The Beastles  Jun 14 2013

DJ BC took the Beastie Boys and mashed them up with The Beatles.

He did more than 40 songs...get them all here. (via ★glass)

David Letterman really really likes drums  Jun 12 2013

Are those your drums? The Late Show host likes drums so much that when musical guests finish up their sets on the show, Letterman often asks the drummer about them.

(via @hodgman)

Get Lucky reimagined for every decade since the 1920s  Jun 12 2013

This is great...Daft Punk's Get Lucky as it would have sounded in every decade from the 1920s to the 2020s.

This is what singles should be from now on...you get the original song, a 30s jazz version of the song, a 1800s classical version, an 80s new wave version, and so on.

Kanye West is a confident gentleman  Jun 12 2013

Jon Caramanica talks with Kanye West about his work, his past, his impending child, and all sorts of other things in the NY Times. I started pulling interesting quotes but stopped when I realized that I was copy/pasting like 96% of the article. So, you only get two:

I sat down with a clothing guy that I won't mention, but hopefully if he reads this article, he knows it's him and knows that out of respect, I didn't mention his name: this guy, he questioned me before I left his office:, "If you've done this, this, and this, why haven't you gone further in fashion?" And I say, "I'm learning." But ultimately, this guy that was talking to me doesn't make Christmas presents, meaning that nobody was asking for his [stuff] as a Christmas present. If you don't make Christmas presents, meaning making something that's so emotionally connected to people, don't talk to me.

And I don't want to ruin the amazing last few paragraphs, but I just had to include this:

I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it's like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.

How does copyright work in space?  May 24 2013

When Commander Chris Hadfield covered David Bowie's Space Oddity on board the International Space Station:

how were the intellectual property rights handled?

The song "Space Oddity" is under copyright protection in most countries, and the rights to it belong to Mr Bowie. But compulsory-licensing rights in many nations mean that any composition that has been released to the public (free or commercially) as an audio recording may be recorded again and sold by others for a statutorily defined fee, although it must be substantively the same music and lyrics as the original. But with the ISS circling the globe, which jurisdiction was Commander Hadfield in when he recorded the song and video? Moreover, compulsory-licensing rights for covers of existing songs do not include permission for broadcast or video distribution. Commander Hadfield's song was loaded onto YouTube, which delivers video on demand to users in many countries around the world. The first time the video was streamed in each country constituted publication in that country, and with it the potential for copyright infringement under local laws. Commander Hadfield could have made matters even more complicated by broadcasting live as he sang to an assembled audience of fellow astronauts for an onboard public performance while floating from segment to segment of the ISS.

We live in a world where sending a guitar into space is trivial while ironing out rights agreements is the tough part. (via waxy)

New from Sigur Ros: Kveikur  May 24 2013

And why should Boards of Canada have all the fun? Sigur Ros has a new album coming out as well, to be released the week after on June 18. Two singles from Kveikur are already out:

And the album can be pre-ordered on iTunes, at Amazon, or direct from the band.

Boards of Canada: Tomorrow's Harvest  May 24 2013

Oh hello new Boards of Canada single. Nice to see you.

Sounds goooood. The entire album will be out on 6/11 in North American (6/10 in the UK) and is available for pre-order on iTunes and at Amazon.

Does good music need to be good?  May 20 2013

I enjoyed and agree with much of Sasha Frere-Jones' take on Daft Punk's recent album, Random Access Memories.

Daft Punk's fourth studio album, "Random Access Memories," is an attempt to make the kind of disco record that they sampled so heavily for "Discovery." As such, it serves as a tribute to those who came before them and as a direct rebuke to much of what they've spawned. Only intermittently electronic in nature, and depending largely on live musicians, it is extremely ambitious, and as variable in quality as any popular album you will hear this year. Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Cliches that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of "Random Access Memories" repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I've ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of "Random Access Memories" feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?

The NY Times' dumb anti-profanity policy  May 07 2013

PepsiCo is dropping Lil Wayne as a Mountain Dew spokesman because of "vulgar lyrics" referring to Emmett Till after the Till family put pressure on the beverage giant. What lyrics? Because of its ridiculous policy against including bad words in such an august publication, the NY Times doesn't even say what the lyrics are! Which makes the entire article worthless from a journalistic perspective. The lyrics are the entire story...without them, it's just a bunch of press release bullshit. FYI, because we are all adults here (and your kids already know the lyrics), here are the lyrics in question courtesy of Rap Genius:

Pop a lot of pain pills
Bout to put rims on my skateboard wheels
Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till
Yeah....
Two cell phones ringin' at the same time
That's your ho, callin' from two different phones
Tell that bitch "leave me the fuck alone!"
See, you fuck her wrong, and I fuck her long
I got a love-hate relationship with Molly
I'd rather pop an ollie, and my dick is a trolly
Boy, I'll bury you like Halle

How can people even discuss the artistic merit and/or offensiveness of the lyrics if you can't print them? The Times should either simply publish whatever it is they are talking about or not run the story at all. (via @bdeskin, who has been giving the Times shit about their profanity policy on Twitter)

The Mixtape Volume Seven from The Hood Internet  Apr 30 2013

You know the drill: it's a new mixtape from The Hood Internet:

Downloads, tour details, and more info on their site.

Update: I made a playlist on Rdio of the songs The Hood Internet used in Mixtape Volume Seven...sifting through their sources is a great way to discover new and previously overlooked music.

There are maybe 3-4 songs I couldn't find on Rdio...they are either unreleased or mixes from Soundcloud. Enjoy.

Update: And here's the same playlist for Spotify. (via @Afterschool)

Neutral Milk Hotel reuniting for tour (no, really!)  Apr 29 2013

What the heck is going on? New recent albums after long hiatuses from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Justin Timberlake, Daft Punk, and Boards of Canada and now Neutral Milk Hotel is reuniting for a tour? Jesus H Musical Christmas.

New Boards of Canada album out June 11  Apr 29 2013

After a weirdly abrupt ARG, it has been revealed that the new Boards of Canada album will be called Tomorrow's Harvest and will be out on June 11 (the 10th in the UK). Pre-order at iTunes.

Clues point to a new Boards of Canada album  Apr 22 2013

Rumors surfaced last year of a new Boards of Canada record. The other day, someone walked into a record shop and bought a Boards of Canada record that contained a single track of a few seconds of music and someone reciting a six-digit number:

So maybe we're getting a new BoC album soon? Please? (via @crazymonk)

Browser accordion  Apr 19 2013

Today's much-needed levity: an accordion that plays when you resize the browser window. (via waxy)

Daft Punk's Get Lucky "leaked"  Apr 15 2013

This is supposedly a leaked version of the song Get Lucky from Daft Punk's forthcoming album, but from what I can tell, this is just an extended version of the song cobbled together from this minute-long commercial that ran during SNL this weekend. Not that that's a bad thing...I've had it on repeat for the last 30 minutes.

The duo have, however, given their first interview about the album to Rolling Stone. (via kyleread)

Update: Hmm, getting some reports that this is the actual radio edit of Get Lucky...and it does have some Pharrell lyrics that weren't in the promos and commercials. And if not, we're getting closer!

(via @djrange)

Update: Ha! Probably still fake. But it's the best fake so I'll take it for now. Would probably take DP, Pharrell, and Rodgers themselves to top this one. (via @Robbie)

Update: Guess that last one actually was the genuine article, which is now available on iTunes, on Spotify, on Rdio, and at Amazon.

The music of Arrested Development  Apr 12 2013

What if each member of the Bluth family made an album? The album covers might look something like these.

(via @aaroncoleman0)

Oblivion soundtrack by M83  Apr 11 2013

Oh hello, what's this? M83 did the soundtrack to Oblivion, the new sci-fi movie where Tom Cruise plays Wall-E? That will do quite nicely. Here it is on iTunes, Amazon, or Rdio.

Hummingbird, a new music notation system  Apr 10 2013

I don't read music so it's difficult for me to say how useful this is, but the folks behind Hummingbird claim their new system of music notation is "easier to learn, faster to read, and simpler for even the trickiest music".

Roll over, Beethoven. (via @veen)

Daft Punk to launch new album at local farm show  Apr 10 2013

I have checked the publication date on this story ten times and it's not April 1st, so I guess Daft Punk really is launching their new album at a farm show in the small town of Wee Waa, Australia.

Rdio introduces streaming video service  Apr 03 2013

Streaming music service Rdio (which I have been enjoying the hell out of for the past couple months¹) is launching a streaming video service called Vdio.

The first thing you'll notice about Vdio is that it's designed to solve the "what to watch" problem. It's not just that we've got amazing content, but that the experience is now geared to get you from searching to watching faster. We're introducing the notion of Sets -- playlists for TV shows and movies -- so anyone can make and share lists of their favorites, making it easier than ever to discover new stuff. Or, you can just check out what your friends are watching in the moment and jump in. Beyond that, Vdio has the beautiful design and social features that people love about Rdio, with plenty more to come.

I haven't played with it too much, but it looks like it's not an all-you-can-eat service like Rdio...you buy/rent movies and TV shows just like iTunes, Amazon, etc.

[1] And that's actually a huge understatement. I ignored streaming music services like Rdio and Spotify when they came out, opting for the familiarity of iTunes, but Rdio has completely reignited my love of music over the past two months. Should write a whole post about this at some point. ↩

Lester Bangs' obituary for Elvis Presley  Apr 02 2013

When Elvis Presley died in 1977, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs wrote a piece on the singer for the Village Voice.

I got taken too the one time I saw Elvis, but in a totally different way. It was the autumn of 1971, and two tickets to an Elvis show turned up at the offices of Creem magazine, where I was then employed. It was decided that those staff members who had never had the privilege of witnessing Elvis should get the tickets, which was how me and art director Charlie Auringer ended up in nearly the front row of the biggest arena in Detroit. Earlier Charlie had said, "Do you realize how much we could get if we sold these fucking things?" I didn't, but how precious they were became totally clear the instant Elvis sauntered onto the stage. He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn't real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection. I mean, Mick Jagger, whom I saw as far back as 1964 and twice in '65, never even came close.

(via @gavinpurcell)

YouTube is the dominant force in music  Apr 01 2013

This is a nice article about how memes are often made or promoted deliberately by financial interests and not because of a spontaneous popular uprising, but mostly I wanted to highlight this statement:

Google's YouTube, not Apple's iTunes, is now the dominant force in music.

I've been convinced for awhile now that YouTube and not Android or Google+ will be their main source of revenue if/when Google's search business wanes. (via @claytoncubitt)

First photo of Radiohead  Mar 25 2013

Technically this photo was taken several years (probably in 1986 or 1987) before Radiohead officially came to be, but it features four out of the five members, back when the group was called On a Friday.

From left to right, Thom Yorke, Phil Selway, Ed O'Brien, and Colin Greenwood. This occasion marked one of the last times that Yorke smiled for a photo. (via buzzfeed)

New. Daft! PUNK!!! ALBUMMMMMMM!!!!!  Mar 25 2013

Daft Punk is coming out with a new album called Random Access Memories. It's out on May 21 but you can preorder on iTunes. Here's a brief ad for the album:

The music that inspired Daft Punk  Mar 21 2013

For Homework, their 1997 debut album, Daft Punk drew on a large number of musical influences. Here's two wonderful hours of the music that influenced them.

Call Me Maybe mashed up with NIN's Head Like a Hole  Mar 04 2013

Weird day (fuck, weird week) but this totally totally made it. Some genius took Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe and mashed it up with Nine Inch Nails' Head Like a Hole.:

Totesally amazingballs. Way way better than I expected. (via the verge)

Beethoven's pulsing dance beats  Mar 01 2013

Late in his life, just after the invention of the metronome and after completely losing his hearing, Beethoven went back and adjusted the tempos of his symphonies to much faster than you might expect. Radiolab investigates.

Soundtrack for Upstream Color  Feb 25 2013

The entire soundtrack for Shane Carruth's Upstream Color is available for streaming on SoundCloud.

From what I can gather, Carruth did the soundtrack himself. So for those keeping track at home, Carruth wrote, directed, starred in, did the soundtrack for, produced, edited, did the cinematography for, and operated a camera for Upstream Color. Oh, and he's self-distributing the film through his own production company. No wonder I like this guy.

The film opens in US theaters beginning in mid-April and will be available for sale in early May: pre-order at Amazon or on iTunes. (via @gotrlelo)

We Buy White Albums  Feb 25 2013

Artist Rutherford Chang only collects first pressings of The Beatles' The White Album on vinyl. Dust & Grooves recently interviewed Chang about his collection.

Q: Are you a vinyl collector?

A: Yes, I collect White Albums.

Q: Do you collect anything other than that?

A: I own some vinyl and occasionally buy other albums, but nothing in multiples like the White Album.

Q: Why just White Album? why not Abbey road? or Rubber Soul?

A: The White Album has the best cover. I have a few copies of Abbey Road and Rubber Soul, but I keep those in my "junk bin".

Q: Why do you find it so great? It's a white, blank cover. Are you a minimalist?

A: I'm most interested in the albums as objects and observing how they have aged. So for me, a Beatles album with an all white cover is perfect.

Q: Do you care about the album's condition?

A: I collect numbered copies of the White Album in any condition. In fact I often find the "poorer" condition albums more interesting.

Chang's collection is currently on view at Recess in Soho, NYC until March 7th. Gotta get down there and see this. (via mr)

The Postal Service's new song - "A Tattered Line of String"  Feb 11 2013

Close on the heels of their announcement to reunite after 10 years, The Postal Service have released a new song called "A Tattered Line of String."

After a decade of anticipation, I'm not sure whether I'm happy or disappointed that a new Postal Service song sounds exactly like I hoped it would.

The 2013 Sony World Photography Awards  Feb 07 2013

Photos from the shortlist of winners of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards. Some stunning shots in there.

Edith, Hellrider, and Dadmonster pose for a photograph. In Botswana, heavy metal music has landed. Metal groups are now performing in nightclubs, concerts, festivals. The ranks of their fans have expanded dramatically. These fans wear black leather pants and jackets, studded belts, boots and cowboy hats. On their t-shirts stand out skulls, obscenities, historical covers of hard-rock groups popular in the seventies and eighties, such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, and AC/DC. They have created their own style, inspired by classic metal symbolism, but also borrowing heavily from the iconography of western films and the traditional rural world of Botswana. Their nicknames, Gunsmoke, Rockfather, Carrott Warmachine, Hellrider, Hardcore, Dignified Queen, may appear subversive and disturbing as their clothing, but they are peaceful and gentle. "We like to get dressed,, drink meet friends and feel free , this music is so powerful . We are lucky to live in a country tolerant and open" argues one of the leaders. A precious rarity for Africa.

Botswanian heavy metal fans and other great selections from the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards

Nordstrom's piano man says farewell  Feb 06 2013

Because of "the evolving experience in the stores" (aka live music is too expensive), after 27 years of playing the piano at Nordstrom in the Tacoma Mall, Juan Perez was let go in January.

Perez remembers his audition at Nordstrom, one morning in January 1986.

"There were five of us. Four beautiful young ladies, and me. They were carrying music books."

They were dressed, he said, as if they had shopped at Nordstrom. He was not. They were carrying sheet music. Perez did not, and does not, read notes. He plays by ear.

"I was the first one to play," he said. "I wasn't expecting they would hire me, and I was dressed in a regular shirt. I started playing and playing as the store opened up. I didn't even have an application."

After playing, he drove home.

"My wife said, 'They called. They want you to start tomorrow.' I almost cried."

Perez arrived in the US with $300 to his name and through hard work at the piano, has put seven of his children through college, with two more currently in college and one more attending private high school. (via brooks review)

Entire Gangnam Style video drawn by hand  Jan 30 2013

Well, this is amazing (in the way that things requiring a ton of organization, commitment, and time are amazing, not in the way life-saving vaccines are amazing). Artist etoilec1 drew the Gangnam Style video, the entire thing, and presented it as a flipbook. Here's his original Youtube where he says he had to remove the music because of copyright, so the embed below will likely not last long. Visit etoilec1's page for several Dragon Ball Z flipbooks.

(via ★stellar)

17-year-old LL Cool J plays a Maine gymnasium in 1985  Jan 28 2013

In June 1985, 17-year-old LL Cool J and his DJ Cut Creator played a gymnasium at Colby College in Waterville, Maine with maybe 120 people in attendance. At this point, his debut album hadn't even come out yet and rapping/scratching was not widely known, so LL and CC give the unenthusiastic audience a little demonstration of what it's all about.

This is amazing. The footage was digitized from VHS by the show's organizer's son and he adds more information about it in the comments:

LL was paid $500 for the show. Since he was the only rap act, he was worried it would a be short performance, so my dad suggested he fill it in with the scratching and beat boxing.

LL was signed to Def Jam. My dad tried to get RUN DMC, but could not afford them, so Def Jam told him he should bring up LL Cool J.

(via @sampotts)

The Postal Service to reunite  Jan 22 2013

The musical duo, who only ever released the one album, will play Coachella and some other dates. But no new album. Yet.

After years of inactivity, the group's website now features a graphic that reads, "The Postal Service 2013." As part of the reunion, Sub Pop is prepping a deluxe edition of "Give Up" next month to commemorate the album's 10-year anniversary, Billboard has learned. Since being released on Feb. 19, 2003, the set became Sub Pop's second highest-selling album, next to Nirvana's "Bleach."

(via @matthewbaldwin)

Dubstep cockatiel  Jan 14 2013

The owner of this cockatiel taught it how to sing dubstep.

Nice try, bird, but this is still the best dubstep video of all time. (via stellar)

GoPro camera on a trombone  Jan 06 2013

This is a clever use of a GoPro camera...attached to the slide of a trombone and pointed back at the player.

And thus the motion is timed perfectly to the music...reminds me of Michel Gondry's video for Star Guitar in that way. (via @dens)

REWORK_: Philip Glass remixed  Dec 27 2012

REWORK_ is an album of Philip Glass's music remixed by the likes of Beck, Amon Tobin, and Nosaj Thing. There is also an interactive iOS app that lets you play around and remix your own Glass compositions.

REWORK_ features eleven "music visualizers" that take the remixed tracks and create interactive visuals that range from futuristic three-dimensional landscapes to shattered multicolored crystals, and vibrating sound waves. People can lean back and enjoy REWORK_ end to end, or they can touch and interact with the visualizers to create their own visual remixes.

In addition to the visualizers, the app includes the "Glass Machine" which lets people create music inspired by Philip Glass' early work by simply sliding two discs around side-by-side, almost like turntables. People can select different instruments - from synthesizer to piano, and generate polyrhythmic counterpoints between the two melodies.

The app was made by Scott Snibbe's studio...I fondly recall his Java applets. (BTW, "fondly recall his Java applets" is neither a euphemism nor something that anyone will understand 5-10 years from now.)

Ol' Dirty Bastard's FBI file  Dec 14 2012

Earlier in the year, Rich Jones at Gun.io filed a Freedom of Information request for Ol' Dirty Bastard's FBI file. It appears Wu-Tang may not actually be for the children. Here are the parts Jones noted.

"The WTC is heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjacking and other types of violent crime." [p5]
Connections to the murder of Robert "Pooh" Johnson and Jerome "Boo Boo" Estrella. [p6]
Connection to murder of Ishamael "Hoody" Kourma. [p13]
A shoot-out with the NYPD. [p15]
Arrest for felony possession of body armour. [p16]
Connections to the Bloods Gang. [p17]
Found in possession of large bags full of paper currency. [p40]
Details of his being robbed and shot while staying in the Kingston projects. [p45]

But also, Wu-Tang Flan, creator unknown.

The 50 greatest hip-hop songs  Dec 07 2012

Rolling Stone asked a panel of experts (Busta Rhymes, Questlove, Rick Rubin, etc.) to vote on the best hip-songs ever produced. Here's the list of their top 50 picks. Dre and Snoop's Nuthin' But a "G" Thang comes in at #6.

Climbing to Number Two on the singles chart in early 1993, "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" made Dr. Dre the undisputed flag bearer of West Coast rap, while also ushering that genre into the pop mainstream. The song's secret weapon was a relatively unknown pup named Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose verses are packed with effortless quotables. The song also introduced Dre's masterful "G-Funk" style of production, which updated George Clinton's legacy with slow, rubbery funk and layered synth hooks. "We made records during the crack era, where everything was hyped up, sped up and zoned out," Chuck D explained. "Dre came with ' "G" Thang' and slowed the whole genre down. He took hip-hop from the crack era to the weed era."

Listen to the entire list on Spotify. (via @gavinpurcell)

Visualizing the Rolling Stones tours  Dec 06 2012

The Rolling Stones have been touring for almost 50 years, starting with a British tour in 1963, and this tool allows you to visualize their travels. It's really cool. The craziest part to me is how dramatically the length of their tours has increased since they started out. Their first tour in 1963 (actually one of their longer tours early in their career) was about 28 shows over the course of a month. Their last tour in 2005 had about a gabillion shows over two years and grossed $528 million.

On a personal note, I read "The Rolling Stones" several times on this page and still spent parts of two days looking at it and thinking it was The Beatles tour visualization. Twice. I read "The Rolling Stones," thought it was The Beatles, corrected myself, and then thought it was The Beatles again. (via @pbump)

The hurry-up marching band  Dec 05 2012

As the pace of play-calling in college football has sped up, college marching bands have had to adjust as well.

What followed was something like the movie scene where every non-essential part on the plane is removed in order to make it light enough to take off from the short, improvised runway. First to go were any tunes longer than 30 seconds. Then, after the 2009 season in which Kelly became Oregon's head coach, Wiltshire ditched the flipbook on which the songs were written in favor of hand signals. "By the time I flipped a page," he says, "it was already too late." Knowing he had to serve two masters -- playing faster while still engaging the audience -- Wiltshire hit upon a new idea: theme music. Now whenever one of Oregon's star players gets a first down, the band plays the first five chords of a recognizable song: the "Hawaii Five-O" theme for quarterback Marcus Mariota (because he's originally from Hawaii); "Mambo No. 5" for De'Anthony Thomas (because his nickname is "the Black Mamba"); and the "Superman" theme for Kenjon Barner (because he's really good).

Country cover of Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice  Dec 03 2012

Revisiting a classic today: a cover of Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice by The Gourds.

Making Gangnam Style playable  Nov 28 2012

Polygon visited Harmonix to learn about the process for Gangnam Style to become a part of their Kinect game Dance Central 3. The result is partially a look at the challenges in that process, but also ends up being a good profile of Harmonix. The "cat cow" move was particularly hard to put into the game.

The "cat cow" requires the dancer to get on hands and knees, thrust their hips and swing their head from side to side. It is but one of a handful of ridiculous moves in a dance inspired by playing cowboy and humping things, but throughout the day we will hear from almost everyone we talk to that in spite of how ridiculous it is, it has been hellish to recreate it in the game. A lot of magic has been thrown at solving the problem of the cat cow.

Kurt Cobain's favorite albums  Nov 14 2012

From Kurt Cobain's journals, a handwritten list of the late Nirvana frontman's 50 favorite albums, including those from Sonic Youth (duh), Pixies (double duh), and Mazzy Star.

Make your favorite songs infinite  Nov 13 2012

The Infinite Jukebox analyzes the self-similarity of music to create neverending and everchanging versions of songs.

The app works by sending your uploaded track over to The Echo Nest, where it is decomposed into individual beats. Each beat is then analyzed and matched to other similar sounding beats in the song. This information is used to create a detailed song graph of paths though similar sounding beats. As the song is played, when the next beat has similar sounding beats there's a chance that we will branch to a completely different part of the song. Since the branching is to a very similar sounding beat in the song, you (in theory) won't notice the jump. This process of branching to similar sounding beats can continue forever, giving you an infinitely long version of the song.

Love this idea. How could I not with disclaimers like this?

you can get stuck in a strange attractor at the end of Karma Police for instance

Try it out with Call Me Maybe, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, or Little Fluffy Clouds. (via waxy)

Why doesn't MTV play music videos anymore?  Nov 12 2012

You'll be sorry you asked.

Jehovah's Witnesses to the deaf: no masturbation in da club  Nov 06 2012

Some genius paired 50 Cent's In Da Club with a video put out by the Jehovah's Witnesses to encourage deaf people not to masturbate. This is probably inappropriate or deafist or whatever, but it also provided me with a much-needed tears-rolling-down face laugh the other day.

(via stellar)

Frank Sinatra Jr. is feeling fine  Oct 25 2012

Chantel Tattoli was assigned to report on Frank Sinatra, Jr's concert at the Seminole Casino Coconut Creek in Florida. And, as one does, she arranged for her father to go with her.

Two weeks ago, I told my father I'd been assigned to report Frank Sinatra, Jr.'s concert, told him I had a second press pass for a photographer. My father heard me loud and clear. He went out and bought a telescopic Nikon. It is now July 12, 2012, a Thursday. An hour ago, I showed him how to hold the camera like a pro, by cradling the lens in his left hand. We were in the parking garage waiting for an elevator. The long window looked out on the complex where a water tower sprouted behind the honey-colored stucco. Behind it was a backdrop of perfect pool blue sky. "Try to shoot that," I said, pointing. He tried. But the auto-setting didn't like the light conditions. The shot wouldn't take. "Well," my father mumbled; his eyes danced over the machine. "How do you do it manually?" It was at that point that dread began to gnaw on his daughter.

This is a wonderful little story...and there's even a faint echo of Frank Sinatra Has a Cold about it.

Free to Be... You and Me at 40  Oct 23 2012

Writing for Slate, Dan Kois looks back on the landmark album for kids, Free to Be... You and Me, which was released 40 years ago. Part one details how the album came to be.

[Marlo] Thomas' fruitless Martindale's shopping trip led her to the idea that her next project ought to be a collection of stories for children that avoided sexual stereotypes and promoted gender equality. She could solicit the stories and record herself reading them. It would be just like the records she and her sister had listened to in their rooms as little girls, but liberated, smarter, modern. She just had to find the stories.

Part two covers how the album was created:

The sketches were recorded at the grand MediaSound studio on West 57th Street over the course of a few days. Billy De Wolfe, Thomas's co-star on That Girl, lent his distinctive voice to several roles on the record, including the dandyish principal who plays the flute for Dudley Pippin. (Dudley Pippin himself was voiced by "Bobby Morse," better known now as cranky senior partner Bertram Cooper on Mad Men.) Some of the sessions were quite impromptu: Dick Cavett remembers getting a call from Thomas in the morning-"I had a show to tape that day, and I thought, well, God, I can't really do it, but I like her, and she does good stuff, and also I was very familiar with her face because on my daytime show the promo for That Girl ran at least 10 times during each show"-and walking the few blocks from his office to MediaSound to record that afternoon.

Mel Brooks' session was more eventful. Thomas had written to him that the album "would benefit the Ms. Foundation," and when he came in the morning of his recording, he told her that he thought the material Reiner and Stone had written was funny but that he didn't know what it had to do with multiple sclerosis. Once set straight about the MS in question, Brooks joined Thomas in the recording booth, where they would both play babies for the album's first sketch, "Boy Meets Girl."

"When I directed," Alda recalls, "I would be meticulous and relentless. I would do a lot of takes. But Mel is not a guy who's used to doing a lot of takes. He's not used to taking direction from anybody-you know, he gives direction." Alda didn't love the first few takes of "Boy Meets Girl"; in the end it took, Alda remembers, 10 or 15 tries, with Brooks improvising madly all along the way. Rodgers was there that day to record "Ladies First," and she still remembers standing in the control room laughing harder with each take. "Mel was generous," Alda allows, "and he let me egg him on."

And part three addresses the impact the album has had:

Criticism came from the other direction, too. Thomas held on to a review from the feminist newspaper Off Our Backs, which chided Free To Be for its focus on the nuclear family and hetero relationships. "The message is so upbeat and catchy and some of the messages so appealing," Fran Pollner wrote, "that the adult feminist listener may miss the first time around the basic idea of this one-hour album: that little boys and little girls should get together at a young age to ensure a solid and satisfying future marriage and family life."

"I think it was very hard in the 1970s to ever make any comment that was viewed as radical enough," laughs Laura Lovett, co-editor with Rotskoff of When We Were Free To Be. "People were holding one another to really hard and clear goals."

But of course part of the point of Free To Be was making radical feminist beliefs palatable to a broad audience that might otherwise reject them. "It was second-wave feminism that went mainstream," Rotskoff says. "It was packed with telegenic celebrities. It was performed by famous people. And the messages were both revolutionary and accessible enough for a mainstream audience."

We listen to a lot of Free to Be on long car trips. No idea whether any of it is getting through, but it's nice to have something to reference when we're talking about, for example, the maddening no-boys-allowed princess parties thrown by Ollie's school classmates. [hair tearing-out noise]

The Rolling Stones cover the Beatles in 1965  Oct 19 2012

Here are the Rolling Stones touring Ireland in 1965, messing around in what looks like a hotel room, playing a couple of Beatles tunes, I've Just Seen a Face and Eight Days a Week.

Jagger at least seems to be taking the piss more than honestly enjoying the music of his fellow British invasion personnel. (via dangerous minds)

Update: From Andy Baio, a reminder that The Stones' first top 20 single was a cover of The Beatles' I Wanna Be Your Man.

?uestlove to teach class about classic albums  Oct 18 2012

The Roots drummer, ?uestlove, will be schooling kids left and right this spring as he teaches a class on classic albums at NYU. It's too bad this isn't a high school class so my Young MC 'Principal's Office' reference would fit better.

The course will include lectures on albums such as Sly & The Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On, Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul, Led Zeppelin's IV, Prince's Dirty Mind, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, and the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique.

They'll also cover what constitutes a "classic" or "seminal" album, looking at the music, lyrics, production, and business behind great albums.

Billboard reports that the course was inspired by an NPR blog post over the summer where an intern reviewed Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, an album he'd never heard before. ?uestlove responded to the dismissive review in the comments, prompting NYU's Jason King to invite ?uestlove and Weinger to teach the course.

Culture as a type of technology  Oct 11 2012

Korean pop music or K-pop has been steadily gaining popularity outside of Korea the last several years, and most of the artists share the trait of having been developed in a music factory. John Seabrook in the New Yorker looks at what the head of the first of these factories calls "cultural technology." There's a lot of fascinating stuff in this article.

In effect, Lee combined his ambitions as a music impresario with his training as an engineer to create the blueprint for what became the K-pop idol assembly line. His stars would be made, not born, according to a sophisticated system of artistic development that would make the star factory that Berry Gordy created at Motown look like a mom-and-pop operation. Lee called his system "cultural technology." In a 2011 address at Stanford Business School, he explained, "I coined this term about fourteen years ago, when S.M. decided to launch its artists and cultural content throughout Asia. The age of information technology had dominated most of the nineties, and I predicted that the age of cultural technology would come next." He went on, "S.M. Entertainment and I see culture as a type of technology. But cultural technology is much more exquisite and complex than information technology."

[...]

Lee and his colleagues produced a manual of cultural technology--it's known around S.M. as C.T.--that catalogued the steps necessary to popularize K-pop artists in different Asian countries. The manual, which all S.M. employees are instructed to learn, explains when to bring in foreign composers, producers, and choreographers; what chord progressions to use in what country; the precise color of eyeshadow a performer should wear in a particular country; the exact hand gestures he or she should make; and the camera angles to be used in the videos (a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree group shot to open the video, followed by a montage of individual closeups).

John Lennon's poster  Oct 09 2012

Peter Dean is a big Beatles fan. And so he set out to reproduce exactly -- from photographic evidence only -- an old circus poster owned by John Lennon. In true Sgt. Pepper's fashion, he had a little help from his friends.

This is a reproduction of the poster that inspired John Lennon to write the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, which appeared on The Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It is printed in a limited edition of 1,967.

Lennon bought the poster in an antiques shop and hung it in his music room. While writing for Sgt. Pepper one day, he drew inspiration from the quirky, old-fashioned language and set the words to music.

A limited edition letterpress reproduction of the poster is available for sale.

8-Bit Koyaanisqatsi  Oct 02 2012

The final song from Koyaanisqatsi, remade in 8-bit audio (aka chiptune).

Philip Glass works pretty well in chiptune.

New album from Godspeed You! Black Emperor  Oct 02 2012

'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! is GY!BE's first album since 2002. The album apparently came out of nowhere, with the band releasing it for sale at a concert in Boston yesterday. (via @aaroncoleman0)

Things from Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire that are still burning  Sep 25 2012

China
Television
North Korea
Vaccine
Brooklyn's got a winning team (maybe)
Disneyland
Trouble in the Suez
Lebanon
California baseball
U2 (albeit a different one)
Dylan
John Glenn
Birth control
Palestine
Terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran
Foreign debts
Homeless Vets

It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

The best 99 Problems jokes on Twitter  Sep 21 2012

According to the data scientists at Stellar (i.e. me armed with clumsy SQL queries), people like riffing off of Jay-Z's line from 2004's 99 Problems:

If you're having girl problems I feel bad for you, son
I've got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one

Here are some of the better ones I found:

@antichrista: If you got religious circumcision, I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems but a bris ain't one.

@elibraden: I'm rubbing lotion on my belly rapping "I got 99 problems but ab itch ain't one" to the elderly men in the gym locker room.

@goldengateblond: "I got 99 problems but the witch ain't one." — Darrin Stevens, widower

@evacide: I've got 99 problems, but an insufficiently sophisticated grasp of 4th amendment law ain't one: https://t.co/E2XcSpb8

@dustmop: I got 99 problems but one of them is that i used hex and i actually have 152 other problems :(

@sween: If you're coming to Canada to escape Obamacare, I feel bad for you son. We've got 99 problems but a lack of socialized medicine ain't one.

@bagyants: "I got 99 problems, but they can wait." - Lay-Z

@mikesacco: i got 99 problems but that's 693 in dog problems!!

@blitznbeans: "I got 99 problems but I really need to lie back on this chair." - Chaise-Z

@justin: I've got 99 problems but a view controller that works as expected on iOS 5 and doesn't respond to user interaction on iOS 4 is the main one.

@paulypeligroso: "I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one." - The Dalmatian parents from 101 Dalmatians.

@trevso_electric: I got 99 problems but white privilege ensures that they're relatively trivial or easily worked out with a therapist.

@yellowcardigan: I got 99 problems but a joke structure based on a 2004 rap single ain't one.

@lisarahmat: I got 99 problems but my math ain't one hundred.

Let's get a Kickstarter together to have Jay-Z rap all these lines.

The Master soundtrack  Sep 12 2012

Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack for P.T. Anderson's new film, The Master, came out yesterday. It's available on MP3 from Amazon ($11) and directly from Nonesuch in MP3 and other formats ($12+). Greenwood previously did the soundtrack for Anderson's There Will Be Blood.

The A train: the Amazon of New York City  Sep 10 2012

In a photo slideshow with jazz accompaniment, narrator Adam Gopnik takes us on a short tour of NYC's A train, which runs from the top of Manhattan all the way out to the beaches of Rockaway.

From Harlem and upper Manhattan to Brooklyn, Queens and the Atlantic Ocean - New York city's A Line subway route covers over 30 miles, takes two hours to ride from end to end, and is the inspiration for one of jazz's best known tunes.

Here -- with archive images and vibrant present-day photographs from Melanie Burford -- New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik takes a ride on one of today's A trains, and explores the communities living along the route.

(via @davehopton)

Zadie Smith's Jay-Z profile  Sep 09 2012

I liked this Zadie Smith profile of Jay-Z, and not just for The Wire reference. Smith's got a nice way with words and handles Jay-Z's way with words nicely.

In "Decoded," Jay-Z writes that "rap is built to handle contradictions," and Hova, as he is nicknamed, is as contradictory as they come. Partly because he's a generalist. Biggie had better boasts, Tupac dropped more knowledge, Eminem is -- as "Renegade" demonstrated -- more formally dexterous. But Hova's the all-rounder. His albums are showrooms of hip-hop, displaying the various possibilities of the form. The persona is cool, calm, almost frustratingly self-controlled: "Yeah, 50 Cent told me that one time. He said: 'You got me looking like Barksdale' " -- the hot-blooded drug kingpin from HBO's "The Wire" -- "and you get to be Stringer Bell!" -- Barksdale's levelheaded partner. The rapper Memphis Bleek, who has known Jay-Z since Bleek himself was 14, confirms this impression: "He had a sense of calm way before music. This was Jay's plan from day one: to take over. I guess that's why he smiles and is so calm, 'cause he did exactly what he planned in the '90s." And now, by virtue of being 42 and not dead, he can claim his own unique selling proposition: he's an artist as old as his art form. The two have grown up together.

Additionally, you'll enjoy this profile of a guy who has sent a couple hundred letter-length emails to Jay-Z since 2010, and is pretty sure the emails are being read.

The thrash metal watchmaker  Sep 06 2012

Dan Spitz played lead guitar for the heavy metal band Anthrax for more than 12 years. Now he's a master watchmaker.

My favorite stuff to work on is older watches because of how they are made. These watches were way overbuilt so that they would never come back for repair. Just look at the mainplates... They were built at a time before computers were checking everything. If you've been working on modern stuff all day, there's nothing like getting a vintage watch to work on, and when you open it up, you say "Ahhhh, look at that, this rocks!" Like an old muscle car, it's so basic, so perfect, so overbuilt. It just rocks.

A history of dubstep  Sep 05 2012

Over at The Verge wub wub wub skztch wubwubwub Joe Flatley Flatley wub wub wub pzzzzt wub WUBB wub Flatley wub wub wub shares the history wub wub wub wub wub wub fwizzort WUBWUBWUB of dubstep here comes the drop

For our purposes, we can begin the story of dubstep at the turn of the 21st century, and with UK garage and two-step; weird, hybrid music that features elements of house music (popcorn snares, glittering high-hats) and a lyrical style that is almost a parody of American hip-hop glamor and excess. "Champagne, Versace and Moschino," as Zed Bias once put it.

Recently I talked to Damian "Dieselboy" Higgins, the Brooklyn-based drum and bass DJ, producer, and head of the record label Human (and its dubstep and electro imprint Subhuman). Higgins has been on the front lines as long as America has had a rave scene. "Drum and bass kept spawning these micro-cultures, or micro-genres," he explained. "[There was] two-step, and then grime, and dubstep was the next one. For me, I felt like it came from drum and bass. There are a lot of drum and bass guys who jumped ship and went to it."

Drum and bass is one of those primarily English forms of dance music that, even today, still sounds alien - the fast tempos (generally well over 150 beats per minute), the intricate syncopation, and the full-on synthetic sound has never been fully accepted by mainstream American ears. Two-step garage took house music and added the foreignness of drum and bass. Or, perhaps conversely, it took drum and bass and added enough elements from house music as to not alienate the ladies in the clubs. It was a form of dance music that was indigenous to London, and for a moment in the late 1990s it was arguably the underground sound of the UK.

Wub wub wub. Wub.

Squid's membrane goes insane while listening to Cypress Hill  Aug 24 2012

The crazy (and possibly high) folks at Backyard Brains hooked an iPod up to a squid in such a way that when the music played, it was converted into electrical impulses that triggered color changes on the squid's skin, thereby creating the world's first cephalo-iPod. Here's a video of the squid's skin pulsing along to Insane in the Membrane by Cypress Hill:

During experiments on the giant axons of the Longfin Inshore Squid (loligo pealei) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA; we were fascinated by the fast color-changing nature of the squid's skin. Squids (like many other cephalopods) can quickly control pigmented cells called chromatophores to reflect light. The Longfin Inshore has 3 different chromatophore colors: Brown, Red, and Yellow. Each chromatophore has tiny muscles along the circumference of the cell that can contract to reveal the pigment underneath.

(via colossal)

This door sounds like Miles Davis  Aug 21 2012

This door in a Chicago parking garage does a pretty good impression of Miles Davis.

(via ★whileseated)

Com Truise  Aug 15 2012

New musical obsession: Com Truise. It's basically all I've listened to over the past two weeks.

While subliminally informed by both parental record collections and hints of faded electronics product design, Haley's Com Truise project isn't just nostalgia capitalization. There are fragments (read: DNA strands) of Joy Division, New Order, and the Cocteau Twins, but it's like you're hearing them through the motherboard of a waterlogged Xbox-demented and modern. He's got a way of making familiar things sound beautifully hand-smeared.

He's on SoundCloud and if you like that, check out a couple of his albums: In Decay and Galactic Melt. Got the rec from Dan Cederholm, who tweeted intriguingly, "Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack was brilliant, yes. I'm voting Com Truise for Tron 3."

Beck's next album to released as sheet music  Aug 10 2012

In a move that harkens back to composers of old, Beck's next album, 'Song Reader' will be released in December as sheet music of 20 unreleased and unrecorded songs.

The sheet music will come with full colour art works for each song as well as a hardcover carrying case. Two of the 20 songs are instrumentals. The 'album' features the tracks 'Do We? We Do' and 'Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard'. The idea behind the release is for fans to play the songs and 'bring them to life' themselves.

Tickets for The Who accepted 33 years later  Aug 06 2012

In 1979, 11 peopled died in a stampede before a stop on The Who's Quadrephenia tour in Cincinnati when not enough doors were opened to let in the crowd. Providence mayor Buddy Cianci canceled a concert two weeks later at the Providence Civic Center, and The Who hasn't ever been back to Providence. Last week, the GM of the PCC, now called the Dunkin' Donuts Center announced he'd accept unrefunded tickets for The Who's February, 2013 concert.

Tuesday, as the Providence Journal reports, "the patience and tenacity of 10 Who fans was rewarded ... at the Dunkin' Donuts Center, where they traded in 14 tickets to the band's canceled 1979 Providence performance in exchange for tickets to their February 2013 show at the Dunk." The ProJo has video. Fan Ed McConnell says he knew exactly where his two '79 tickets were: one was in a cigar box in a closet and the other one "was stuck on a cork bulletin board in my parent's house in my brother's old bedroom."

About 10 fans exchanged their tickets, including one fan who had waited in line for 3 days to get tickets in 1978. (via Josh)

PS: Songs by The Who considered of puntastic entry in this post include the following: Going Mobile, I Can See for Miles, I Can't Explain, I've Been Away, Long Live Rock, My Generation, The Kids Are Alright, and Who Are You?

Miles Davis' blind listening test  Jul 23 2012

As part of an interview by Down Beat Magazine in 1964, Miles Davis listened to a bunch of unknown music in a blind listening test and offered his opinions.

What am I supposed to say to that? That's ridiculous. You see the way they can fuck up music? It's a mismatch. They don't complement each other. Max and Mingus can play together, by themselves. Mingus is a hell of a bass player, and Max is a hell of a drummer. But Duke can't play with them, and they can't play with Duke.

Now, how are you going to give a thing like that some stars? Record companies should be kicked in the ass. Somebody should take a picket sign and picket the record company.

Boston Symphony Orchestra audition  Jul 17 2012

Mike Tetreault recently let Boston Magazine follow along while he prepared to audition for the Boston Symphony Orchestra resulting in an interesting look into the BSO and the life of an elite orchestra musician. There's even a surprise appearance from Steve Blass Disease.

At 33, Tetreault was putting in 100-hour weeks on a patchwork of gigs he'd pieced together -- simultaneously serving as the music director at the Galilee Baptist Church in Denver; teaching at the University of Colorado; and working various gigs with the Boulder Philharmonic, the Fort Collins Symphony, the Colorado Ballet, the Colorado Symphony, and Opera Colorado. Yes, he was doing what he loved for a living, but when he added it all up, it was barely a living at all. He'd made $55,000 the previous year, pretty good -- until you factored in all the hours, and the fact that the salary had to support two since his wife, Rachel, had been laid off in 2010 from a communications job with the Colorado Symphony. The couple was living in a 625-square-foot one-bedroom apartment.

(via stellar)

Def Leppard re-recording back catalog to screw Universal  Jul 05 2012

In a dispute with Universal over compensation for digital downloads, Def Leppard is taking the extreme and fairly metal step of re-recording their entire back catalog so they can do what they want with the songs. Earlier, they recorded what they're calling "Forgeries" of 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' and 'Rock of Ages' to coincide with the movie release of Rock of Ages.

While the business side seems cut and dried, Elliott says the creative part of recreating songs that date back 25 years or more is not. "You just don't go in and say, 'Hey guys, let's record it,' and it's done in three minutes," Elliott notes. "We had to study those songs, I mean down to the umpteenth degree of detail, and make complete forgeries of them. Time-wise it probably took as long to do as the originals, but because of the technology it actually got done quicker as we got going. But trying to find all those sounds...like where am I gonna find a 22-year-old voice? I had to sing myself into a certain throat shape to be able to sing that way again. It was really hard work, but it was challenging, and we did have a good laugh over it here and there."

(via @lsrmichael)

Madonna has a DNA sterilisation team  Jun 25 2012

This seems apocryphal but I'm gonna go with it anyway: Madonna has a cleanup team sweep her tour dressing rooms after shows for bits of hair, skin, and spit the singer might have left behind so that fans cannot get ahold of her DNA.

Concert promoter Alvaro Ramos, who is overseeing the Portuguese leg of Madonna's MDNA tour, told Britain's Daily Mirror: "We have to take extreme care, like I have never seen for any other artist.

"We cannot even look at the dressing room after it is ready, or even open the door."

MDNA = Madonna's DNA?

Neutral Milk Hotel + hip hop = whoa!  Jun 04 2012

This is great so far: Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea mashed up with hip hop. (via av club)

New Sigur Ros album  May 29 2012

Sigur Ros is out with a new album today. Pretty good so far.

Watch the Throne 2?!!  May 25 2012

Kanye and Jay-Z are doing a second album together!

Kanye West's producer Mike Dean, who co-produced part of Jay and 'Ye's Watch the Throne, has confirmed that there will be a Watch the Throne 2! While Dean revealed that a follow up album is definitely in the works, he was unable to give a specific time for its release.

Maybe they'll call it Watch the Throner?

The Keaton Music Typewriter  May 25 2012

No, it's not a typewriter that plays music. The Keaton Music Typewriter was invented in 1936 for the purpose of printing musical notes on sheet music paper.

The Keaton Music Typewriter was first patented in 1936 (14 keys) by Robert H. Keaton from San Francisco, California. Another patent was taken out in 1953 (33 keys) which included improvements to the machine. The machine types on a sheet of paper lying flat under the typing mechanism. There are several Keaton music typewriters thought to be in existence in museums and private collections. It was marketed in the 1950s and sold for around $225. The typewriter made it easier for publishers, educators, and other musicians to produce music copies in quantity. Composers, however, preferred to write the music out by hand.

Kids review a Skrillex song  May 16 2012

A bunch of cute kids review Bangarang by Skrillex.

What is dupstep?

I've never heard of that.

Daddy loves dubstep.

A couple of the kids were asked what "the drop" meant:

I think the drop is when you drop being sensible.

When it gets really quiet and then it gets really really really loud. BANG!

(via ★interesting)

Sabotage! You know, for kids  May 15 2012

As a tribute to Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, James Winters and his family made this parody of the video Sabotage with kids playing all the roles.

Charming, although I might have gone with squirt guns instead of the more realistic item.

(via @moth)

If rock bands were sandwiches  May 10 2012

At McSweeney's, John Peck whips up some bandwiches.

Bjork: Sliced narwhal, mustard, whole wheat bread.

Grateful Dead: Lemon verbena sorbet, peanut butter, clarified hemp butter, deep-fried brownie bites, M&Ms, stale focaccia.

Sex Pistols: Deep-fried Frank Sinatra LP, Russian mustard, spackle, tacks, stale rye bread.

John Cage: Silence, warmth, indirect sunlight, the memory of lettuce, the idea of bread.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Bacon-double cheeseburger, mescaline pesto, sourdough bread.

The Hood Internet: The Mixtape Volume Six  May 08 2012

Wooooo! The Hood Internet has just released the sixth installment of their Mixtape series. You can listen to the whole thing here:

or download it here. Their five previous Mixtapes are some of the most-played music in my collection...I'm listening to volume five right now actually.

Paul's Boutique would be impossible today  May 08 2012

Matt Yglesias argues that because of the way copyright is viewed by the public and interpreted by lawmakers and the courts, making an album like The Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique would be nearly impossible today.

The death on Friday of Adam Yauch, best known as the Beastie Boys' MCA, surely sent many of us back to old albums we may not have heard for a while. And anyone who threw on Paul's Boutique, the Boys' best album, was surely struck by the sense that they don't make records like that anymore. That's not just because tastes and styles have changed. The entire album is based on lavish sampling of other recordings. "Shake Your Rump," which leads Slate's #MCATracks playlist, features samples of 14 songs by 12 separate artists. In all, the album is thought to have as many as 300 total samples. The sampling gave Paul's Boutique a sound that remains almost as distinctive today as it was when it was released in 1989.

Perhaps the main reason-and certainly the saddest reason-that it still sounds distinctive is that a rapidly shifting legal and economic landscape made it essentially impossible to repeat.

Radio time machine  Apr 26 2012

Put in a year and hear popular songs from that year with Radio Time Machine. If you have a Rdio account, you can hear full songs. See also YouTube Time Machine. (via @fchimero)

The Art of Rap  Apr 13 2012

Directed by Ice-T, Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap is a documentary about the birth and evolution of rap and hip hop music.

Ice-T takes us on an intimate journey into the heart and soul of hip-hop with the legends of rap music. This performance documentary goes beyond the stardom and the bling to explore what goes on inside the minds, and erupts from the lips, of the grandmasters of rap. Recognized as the godfather of Gangsta rap, Ice-T is granted unparalleled access to the personal lives of the masters of this artform that he credits for saving his life. Interspersed with the performers' insightful, touching, and often funny revelations are classic raps, freestyle rhymes, and never before heard a cappellas straight from the mouths of the creators. What emerges is a better understanding of, and a tribute to, an original American art form that brought poetry to a new generation.

(via @gavinpurcell)

In defense of Skrillex  Apr 11 2012

Stereogum writer Tom Breihan saw a Skrillex show at SXSW and loved it. In fact, it was his favorite act. His takeaway was that the Skrillex many people deride as a one-trick WUB WUB WUB pony on the basis of his albums is an extremely effective and talented live DJ.

But what I found was one of the more dynamic sets I heard during all of SXSW. Skrillex, see, knows what he's doing. He does what great DJs do: He layers sounds and ideas on top of each other, building tension and releasing it, moving fluidly from one thing to the next. Parts sounded like the sort of early-'90s hardcore techno that was popular with people who wore lots and lots of smiley faces. Other parts sounded like the sort of dark, broody late-'90s breakbeat techno that was popular with scary white guys with dreads. There was also a lot of robotic one-drop reggae in there. Early on, Skrillex played a big chunk of Damian Marley's "Welcome To Jamrock" unmolested. Later, he dug out Ini Kamoze's "World-A-Music," the song that Marley sampled on "Jamrock." All of it fit in seamlessly. None of it was built around bass-drops.

When Keith Richards met Mick Jagger  Apr 11 2012

Letters of Note has a letter written by an 18-year-old Keith Richards to his aunt about meeting Mick Jagger for the first time since they were childhood friends.

Anyways the guy on the station, he is called Mick Jagger and all the chicks and the boys meet every Saturday morning in the 'Carousel' some juke-joint well one morning in Jan I was walking past and decided to look him up. Everybody's all over me I get invited to about 10 parties. Beside that Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don't mean maybe. I play guitar (electric) Chuck style we got us a bass player and drummer and rhythm-guitar and we practice 2 or 3 nights a week. SWINGIN'.

The Stones played their first show three months after the letter was written. (via ★thoughtbrain)

Music awakens closed minds  Apr 10 2012

Alive Inside is a documentary that follows social worker Dan Cohen as he discovers that music can "awaken" people suffering from degenerative memory loss (Alzheimer's, etc.). Here's a clip in which a man goes from a near-coma state to talking about his favorite songs after listening to music for awhile on headphones.

(via ★swissmiss)

What does a music conductor do?  Apr 09 2012

Alan Gilbert is the music director of the New York Philharmonic and in this video, he talks about what a conductor does. I've been to the Philharmonic a few times in the past year and have wondered about the role of the conductor...specifically, is he actually doing anything up there to affect the music being played in realtime and could the orchestra play without him? The conductor obviously has a huge role in shaping the piece in rehearsal, but it seems like his presence on stage during the performance itself might be more performance than utility. But that's just a guess.

Update: I got an informative response about this from professional classical musician Chris Brody:

You're absolutely right that one of the main things an orchestra conductor does is to prepare the orchestra in rehearsal for the way he/she wants the piece to sound in performance. A lot of stuff is conveyed in that way that the conductor then won't need to attempt to convey in real time during the performance. And furthermore, as you suspect, conductors are often in some sense kind of "dancing" for the audience during performances, in ways that are strictly superfluous to making the musicians play correctly, though sometimes an enjoyable part of the concert experience.

In order for a concert performance to come off correctly, someone has to take responsibility for giving what musicians call "cues"-concrete gestures that enable everyone to know when to start playing. In chamber music (classical music played in small groups), one of the players will do this, usually with an exaggerated, rhythmically timed gesture that connotes "taking a breath to start playing right NOW" or "preparing my bow to play the string right NOW", and so on. In fact, there are entire smallish orchestras, like the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, that play with no conductor, because members of the ensemble give cues when they are needed.

In larger (orchestral) settings, it is convenient to have a conductor to give cues instead. Of course, there are some pieces that are played with metronomic strictness, and the conductor in fact will have fairly little to do during those performances. You might have noticed that pieces from the Baroque and Classical periods are usually quite strict in time, and it is no coincidence that there was no such thing as a professional conductor until the nineteenth century-music prior to that was usually quite playable with the first-chair violinist ("concertmaster") or the keyboardist giving a few cues as needed. (Conductors were occasionally used prior to the nineteenth century, but not so much that it was anyone's entire job.)

Some pieces, by contrast, have a lot of changes of tempo, or a lot of starting and stopping. In cases like that, a conductor is really an indispensable part of having a performance come off non-disastrously! Furthermore, a lot of pieces are written in a complicated enough texture or rhythm that the musicians cannot necessarily hear what the beat is all the time, and need some visual help to stay together (this is especially true of very slow music, and of a lot of twentieth-century music).

Aside from this, when ensembles don't need help staying together, the conductor will do a lot of gesturing to elicit slight changes in dynamic level, expressive character, and so on, from the musicians. Very good ensembles, when working with a conductor they respect, will absolutely respond in real time to these gestures. Less good ensembles will often not be able to do so and will mostly watch the conductor for cues. Also, ultra-elite ensembles are sometimes known to ignore the conductor during performances if they think he/she isn't adding much value (a dirty secret of professional musicians!), or of course if they do not have confidence in the conductor's ability to keep them together.

A couple more things that might interest you. Basic conducting is done via the use of "patterns" that correspond to certain time signatures. When a conductor conducts music in 3/4 (3 beats per measure), there will be 3 precise places that the baton is expected to be during the measure, and the musicians can always look up and follow that pattern. (The basic patterns are shown in this video.) If you watch, let's say, a high-school band, you will see the conductor use these patterns very strictly and literally. In orchestral conducting, two things are different. First, the musicians don't need much help keeping time, so the patterns are either heavily modified or abandoned entirely-although you can often see downbeats and things if you look for them. Second, orchestral conductors conduct WAY ahead of the beat the musicians are actually playing. This helps the musicians respond in real time to the conductor's instructions. From the audience's perspective, therefore, it can be nearly impossible to see the connection between what the conductor is doing and what you're hearing from the musicians-they're probably substantially out of sync.

Looks like I have a lot more to look for the next time I go to the symphony. (thx, chris!)

How Ya Livin' Biggie Smalls?  Mar 12 2012

Friday was the 15th anniversary of the death of The Notorious B.I.G. The Fader has a look back at the life of Biggie, as told through pictures of the places he went and the people he knew.

I started working with Big in '91. I was 21, he was 15. I met him through a friend of mine. They hustled together on Bedford and Quincy. People in the neighborhood knew him as the hottest rapper around. Everybody that stepped in his path, he ate 'em up. He earned that stripe from that one battle he had on Bedford and Quincy. I was the one that was playing the music. This man used to live right upstairs from the pool room. Every day in the summer we'd play the music out. It just so happened that Big came around, so we brought the grill out, we brought the music out. They got on the mic and went at it. It went on from there. Cars stopped, it got real crowded out there. We rocked it 'til 12, one o'clock that night. It was a good look. Everybody that came at his back, he took out.

Biggie would have turned 40 this year.

Dubstep sounds like a broken Frosty machine  Mar 12 2012

After Wendy's tweeted that "Dubstep sounds like a broken Frosty machine", illustrator Chris Piascik made this:

It took me a few seconds to notice the Skrillex-ification of Wendy. Awesome. Prints are available or you can get it on a t-shirt. (via @unlikelywords)

The violin maker  Mar 06 2012

Short video profile of Sam Zygmuntowicz, a Brooklyn violin maker.

I like the robotic violin player that appears around 2:15, presumably used to test a violin's sound characteristics. (via ★interesting)

Possible new album from Boards of Canada?!  Feb 29 2012

That is the rumor, and a very exciting one indeed.

I'm gonna play some Board of Canada now. I'm a bit of a Boards of Canada evangelist. They're my favorite band, I think. Maybe them and The Beatles. But, they are a band, again, a bit like The Fall. It's like once you get into them, or rather, once something clicks you just wanna hear everything they've released. This track I'm gonna play, it's from their last full album, which is The Campfire Headphase from 2005. They've got a new album coming out soon and I think it's gonna be a double album and I'm so excited, I really am-to hear their new one. Um, I just love them.

(via @jadabumrad)

The music of Daft Punk revisited on vintage video game systems  Feb 24 2012

Daft Punk already sort of sounds like they make their music using vintage video game systems but Da Chip is what that would actually sound like. Better than I expected. (via @shauninman)

Rap music business lessons  Feb 21 2012

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ben Horowitz frequently turns to rap music for business wisdom.

Much of rap is about business, whether the drug business, the music industry or work ethic, said Adam Bradley, an associate professor specializing in African-American literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder who wrote "Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop" and co-edited "The Anthology of Rap."

"It comes out of the fact that rap is such a direct mode of expression, maybe more so than any other music lyric, because of the emphasis on language, of words above melody or harmony," Mr. Bradley said.

People think of rap lyrics as being only about money, women, status and cocaine, he said, but more pervasive themes are leadership, collaboration and the vulnerability beneath the swagger -- all relevant in business.

Reminds me of this line by Jonah Peretti:

"Remember, you're not selling out," Jonah Peretti, a co-founder of the Huffington Post, told Denton. "You're blowing up. Think in terms of hip-hop, not indie rock."

New Sleigh Bells out today  Feb 21 2012

Sleigh Bells' new album, Reign of Terror, is out today. It got an 8.2 over at Pitchfork if you care about such things.

Niggas in Paris at Midnight  Feb 14 2012

This is so perfectly in the kottke.org wheelhouse that I can't even tell if it's any good or not: a mashup of Jay-Z and Kanye's Niggas in Paris and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

(via ★davidfg)

Peter Sellers covers The Beatles  Feb 13 2012

Peter Sellers did four different spoken word versions of The Beatles' She Loves You: as Dr. Strangelove, with a Cockney accent, with an Irish accent, and with an upper crust English accent (my fave):

Yeah, Sellers is pretty good with accents. (via ★bump)

Painting with sound: a 3-D take on Jackson Pollock  Feb 10 2012

You may remember Martin Klimas from his photos of shattering figurines (which I love).

His latest project involves arranging paint just above massive speakers, turning the sound up, and photographing the results. This is Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians":

I wonder what dubstep looks like? (via @pomeranian99)

Ice Cube's "Good Day" located  Jan 30 2012

An internet sleuth used the lyrics of Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day to figure out when his exceptional day occurred.

CLUE 3: "The Lakers beat the Super Sonics"
Dates between Yo MTV Raps air date AUGUST 6 1988 and the release of the single FEBRUARY 23 1993 where the Lakers beat the Super Sonics...

Update: Someone fact-checked the original calculation and found it wanting. (thx, trevor)

Adele's Rolling in the Deep, covered and covered and covered  Jan 19 2012

Adele's Rolling in the Deep has been covered thousands of times on YouTube...here's 70 of those performances cut together into one seamless song.

(via ★davidfg)

The oldest piano shop in Paris  Jan 17 2012

The Fournitures Generales Pour Le Piano is a shop in Paris that sells parts for piano repair. The owner runs the shop himself, sells fewer and fewer parts each year, and dreams of building a one-string instrument which sounds like a piano, lute, and harp all at the same time.

See also the decline in piano quality over the last 100 years. (thx, judy)

Clip art album covers  Jan 11 2012

On the Clipart covers blog, you'll find noted album covers redone with clip art and Comic Sans.

(via @aaroncoleman0)

Don't go changing  Jan 09 2012

In a piece for Vanity Fair, Kurt Andersen argues that for the first time in recent history, American pop culture (fashion, art, music, design, entertainment) hasn't changed dramatically in the past 20 years.

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there's the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what's odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past -- the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s -- looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Think about it. Picture it. Rewind any other 20-year chunk of 20th-century time. There's no chance you would mistake a photograph or movie of Americans or an American city from 1972-giant sideburns, collars, and bell-bottoms, leisure suits and cigarettes, AMC Javelins and Matadors and Gremlins alongside Dodge Demons, Swingers, Plymouth Dusters, and Scamps-with images from 1992. Time-travel back another 20 years, before rock 'n' roll and the Pill and Vietnam, when both sexes wore hats and cars were big and bulbous with late-moderne fenders and fins-again, unmistakably different, 1952 from 1972. You can keep doing it and see that the characteristic surfaces and sounds of each historical moment are absolutely distinct from those of 20 years earlier or later: the clothes, the hair, the cars, the advertising -- all of it. It's even true of the 19th century: practically no respectable American man wore a beard before the 1850s, for instance, but beards were almost obligatory in the 1870s, and then disappeared again by 1900. The modern sensibility has been defined by brief stylistic shelf lives, our minds trained to register the recent past as old-fashioned.

What the hell is dubstep anyway?  Jan 09 2012

This video, which takes its audio from a 2007 interview, takes a crack at defining it.

So, a dubstep or grime is kinda like this ultra slow, ultra dirty spawn of hip hop, but it's almost at a breakbeat speed, but it's at a halftime breakbeat speed. So it feels, like, abnormally slow, and just gives this really heavy feel.

Since the evolution of music has slowed since, say, the early 1980s, I thought it would be a long time before a popular genre of music came along that seemed, to my old ears, to be noisy garbage...but then dubstep came along. Industrial, happy hardcore, metal, punk, glitch, and even drum & bass I can appreciate, but dubstep makes me want to yell at children to get off lawns. And I actually like that door stopper noise!

Dubtrot: My Little Pony dubstep  Jan 06 2012

You've probably seen the NY Times correction that everyone's talking about. Ok, not everyone, just everyone who works in media. Anyway, here it is:

An article on Monday about Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students with Asperger syndrome who are navigating the perils of an intimate relationship, misidentified the character from the animated children's TV show "My Little Pony" that Ms. Lindsmith said she visualized to cheer herself up. It is Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual, not Fluttershy, the kind animal lover.

Here is said article. Jim Romenesko talked to Amy Harmon, the reporter who wrote the article, and uncovered this magical tidbit:

I was accompanying Kirsten to school, taking notes on my laptop as she drove. She was listening to music on her iPod known to Pony fans as "dubtrot," -- a take-off on "dubstep,'' get it? -- in which fans remix songs and dialogue from the show with electronic dance music.

Dubtrot! And leave it Urban Dictionary to gild the lily.

Dubstep music relating to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Often created by bronies, dubtrot can include dubstep remixes of songs from the show and original pieces created as homage or in reference to the show.

Bronies! Defined as:

The term used to describe the fan community(usually of the older group, males and females) of the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Anyway, would you like to listen to some dubtrot? Of course you would: Rainbowstep, Rainbow Dubtrot, and fluttershymix.

Pretty Lights  Dec 21 2011

Been grooving on Pretty Lights lately. I recommend downloading one of several EPs from his site (for free + suggested donation) or getting disc two of Filling Up the City Skies.

And if you were a Chicago Bulls fan in the 90s, don't miss his remix of the Bulls intro music in the Unreleased 2010 Remixes collection (find it on the downloads page).

Shufflin' grandpa  Dec 20 2011

One of my favorite things on the internet is footage of old styles of dancing set to contemporary music. Like this:

See also Daft Punk Charleston and Russian dancing (w/ Run DMC). (via ★dunstan)

Moar Hood Internet!  Dec 07 2011

Woo, a new compilation from The Hood Internet just "dropped". I am picking it up right now. (Am I doing this right? Yo?) Anyway, free music that's good! Clicky clicky.

Reznor's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack out soon  Dec 02 2011

Trent Reznor's and Atticus Ross' soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is in the can and will be released in one week. For now, you can pre-order the soundtrack or download a free six-song sampler. Reznor and Ross won an Oscar for their The Social Network soundtrack.

All Beatles songs played at the same time  Nov 30 2011

Every song by The Beatles played simultaneously. The start times are staggered so that every song ends at the same time.

As a commenter notes, "Gets very complicated in the end. So did the Beatles." (via waxy)

Free music from Moby  Nov 17 2011

Moby has a web site where filmmakers can download his music for use in non-profit projects. Cool!

this portion of moby.com, 'film music', is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short. to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password. you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short. the music is free as long as it's being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.

Something to keep in mind when you're tempted to slap a Sigur Ros song on your viral video. (via ken murphy)

Match booze to your music  Nov 16 2011

Drinkify matches up the music you're listening to with a suggested drink. According to the site, Daft Punk pairs best with 6 oz. Bombay Sapphire Gin served neat, Philip Glass should be accompanied by a bottle of red wine, The Clash goes with 1 oz. cocaine + 1 oz. grenadine served in a highball, and you can probably guess what you drink while listening to Snoop Dogg:

(via coudal)

Michael J. Fox performs Johnny B. Goode at Parkinson's benefit  Nov 14 2011

Michael J. Fox recently took the stage at his annual benefit for Parkinson's disease and played a familiar favorite: Johnny B. Goode. Marvin, get on the phone to your cousin!

And if that's not Mike Fox awesomeness for one day, here he is on a recent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

M83 vocal audition  Nov 07 2011

If you like M83 and have listened to their new album, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, you'll probably love this M83 backup singer audition video.

I literally LOL'd when he started singing. (via stellar)

Koyaanisqatsi  Nov 03 2011

Saw Koyaanisqatsi last night (with great seats), accompanied by the New York Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble...Glass played one of the emsemble's two keyboards. It was really fantastic.

KOYAANISQATSI, [Godfrey] Reggio's debut as a film director and producer, is the first film of the QATSI trilogy. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance." Created between 1975 and 1982, the film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass.

The entire film is available on both YouTube and Hulu.

Sword dancing  Nov 03 2011

Dancing skills + sword fighting skills + old lady sitting motionless in a chair skills + huge boom box skills + dog almost gets beheaded skills + it gets magical around 52 seconds =

(via @thanland)

Kreayshawn The Game  Oct 28 2011

From Beth Maher, a Flash video game featuring rapper Kreayshawn (Gucci Gucci). And it uses Silkscreen! (via clusterflock)

Michael Winslow gets the Led out  Oct 19 2011

There is a sense amongst my generation that Michael Winslow's best performing days are behind him. (You'll remember Winslow as Officer Sound Effects from Police Academy.) After all, we live in the age of the beatboxing flautist. You might change your tune after watching Winslow do Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. The first 28 seconds are like, oh, I've heard this before yawn zzzzzzzzzz WHOA, WHERE THE HELL DID THAT GUITAR NOISE COME FROM??!

And then it goes bananas right around 1:30. This is a must-see. (via @beep)

George Harrison: Living in the Material World  Oct 03 2011

Premiering on HBO this week, a Martin Scorsese documentary on George Harrison, everyone's favorite Beatle who wasn't John or Paul.

Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese traces Harrison's live from his musical beginnings in Liverpool though his life as a musician, a seeker, a philanthropist and a filmmaker, weaving together interviews with Harrison and his closest friends, performances, home movies and photographs. Much of the material in the film has never been seen or heard before. The result is a rare glimpse into the mind and soul of one of the most talented artists of his generation and a profoundly intimate and affecting work of cinema.

Piano quality and consumer technology regression  Sep 29 2011

A piano technician reports that the best pianos were built around 1900 and we'll never again see their like...the quality of today's pianos just doesn't measure up.

The finest pianos in the world were built about a hundred years ago. Due to evolution in engineering, exhaustion of raw materials, and flagging business standards, we will never see their like again. Some people may build very good pianos; new forms of the instrument may exceed (in narrow ways) the magnificent machines built a few decades either side of the year 1900. But, from a musical perspective, there will never be a "better" piano than the typical concert grand of a century ago.

(via @kdawson)

Rare footage of live Nirvana concert  Sep 28 2011

YouTube has 45 minutes of previously unreleased footage of a Halloween concert Nirvana played in 1991 at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.

The DVD contains the full performance (there's also a Blu-ray version out in a few months). I think this might be one of my answers to "what would you do if you had a time machine?"... (via devour)

Update: The video seems to be down right now...not sure if it'll be back or not. Sorry...