I loved these guys back when I was in high school. It has been years since I listened to them, and last night, I did some searching on the internets on Grooveshark and found these guys again. I hadn’t forgotten them, but I just hadn’t listened in a while.
I just went to MTVMUSIC.com, another really cool site that allows you to search and FIND videos to almost any song…heaven. I found a video for Blister in the Sun and thought I would share it here. It has some clips from Gross Pointe Blank which is a bonus. It also has the lead singer taking a shot at a presidential cat, that was weird, but I still loves the song, and the Femmes. I am old.
Just posted to Last.fm. I am afraid that I am talking to myself there so I am posting my entry here as well.
Wow, the value of this site is starting to rear its head. It is a lot of fun to look at what I have been listening to since the last time I had to rebuild my iTunes library.
It has been about a year, but a while back, the hard drive that I used to keep my music collection got corrupted and I had to go to backups and rebuild my music collection. Unfortunately, as in many cases, my backup wasn’t complete and I lost a number of files.
That was the point when my music listening statistics began again.
The great thing about this site is how it confirms some beliefs and denies others. For instance, I knew that I liked Coldplay, but according to the stats here, they are my number one band. I would have assumed that John Mayer would have been number one.
All these stats get me thinking. Now, I wonder what the numbers would look like if I combined my wife’s stats with mine. I can assure you that John Mayer would win in a landslide. Even more interesting, if I added my kids, High School Musical, Jonas Brothers, and Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana would show up with alarming frequency
I just started using the social music site last.fm. You can check out my page! They have a journal/blogging system on the site that allows you to post entries about your thoughts on music. I posted something there, and I was afraid that the post would just disappear into the ether so I am going to post it here too!
I have heard about this site for years now and I haven’t felt like jumping in, but now.. it is a Friday, and I just bought Coldplay‘s Viva La Vida, and music is on my mind so now is as good a time as any to jump in and do some social music.
Shuffle on iTunes
I have iTunes set to shuffle on a playlist I call Super Mix. I put all the albums I love in there and turn on shuffle. Sometimes I have this creepy feeling that iTunes shuffle has a personality and makes weird picks. Today, iTunes is in love with Coldplay. It won’t stop playing them. I hit the next track button and then it gets stuck on The Cure. I am trying to get to the magic number of tracks on last.fm so that I can see trends in my listening and all the other fun stuff this site does and I want the trends to be correct. iTunes, quit screwing me.
The latest Coldplay album is a departure from its first three albums. Where the first ones were sparse and patient in bringing the full band to bear. This album is adventurous and more in your face. It has a definite flavor of 80′s new wave and is deliciously english. I am still in that strange honeymoon phase with this album, and it is a bit of an acquired taste. I am only now starting my third listen and the songs (itunes just played another Coldplay song… what the…) are starting to grow on me.
It seems very evident that Coldplay has a lot more money to throw at an album because every song is crammed with instruments, like I said earlier. A real departure from the sparse patient sound of their earlier albums, Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and X&Y.
I am interested to see whether or not this new album will grow on me as their first three have (iTunes just played another The Cure song… this is weird…).
Introducing The Good Fear. Wow, could this band be any better? And, they are right here in Fayetteville. One of the guitar players in this video is an acquaintance of mine named Dustin Bartholomew. He used to work for the ad agency downstairs from my office. He was gracious enough to let me use some of his bands music in a video project.
Their new album is called Dirty Lowdown Adventure, and if the song in the video is any indication, the album should be quite delicious.
For more information on this band go here or here. There is more music to listen to in both places…and by the way… you’re welcome!
So let me get this straight, Sony, who has its own record label and has a lot of experience in the music business is throwing in the towel while a cell phone maker is getting started… hmmm. It sounds to me that Nokia’s music store is on death watch before it even gets started. I don’t think it will work.
Ok, I am looking at something that seems really cool. Line6 has just come out with a new line of effects pedals that are unlike anything you have ever seen before. These new pedals allow you to easily pluck the guts of the pedal out of the stompbox and replace it with different guts. What does this mean? Well, it means that you can easily switch an effects pedal from being a distortion pedal to a digital delay just by swapping out the brain. WHAT UP? That is pretty cool.
I will have to think about it further, but right now it sounds like really cool functionality, but with very little real world use. I mean, it is rare that I look at my pedal board and wish I could … as I am typing this I am already rethinking this. There are times that I wish that I had different overdrives, or what if you could change the order of the pedal… that would be cool.
I guess there is a place for these… I KNOW! You could have one or two of these tone cores in you pedal board run, and you that are reserved for those effects that you only need in certain situations. Maybe it is that sCrEaMiNg distortion that is only useful for that one thing… whatever… you could switch that out with something more useful for all the other times you play.
Don Dodge, now with Microsoft, was one of the guys on the Napster team back when it took the world by storm back in 2000. This is a great blog post about the things he learned and we can all learn from the great Napster failure.
It is extremely interesting to see what their business model was and how they viewed their future co-existing with the record industry. There was some money to be made, but the record industry would hear nothing of it. This is definitely a must read if you are in the start-up business.
This is great new. It shows that there may be a thawing in the thinking of major labels and how they market their product online. But, I’m afraid that may be a bit premature. I am adopting a wait and see attitude when it comes to labels going “unprotected”.
The tech community has been crying foul over DRM from the very get go. DRM does not protect content from pirates. DRM breaks content for upstanding customers. DRM in effect harms customers, who incidentally paid for the content, while doing nothing to stop the pirates who are the real problem.
I know there is going to be some illegal sharing, but if I know that I can get a great version of the content quickly and easily from a known source, I will take that over the malware infested waters of the sharing sites.
One of the main reasons I haven’t purchased more from the iTunes Store is that I didn’t want crippled AAC files that would transfer to my other devices. I have no incentive to be a pirate of content. I don’t want to give up my cherished bandwidth so that others who didn’t pay for the content could profit from my purchase. I do want to be able to listen to my content on my XBOX. (Which, my home computer can’t see my XBOX because the new version of Windows Media Player is broken, but that is another blog entry.)
Hurray for EMI for at least testing the waters. This is a major step towards what I see as an uptick in revenues for you company. I know I will buy more tracks if they are more useful to me.
