Music
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star – Part I
[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 29, 2009 by admin in Music
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009A few of the music industry’s most successful artists share how.
 Are you sure you wanna go down this road? |
Music won’t leave me alone. Not that I mind; I’ve been in love with music since I was about four, when my mom managed a music store and would bring home demo models of pianos and dual-keyboard Hammonds with beatboxes built into them. As a teen, I had an Arp Axxe synthesizer before most people knew what a synthesizer was. In the early 80′s I had a good-looking but tragically Human League-like band, and in 1989 was convinced by a very savvy manager to turn down a major label deal. At that point I put music on the backburner as a career, doing occasional soundtrack drivel (well, maybe my stuff’s not that bad) through the nineties, until 2005 when I came close to jumping into the fray of on-line music distribution by expanding my web business. Recently, I’ve been hired to research and plan some marketing for a couple of artists (including Ann Arbor’s Khalid Hanifi), and among other things, was blown away by this 2007 article (which I somehow missed at the time) in which Columbia Records’ Rick Rubin actually says out loud that the traditional music business model is toast. More interestingly though, I’ve been impressed by the wealth of information shared by artists who’ve been very successful with the new business model, much of which can be distilled down to one simple idea: forget unit sales and Read the rest of this entry »
80′s One Hit Wonders
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on July 23, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Was the music & fashion so bad because we did so many drugs, or did we do so many drugs because the music and fashion was so bad?
At last, the “Official” video for 88 Lines About 44 Women. Rather peculiar, and NGSFW* |
I’d completely forgotten about the 80′s song “88 Lines About 44 Women” by The Nails until the other day when the “Official” video (also at left, NGSFW*) appeared on YouTube. I guess it isn’t so odd I’d forget about it; as much as I loved the song back then, I now remember clearly the drug-addled morning that I first heard it. I had just awakened in the San Francisco apartment of some woman I’d met the night before and she thought it really funny to play it under the circumstances. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if there were so many one-hit wonders in the 80′s simply because people were doing so many drugs that they couldn’t remember the bands’ names from release to release. I know that I, for one, remember very little of lasting value from the years 1983-1990, and given our hairstyles, clothing, and musical preferences, probably prefer it this way! But I thought it would be fun to try to recall – without using the Internet or VH-1 as a memory aid – a list of these tunes. By the way, compiling this list made me realize that there’s a previously un-named micro-genre in here somewhere that’s epitomized by tunes like Trio’s Da Da Da, The Flying Lizards’ Money (That’s What I Want), and The Nails’ song featured above. I hereby christen this genre “Clock Rock”. Remember me if that catches on. The list is below, feel free to share your own in the comments…
Microsoft & Music – A Remix We Don’t Need
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on July 15, 2009 by admin in Music
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Why is Microsoft the last thing I think of when I think of music?
You’re sitting at your computer listening to your favorite song, and suddenly your system freezes, an error box pops up saying that the “Bing Streaming Music Player” is not responding, and the music gets stuck in annoying loop. Which of course, you might not even notice, if you were playing Vanilla Ice’s ripoff of Under Pressure (we would’ve embedded those clips but ASSCAP is suing people for doing that lately). In any case, this is what I imagine happening regularly if Microsoft does in fact launch their streaming music service later this month. Remember how Microsoft’s first big media partner RealPlayer (which has actually won awards for how bad it is) used to not only try to spy on you obsessively, but would always crash while doing so? Remember the Zune launch and all its software problems? Personally, I don’t even use iTunes; I refuse to download a 72MB piece of software just so I can buy some music. I typically buy from Amazon
Who Needs The Jackson 5 When There’s The Finger 5?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 9, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, July 9th, 2009Don’t try to figure out the name. Just sing Din din dih-din, din din dih-din din, din din dih-din din dih-diddy-din din
We don’t usually customize embedded YouTube clips, but this one seemed to just cry out for a red border somehow |
We thought the Michael Jackson fans amongst you might need a little cheering up after the recent trauma you’ve endured, especially finding out that your idol was buried without a brain in his head. That’s why we’re staging a Finger Five revival. Granted, it’s a little difficult to stage a revival of something that no-one’s ever heard of, but we’ll give it a go. Finger 5 was Okinawa’s answer (not that anyone had asked the question) to the Jackson Five. Copping their style more from the Osmond Family than the Jackson family, they still had some smooth flair-bottomed 70′s moves, and made enough of an impact in their day that they’re still being covered by J-Pop girl bands like Morning Musume. Check out Morning Musume’s version of Finger 5′s biggest hit “Koi No Dial 6700″ (featured in the clip at left). Although we haven’t actually checked it out, the best collection of Finger 5′s hits seems to be Finger 5 Best 10
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Jazzy Japanese Pop Band Sour’s New Video Is Fan-Powered
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 3, 2009 by admin in Music
Friday, July 3rd, 2009The clever new video for Sour’s song Hibi no Neiro, from their new EP Water Flavor is performed entirely by fans on web cams.
Whenever I feel like I’ve pretty much seen the Internet and am ready to cancel my membership, something charming comes along and reminds me what I’m doing here. Not too long ago it was Kutiman, the Israeli guy who took hundreds of amateur music tutorial videos from YouTube and mashed them up into amazingly listenable new music. This time it’s the Japanese band Sour, whose music is just some mellow, sparse, jazzy pop that sounds sort of like if a few Japanese guys studied at Berklee and couldn’t decide who they liked more, Chet Baker or Charlie Hunter. The video at left (for their song Hibi no Neiro) was produced completely using their fans, carefully choreographed on web cams to make a whimsical little video that perfectly matches the thoughtful but upbeat tune. They have a few other playful and clever videos on YouTube, including Omokage no saki which uses simple stop-animation, and Hangetsu, which uses some clever shadow puppetry. I was going to research them a little more and write about them, when I realized the bio information on their site summed it up perfectly:
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