I was checking out some tracks on Rapsody. Evanescence was playing and a vampire movie was the the sponsor.

I’ll wager I’d get the same advert if I were listening to Liberace (who is not quite as goth as John Tesh, but close).

 

You can either treat your fans as a necessary evil, or you can embrace them. The Japanese band Sour went one step further and made their fans the stars of their latest music video.

The concept: ask your fans to do specific actions in front of their web cams, then assemble the individual actions into a complex dance involving people from around the world.

The result:

SOUR / 日々の音色 (Hibi no Neiro) MV from Magico Nakamura on Vimeo.

 

This is fantastic. Rock on violin dude!

Michael Shulman describes himself as a “neo classical shred violinist & dancer”. Whatever it is, I like it.

 

It's been a while since I pulled down some good free music. I stopped obsessing over every Mercedes Benz Mixed tape and haven't gone on a mash-up bender for years. Yesterday, however, a couple free albums caught my attention.

Harvey Danger - Little by Little

Harvey Danger has put their third album up for a free download in the hopes that you'll try it, like it and buy it. While the album is free, the band is relying on your honesty to buy it if you like it. I personally like this model, partially because I have a huge tendency to feel guilty about intellectual copyright so I'm sure I'll pay if I like it. I do hope that enough of the public also steps up and pays because I'd be really cool to see this type of trust continue.

My take? It's catchy pop/rock with pervasive piano and harmonies giving it a decidedly Beatle-esque feel (which isn't bad in my book). And, heck, they're a Seattle band. Note: if you really like it you may want to get the CD since it has 9 more tracks.

Get it!

NIN|JA - Tour Sampler EP

Perhaps they're touring together because they have similar music, perhaps it's mutual respect between the bands... I think it's just because they realized that combining their names creates "NIN|JA". Whatever the reason, Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction (and Street Sweeper) are offering a free sampler album with two tracks from each band to help promote the tour. Unlike other "check us out, please" free albums, this one is promotional and doesn't come with the guilt of needing to donate money (other than you should go buy tickets and see them live... unless you're old like me and would probably break a hip in the mosh pit).

My take? Classic NIN and Jane's Addiction sound. Turn it up and let your ears bleed freely. I was also pleasantly surprised by Street Sweeper, a nice Industrial/Nu Metal blend with a bit of gansta' rap special sauce poured on top.

Get it!

Bonus album: At the NIN site you can get The Slip for free too.

 

I love listening to music, I have gigabytes of tracks stored on my Home Media Server but there's a catch: who has time to look through nearly twenty-thousand tracks to pick out just the right grouping of songs? 

Enter Pandora, a fantastic streaming music service which takes a song or artist as input and then creates a steaming radio station based off the musical "genes" of your choice (for more, see The Music Genome Project).  It's fantastically easy, and it's free to listen from your computer.  Try it out, you don't even need to create an account to start listening.  Genius!

The whole experience is really quite slick.

• Land on the home page and you're prompted to enter a track or artist... no login to get started!
  
• Playing music to fit your mood is as easy as picking a song or artist.  Let's say I'm in the mood for some Yes, type in to the box, click "create" and Pandora sez: 
  
• Sweet, what about the rest of the songs?  Next track is Pink Floyd:
  
• You can rate each song, telling Pandora to play more like it, or not play that song anymore on that station.  You can also look up why any song is playing if you're curious.
• While it's free to listen to on the web you can also pay a nominal fee for Pandora goodness on your other devices.  For example, if you have a Sonos or Squeezebox you can pay $36 a year to stream custom, commercial-free radio stations around your house.

What's playing on the Yes station?

While Pandora is almost magical, it isn't infallible. 

• If you listen for a long time (several hours) you'll start hearing repeats. 
• Pandora sometimes seems to get its wires crossed... our Dixie Chicks station will occasionally play Corn or Guns 'N Roses.  Huh?

It's also worth noting that Pandora doesn't allow you to play any song you like at any time (like Napster), but that also allows them to have pricing more like satellite radio.

Now what I'd like to see is Pandora for my own music.  Let me pick a track then have Pandora create a play list I can sync to my portable media player.

 

... Fight Like Apes!

With an EP title like "David Carradine Is A Bounty Hunter Whos Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch", how can you not love these folks?

The quirky title might grab your attention but the Dublin quartet will definitely please with great tracks and a style described as "synth-grunge".  Check out their My Space page and have a listen.

 

Note: I realize "Whos" is not "good English"... but that is the album title.  They are, after all, quirky.

 

A couple years ago I got hooked on music mash-ups when a coworker pointed me to the work of Party Ben, a DJ who, until recently, had a mash-up show on San Francisco's alternative station Live 105.  Since then I've been hooked.

What's a mash-up?  
Music mash-ups are the result of a DJ taking two different songs and mixing them together into a hybrid of the two, sometimes with fantastic results.  It's a little like sampling (taking a riff from one song and making a new song around it).  Some of the results are total crap... but sometimes one can find some real gems.

Why do I enjoy mash-ups so much? 
Well... I listen to music a lot and find I get sick of what's on the radio and what I have in my own collection.  Mash-ups are a fun way to listen to music I already like and make it fresh again.

Where can you find mash-ups? 
A quick search will net you all sorts of stuff but you can save yourself a lot of legwork by simply going to Mashuptown, a mash-up review blog which picks out great tracks almost daily. Mashuptown will point you to the sites of some great DJs where you can find more great tracks on your own.  Another good place to start is on the mixes page of Party Ben's site.  Party Ben has a collection of tracks all crammed into a single file, as if you were listening to a long set at a club.

 

In case you were snoozing (I sure was) Mercedes-Benz mixed tape 16 is out.

 

Saw this on Christopher's site (he saw it on Trina's site (she got it from her brother-in-law (he saw it on CC Chapman's site (he got it as a chain mail from his sister))))... have I mentioned I have trouble staying on track?  Where was I?  Oh yes... 

The general idea is this: put your entire music library on shuffle, write down the first 14 tracks and slot them in for these pre-set sections of your life movie (rules, my play list and movie scenes below).

So, here's the thing, I wanted to link to clips of each of the tracks so people would be able to listen to them if curious, but Amazon doesn't have samples of all these tracks... so I instead went waaaaayyyy off the reservation and and started pulling pictures in from my life, slapping them into Photo Story and adding the musical tracks.  The end result lands somewhere between nostalgia and narcissism.

Video: My Life

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Steps/rules:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every section below, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new section, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool …

#	Scene	Track
1	Opening Credits	Embrujo by Triumph
2	First Day At School	Breaking the Silence by Queensryche
3	Falling in Love	Boomerang by Kiss
4	Breaking Up	Play Rough by Night Ranger
5	Prom	In Search of a Rose by The Waterboys
6	Mental Breakdown	Seeing Things by The Black Crowes
7	Flashbacks	Knights of the Round Table by Monty Python
8	Getting Back Together	Mr. Rainmaker by Warrant
9	Wedding Scene	Apples and Pears by moO
10	Final Battle	Homewrecker by Gretchen Wilson
11	Death Scene	Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon by Neil Diamond
12	Funeral Song	Full Sail by Rick Emmett
13	End Credits	Two Guys a Girl and A Horn Section by Redwood School District
14	Anthem	World Start Turning by Rick Springfield

 

I'm stuck listening to Metal all day today, and it's the fault of a pair of Mexican guitarists.

Tuesday night Paula and I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela in downtown Dublin.  This couple got their "start" several years back here in Dublin are are currently in the middle of a world tour. 

I put "start" in quotes because this acoustic guitar playing duo were in a metal band before moving to Dublin and redefining themselves with an infectious mix of Spanish guitar, flamenco, jazz and heavy metal.  The duo's show draws you in as they chat with the crowd, jam together and string together an almost random combination of original pieces and cover songs.  The best way to understand their music and personalities is to go see a show (and you really should). For folks state-side set your TiVos to record Letterman on the 18th, they're definitely worth sitting through some stupid people tricks to see.  They'll also be in Seattle on the 15th at Chop Suey.  Check out their site for Philadelphia, Denver and Chicago dates too.  As a poor substitute, here's a melange of clips I recorded at their show.

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A nice bonus was the opening act, Foy Vance.  Foy, with floppy hair, stellar guitar chops and wonderful voice, was a complete surprise.  Imagine if James Taylor and Mary Chapin Carpenter's love child had been raised in Belfast by George Harrison.  Okay, perhaps that's  a little hard to imagine, just go check out his music on his MySpace site, it's worth the trip.

 

I downloaded this one at the beginning of April, so Mercedes-Benz's mixed tape 11 is certainly not brand new, but hey... it's free music.  Grab it while it's still there.

 

I went to the effort to copy/paste nice album art for Windows Media player for each of the mixed tapes (they only come with Adobe Reader art for printing) so I thought I might as well share them:

  

  

  

Download and use with AV Soft Album Art Checker.

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And for those of you who are curious... the Mercedes-Benz mixed tapes work just fine in a Volvo station wagon (or other car of your choice).

 

Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape 9 is out along with some other interesting news: MB is branching out from the music business into the spoken word.  Early December Mercedes will publish its first volume of text tracks for download.  Billed as "Challenging literature for mobile people, young authors read by well known voices" it should provide a bit of variety to your morning commute.  We can only hope the right type of people download these audio tracks... plenty of people in California have enough trouble driving as it is... throwing challenging literature into the mix could create a tremendous road hazard.

Mercedes-Benz text tracks, think of it as Mercedes-Benz Mixed Audio Books.

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Addendum: Small print on the back of the cover for MBMT9 indicates that volume 10 will be available on 12/13/2005 at http://www.mercedes-benz.com/mixedtape/ ... mark your calendars.

 

Success! 

I have finally reached the end of my CD collection... they are now all ripped.  870 (give or take) CDs are now stored on my PC.  17,501 files in 1,411 folders for a total of 270Gb.  There are 458 unique album artists covering just about every, imaginable genre.

Crap?  How do I find something now?

Windows Desktop Search to the rescue!  I use this free desktop search engine at work to quickly dig through megabytes of saved e-mails… and now I’ve also found a great use for it at home as well.

You can either type in your search (searching through e-mail, files and more) then narrow the results to just the music files by clicking the “Music” icon in the toolbar or you can use the keyword “music” when you perform the search (e.g. “Robert Plant Kind:music”).  You can even create some quick play lists by doing a search like “kind:music genre:classical”.  From the results you can select multiple files and either play them directly from search or create a play list.

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Ripping all the music was done over the period of four months and took me hours to complete, I definitely don’t want to do it twice.  All the music is ripped to a RAID array, each hard disk has an exact duplicate.  For backup advice, see my earlier post: Are you crash-safe?

 

Put simply: Mercedes Benz Mixed Tape 8 is out.  Get your fix of free Euro-pop and Jazz.

Too tired to blog.  Me: TV.  You: Download.

 

I was organizing my music last night (after ripping another 110 albums this weekend) and was reminded of the free music from Mercedes.  On a whim I went back to the Mercedes Benz Mixed Tape site... they're up to number 7!  They were supposed to e-mail me when the next edition came out but didn't.  I missed out on mixed tapes 4, 5 and 6.  Oh well, I won't pass up on some gratis Euro-pop.  Free music is free music, get yours while it's there.

 

I love free music... well, I love free legal music.  I may have to wait a while for another Mercedes Benz mixed tape but starting tomorrow (2/8) MSN Music is starting its Grammy blitz by giving away one free song from each category.  A panel of music professionals is going to attempt to predict the winner in each category... then MSN Music will give away the song predicted to win.  So, not only is it free music, it's good, free music.  You know it's good, the professionals told you so.

Now, before you point out that I'm just being a corporate pawn to Microsoft let me say this... first: I am a total pawn, second: even if I weren't a pawn I still like free music.  So there, I'm a sell-out... but I'm a cheap, stingy sell-out... that must be worth something.

There will be one free song per day, starting on February 8th.  Using my top-secret, internal Microsoft sources I've determined the order the songs will be released in is:

1. Tuesday, Feb. 8: Best Male Pop Vocal Performance/Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
2. Wednesday, Feb. 9: Best Rock Song
3. Thursday, Feb. 10: Best Rap Song
4. Friday, Feb. 11: Best R&B Song
5. Saturday, Feb. 12: Best Country Song

So, there you are, in the greatest of corporate traditions a big company has told you what you're going to like.

 

 

I was going to sell my wife's car to buy this... but she won't let me. What kind of wife won't let a guy buy a $10,000 record player? Details: ELP Laser Turntable

 

Okay, this is an interesting concept: cut up a bunch of songs, put them in a database as words then let people construct their own songs. It's great, cause if you can't sing, you can Let them sing it for you.

 

Let's say you're an avid Trekkie, you live in Sacramento and you really have a hankerin' for live music... check out some Star Trek tribute bands.