Gorillaz New Release “The Fall”
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 25, 2010 by admin in Music
Saturday, December 25th, 2010Composed on the road with the iPad as a key instrument, the Gorillaz new release “The Fall” is their Christmas gift to you.
A few months ago we pondered the iPad as a musical instrument, but while we were sitting around on our butts pondering, apparently Gorillaz
We Mix You A Merry Christmash – Fun Alternatives To Your Usual Christmas Music Playlist Ideas
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 15, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010After weeks of Christmas songs insinuating themselves into your life, a holiday playlist is probably the LAST thing you want to think about. So we’ve done some thinking for you.
 This is not a gratuitous image exploiting women. We included a clip of Charo singing Feliz Blah Blah Blah on Pee Wee’s Playhouse below. Made ya look though. |
It all begins around the first of November, when you’re at the market staring at piles of deeply discounted mini chocolate bars left over from Halloween, and suddenly, like some sonic message from the dark side, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” pokes through the ambient shopping noise. By mid-December, you’ve probably subliminally absorbed so many Christmas songs that you find yourself spontaneously whistling “Walkin’ In A Winter Wonderland” while making love. So it’s natural that so many people groan at the idea of listening to Christmas music on purpose. Which is a shame, because thanks to the thousands of crassly opportunistic attempts to cash in on the Christmas spirit, there are literally thousands of tunes to choose from, in every genre, from several decades. We’ve previously tried to cover all the bases; over the past couple of years we Jewished you a merry Christmas with Oye To The World, suggested some Santastic mashups with Generation Xmas, and with Generation Triple X-Mas we got on Santa’s naughty list. So this year, we thought we’d try to get back on the “nice” list with some actually sane Christmas music ideas, and a few oddities thrown in for fun. If you’ve ever gone searching on the web for some new holiday music ideas, you may have had that Wikiphilia-like experience of suddenly realizing you just wasted three hours of your life mindlessly YouTubing weird Christmas tunes like we did. So we have to give considerable thanks to MistleTunes, Falalalala.com, and Check The Cool Wax for their passion and devotion to compiling and organizing thousands of offbeat and obscure holiday songs. They bring a lot of the spirit back to what should be one of the best parts of the holidays. The music! Hope you enjoy, and feel free to share your own playlist ideas. Read the rest of this entry »
Yeah Yeah Yeah. The Beatles Are On iTunes
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 18, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, November 18th, 2010The long and winding road to digital music sales for the Beatles began with one Apple, and ends with another.
The word is that the day before yesterday, after a decade long wait, the Beatles catalog finally became available on iTunes. Should we care? Well, Todd Martens of the LA Times has some reasons why we shouldn’t. Personally, you won’t see me rushing to download a bunch of Beatles songs for a price 30% higher than anything else on iTunes. But I’m not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other; I prefer you think for yourself. Except you may have noticed I’m playing a little game of trying to sprinkle Beatles song titles into what I’m saying, because I’ll make money if you follow the links and buy something. After a few sentences, you’d think I’d be getting better at it, but clearly I’m not. So I will stop now. But that silliness I just engaged in is an example of something you might want to ponder. Releasing this material on iTunes really means only one thing. Revenue. And for whom? Certainly not the two Beatles that many would agree were the cool ones. And certainly not Michael Jackson, who owned half of the publishing rights. No, in my opinion, this is the big lumbering thud of the money tree of the old music industry falling. It’s ironic to ponder that without the business model that devoured the Beatles’ profits as artists and fueled the decades of legal wrangling over them, the Beatles would probably not have even existed, let alone become the legend that they now are. And then, you wouldn’t be able to buy every song over and over and over in endless re-re-releases including absurdities like a $299 Apple-shaped USB stick
Is Classical Music Dead?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 2, 2010 by admin in Music
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010Obviously not. But it doesn’t seem to be feeling very well.
 Maybe classical will have the last laugh. |
I was much more of an audio snob when I was a teen than I am now. At the peak of my snobbishness I had a Thorens direct drive turntable, a McIntosh (no, not MacIntosh) amp, and custom speakers that I built myself using components from a Seattle company called SpeakerLab. Aside from being able to blast my Aerosmith, Bowie, and Clash records at 120 decibels, I could then turn around, switch out the stylus, and throw on some immaculate Deutsche Grammaphon pressing of Beethoven, Bartok, Tchaikovsky or Arvo Pärt. Not too long after that the CD came along, and we were all so distracted by its signal-to-noise ratio and “accuracy” that it took us forever to notice how really bad they sound because of their sample rate. And in the 90′s, my snobbishness finally died a quiet death in the hands of a computer and a crappy file format known as mp3. The ability to compile and shovel around songs by the thousands and not need physical storage space seduced me. And the ability to choose from such a vast array became more important somehow than slowing down and really listening. This fact was painfully highlighted for me the other day when a friend and I were lamenting the dearth of classical music outlets these days. I don’t even know if there is one where I live, and my friend who lives in Chicago says they are a rarity even in a city of its size. So is classical music dying? Well, in a way, yes. The broad category referred to as classical has recently had extremely low unit-per-artist sales and accounted for around 3% of American music sales, and around 5% of global sales. And the trend has been to head steadily downward for some time. Adding to the genre’s woes, American orchestras are recently enduring severe budget crunches. So is this the end of the centuries-long line? Well, Universal and Sony don’t think so; they’ve launched Passionato and Ariama, respectively. Both sites offer CD’s and downloads in both mp3 and FLAC formats. Does this mean there’s hope? What do you think? Have you rocked any Amadeus lately? Is classical doomed? I personally predict an indie classical rock revival with renewed interest in the classics. But then, I’m an ELO fan.
More Guilty Pleasures Of 70′s Symphonic Rock: The Moody Blues
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on September 24, 2010 by admin in Music
Friday, September 24th, 2010Sure, these stoned, classically-trained hippies may have accidentally planted the seeds of the new age movement, but until tragedy struck in 1978, they were one of the best art rock bands in existence.
  With covers like this they may have been indirectly responsible for the new age movement, but they still rocked. |
Last year I publicly revealed the shameful pleasure I still derive from listening to 70′s symphonic rock band ELO, and was genuinely surprised by how many people still enjoyed their Beatles-esque pop genius. Well, today I have an even more shameful confession. I am a hopeless The Moody Blues fan. In spite of the fact that these guys were essentially a bunch of hairy-faced, classically-trained hippies who may be single-handedly responsible for the entire new age movement with their penchant for stoned, pseudo-spiritual peacenik poetry interludes and dreamy airbrush psychedelic album covers, they also happened to be amongst the most talented and innovative of all the 60′s/70′s art rock bands, with their brilliant early use of the mellotron and tight pop symphonics, provided mostly by the London Festival Orchestra. The Moody Blues especially stood out amongst many of their prog-rock contemporaries like Yes or Pink Floyd for the simple fact that they possessed a gift that few of these bands did: the ability to not sound like crap live. In fact, if you’re familiar with the studio version of Ride My See-Saw, I would defy you to be able to tell the difference between it and this live Paris club performance (also below) from 1970. The band churned out a string of hit singles and solid albums beginning with (video below) 1964′s Go Now – which could easily be mistaken for a song by Peter Bjorn & John or Grizzly Bear – and culminating with 1972′s Seventh Sojourn. Unfortunately, after creating a series of well-crafted stoner concept albums like Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Seventh Sojourn, and A Question of Balance, as well as resilient singles like Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon and I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock ‘n Roll Band), tragedy struck in 1978. No, there was no tragic aircrash, 1978 was the year the band decided to get back together and release Octave, which launched a series of middle-of-the-road pop dreck albums with aging rock star saccharine hits like I Know You’re Out There Somewhere. Personally, I do a good job of pretending – as I do with much of the 80′s – that their later releases never happened, and just enjoy the good stuff. Vids below. Read the rest of this entry »