Hick Hop Hos Throw Down At The Hoedown
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 30, 2010 by admin in Music
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010In some magical realm between Kid Rock, Cowboy Troy, and Eminem, a megastar is waiting to be born.
 Bubba Sparxxx Hoggin’ The Mic |
It may never have occurred to you before just how much gangsta rap and bluegrass have in common. Well, okay. They really don’t have much. Which is why – in spite of a lot of obvious talent and decent production – a project like Gangstagrass
Music As Torture
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 24, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, June 24th, 2010The sounds of the sixties brought people together. The sounds of the 21st century are not only annoying us, they’re causing lawsuits and lethal injuries.
 The US Government’s version of a “boom car” |
While I would still contend that the recent remake of We Are The World is the most effective use of music as torture ever devised, there are a multitude of ways to cause discomfort with sound. Which I’ll get to after I tell you a little story, and give you some background. I’ve always felt that music is literally sacred, and that it should never be used to make someone else unhappy. Meaning, for instance, that if my choice of music bothers someone, I’m glad to turn it off and look for common ground. I’m rethinking my values a bit lately though, thanks to boom cars, ignorant cops, and outdoor fundraisers with drum machine driven top forty bands. Let me explain. I live in town that has an abundance of musicians. Musicians that apparently aren’t allowed to play on the streets unless they suck in some way. Example 1: A few weeks ago I walked past a talented jazz guitarist playing at a very reasonable volume. I tossed a couple bucks in his case. A few minutes later I walked back past him to find that he had stopped playing, and that a cop was writing him a ticket. I asked the cop why he was ticketing the guy. The cop cited a 90 decibel limit specified by the city. I’ve done professional sound work, so I asked this cop how he decides how many decibels a musician is generating. As he tried to explain that they have a decibel meter at city hall for when a citizen questions a cop’s judgment, a bus drove by, completely drowning him out. I got in a fairly heated argument with this public servant who risks his life daily to protect us from all this lethal jazz, because he had NO IDEA what he was talking about. He ended up not writing a ticket. I guess it was cost-inefficient for him to make the trip to get the meter. A week later, a local organization was holding a fundraiser across the street from my apartment. Their “entertainment” committed two crimes at once. First, they played at well over 90 decibels until after 11pm. And second, they played songs like “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone”. WITH A DRUM MACHINE. And finished off their sound with nasal, midwest schoolteacher whitefolk vocals. Granted, there’s actually no law against sucking, but where was that cop NOW? I pondered the likely results of filing a noise complaint against a fundraiser for a major medical institution, and decided it would be futile. So I ended up doing one of the more childish things I’ve done in my life, which was to digitally create cleverly dissonant tones and aim them out my window during the most egregious offenses against decency that the top forty band committed. Like when they started playing “Play That Funky Music White Boy [Church Lady Remix]“. After this I was feeling like a bit of a git for an hour or so, until the universe reared its ugly karmic head and treated me to a series of boom cars parking below my window. Which instead of teaching me a lesson, got me fantasizing about building a HERF Gun that would be specially tuned to destroy car audio subwoofers. This fantasy sated my frustration until the next morning when the owners of the parking structure across the street decided that 7am was a great time to star with the jackhammers. Again, where was that noise-fighting cop now? So while you’d probably suggest that I should just move to the country and all my problems would be solved, the point I’m really getting at is that sound is more and more often being used recklessly, rudely, and in some cases violently. Below is a quick list of these evil uses of sound, and what you can do about them. Read the rest of this entry »
Live Indignation & Ticketmaster Slavery
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 9, 2010 by admin in Music
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010It would be nice if the cost of live music were to enjoy the same market adjustment that recorded music has over the last decade, but things will probably get worse before they get better with the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
Few things have made me more ecstatic than the explosion of indy music over the past decade. But I still have one complaint. Ticket prices. While the average pop song has settled nicely at a price of about a dollar, and the artist generally takes a bigger slice of that dollar in spite of the lower unit price, concert tickets rose in price by over 80% between 1996 and 2003, and have continued to rise consistently since then. What’s behind this insane inflation of concert prices? Well, everyone’s pointing fingers, but most agree that it began over a decade ago with the aggressive and monopolistic practices of Clear Channel, who devoted most of their energy to decimating the diverse network of venues and promoters that used to exist. But as easy as it is to place ALL the blame on them, the fact is that “premium artists”, i.e.: dinosaur rock baby boomer idols like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles – are just as much to blame in many ways, by charging upwards of 300 bucks for shows, in order to offset their lousy album sales and still be able to stay in $2,000 a night hotels while on tour. Even a next generation act like Green Day can be accused of this greed, if you believe the numbers in this infographic; Green Day’s 65% cut makes the promoters and venues look like they’re being reasonable. It’s rough enough out there that even a well-established artist like Imogen Heap had to throw in the towel recently. And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better, in light of the DOJ’s recent approval of the monster merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. I think it’s time we started to practice some asymmetrical warfare techniques against the concert ticketing industry. It would be amazing if a network of non-ticketmaster promoters and venues could pull it together. I personally would be out every night of the week if I could catch a decent band for ten or fifteen bucks on a regular basis. We’ve done it with record labels, lets change the game with radio and live music too.
Bell Gardens – Hangups Need Company
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 22, 2010 by admin in Music
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010Members of the groups Stars Of The Lid and Furry Things get together to form the immaculately anachronistic pop group Bell Gardens.
If you enjoy perusing the meandering sub-genres of current indy pop, you might be intrigued by Bell Gardens’ new EP “Hangups Need Company” (available on vinyl
Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 9, 2010 by admin in Music
Sunday, May 9th, 2010Id’ like to teach the world to sing, but it sounds like they already know how.
The Britlin Losee clip that started it all |
If you saw the video at left on its own, you might just think “Aw, what a silly sappy little fangirl with a sweet voice”, or, if you’re a weepy little crybaby like me, you might actually tear up a bit. She does have a lovely little voice, and she seems like she’s on the verge of crying as she does her introduction and then sings an a capella piece. But what makes the whole thing more touching is that her simple, unsolicited video clip inspired American choral composer Eric Whitacre to assemble his Virtual Choir (clips below), which is a project that uses 285 singers from 12 countries to perform his work. So what’s so inspiring about that? Well, it’s all done through YouTube! On his how we did it page, he describes how a friend sent him the Britlin Losee clip, which inspired the rest. Although the inclusion of Whitacre “virtually conducting” a couple hundred YouTube clips floating in darkness detracts a bit from the video production (it lends a slightly “John Tesch” vibe), the resulting music is gorgeous, and embodies the sort of thing that’s rarely achieved but always hoped for via the web: international sharing of creativity, passion, harmony, and beauty. It also proves something that I’ve always believed but am willing to ascribe to my perceptual disorders, which is that everyone has a song in them. I am almost always hearing a choir in my head, and this music sounds like part of it. Now I know what some of the people look like! More clips below. Read the rest of this entry »