Music

« Older Entries | Newer Entries »

XX’s Extra X Has Made Me An Ex-X Hater

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on September 3, 2009 by admin in Music

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

All Ian wanted to do was say he really likes XX’s first release, but no-OO-oo. First he has to ramble on for 224 words about the history of bands with X in their name.


These kids are so shy that they
don’t stop mumbling and get to
the good stuff until about 0:55

I wish bands would stop resorting to using “X” in their name. For me it all started with X in the 70′s. My friends and I were all busy cutting ourselves, wearing second-hand clothes, getting weird haircuts, and listening to weird music, when all of the sudden people started calling us “Punk”. It wasn’t long after that that there were all these “punk bands” running around, acting all punk and stuff. One of the first in the states was, of course, “X”. In spite of (or maybe because of?) their solid musicianship, I remember distinctly thinking they sucked, and seemed incredibly contrived. Punk Lifestyle Rule Number 1: You can’t call yourself punk and actually be punk at the same time. It’s sort of like Groucho’s line about not wanting to belong to any club that would have people like him as a member. I mean c’mon, these alleged rebel misfits actually received an “Official Certificate of Recognition” from the City of Los Angeles for their music. We also would always confuse X with Generation X, until Billy Idol left the band and started his solo career. Which has turned out well, don’t you think? In my opinion, the only bands named X ever worth listening to were the esoteric and Read the rest of this entry »

Air Guitar, Karaoke, And Why People Hate Mimes

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 26, 2009 by admin in Music

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

How to get attention for still not doing something you can’t do.


Günther Love Understands That
Sometimes The Package Is
The Only Thing That Matters

As someone who actually likes doing things that I can actually do, I’ve always been a little perplexed by people who can’t do things pretending they are. All the same, I was disappointed that it somehow escaped my attention that the Air Guitar World Championship finals took place the other day, and that they crowned the new champion, French native Sylvain “Günther Love” Quimene. To be perfectly honest, although I had heard of air guitar competitions a few years ago, I had no idea just how big they had become. This year’s winner performed before an audience of more than 5,000 people from 20 countries, and has received international press. If you’re kicking yourself for not having your act together yet again this year, don’t (ahem) fret, learn more about the profession by reading Björn Türoque’s (say that out loud) To Air is Human: One Man’s Quest to Become the World’s Greatest Air Guitarist. Then maybe pick up an Air Guitar Pro to practice. And don’t forget to pick up some strings. You might think that being a world class air guitarist is all about dressing up in an outrageous outfit and flailing around the stage like an idiot, but there’s much more to….oh c’mon. Of course that’s what it’s all about. But apparently it’s become a much more well-defined affair. Contestants are judged on – among other things – something called “airness”, which everyone involved seems a little reluctant to define, but which doesn’t seem to require faithfully reproducing the exact gestures of actually playing a guitar. Which for some reason makes me think of Karaoke. Read the rest of this entry »

New Release From Swiss Band Yello Due October 2, 2009

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 17, 2009 by admin in Music

Monday, August 17th, 2009

You may know of them because of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Twix commercials, but Yello has been around since the late 70′s.

Some of you may only know of the band Yello from the use of their song Oh Yeah (original video below) in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Twix commercials, but the duo has been churning out innovative music since the late 70′s, and have gleefully prostituted themselves more than Moby during that time (see a long list of placements here) You might think you’ll know what to expect when you throw on a recording by a Swiss band comprised of two guys named Dieter and Boris, but the band Yello has always managed to skirt expectation just enough to keep their sample-based sound fresh over nearly three decades. Part of the reason their music holds up is that although they use sampling extensively, they don’t sample other people’s music, they sample their own and edit it into elaborate compositions. They also maintain production values on par with say, Trevor Horn or Quincy Jones, and program with the sophistication of Kraftwerk. I personally can’t wait to hear their new collection “Touch”, slated for release October 2, but I guess I’ll have to; although the track “You Better Hide” will premiere in the Swiss science fiction movie Cargo (see an early look at the movie here if you speak Swiss) on September 24th, there are otherwise no pre-releases or leaks available as of this writing. For more interesting background on Yello, visit their refreshingly functional Flash-driven site or Planet Origo.  A new Yello release? O-o-o-o-h Yeah…. Read the rest of this entry »

So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star Part III

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 11, 2009 by admin in Music

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Why Your Band Doesn’t Need A Web Site


We’re still not sure why
you’d want to pursue this.

Two different musicians asked me recently if a couple thousand dollars was a reasonable quote for a basic web site. I said “Absolutely” and then immediately added “but don’t do it”. Interestingly, both were asking for my expertise (I do have a little) but neither were asking me to do the work. Musicians are cheap bastards. I should know, I’m a recovering musician. So why did I tell them not to bother? Because almost everything you would want a web site to do for your band – streaming music, streaming video, user interaction, downloads, etc – is available as a free service elsewhere, with widgets that you can easily embed not only in a very simple site of your own, but in the billions of pages that are the Internet as well. Ask yourself the rather silly (but oft-overlooked) question: Do I want to spend a bunch of money building a destination site of my own and stuggling with SEO to get people to see it, or do I want my music on my site, several other massively trafficked music sites, and thousands of Facebook, Friendfeed, and other Social Networking pages? So the great thing is that whereas this wasn’t really possible even a year ago, there are a slew of sites now that make this absurdly simple. The embedded player from SoundCloud that’s featured below took about five minutes from account setup to embedding to create. For the record, it’s some soundtrackish dreck I did a few years ago for a benefit CD for Kenya-based Amara Conservation. But we’re not showcasing the music, we’re showcasing SoundCloud. They’re just one player in an emerging scene that is sort of like “YouTube” for audio. Below are some of the other key players.


Colonial Void by ambientitems

Read the rest of this entry »

So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star – Part II

[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 4, 2009 by admin in Music

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Well, since your music probably sucks, you might as well plan on getting naked.


If you play your cards right,
you could end up as happily
successful as this fellow!

If you really have an interest in succeeding in pop music, there’s one way to avoid having to do many of the things we’ll suggest in this piece: be an absolutely f***ing brilliant songwriter with solid musicians to play your broadly accessible music. Then some top-notch management will find you, and your only battle after that will be not getting screwed by all the deals you’ll be offered. Since you almost certainly don’t have that particular set of attributes in your possession, ask yourself a few more questions about why you’re seeking to promote your music: Do you want to make a living at it? Are you convinced for some reason the world just needs to be exposed to your genius? Do you think you might have some reasonably marketable music, and wouldn’t mind getting paid for it? Have you been hitting the crack pipe pretty hard again? The fact is that even the established music industry has one of the highest failure rates of almost any business, and you’ll be entering one of the “noisiest” markets on the planet, alas, with a “naked” product. For some interesting thoughts about the new marketplace, check out Digital Music Can’t Be Marketed, which points out that you can’t really package and Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries | Newer Entries »