Archive for the “Music” Category

Last Thursday through Monday, I flew down with my Torontonian Australian Rules Football team for a weekend partyfest.

• It was bizarre seeing how segregated the workforce was between white people and minorities. The cleaning staff at my hotel just stared at us like lost puppies when we made a request.
• We sneaked onto UT Longhorn’s playing field. (photo)
• Next day some of us watched a UT women’s volleyball game vs. Colorado. I felt like I was watching a cult ceremony. For volleyball. (photo)
• Avoid 6^th street.
• Gingerman needs a Toronto location.
• Properly tried bourbon for the first time at Club DeVille. Still prefer rye.
• Saw White Denim at Mohawk.
• Followed up with Future of the Left at Beauty Bar. Don’t remember a thing because they didn’t go on until 1AM.
• Both of the above bands are in Toronto next week, but I couldn’t get a ticket to the sold out Built to Spill/Dinosaur Jr. gig!
• I have no SMS history between 2:20AM and 3:44AM on Saturday. The 3:44AM message seems to indicate I met people. Don’t have a dozen drinks starting at 2PM when you weigh less than 150lbs.
• Aussie’s Grill and Beach Bar was the location of the first time I ever witnessed someone skol a margarita.
• 16oz. ribeye at Austin Land & Cattle Co. was excellent even if my stomach wouldn’t let me finish.
• Coyote Ugly on 6th was likely the most embarrassed lately I’ve felt for another human being. I felt less so after witnessing the amount of money milked from my group from those bartenders. Faux-lesbianism while feeding cheap beer followed by expensive shots is business savvy right there. They called me McLovin’ but were too dense to notice I walked out without paying for three drinks.
• Didn’t find the time to eat proper Mexican or Texan BBQ, but did hit some late night Kebabalicious.

After four nights, I don’t think I got the full Austin, Texas experience.

Just thought I’d highlight issues I have with concert listings in my dear city. I’m talking about advanced ticketing for bands that can pack medium-sized halls. The main problem I have is a lack of centralized event listings or even a common format where concert-goers can aggregate dates and details through RSS feeds or RESTful apps. Venues in this camp include:

• El Mocambo
• Lee’s Palace
• Horseshow Tavern
• Phoenix
• Opera House
• The Mod Club (which has Flash listings that your browser can’t even search.)

Sneaky Dee’s are in there too but they haven’t had a working events calendar since their latest event booker started in June. Promoters like Against the Grain and rootmeansquare also have separate listings covering multiple venues.

Up until now, I’ve been tracking upcoming concerts by using local record stores, Rotate This and Soundscapes. They’re the best way for downtownizens to avoid Ticketmaster/LiveNation service fee money-grabs, instead getting tickets in-person with no scalping pretense. There are still issues with certain events falling through the cracks (no advanced ticketing?) and these listings not allowing custom sort criteria such as band name, date, price, or dated added to listings.

What I’d really like to see is for venues and promoters to use a feed or web service with full show details. It’s great when they show band set times, convenient when the openers are inexplicably terrible. With the event name, venue name, address, and list of artists with start times alongside links on where to buy tickets, all the necessary details are there for a potential customer. It’s a pipedream to get all these competitive profit-seeking interests to use one common service, so maybe just RSS can even the playing field.

Of course, the obvious part-solution to this whole problem would be if promoters would use Facebook . For aforementioned Sneaky Dee events held this summer, the only way I was able to find out about shows was through my friends’ joining Facebook events created by the venue’s event organizer. ATG’s group has also been on the ball (at times) by creating events for headlining artists and sending out invites to every member of their group. However, if all promoters pulled this, you’d be bombarded by dozens of invites everyday. It would be much better to narrow down invites based on genre (crowdsourcing killing art aside) but Facebook doesn’t have that capability unless each promoter created multiple groups. Then the overhead becomes overkill. The coolest filter I can think of is only allow invites for bands in a user’s Last.FM artist library but eh, that’s a web 2.0 mash-up where there wouldn’t be enough of a userbase to make it worthy. Last.FM does have an event recommendation system but it’s focused on the next week’s events that have likely sold out.

I believe Toronto is the second highest ranked city as far as Facebook registration number go (behind London), especially in the core 18-35 demo. Having centralized event pages with integration for Facebook, MySpace, and Last.FM would allow for advertising using free tools (no hosting, monthly registration, or web site development/maintenance fees) that take advantage of social networking for more pleasant concert organizing experiences.

Some thoughts on last night’s The Twilight Sad show in Toronto:

• Venue was a dudefest. There was a line-up for the men’s urinals and an empty ladies washroom. I have only seen this at large-scale sporting events.
• The bartenders kept giving me a handful of change expecting me to tip them higher. When I give you a $10 bill for a $5.25 bottled beer, don’t hand me 3 quarters and 4 loonies. That means I will tip you even less. $0.75 for you.
• I was slightly right of centre six people back and could barely hear the lead guitarist Andy MacFarlane positioned to the left. Of course, it was because the amps were stacked behind him for controlled feedback but there should’ve been something mic’d so the whole crowd could get a better mix. His wailing is their signature sound!
• They played for about an hour with no encore. Who are you? Tool? I don’t believe their set was any longer than when they opened for Mogwai back in May.
• Their bassist may be a robot.
• Love the live interpretation of Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters’ first song “Cold Days From the Birdhouse” instead having an a capella intro.
• Fellow Scots We Were Promised Jetpacks are pretty awesome. Glad I accidentally arrived early enough to catch their set.

All points aside, solid show with much love around.

Shrinebuilder is a new underground metal supergroup of sorts that has a blog called We Burn Through the Night that’s updated by Neurosis guitarist Scott Kelly. These updates make me believe he’s a man whose intensity places himself constantly on the brink of a psychotic breakdown. The line-up:

Guitar: Scott “Wino” Weinrich (Saint Vitus/Obsessed/Spirit Caravan/Hidden Hand)
Guitar: Scott Kelly (Neurosis/Tribes of Neurot)
Bass: Al Cisneros (Sleep/Om)
Drums: Dale Crover (Melvins)

Another year of quantifying tastes, this time with more links and less prolix. Begin!

If this video clip doesn’t turn one into a Fleet Foxes fan, I don’t know what will.

Since Apple doesn’t allow third party apps in their iTunes store to run in the background, uploading your listened-to music in real time over the air (EDGE/3G/WiFi) is not possible. That is, unless you jailbreak your device and install MobileScrobbler. The free Last.FM iPhone app is for listening to online radio and checking listening histories, not for actual scrobbling.

Insert more funeral jokes.

Welcome to another edition of me telling you what is already known. Death Magnetic-edition.

St. Anger was an embarrassment of tin drums and dull songwriting. After watching the album’s documentary Some Kind of Monster, I could only conclude that Lars Ulrich is one of the smuggest motherfuckers on the planet. Yes, you’re the first band ever to express anger in a positive way. Innovators.

After that critical wreckage, the band assembled themselves by just regressing to their past successes. Use the same riffs as found on …And Justice For All? Extend songs minutes past their expiration point? Reintroduce solos that are technically laughable compared to their above-average guitar output from the eighties? Check on all of the above.

Most major publications are giving it positive reviews because it’s comfortable, familiar, and infinitely better than St. Anger. But it’s pointless. If you want Metallica, throw in Master of Puppets and then stop it halfway through because that riffing gets boring quickly when taken into the context of today’s music. From the directions acts like Agalloch, Opeth, Cult of Luna, and Mastodon have taken metal, Metallica’s one-dimensional approach is irrelevant when overtaken by the musicianship and songwriting exemplified by the former. Attempts at diversity like S&M or “The Unforgiven III” are cringe-worthy.

So why bother? As Henry Rollins said, “if a place has electricity, Metallica can play a sold out show.” Cash! Cash! Lots of cash! Even with bad public relations stunts thrown around, they can still tour the world and watch the bones roll in. As an artistic statement, this album has no purpose. Why did I just spend four paragraphs on this? Consumerscape blogosphere!

Cliff Martinez – Solaris
Lush sci-fi electronic with a numb feeling.

Peter Gabriel – Passion: The Last Temptation of Christ
Tastefully appropriating other cultures.

Clint Mansell (Featuring Kronos Quartet) – Requiem For a Dream
Haunting movements built for curling into the fetal position.

Philip Glass – Koyaanisqatsi
Repetition ascending to a chaotic swirl.

Ennio Morricone – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo)
“The Ecstasy of Gold”. That’s all you need to know

This article is late for many reasons (mostly slothfulness) since I scour other year-end lists to ensure I don’t miss out on anything important. OCD has its advantages. So I’ll cover some bands rediscovering their roots, art metal being described as “dirgy”, middle-class dudes ripping off channeling Joy Division (yes, still), and some post-rock groups incorporating actual human vocals. That’s innovation !! I’ll run out of adjectives, make blatant misuse of semicolons, and repeat the same sentence in each review via synonyms.

My original intention was to scale back this year’s list since 2006’s article turned into a 10,000+ word behemoth. I never even expended that much energy for upper-year university papers. A little bit shorter, a whole lot sweeter, so was the plan that was made to fail. Now let me condescend your place in the world by using the collective terms “kids” and “folks”.

Hip to be Square

In an endeavor to fill my empty soul with joy in the form of capitalist fulfillment, I embraced my consumer whore nature and purchased an 8gb Apple iPod Touch. The “I” stands for inflated sense of ego.

In early 2007, my CD/MP3 player broken and I never really got around to purchasing another device. A friend threw me a replacement in the form of a JSK Digital MP-407 USB thumb drive MP3 player (oddly, the manufacturer doesn’t have a web site), which had a measly 256mb capacity. I generally only listened when mobile on transit and I also stuck to the same artist for a week at a time, so it really wasn’t an issue only have two or three albums with me at any time.

The manufacturing defects of the thumb drive started to become exposed via random player reboots and the inability to lock the next track button leading to my pocket suddenly deciding on song changes. I decided it was time for a quality player, but resolved to not making it an impulse buy. My next plan of action? Impulse buying an expensive mobile music player. Of course, as a fashion accessory, it kind of is a thief-happy device due to the white earbuds. I didn’t even let those rubbish pieces of audio equipment leave their packaging. Instead, I’ve been using my dumpy (but adequate) Sennheiser PMX-60 pair which don’t attract much attention, although they supposedly leak a lot of sound due the open design… but nobody on public transit has complained yet. I dare you! I FUCKING DARE YOU! I tend to keep my iPod in concealed as to avert the questioning eyes of the young and the beautiful. That I must above all things love myself.

I’ll get right into the Negative Nancy.

It bugs me that controlling music volume or making a track change both require looking at the screen. So you can’t just throw a hand in your pocket to make a quick adjustment. No Adobe Flash negates the “full web experience” that Apple claims. It may be a strategy to avoid streaming video that isn’t YouTube or a method to reduce memory usage, but Flash is now a necessary component of the web. It isn’t just used for frivolous splash pages anymore. There is also no scrobbling through Last.FM to keep a record of all the music you listen to. There are workarounds and I imagine there will be a supported standalone app once the iPhone SDK third-party additions are allowed to be copied over through iTunes in June.

Now on to why the thing sells well. Apple sure knows how to throw a nice graphical layer or some simple, useful features. The user interface is pretty and responsive with its PowerPoint-style page transitions from menu to menu. My attempt at drunk Facebooking while sitting in the crowd at a Guelph Storm hockey game was luckily thwarted by the small touch keyboard, hazy vision, and my Man-Sized fingers. The next morning moved nicely into a session of hungover bed-chillaxing while checking the message history in a competition to see if I could delete possible items before recipients read their contents. It was as I remembered – nothing sent since I was too drunk to log in. Stay in school.

Some of the iPhone/iPod Touch-specific webapps are very nice, such as the aforementioned Facebook version, mostly since it doesn’t waste whitespace on advertisements (which I block anyway, on PC) and doesn’t require zooming on any screen. The zoom in/out finger strokes can get tiring when browsing the web, but once more sites create webapps, it can make the mobile Internet experience much more seamless.

I’ve yet to really use the features of the Touch other than music and email, mostly since I don’t want a jailbreak attempt to create a $350 brick. In all actuality, with my lifestyle, the WiFi features are simply a gimmick since I’m so often near or at a PC anyway. I probably soon will be buying a mobile phone, but the iPhone was never in my frame of thought since Rogers are fucking assholes about allowing their wireless service prices to even approach anywhere near the somewhat reasonable prices of US provider. This covers both their equipment costs and data plan options. Of course, the reviews of the iPhone for its phone functions haven’t been too praising, other than the visual voicemail feature. I’ll probably instead find an unlocked Sony Ericsson and be that annoying jackass double-fisting expensive technology while crying out for Nature as the disillusioned man-child he really is.

The new Nine Inch Nails instrumental release Ghosts I-IV finally got music release methods down to the way they should be. By self-releasing five different packages choices, the consumer can make a decision on how much they wish to invest into the product. The higher-end selections are for the hardcore listeners that decide quality and support for the artist are paramount, while the digital download or 2CD set attract the casual listener. For any package, you get the immediate lossless, DRM-free download link so you don’t have to wait for your package to ship. You can even sample 1/4 of the release in a shareware-like plan to invite listeners to purchase more. This range of selection doesn’t devalue music, as I felt Radiohead’s deceiving blind 160kbps MP3 fiasco introduced and Saul William campaign represented for its fully-free download option.

Within hours of release, there was so much immediate demand that the web servers handling orders were down to a standstill. This, of course, exposes the limits of HTTP as a delivery platform; this is why the über-nerds prefer BitTorrent for data transfer. I bought the $10 2CD release however my FLAC download cut off at 161mb out of 608mb done due to the server overload. Now the best part about the new album is its licensing under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike, which means I can jump on The Pirate Bay to grab the album in full and it’s completely legal. The abandonment of outdated copyright law restrictions puts power completely in the consumer’s hands (hello to you, democracy). It doesn’t make the assumptive pretense that the artist or audience are a victim or criminal. They’re on equal ground and have the free will to define the value of a piece of art. I imagine in the next month you’ll find Ghosts I-IV is worth far beyond expectations simply due to the message its release represents.

When Pigs Fly: The Death of OiNK, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide by Rob Sheridan pinpoints many of the similar opinions I have about current music. It’s difficult to support an industry where no-talent businessmen reap the rewards while those expending effort that means something get cast aside. For years it was an exercise of learning the golden rule: he who owns the gold makes the rules. With the current technology, we now have the power to bypass the middlemen and enjoy music as it should be. This means turning off your radio. Artists like Saul Williams, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Radiohead are now allowing fans to directly support their work.

While perusing my bank statements a couple days ago, I discovered the last time I purchased music was June 5, 2006. It was Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations, in which the Canadian release, of course, didn’t include the B-side bonus track “Glorious” found on the Japanese and iTunes releases. I had actually downloaded the release months before the purchase, as I had done with Absolution which was out in Europe almost six months before North America. The instant retrieval of information is oh-so naughty in a world where regional markets must be established to maximize profits (see: video games and Steam Territory Deactivations).

When I Mother Earth’s 2003 final release, The Quicksilver Meat Dream, rapidly faded away due the glut of “Three Days Default Theory of a Nickelcreed”-itus permeating Canadian airwaves, I stopped feeling sympathy for major record labels. For now, my money is better spent paying off student loans and watching the music industry curl into submission.

I do what I must because I can.