Entries Tagged 'ear-candy' ↓

Talking Heads, 1977 (via jstn via frangry via alexagray)

Apple’s new iTunes-enabled music store sold 1 million songs in its first week of operations, shattering all records and expectations. Unlike the restrictive music services run by the major music labels (MusicNet and Pressplay):

Apple is rumored to be developing a version of iTunes for Windows. Considering that the Mac represents only 8% of the PC market, the potential sales are enormous once Windows and Linux users — as well as users from anywhere else in the world besides the US — are allowed into the store.

Over at different strings, Kriselda called my attention to a recent lawsuit brought by four concert-goers against the band Creed. According to the MSNBC report on the suit, filed on April 22 in Chicago for the events which occurred at the December 29, 2002 concert:

I’m looking at a little raffia basket full of the 300-400 ticket stubs my wife and I have accumulated in the 20 years we’ve been together. Most of those stubs are for music events: concerts and nightclub shows. When you go to that many shows, you get all kinds of experiences, from the transcendent(Luna at Irving Plaza) to the abysmal (Smashing Pumpkins at Lollapalooza, Randalls Island, NY in 1994) to the so-bad-it’s-brilliant (Johnny Thunders at the Cat Club, NYC). The thing is: you never know what you’re gonna get.

What did these litigious concert-goers get for their money? They got a show. They got a 2-hour car-wreck of a show. They got a glimpse of the performer as a fallible human, not a mechanical jukebox. They got to watch the rest of the band — and it is a band — attempt to soldier on through their mate’s antics. They lived through an experience, which — while it wasn’t what they’d bargained for — was certainly memorable, certainly something which will stick with them for the rest of their lives.

And what do they do? They sue. They sue because the concert didn’t meet their expectations. They sue because the live performance wasn’t of high enough quality. To which I say: if you want perfection, play the fucking CD at home and save your money, and the court’s time, and the livelihoods of the venue owners and employees. Save everyone the trouble and stay in your living room and when the CD is over, press “Play” again and the performance will be exactly the same as you expected.

Because… what’s next for these plaintiffs and their attorney? When they attend a Broadway play and the star’s understudy plays the role, will they sue? When they go to the baseball game and the star player is on the disabled list, will they sue? When they take the kids to the zoo and the pandas aren’t frisky, will they sue? Is this a whole new practice area for their attorney’s firm? Or is it just another punchline to a lawyer joke?

(And all this about a band with a large Christian-rock following. I know nothing about the plaintiffs’ religious background, but I wonder: did these idiots even stop to think that this is probably a sick man on that stage? Did they pause in their self-righteous arrogance for a second to give this man maybe a little understanding, a little brotherly love, a little forgiveness, a little tolerance?)

I just hope a judge with a smidgen of common sense tosses this case before it really gets started.

If the reports are true, how long before Steve becomes Big Brother? With Apple poised to spend US$5-6 billion purchasing Universal Music, how long before DRM becomes part of OX 10.4 “Bobcat”? When will iTunes rat you out to the RIAA?

Or maybe, just maybe… this is the start of a change which needs to come from within the industry… Maybe Apple/Universal will get together with Sony, similarly divided between media and technology, and start bringing some sense to the digital download debate?

Fitting timing. On Thursday, Edwin Starr , the singer of “War”, probably the most successful anti-war song, died of a heart attack at his home in Nottingham, England. He was 61 years old.

Over at Legal MP3 Downloads, they’re maintaining a blog listing of free and cheap music downloads. The songs are usually in only one of the major formats: MP3, WMA, or Liquid Audio.

While there might not be an infinite selection, the front page lists over 70 cuts by artists from Lil’ Kim to Allison Kraus to Faith No More, to Australian star Paul Kelly.

I’m sure the selection will get even better as time goes on, and with more user suggestions. One thing I’d like to see… if it’s possible: a stream of the songs — from their original sites. This would be similar to what epitonic.com does with their Epitonic Radio.

[Via Frank Fields' FURDLog]

UPDATE: I heard from David Lawrence, at the Legal MP3 Downloads blog and he points me to an article (which I missed) where he discusses the original purpose of the site. In his e-mail to me, he says:

He’s got a clear purpose, a narrow focus, and that’s going to be what makes the site work. Good luck, David!

Andrew Bayer Is Dreaming of China pointed me to the website of WFNX (Boston), where they’re currently showing a list of “The Top 500 Ever” Alternative songs. As Andrew says:

I’m not even gonna quibble about the order of the songs. What I want to know is: what is the criteria for “alternative”? Roxy Music’s 1976 hit “Love Is the Drug” (#340)? David Bowie’s 1969 Top 5 UK hit “Space Oddity” (#46)? “One Love” by Bob Marley and the Wailers from 1977 (#36)?

“Rock” is a big genre. (Rock could probably be classed as a sub-genre of “Pop” or “Popular” Music, which is distinguished from “Classical” and maybe “Folk/Ethnic” and “Liturgical”.) Rock has plenty of sub-genres — Reggae, Singer/Songwriter, Electronica, Folk-rock, Dance, Hard, Britpop — which overlap with its historical periods — Glam, Punk, New Wave, Grunge, College, Psychedelic, Hair-bands.

This selection of “Alternative” songs — which span five decades, major labels, indie labels, top ten hits, album cuts, acoustic songs, electronic cuts, cover versions — have absolutely nothing to unite them and are therefore meaningless as a classification. I wish the appellation would just disappear forever.

(There is one thing I did notice while looking through the list: with the exception of Bob Marley — 4 songs — and Lenny Kravitz — 3 songs — this is a very white list…)

Saw my favorite band on Friday night. Jenn got me tickets to see Luna for my Christmas present and I’ve been waiting patiently for the show to come around. I wasn’t disappointed. This was the third time I’ve seen them live, and the first time I’ve been to Fletcher’s here in Balto.

The first time I saw them was at the Academy in Manhattan. (The venue was in midtown, but I think it’s gone now.) Luna was opening for the Sundays, and although I loved the Sundays, I was transfixed by Dean Wareham’s guitar and his almost-just-talking voice, and the sardonically funny lyrics like: “You can never give/ The finger to the blind”, “I look at my dog/ we’re both confused.” I couldn’t find the album anywhere — maybe it hadn’t come out yet.

The next time I heard them , though, was on a CMJ “Certain Damage” disc which my friend Rob — a CMJ employee — had given me. When I came across “Tiger Lily,” [clip at Amazon] I put the Discman on repeat and listened to it for the rest of my shift at the newspaper. The next morning I went and bought the first album, Luna and the Slide EP, and subjected everyone I knew to my endless rants about how awesome they were.

The second time we saw them play was at Irving Plaza on the Penthouse tour. We’d driven down to Manhattan from our place in Albany, NY just for the show, and we’d be driving back right afterwards since we both had to work the next morning. We had no drugs in us, no alcohol (Irving Plaza back then only served Heineken & Rolling Rock in plastic cups for US$5 a pop, and life is too short for bad beer) and still, I became lost in “Chinatown” and I didn’t surface again until the houselights came on. I’d forgotten where I was, and when I turned to Jenn, she just whispered, “That was the most amazing show I’ve ever seen.”She’d been lost, too.

Friday’s show wasn’t a transformative experience like that earlier one, but it still ranks with some of the best. Fletcher’s is a tiny club and it was completely sold out. The opening band (Calla) had to cancel for some reason, so there was a guy playing an acoustic guitar and a keyboard (someone said it was John Mayer, but I can’t really be sure…) Luna came on around 11:30, Dean Wareham looking really skinny and (relatively) new bassist Britta Phillips looking really gorgeous. They didn’t say much, just launching into a set that covered most of my favorites, with the exception of “California” and “Chinatown.” They hit a high point in the extended “23 Minutes In Brussels” and if it weren’t for the distraction of water suddenly pouring out of one of the track lights in the black-painted ceiling right next to us, I think I would’ve been spirited away once again.

Still, this show (and Aimee Mann at the Recher Theater in Towson last month) made me realize how much I miss going to shows. So, I think I know what my first real New Year’s resolution is…

With their bands, Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer represent the extents of the punk spectrum, both in time and in substance. The Ramones were one of the first of the punk bands, surfacing at CBGBs in the mid-70s, and playing their brilliantly brainless 3-chord paeans to sniffing glue, performed at blinding speed in the style of some alternate-reality girl group. Strummer’s band, the Clash, was more cerebral, more worldly, more political, and angrier, infusing their left-wing sentiments with reggae, rockabilly and latin rhythms, and ending the punk era with their break-up in 1982.

One of the biggest disappointments of my concert-going life was my inability to get tickets to see the Clash at their 17-date Bond’s Casino stand in New York City 1981. When the fire inspectors closed the show for overcrowding, the band decided to extend their stay long enough so that every ticket-holder would get a chance to see the show. I wasn’t one of them.

Ramone died last year of lymphoma, and Strummer died yesterday of an apparent heart attack. Unlike the Who and the Stones, both Ramone and Strummer died before their times, before they got old.

Okay, so maybe I’m dense, but I just realized why the MP3 situation is so frustrating to the entertainment industry that they’ve been buying House members and Senators and rewriting the Constitution, as well as calling their own clients criminals in reaction. It was this article in Wednesday’s WaPo which opened my eyes.

In the past, whenever consumers swooned for a new music format, like CDs, the record industry made a fortune from the conversion. This time, millions of listeners are again getting their music in a new medium — MP3s and other modem-friendly formats — but the labels aren’t profiting from the revolution. This time the revolution is actually hurting them.

I’m thinking of “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“. I bought it on vinyl as one of my first album purchases ever. My father bought an 8-track player for our 1965 Chevy station wagon when we moved out to Long Island in 1970 and he had an hour-long commute to work. For Hannukah one year, he bought me a copy of Sgt. Pepper in that (terrible) format. When cassettes became popular, I went around replicating most of my (very small) album collection on the much more durable format, since I’d never been very good at vinyl — scratching, skipping, replacing needles, and a complete inability to balance the damned tone arm. I replaced the tape when CDs came out, but kept the album around both for cleaning pot and for attempting to identify the members of the crowd surrounding Paul’s grave.

I’m the kind of sucker who would’ve probably purchased a CD of MP3s of the album, especially if they packaged it with a full-sized poster of the album cover! And I’m sure I’m not alone. And, then, there’d be the conversion to the next format and the next and the next…