the lines of Crazy in Love in 2003 and, what, Since U Been Gone in 2005...a song that comes to identify the summer to a wide variety of people. There's beensomediscussion of this question, but no definite answers yet. I've heard MIMS' This is Why I'm Hot in a wide array of contexts...might be a contender, but does it have the mass popularity and longevity?
It's a completely different scenario. [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about hos that's in the 'hood that ain't doing shit, that's trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthafuckas say we in the same league as him.
What Mr. Dogg is arguing here is that it's ok to refer to actual hoes as hoes in the service of artistic expression but it is not ok to refer to college basketball players as such for the purpose of demeaning people. As we're currently engaged in another go-round on the issue of speech, political correctness, and its potential enforcement, it's not hard to imagine that someday an argument like Snoop Dogg's will be deployed in a court of law. I wonder if anyone will buy it?
When the Chicago Bears take the field against the Indianapolis Colts in early February for Super Bowl XLI, a former foe of the Bears will be close at hand. A kottke.org reader writes:
The "Super Bowl Shuffle" earned The Chicago Bears a [1987] Grammy nomination for best Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance - Duo or Group. They lost to Prince and the Revolution's "Kiss".
Last.fm keeps track of what music I like so I don't have to. Here's a list of my favorite artists from 2006, apparently:
1. Boards of Canada
2. Ladytron
3. Cloud Cult
4. Marumari
5. Gnarls Barkley
6. Metric
7. John Digweed (good coding/writing music)
8. Röyksopp
9. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
10. Alexandre Desplat (Syriana soundtrack, haven't listened to this in six months)
11. Mogwai
12. Sigur Ros
13. Mint Royale (I didn't even like this)
14. Daft Punk
15. The Smashing Pumpkins (golden oldies)
16. Fischerspooner
17. Coldplay
18. Broken Social Scene
19. Sound Advice (Gnarls/Biggie mashup)
20. Bloc Party
21. Ulrich Schnauss
22. Sasha (good coding/writing music)
23. Wolf Parade (didn't like this either)
24. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
25. Arctic Monkeys (nor this)
Not sure this is such an accurate representation of the music that I enjoyed this year. And where's CSS? I've been listening to them a ton in the last couple of weeks and they're not even on the list. Upon closer inspection, it looks like last.fm doesn't include the current month in their "rolling year charts".
Last Saturday, Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg collaborated on a music video for a new holiday gift idea: Dick in the Box. If you haven't seen the video yet, go now and then come back...it's pretty funny and you won't understand the rest of this if you haven't seen it. So go!
You back? So, my favorite part of the song is the instructions and yesterday while we were alternating between watching the video like 50 times and assembling some IKEA furniture for the office, I had the obvious idea. Ikea instructions for making Dick in a Box:
Merlin Mann recently wrote twoposts about managing your music library using iTunes Smart Playlists. His suggestions for making music-only playlists (for those that have a lot of podcasts & audiobooks in their libraries) and the "sure you really like that?" playlist are especially helpful. One of my recent favorite Smart Playlists is helpful for discovering good stuff that I haven't listened to in awhile:
The Last Skipped bit is in there because while listening to this playlist, I found myself skipping stuff I didn't want to hear and that rule gets it out there so that it doesn't come up again. An item on my Smart Playlist wishlist is the ability to measure popularity acceleration (basically, something like "gimme the most played over the last week"), but there's no way (that I can find) to ask iTunes how many times a song has been played in the last x days.
A couple from Ireland (by way of Mexico), Rodrigo and Gabriela totally blew the audience away here at PopTech with their thrash metal-influenced Latin percussive acoustic guitar. I know that's not much to go on, but trust me on this one. Check out some of their stuff on YouTube and then buy their new CD. (Best part of their set: they threw in a little Enter Sandman by Metallica, which went over the head of everyone in the audience over 35, i.e. almost everyone.)
Onstage at PopTech just now, Brian Eno said that a musical piece by Steven Reich had a huge influence on how he thought about art. He said that Reich's piece showed him that:
1. You don't need much.
2. The composer's role is to set up a system and then let it go.
3. The true composer is actually in the listener's brain.
I'd never heard of Reich, but the name sounded familiar when Eno mentioned it. I realized I'd seen it yesterday when reading about Cory Arcangel's show at Team Gallery in reference to his piece, Sweet 16:
Cory applied American avant-garde composer Steven Reich's concept of phasing to the guitar intro of Guns and Roses' track Sweet Child O'Mine. Rather than use instruments, Cory took the same two clips from the song's music video and shortened one clip by a single note. As the videos loop, the two intros grow farther apart until they are back in sync.
He's veered away from video games, but Cory's new work is looking really interesting these days.
Long ago, I signed up on last.fm and downloaded the AudioScrobbler plugin for iTunes, which plugin listens to what I'm playing in iTunes and sends a report of it the last.fm web site. Then I promptly forgot about it. A year and a half later, it's compiled quite a musical dossier on me: 10,300+ tracks listened to (that's about 18 per day), my most listened to track is A Dream by Cut Copy, and my 10 most listened to artists are Ladytron, Boards of Canada, Fischerspooner, Bloc Party, John Digweed, Daft Punk, Royksopp, Pixies, Radiohead, and Sigur Ros.
In 1962, Arthur C. Clarke was touring Bell Labs when he heard a demonstration of a song sung by an IBM 704 computer programmed by physicist John L. Kelly. The song, the first ever performed by a computer, was called "Daisy Bell", more commonly known as "Bicycle Built for Two" or "Daisy, Daisy". When Clarke collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey, they had HAL sing it while Dave powered him down.
Update: A reader just reminded me that HAL may have been so named because each letter is off by one from IBM, although Arthur C. Clarke denies this. (thx, justin)
If you're like me, you're waiting patiently for that day in early January when you can go more than 10 minutes without seeing a reference to some best of 2005 list. If you're also like me, you love lists so much that you can't get enough of them. So, with apologies to that first part of me, here's a final 2005 lists from me: a few movies, weblogs, books, and musical selections that I enjoyed this past year (in no particular order).
Music (not necessarily released in 2005)
Ladytron, Witching Hour. This one grew on me a lot.
Kelly Clarkson, Since U Been Gone.
Fischerspooner, Odyssey.
Bloc Party, Silent Alarm.
Royksopp, The Understanding.
Diplo, Megatroid Mix. (download)
Boards of Canada, Campfire Headphase.
Mark Mothersbaugh (and others), The Life Aquatic soundtrack.
Stars, Set Yourself on Fire.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
Kanye West, Gold Digger.
Sigur Ros, Takk. BBC Philharmonic, Beethoven's Symphonies.
Two disappointments: Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better and Broken Social Scene by the band of the same name. I enjoyed Franz's debut album and You Forgot It in People so much, but the follow-ups fell flat for me. Still trying though...
Cynical-C. Can't remember where or when I found this one, but almost every single thing on there is something I'm interested in.
Scripting News. I skim most of his opinion stuff, disagree with 90% of the rest of what I do read, but Dave has his finger on the pulse of the part of the web I care most about. He gets links so quickly sometimes that I think he's actually part RSS aggregator. "He's more machine than man now." "No, there is still good in him..."
Boing Boing. There's stuff I don't care about here, but the best of BB is really good.
3 Quarks Daily. The most accessible smart weblog out there.
You may notice that there are few "pro" blogs on this list. The best stuff out there is still being generated by interested, enthusiastic amateurs. When you're producing media for a profit, there's a certain vitality that's lost, I think...a loss I've been struggling with on kottke.org for the past few months. kottke.org was on last year's list but doesn't appear this year...here's hoping for a better year for the site in 2006.
Ok, one last wrap-up post about Hong Kong and then we're focusing on the matter at hand in Bangkok (short summary: having a great time so far here). So, three things I really liked about/in Hong Kong and then some miscellaneous stuff.
1. Octopus cards. I really can't say enough about how cool these cards are. Wikipedia provides a quickie definition: "The Octopus card is a rechargeable contactless stored value smart card used for electronic payment in online or offline systems in Hong Kong." It's a pay-as-you go stored value card...you put $100 bucks on it and "recharge" the card when it's empty (or when it's even more than empty...as long as your balance is positive when you use it, you can go into a HK$35 deficit, which you pay when you recharge the card). You can use it on pratically any public transportation in the city: buses, trains, MTR, trams, ferries, etc. It works with vending machines, at 7-Eleven, McDonald's, Starbucks, and the supermarket. You don't need to take it out of your wallet or purse to use it, just hold it near the sensor. Your card is not tied to your identity...there's no PIN, you can pay cash, they don't need to know your credit card number, SS#, or anything like that. They even make watches and mobile phones that have Octopus built it, so your phone (or watch) becomes your wallet. Mayor Bloomberg, if you're listening, NYC needs this.
2. The on-train maps for the MTR. Here's a (sort of blurry) photo (taken with my cameraphone):
The current stop blinks red -- in this case, Tsim Sha Tsui (blinking not shown, obviously) -- with the subsequent stops lit in red. If the next stop connects to another line, that line blinks as well. A small green arrow indicates which direction you're traveling and there's an indictor (not shown) which lights up either "exit this side" or "exit other side" depending which way the doors are going to open. Great design.
3. Muji! We located one in Langham Place (an uber-story mall) in Mong Kok (for reference, the store in Silvercord in TST listed on their site has closed). Muji is kind of hard to describe if you've never been to one of their stores before (and if you live in the US, you probably haven't because they're aren't any, aside from a small outpost in the MoMA Store). Adam (see previous link) roughly translates the name as "No Brand, Good Product", so you can see why I like it so much. They sell a wide variety of products (take a look at their Japanese-only online store for an idea of what they carry); at the Monk Kok store, they had snacks & drinks, some furniture (made out of sturdy cardboard), their signature pens and notebooks (a display of the former was completely surrounded by a moat of teenaged girls, so much so that I didn't get a chance to test any of the super-thin pens), some clothes (including some great pants that they didn't have in anything approaching my size), dishes, cosmetics, bath products, and containers of all shapes, sizes, and uses. I wanted one of everything, but settled for a couple of shirts (with absolutely no logos or markings, inside or out, to indictate that they are Muji products).
m1. Big Buddha, worth the trip. It'll better when the tram from Tung Chung and back is built, although then you'll miss the boat ride (fun) and the bus ride (harrowing at times).
m2. The Peak Tram. Touristy, but also worth the trip. The weird/ugly anvil-shaped building at the top is currently under construction, so the views will be much better when its finished. Go at night for the best view.
m3. The view from the waterfront in Kowloon of the Hong Kong skyline at night is one of the best in the world.
m4. Speaking of, Hong Kong is a night-time city. All the buildings are lit up, there's a nightly light show at 8pm (think Laser Floyd without the music), and buildings that appear monolithic in the daytime transform at night, either by disappearing into the darkness while leaving a graceful trace of their outline or acting as huge screens for projected light shows. Reminded me of Vegas in this respect.
m5. We had tea in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel (go for the view, it's incredible) and the live band played the theme song from The Lord of the Rings. I tried to get a recording of it with my phone (iPod was back in our hotel room), but it didn't turn out so well. Very weird; we were cracking up and expecting the theme from Superman or even 3's Company to follow.
m6. Oh, I'm sure there's more, so I'll add it here as I think of stuff.
Sigur Ros played New York's Beacon Theatre last night, and it was one of the oddest rock and roll shows I've been to. Not that I've been to a lot of shows, but still. It was like going to the symphony...everyone sat quietly in their seats, clapped politely at the conclusion of songs, and since the music was so quiet at times, people were shushed for talking too loudly (after awhile, most of the audience got clued in that you couldn't just yak during the whole thing like at normal concerts). And then there was the 30 seconds of complete silence when the band paused in the middle of a song -- not a peep from the audience -- and then kept right on playing. Great show though...the visuals for the last two songs (final song + encore) were especially impressive. Makes me remember how much I like Sigur Ros. Even though I've heard their older albums a thousand times, I don't get sick of them. I'm looking forward to listening to the new album on the train ride to Boston today.
Here's some Flickr photos of the show...probably a mixture of stuff from last night's show and the previous night's.
Quite a few folks are pointing to the results of this survey (graph here) about what features people want on their most frequently used mobile devices. The results are interesting but also probably misleading in about 1000 different ways (text messaging didn't even make the list). But it got me thinking about how I use my most frequently used digital device, my mobile phone. In order of a combination of most usage and importance, here's what I use my phone for:
Clock. I don't wear a watch, so I look at my phone all the time to check the time.
Taking pictures + sending them to Flickr.
Voice. I dislike talking on the phone, but when you gotta, you gotta.
Text messaging. Texting is preferable to voice in many instances and many friends text more often than they call nowadays.
Taking pictures. I think of this as distinct from the photo + Flickr usage above. The camera on my phone just isn't that important to me without the ability to easily publish them to the Web.
Stuff I don't want on my phone:
Music. I am unconvinced of the wisdom of cramming a music player into a phone. The user experience needs to be solved first.
Email. I still use client-side spam filtering so reading my mail on a phone would be a painful exercise. And I can send email from my phone and that's enough...I can handle not reading my email for hours on end.
Web browsing. I love the Web, but my preferred portable device for accessing it is my laptop. Not worth the extra expense of adding it to my service plan.
What's your most-used portable device and what do you use it for? Feel free to comment here or link to a post on your site.
Spin magazine's recent list of the best albums from the last twenty years (as well as MSNBC's alternate list) got me thinking about what my favorites list from that era might look like. Since I'm not Spin and my musical opinion doesn't carry any weight, I felt free to list what I like, influenced me, continue to find enjoyable, and will still listen to in the future instead of what's actually good...whatever good means.
In rough chronological order and briefly annotated:
Nevermind, Nirvana - As I've mentioned before, I was a late bloomer musically. Nothing outside of Casey Kasem and his Top 40 countdown existed for me when I was a kid. And when you're listening to music like that, it's hard to get excited about music in general...I was pretty much apathetic about the whole thing. My freshman year in college, a guy on my floor got a nice stereo system for Christmas and when he threw on Smells Like Teen Spirit, that was it. I'm sure the bands and songs that opened your mind to the possibilities of music and life were a lot better, but you can't really choose how/why/when/where that happens.
Rave 'Til Dawn, Various - This is the worst album on the list but may be the most influential in terms of my future listening habits. For a kid who grew up in the country and went to college in a small Iowa city, hearing rave music for the first time was a complete revelation for me. I had no idea people were making music like this, so fast, so joyous, so unlike anything that anyone I knew would enjoy listening to. I loved it immediately and have been a huge fan of electronica ever since.
The Chronic, Dr. Dre - Introducing Snoop Doggy Dogg, probably my favorite rapper. So smooth. And Dre's beats are among the best in the business.
Siamese Dream, Smashing Pumpkins - College junior, couldn't get laid...isn't this what I was supposed to be listening to?
The Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails - I still tell anyone who will listen that Closer is one of the best pop songs ever made. Pretty Hate Machine was probably the better album, but I fell in like with this one first.
Entroducing..., DJ Shadow - One of the most solid debut albums in the past 20 years.
Orblivion, The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds is my favorite song from The Orb, but Orblivion is the album I'll never get tired of. Saw them spin/play live in Minneapolis once and when Toxygene came on, it was almost religion.
Homework, Daft Punk - Around the World is my answer to the question, "if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take one song with you, what would it be?" I've probably listened to it about a thousand times in the past 8 years and I'm still not sick of it.
OK Computer, Radiohead - Somehow it wasn't until mid-2000 that I heard this album (old habits die hard), but it didn't take long to become a favorite. Still their best...although I haven't given their earlier stuff the attention everyone I know says it deserves. Radiohead = favorite band.
Bedrock, John Digweed - Cheesy trance music, but I love it. This album reminds me of my (then) new Jetta and fine times in Minneapolis.
Agaetis Byrjun, Sigur Ros - I found Sigur Ros while poking around on Napster looking for an advanced copy of Radiohead's Amnesiac. Boy, I thought, this Amnesiac album is going to be fantastic, but what happened to the vocals? Oh, heh.
Boards of Canada, Geogaddi - I can't remember how I found out about Boards of Canada. Online somewhere probably, downloading mp3s off of Limewire or something. After hearing a few songs, I immediately procured Geogaddi and Music Has The Right To Children from my nearest CD shop. Fantastic stuff...they make me wish I could make music.
Give Up, The Postal Service - Might be too early to tell, but I think this is a classic.
Conclusions: I seem to like all sorts of music, but the common thread is the mainstream-ness of these albums; they're typically the most popular examples of a particular genre, style, or time period. Gangsta rap wasn't that mainstream at the time, but The Chronic went multi-platinum. Nevermind was grunge for the mainstream, and The Downward Spiral was one of the few industrial albums to make it big. The same for Rave 'Til Dawn, Daft Punk, DJ Shadow, Smashing Pumpkins, and Sigur Ros, if to a lesser extent.
While walking through Chelsea Market to get some lunch, I ran across a band comprised of more than a dozen 10-12 year olds with trumpets, clarinets, flutes, guitars, and percussion instruments. They were playing Superfreak by Rick James when I walked in and segued from that right into Hava Nigila. Awesome.
I'm not what you would call a fan of world music, but I just counted the number of languages used in my music collection and came up with nine:
English - Most of the songs
Spanish - Manu Chao, Pixies, others...
French - Manu Chao, Amelie soundtrack, Dealership, others...
Japanese - Yoshinori Sunahara
Portuguese - Seu Jorge (his Bowie covers from The Life Aquatic)
Icelandic - Sigur Ros
German - Nena (99 Luftballoons), Kraftwerk
Latin - Chant (you know, that ubiquitous Gregorian chants CD from the mid-90s)
Galician - Mano Chao
Seems like there should be some Italian in there as well, but I can't find any right now. And I didn't count Hopelandic, which is a made-up language that Sigur Ros uses in some of their songs. How many languages can you find in your music collection? Post your list or a link to your blog post in the comments.
I participate in a forum with a few friends where we discover new music together. A couple of weeks ago, someone posted about a song by Kelly Clarkson, former American Idol winner. I was busy so I didn't pay it much mind...and also, American Idol!??...how good could the song really be?
But then over the next two weeks, these supposed indie rock fiends kept talking about this pop song, how it was the best thing ever, and I was just like, wtf? and all annoyed with them for being dumb. News broke that Ted Leo had covered the song at a recent show and you can imagine the excitement that generated in indie land. When a copy of the covered song was produced, I finally caved and listened to both versions of the song. After two listens of each, I still didn't get it. What the hell is wrong with my friends?
This morning as I stumbled out of bed and into the shower, I'm humming a little tune. Couldn't figure out exactly what it was though...I was still shaking the sleep from my body and wasn't really paying attention. Still humming. Hmmm, catchy. Then. About halfway through my shower, in my best Ted Leo-esque falsetto:
"Since u been gone..."
Followed quickly by, in a very loud voice:
"Goddammit! That song!"
The neighbors probably think I'm crazy, and they're right...my stupid brain is nuts for this song. I'm not saying Since U Been Gone is good, but it certainly is catchy and I can't help but like the damn thing. Merlin, Matt, Lia, Anil, and Kathryn, I owe each of you a sock in the face for introducing me to this maddeningly infectious crap. A pox on your iPods! Now if you'll excuse me, I need to concentrate on mustering up the necessary courage to unclick the "repeat one song" button on iTunes.
I've been busy. For as long as I can remember now. There was a point in my not-so-distant past when I wasn't so busy, but I'll be damned if I can remember what that feels like. Lately though, I've been a different kind of busy...I'm enjoying the nonstop rush of tasks, meetings, projects, emails, IMs, etc. for the first time in a long, long while. If I were feeling cynical, I might chalk it up to the giddy infatuation of starting something new, but I don't think that's it. I hope not, anyway.
I've been listening to a lot of music lately as well, and it's been taking me back into different periods of my life. I don't know how it is with you, but my life definitely has a soundtrack, songs and albums that remind me of people, places, and experiences. The soundtrack for the past few weeks includes Daft Punk, Bloc Party, The Pixies, Joy Division, The Life Aquatic soundtrack, The Arcade Fire, Scissor Sisters, Death Cab for Cutie, and a couple of mixes given to me by friends.
This is going to sound crazy to you, but both Joy Division and The Pixies are recent "discoveries" of mine. I'd heard of both before, but had never really listened to any of the music (I missed most of the 80s musically). I found Joy Division through the excellent 24 Hour Party People and first time I really heard anything by The Pixies was at one of their recent reunion tour concerts. What's amazing about both groups is how fresh their music sounds to me as a new listener, especially Joy Division. I imagine some of it is the lack of genuinely new sounds in rock these days, but these two groups both have well-deserved reputions as innovators and produced music that was ahead of its time. Glad I'm finally getting around to enjoying it. :)
Oh, and stay tuned for an announcement tomorrow (hopefully).
Since two Fridays ago, I have been unable to sleep past 7:30 in the morning, no matter what time I go to sleep or what time I am required to get up. In the months prior to that, I can count on one hand the number of times I awoke before my alarm at 7:45. I have no idea what's causing this.
Finally got the chance to check out Daisy May's BBQ with a friend last night. We wandered over to the restaurant, but I would recommend getting delivery instead (there are no tables, just a small counter), which according to to CitySearch, is free anywhere in the city. I had a beef brisket sandwich with pickles and onions (yummy!) while Nichol had a whole, like, 2 quarts of creamed spinach which she completely finished so it must have been good.
While I was waiting outside Daisy May's for my companion to arrive, a horse-drawn carriage sped by on 11th Ave. His horse at a full trot, the driver loudly sang the chorus to "Zombie" by the Cranberries:
In your head, in your head, Zombie, zombie, zombie, Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head, In your head, Zombie, zombie, zombie? Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, dou, dou, dou, dou, dou...
It's been in my head (in my head, zombie...) ever since.
Earlier in the evening, I saw the largest blue screen of death ever near Times Square. I tried not to take it as a sign of something.
Radiohead came onto the South Park stage at eight-thirty. It was not the most flawless show of the past few weeks, but it may have been the most intense. Yorke's voice glowed with emotion. If Terence Gilmore-James had been there, he would have been happy; you could hear how Radiohead's storm of sound was centered on a singing line. During "How to Disappear Completely," a drenching rain began to fall. The crowd, religiously attentive, stayed in place. Yorke appeared alone for the last number, and hit a few plangent chords. His instrument went dead. "Es ist kaputt, ja?" he said. "I have another idea." The others came back onstage, and together they launched into the familiar strains of "Creep," which had gone unplayed since 1998. G major wheeled majestically into B. Jonny made his Beavis-and-Butt-head noise. Yorke sang, "What the hell am I doing here?"
Afterward, in the dressing room, Yorke looked happy. "Don't know if you could tell," he said to Colin's wife, Molly, "but I was in tears for the last part of it." Then the perfectionist in him reawakened. "Horrible diesel smell coming from somewhere," he said.
Jot - Bringing structured data to wikis. Actually let's not use the word wiki, because Jot isn't that. It's part Word, part Excel, part database, but deployed through a Web browser and published as Web content (as well as email and probably in other ways as time goes on). If you had asked me a year and a half ago what software I would like to build if I had the money, time, and programming chops to do it, a wiki-ish program with structured data capability where you don't have to worry about people learning the wiki-ish formatting syntax would have been near the top of the stack. (The last remaining big wiki problem is that the fundamental unit of wikis is the page. Wikis need to be less dependant on the page (think chunks instead, like weblog posts)...TiddlyWiki is a good step in this direction.)
Rojo - Sigh. This is moving toward what Kinja was supposed to be.
Artists are responsible, because for some reason we think we should be millionaires for making people smile. But I don't worry too much, because it will be over soon. There won't be a market for making people smile because kids will just do it for free.
Thanks to Veen for the quote (visit his post for another good DM quote.)
Mary Meeker - Don't forget about China. There is huge Web/mobile/gaming business going on in China right now. If you believe Jared Diamond's hunch (which I do), the so-called dominance of Western Civilization in the world is just a blip on the radar as far as China's actual dominant position goes.
It's only Wednesday, but we're gonna have some Friday-grade fun anyway. I found this iPod guilty pleasures article wherein folks confess the most embarrassing songs on their iPods. Britney, the Carpenters, New Kids on the Block, and Air Supply are all mentioned. I don't have it in front of me, but my iPod contains the likes of White Town (Your Woman), some post-Thriller Michael Jackson, White Zombie, Guns and Roses, and a bunch of trance that's probably pretty cheesy and non-credible. After reading the article, I'm gonna have to put some Ace of Base on there at some point as well. How about you? Any dirty little secrets on your smooth white machine?
And if anyone out there in Kottkeland has an extra ticket to The Killers show on Monday in NYC, I'm so totally not doing anything that evening. (Kottkeland? WTF? (I know! Boo! I'll take it out. (On second thought, I'm leaving it in, but I should probably erase this. (Nope, I'm leaving that in too. [please erase this self-indulgent crap or I'm killing the piece -ed] (Nice try, but it's all self-indulgent, dumbass. (See!))))))
The interesting thing about movies though is that movies are in a very different place than music was. When we introduced the iTunes Music Store there were only two ways to listen to music: One was the radio station and the other was you go out and buy the CD.
Steve, pass around whatever you're smoking because I'd like some. People listen to music at concerts (!!), on television shows & commercials, in movies, on cable music stations, on MTV, in elevators, on hold, on airplanes, in waiting rooms, at friends' houses, at bars & clubs, on my iPod, on old cassette tapes, and most significantly in recent times, people download and listen to tons of music they've downloaded from the Internet. I agree that "movies are in a very different place than music", but I don't think it has much to do with a paucity of ways to listen to music.
The Frontline special on the music industry covered a lot of ground, perhaps too much for just an hour. The main theme of the show was that music hasn't fared too well as an industry. Media companies, including the big five record labels and the radio station chains, have lost touch with their customers, marketing what will sell instead of providing a good product. Big media blames the industry downturn on free music availability on the Internet, but as Michael "Blue" Williams, Outkast's manager, puts it, the labels have gotten lazy and are pushing out crap; he says if the labels "started putting out good records, quality records, the public will buy".
If you missed it, don't worry; the entire episode is available on the PBS Web site in either Windows Media or Realplayer format**. Also on the Web site are all sorts of additional interviews and information.
** Go PBS for putting episodes online. As taxpayers, the shows are ours anyway...we should be able to choose when and how we watch them. This way, we don't need to go downloading illegal copies of missed episodes of our favorite shows.
(Oh, and I tried looking for the weblog world's reaction to the show, but all three of the blog search engines I tried -- Daypop, Blogdex, & Technorati -- were down, so you'll have to dig that up on your own. Will someone make a reliable weblog search engine that doesn't suck? Hello, business opportunity!)
kottke.org is grey today because I believe that musical sampling without prior consent of the copyright holder should be legally allowed because it does our society more good than harm.
Late last year, a DJ named Danger Mouse took The Black Album by Jay-Z, mixed it with samples taken from the Beatles' White Album, and produced The Grey Album. He sent the album to a few folks and now -- blame the Internet -- everyone has a copy.
EMI, one of the big five record companies, parent of Capitol Records, and owner/controller of the Beatles musical catalog, sent Danger Mouse a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that he had infringed on their copyright of the Beatles tunes in question. (Jay-Z, on the other hand, released an a capella version of The Black Album so that precisely this type of sampling/remixing would occur.) Andy Baio and several other people posted MP3 copies of The Grey Album on their Web sites and were also sent letters by representatives of EMI ordering them to remove the songs from their sites.
Believing that "the record industry has become a huge drag on creativity", music activist group Downhill Battle organized Grey Tuesday (Feb 24) and urged Web sites to turn grey and/or host MP3 versions of The Grey Album. I'm not hosting any of the MP3 files (you can find the files on these sites), but I have turned the site grey for the day to show my support for more permissive copyright laws. Instead of locking creativity up, I say set it free and see what happens.
I love what the judge had to say to one of MGM's lawyers in the MGM vs Grokster case:
Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language.
The audio transcript is available on MP3 and is in the public domain, which means you can share it with your friends, share it with strangers with P2P software like Grokster, or do a remix of it with GarageBand and release that into the public domain (which you could then share with your friends or strangers however you see fit). Gosh, wouldn't it be nice to have a collaborative culture instead of a culture dictated to us by Universal, Sony, EMI, Time Warner, and BMG? (link via bb and Copyfight)
"I don't like it. It's worse than football. My dad watches football all the time and I have to leave the room. My dad went to watch football in Australia." (Cream, Sunshine Of Your Love)
"This isn't singing, it's just screaming." (Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song)
"It's making me think about doing bad things like putting snowballs down my sister's back." (Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit)
When Apple announced iLife '04 a couple of weeks ago, a common reaction was moaning over the price, which went from free to $49. Which is ridiculous...$49 is a steal for that bundle of software. After playing around with GarageBand this morning, I can report that GB alone is worth the price. I've never had this much fun with a piece of software before...I got my money's worth after 30 minutes.
(And I'd like to post the song I made -- the finest techno banjo tune (w/80s synth) ever!! -- but the vast extent of my musical talent is just too much for the world to experience in such a direct fashion. Alas.)
When you listen to the new Strokes album for the first time, you feel a little ripped off because it sounds so much like their first album. After the third full listen, it becomes as familiar as that favorite pair of jeans that somehow got lost in the back of the closet but which jeans you're delighted to find and start wearing again almost daily. Comfortable.
From Criminal Records, an article from the Sunday Times Magazine on UK pirate radio:
There is a studio mobile too. It vibrates every few seconds like a faulty alarm clock, as listeners call and text. Scrolling through its inbox, I notice scores of "missed calls". Big N explains that this is how pirates gauge a record's popularity. If listeners like a tune, they call in and then ring off, so the studio mobile registers a "missed call". This costs callers nothing. If Xtreme receives over 20 missed calls from different numbers before a track ends, the DJs play it again. This is why teenagers listen to pirate radio: it's interactive in ways legal stations can't match. Some tune in on their mobiles - on the bus, in the high street, even at school.
If you're strapped for new music and flush with cash, you might want to check out You Forgot It In People by Broken Social Scene. I didn't think much of it at first, but after listening to it a few times, it's really grown on me and has become a regular in the rotation on my iPod. (via almostcool)
I wish I were Sofia Coppola. Then I could say, hey, Air, why don't you, like, record a song for the soundtrack of my new movie, Lost in Translation? And then they would and the song would be great and I would play it on my iPod again and again, so much so that it would become my #1 most played song in a single day. That would be cool. Fo shizzle.
The big record companies are (smartly) using statistics from file-sharing networks to get a TiVo-level look at what people are listening to, but are keeping it on the downlow because it weakens their legal case against those networks:
According to on-the-record statements by many major labels, the scene I witnessed in Fleischer's office couldn't possibly have happened. But Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, says his firm is working with Maverick, Atlantic, Warner Bros., Interscope, DreamWorks, Elektra, and Disney's Hollywood label. The labels are reticent to admit their relationship with BigChampagne for public relations reasons, but there's a legal rationale, too. The record industry's lawsuits against file-sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance. "We would definitely consider gleaning marketing wisdom from these networks a non-infringing use," says Fred von Lohmann, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based cyber liberties group that's helping to defend Morpheus, Grokster, and Kazaa.
I was wondering when this issue would arise. There's just too much information available about people's music-listening habits on file-sharing networks for the labels to ignore, even if it means that those networks would be legally allowed to exist. The labels and the RIAA must have some inkling of this because their tactics have changed in recent months; they're now going after individuals in addition to the networks. Might they are willing to concede a distinction between legal and illegal use of file-sharing systems? (via bb)
Wired News is running an article this morning on a revolutionary Internet radio station that uses collaborative filtering to tailor streams for individual users. That revolution has already happened...launch.com was there in 1999:
You can grab songs for your playlist from real-life radio station playlists, from other LaunchCAST DJs, or by rating the songs as they are played. As you rate songs or choose DJs & radio stations that you "trust", the player learns from that and starts pushing you music that you are likely to enjoy.
Network Effects: Use of the Internet in the Chinese Rave Scene describes how Chinese music promoters and DJs are using the Internet to download & share music, read foreign music-related media, plan events, and generally share knowledge about their interests & craft, despite the Great Firewall of China:
I began to see a number of distinct effects of the rapid increase in Net usage on the nascent Chinese club scene: local DJs and producers were using the Internet to obtain new tools for producing and distributing their own music; websites were springing up to inform users about new developments in the Chinese scene and provide new opportunities for participants to communicate with one another; and music makers and clubbers alike were using the Net to learn about and obtain new music from both domestic and international artists.
and
Some Chinese DJs even use music downloaded from the Net in their live sets, making their own compilations of MP3 files of music from China and abroad and recording them on CDRs; I have observed DJs at some of the largest clubs in Shanghai and Guangzhou using these CDRs in the DJ booth. Among some in the Chinese underground hiphop scene, only tracks which have been downloaded are considered truly "underground" and thus valuable, while any music which is available for purchase in physical form is seen as being tainted by commerciality to some degree.
When I was in Beijing in 1996, I observed several people handing out club flyers around hotels and in the more hip/affluent parts of the city. They were particularly keen about giving flyers to anyone who looked like a tourist.
Moreover, I hope to show that despite our present gains, the internet retains great untapped potential. Apple's new iTunes Music Store is, I believe, an important precursor of what is to come. The strength of Apple's business plan lies in reducing search costs below those of the best file sharing software. If other record companies embrace internet distribution, they can do the same, and music listeners will gain access to a huge library of music. I will show that this gives a way for music companies to make money from the internet while simultaneously increasing the welfare and satisfaction of their customers.
The conclusion seems to be that music listeners have a very bright future. The only way that companies can succeed is to stop trying to exploit search costs and make their customers better off. In addition, a general reduction of search costs will lead to important secondary effects. By making it easy to search for new and better music, the internet will force companies to pay close attention to listeners and improve their products. They've long been able to make large profits on inferior products, but once listeners can find better music with minimum effort, the output of major record labels will have to improve in order to maintain market share.
That's a pretty hopeful view; it would be nice to see it come to pass, if only partially. I wonder if the music companies are doing any of this kind of analysis?
I completely forgot about this until the other day, but I have a bit of a link to the Matrix Reloaded. Rob Dougan has two songs on the soundtrack for the film (one of which you can hear during Neo's fight with Merovingian's henchmen) and the creative agency for his record company commissioned me to do a Quicktime skin to promote Rob's music. Here's the skin (download and open directly with QuickTime to get the full effect...you don't get all the nice transparency in the browser). It was a fun little project to do; I enjoyed designing something other than a web site for a change. (Oh, and ignore the scrolling text at the beginning...that was an unfortunate last minute addition by the client after the budget was gone and sorta bodges up the whole thing.)
Now that people have had a couple of weeks to tinker with it, it's become apparent that in iTunes, Apple has created their own little Napster. Well, half of Napster anyway. Just like with Napster or Kazaa, users of iTunes can share their music libraries with anyone with anyone they want. Several public sites and applications have already sprung up to help people find folks who are sharing their music, most notably ShareiTunes and SpyMac.
The catch is that you can't save songs from someone else's library to your local library using iTunes. However, a few enterprising developers looked at how iTunes shares music and have been building applications that provide the other half of the Napster experience, the downloading of music from remote libraries. iLeech is a very simple, tiny program that lets you download music from any publically available iTunes library (and there are other apps that do similar things).
Conventional wisdom is that Apple seriously fucked up, the RIAA is going to sue Apple's pants off, and Apple's new iTunes Music Store will be shut down by the some seriously pissed off record companies.
I'd like to believe an alternative theory. Apple had to know what they were doing with iTunes. Their engineers aren't stupid. They left the whole thing wide open and had to know how trivial it would be for developers to figure out the protocol and write apps to download the music directly. Maybe Apple is taking a stand here, saying that this type of software is not illegal and that it is individual users who choose to break the law. Apple knows that it's in our nature to want to share music, photos, and movies with each other and is building applications (social software?) to support that behavior. Apple wants to make a business out of this and maybe they're daring the RIAA to sue them over it. Or daring the RIAA not to sue them. After all, Apple and the record companies are all buddy-buddy now with the iTunes Music Store...are they willing to sue Apple right after getting Jobs on the cover of Fortune with Sheryl Crow? If Apple is in fact taking a stand here, I say, go Apple!
The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players buy old slide shows at yard and estate sales and then play music to them. After catching them on a rerun of Conan O'Brien, my appetite was whet for their appearance at GEL last week. Among other things, they sang a six-part rock opera about a 1977 McDonald's corporate meeting. Half the audience was laughing hysterically while the other half was very, very perplexed as to what was happening (one gentleman looked almost angry that his time was being wasted in this manner). For the unperplexable among you, I recommend checking out one of their shows.
Midway through a sold-out show at the UIC Pavilion Saturday night, Avril Lavigne played a spirited cover of Green Day's "Basketcase."
A comparison between the two pop-punk acts is revealing.
According to the standards employed in the punk-rock underground and adopted by many critics, one of these acts is "real" and one is "phony." But while the differences are interesting to note, in the end they don't matter a bit.
The show that Lavigne performed here on her first wide-scale tour was as musically accomplished, emotionally rousing and satisfying overall as any I've seen by Green Day, Blink-182, Sum 41 or any of their "more authentic" pop-punk peers.
Tickets go on sale this week for the Field Day Festival being held on Long Island on June 7-8. The lineup includes Radiohead, The Beastie Boys, Royksopp, Sigur Ros, and Interpol...which is killing me because I can't go due to a previously planned trip. Khan!!!!!!
Downside of this list: Little to no context to the musician or musical style is given on this list. Some context may or may not be gathered from reading the actual commentary. Also, formatting and duplication errors abound.
Organizational note: The alphabetized list ignores the "The" bands by alphabetizing the band based on the second word in the name (e.g. White Stripes, The). Unfortunately trying to alphabetize the band "The The" ended in a vicious, never ending cycle from which I have yet to escape.
In no particular order: Interpol, Digweed's Stark Raving Mad, new Radiohead, Wilco (I was the last person in American to hear Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), The Postal Service, new White Stripes, Mirwais, Requiem for a Dream Soundtrack remixed, Schneider TM, Boards of Canada (still and probably always), Doves, Dntel, Major Tom cover by Dealership, and Around the World by Daft Punk (this is my desert island song...I will never ever get tired of this song).
As far as I can tell from my chair far from Austin, Scott's bet-winning song was the best thing about SXSW this year:
Sitting in Austin, knockin' back a Shiner listenin' to a guy by the name of Dave Winer an' he's talkin' 'bout RSS, XML and RPC talkin' 'bout things that don't make no sense to you or me so tell me now, friends, why ya gotta be a hater? just because my site doesn't pass the validator? but I'm gonna get it right, I'm gonna get it straight gonna get compliant with Section 508
Sigur Ros' new album is untitled (the title is generally denoted as ()...a reviewer on Amazon called it "Two Sausages Kissing") and so are all the songs on it. I adored Agaetis Byrjun, their last album, but I'm still warming up to this new one. And since everything about the album, save for the music, is untitled or non-existent, the group invites you to their Web site to upload your own song lyrics and cover art.
I'm beginning to understand what the critics see in Eminem. Contrary to most of Mr. Mathers' other material -- of the look-at-me/fuck-you variety -- Lose Yourself, off the soundtrack for 8 Mile, is surprisingly uplifting, positive, and even poignant. Dr. Dre's beats have always been top notch and they're put to excellent use here by Eminem with each verse powerfully building to the chorus. The first bit of the song is especially good...everyone is familiar with the feeling of nervous anticipation and potential for failure you experience when attempting something that's important to you and Eminem captures it perfectly:
snap back to reality
oh, there goes gravity
oh there goes rabbit
he choked, he's so mad
but he won't give up that easy
nope he won't have it
he knows his whole back's to these ropes
it don't matter he's dope
he knows that but he's broke
he so sad that he knows
when he goes back to this mobile home
that's when it's
back to the lab again, yo
this whole rhapsody
better go capture this moment
and hope it don't pass him (you betta)
lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it
you better never let it go
you only get one shot
do not miss your chance to blow
cuz this opportunity comes once in a life-time, yo
"lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go"...that's good advice no matter who it's coming from.
I'm currently listening to some of my Dealership MP3s in anticipation of their performance at Fray Day 6 tonight. Matt turned me onto Dealership a couple of months ago and the MP3s have been in my iTunes rotation ever since. Matt also informs me that From Monument to Masses, the other band playing tonight, also puts out some high quality audio. I'm just amped that I get to hear some math rock in person.
(Update: Dealership was great despite what Matt deemed a less-than-optimal sound setup. Alas, I arrived too late to catch FMTM. Plah.)
Moby and Eminem got into a bit of a scuffle (photo) during the MTV Video Music Awards last night. Eminem got booed by the crowd for referring to Moby as a girl and then made a remark in Moby's direction about hitting a man with glasses. Jeering, posing, and hand gestures followed.
Apparently, the feud started at the 2001 Grammys when Moby spoke out against Eminem's misogynistic lyrics and homophobia. Eminem didn't like that too much, so he wrote Moby into "Without Me", the first single off of his latest album:
"And Moby? You can get stomped by Obie
You thirty-six year old baldheaded fag, blow me
You don't know me, you're too old, let go
It's over, nobody listens to techno"
I care little for this goofy "feud" and even less about Eminem, but it's fun to hear what Moby had to say about last night in his weblog. He's also posted some pictures from the night's festivities, including shots of the Hilton sisters, Kelly Osbourne, The White Stripes, The Strokes, and assorted revelers.
The CDDB is a huge user-generated database of information related to music CDs: album titles, songs, artist information, genre, and about 50 other attributes. The CDDB has been around since 1995, an early example of what is now referred to as Web services. Most computer CD players will automatically contact the CDDB database when you play a CD on your computer (if you're connected to the Internet), allowing you to see song titles while it's playing. The CDDB information comes in especially handy when you rip MP3s from CDs: the newly minted MP3s are tagged with the CDDB info.
Since the CDDB server is contacted each time a CD is played on a computer, the database contains lots of information about what's being played. Gracenote, the company that controls the CDDB, publishes top 10 lists for several genres each week. For the most part, people are listening to the same stuff that you see on MTV's TRL.
To store all that information in a useful way, each CD needs a unique identifier in the CDDB database. Before I started poking around a little, I assumed that each CD was burned with a unique key parcelled out by an agency like ISBNs for books. What actually happens is when the information from a CD is placed in the CDDB for the first time, the CD's TOC is stored in the database as the identifier for that CD. The TOC contains the lengths of all the tracks as well as the starting sectors of each track. That means that TOC is not necessarily unique...it's merely almost unique, causing the occasional misidentification.
WebPlayer lets you listen to what a URL sounds like so you can groove along while surfing your favorite sites (Shockwave player required). The creator says:
"Fortunately, I stumbled upon the serialist composers and their work - people who used strict mathematical formulas to structure their music composition, effectively generating music out of numbers. By implementing a similar process to the likes of Schoenburg, Messian et al, the output became structured, rhythmic and more musical in nature. The formulae that the webPlayer utilises are quite complex in nature, but fundamental to the process of its musical generation, so I have included a complete breakdown of them here."
A more complete description of the process is available. It would be nice to see an updated version of WebPlayer that introduces a bit more variation into the music...most of the sites I tried sound about the same.
I've been watching MTV and listening to some top 40 on iTunes for the past couple of days. I shouldn't be surprised by this, but the music sounds exactly like it did when I was in college. The fashion is up-to-date and the band names are different (Avril Lavigne is a present-day Alanis Morissette), but the sounds seem like they're coming from tribute bands. And don't even get me started on rap and R&B...talk about stagnant, nothing new there for years.
To its credit (and great advantage), despite its derivative nature, today's pop music is still incredibly addictive...I just can't get some of them out of my head. When I went to do the dishes yesterday, they "looked like a job for me" rather than just a simple chore. Thanks pop music, you make life more fun and manageable!
I'm currently listening to 18, Moby's new album. It sounds exactly like Play: gospel vocals, similar samples, familar synth noises, and the same piano melodies that he used on Play and Everything is Wrong several years ago. There's some good tracks on there, but I'm disappointed overall. Come on Moby, how about something a bit fresher?
iTunes is a quality piece of software...especially when you can script it. Kung-Tunes is a wee app written with AppleScript that takes the current track info from iTunes and FTPs it to a server of your choosing. My choice is my Web server, allowing me to display here -- for you, kind reader -- the track I am currently listening to on my own personal computer.
Currently listening to:
Thanks to What Do I Know, a quality piece of online narrative and fun-making, for passing this along to me and all of you too.
Christian Marclay's Video Quartet was the most interesting thing I saw at the SFMOMA yesterday. Video Quartet is a movie featuring four simultaneous clips from other movies shown side-by-side, each one contributing some sort of music, sound effect, or vocal to a 13-minute visual mix tape. The result is as if Mike Figgis had directed an Avalanches music video...but way better. "Richly layered" doesn't begin to describe the experience.
Even after listening to Kid A about a million times, Everything In Its Right Place can still almost make me cry. It's not what he's singing, it's how he sings it.
What I'm listening to right now, courtesy of DJ BBJ: Lazy (X-Press 2 Feat. David Byrne), Halcyon (Orbital w/ Bon Jovi & Belinda Carlisle), and Just Dropped In (Kenny Rogers).
