half-assed adventures in half-assed digital music marketing...
I found myself on the Windows homepage, and was greeted with the above screen toting its music-related applications. This quote on the left-hand side of the screen caught my eye:
Color me badd and tickle me impressed... Windows - a clunky company that's generally out of touch with youth and/or music culture - is promoting their ability to enable the user to create mash-ups... and... they're going a step further an acknowledging the fact that users are by no means pro, and will happily make shitty mash-ups. Microsoft + sub-cultures = fingers on the pulse?
For those too lazy to click/read: Starbucks was going to roll out kiosks where customers could pick a bunch of "barrista approved" tracks and burn them to a CD. Initial tests revealed that this business model would bomb. Shocker.
This particular line of text from the article makes me want to punch myself:
2 questions:
Who are these "experts" and are they retarded?
What size of balls do you have to have to "blame" society's integration of ubiquitous mp3 players and PC's for the failure of a garbage me-too product? This would be the same as the Hot Air Ballon Manufactures of America blaming society's dependence on cars and preference for convenience as the grounds for their inability to sell hot air balloons as an alternative form of commuter vehicle.
Yes, I realize I'm bad horrible at analogy... but you get my point. No?
I'm gonna take a stand here: the new Phoenix disk, "It's Never Been Like That" has got 'official album of summer 2006' written all over it (ummm... not literally). It's killer from end to end. Why?! 'Cause it seems to seamlessly fuse jangly indie rock with glossy electronica elements... 'cause it's far more uptempo and consistent than their previous work... and 'cause French dudes who sing in English regardless of language mastery will sound kinda removed and nonchalant in a cool kinda way.
After listening to the new Futureheads disk "News & Tributes" about 17 times, I'm starting to really like it... but my reasons for enjoying this disk are 100% different from the previous disk (which is easily one of my top 5 favorite albums, ever). The new disk seems much more dark, more introspective... if I'm not mistaken the subject matter is a bit more, uhhh, blue collar. Yes, the ultra-euphoric, singing and clapping, 5 part harmonies take a back seat, but the resulting disk is decent in its own right.
Finally, after review of The Pipettes first full length disk, I'm dying to tell the interweb kids to NOT further jump on the bandwagon. The disk is no good. Yes, conceptually a bunch of pretty girls in pokadots doing some Phil Spector "wall of sound" revival thing is interesting... but the actual execution isn't up to snuff. It sounds so grating, so forced. The only time that they really nailed it was with that "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" track [mp3]... but that's been out for a while now, and everyone already knew that.
If you're itching to put an English female doing catchy hybrid stuff on heavy rotation this summer, you might as well go with Lily Allen. That girl has crazy pipes. See:
Last week Quinn stepped up to my blogger DJ challenge thinggy from back in January. He's posted his DJ set for download here. Go get it... it's great... a total genre crosser. Well done, dude.
Inspired by his post, I booted up the fake DJ software and created another mix. Here's the resulting mp3:
Feist - Mushaboom (K-Os Mix) Soul For Real - Candy Rain (Trakmasterz Mix) Paris - Mellow Madness DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Summertime (Remix) TLC - Creep Queen Latifah - Wickedest Man Alive Naughty By Nature - O.P.P. (Ultramix) A Tribe Called Quest - Oh My God Red Astaire - Come Down Colossus - The Tribute LL Cool J - Jingling Baby (Remix) Gnarls Barkley - Crazy Eric B. & Rakim - I Know You Got Soul Nelly Furtado - Promiscuous Girl Tegan & Sara - WWAG (Desert Eagles Remix) Daft Punk - Teachers Party Ben - Hung Up on Soul (DCFC vs Madonna) NWA - Something 2 Dance 2
I set out two criterion for this mix - (1) I wanted it to have a summery feel to it. i.e. all the songs are kinda braindead and kinda fun. This mix would work well as a Friday night, post-work soundtrack. (2) I wanted it to contain some songs that usually wouldn't be paired together in a DJ set. e.g. Feist + Heavy D's failed attempted a Boyz II Men clone... Death Cab For Cutie + NWA.
Anyways, download and share away. Feel free to make your own sets and post them, Pinder and Brown Cardigan already have.
Also, all these beat-mix mixes I'm making are available via a podcast feed (note: not this is separate from the mixtapes). You can subscribe using this link. Keep in mind this is not even remotely a real podcast.
Hey, interneters... do yourself a favor and swing over to Ryspace... dude's being super swell and is hosting his bootleg recording of Art Brut performing live at an instore in Brooklyn - and the show sounds like heaps of fun (reviews back this theory up).
You can download the entire performance as one zip file here. If you don't have the patience/bandwidth to pull down the full zip, here's a sampling:
I very much enjoyed the completely over-the top violence levels.
I very much enjoyed the realized vengeance.
I very much enjoyed Bill Buchanon's out of place & awkward smile as he suffers from total exhaustion while throwing out a last minute attempt to pick up his boss.
I did NOT enjoy the whole last minute China angle. Yes, it was unresolved through out the season, but it felt tacked on at the last second for no good reason at all. Related: are we now to belive that Jack Bauer is a one-eye'd cyclops?
Actually, word on the street (i.e. a guy on the elevator this morning tipped me off) is that there will be a 24 movie (hi, jump the shark much?) which will be released this summer that will deal with the escape from China. I really hope this doesn't become reality.
And now, because I'm sure you care, here's my personal ranking of the seasons thus far:
1. Season 2 2. Season 4 3. Season 5 4. Season 1 5. Season 3
---
I just reviewed this post, and realized that the pictures included are pretty graphic. As a remedy and a balance to this, feel free to feast your eyes on the following soothing image:
This weekend = most bonkers. Pair 5 house-guests with a wedding, then multiply by a long weekend, and you'll most likely have the hangover that I'm currently defeating battling.
Not that I'm complaining.
Scott's wedding was uber-classy. Like really well done. Even the pastor was entertaining... don't even get me started about the mustard they served with dinner. Fuck it, I'll go on record: best comedic pastor and best condiment featured at a wedding ever. Also nice, it appeared that everyone on the guest list was pretty... where did Scott meet all these people?
Also awesome this weekend: the fact that I played/performed music and sang my face off (quite literally until the sun came up one night). Something I haven't done in ages. I've realized I'm spending too much time talking about music, and not enough time doing music these days. I'm changing that lickety split, kids. The catalyst for this realization was Jay, Sheri et al... who collectively as a band are dynamite these days, and are playing The Ironwood and The Lilac Festival mainstage next weekend in Calgary. If you're there, get on it.
And now, it's nap time. The song that will sing me to sleep? Here:
Yeah, I realize blogging about Jolie Holland is sooooo 3 weeks ago, but it's taken me a while to come around. Soothing, melodic, but without being overly artsy-fartsy.
uber-hot trend spotting: vancouver edition! (+ links)...
Things that have suddenly become very common in Kitsilano:
1. "sling style" baby carriers
2. half-drunk/half-naked wiggers from Surrey loitering around Kits Beach.
Yup, summer's finally here.
---
And now some very hyper links:
Download: The Pipettes Covering "I Think We're Alone Now" here. Can these girls actually do wrong?! Bless them and their penchant for dressing in throw-back polka-dot'ed outfits. Although, every song they do reminds me of "Stop" by the Spice Girls one way or another.
OverHeardInVancouver.ca just like Overheard In New York... but new. This could mature into a good read.
Apparently Erlend Øye has a newish side-project aptly titled "The Whitest Boy Alive". Nice.
You can download the first single of the soon to be released Keane album here.
Local rock revivalers Lions In The Street are playing the Lamplighter on Saturday AND are offering free download of their entire new EP "Cat Got Your Tongue" here. Go get.
Speaking of gigs - there's been a heap of new announcements as of late - As per usual, Quinn has all the details.
Speaking of speaking of gigs team vanmega will be out in full force at The Coppertank (3135 West Broadway) tomorrow (Friday) night to check out the Jay Burns / Rebecca Ramone gig. Come join us, we'll all do shots. Repeatedly.
Screen cap source: iTunes' "alternative radio" listings.
Hey, someone bring me up to speed here... is there really a demand for a radio station that features nothing but songs by Sugar Ray? Sure, just like you, back in 1997 I loved to get drunk off $5 jugs of draft at my local university pub and then grind against the nearest co-end whilst screaming the chorus to Fly, but I mean come on... that was 9 (Nine!) years ago. Have they done anything entertaining since then? Is their body of work even big enough to fill more than 90 minutes of air time? Doesn't Mark McGrath co-host Entertainment Tonight now?
Related: IMO Sugar Ray peaked with the track RPM. Peaked is, of course, a relative measure.
Moving on: If you're looking for some delightful content for your ipod this evening, might I suggest you pull down a copy of the latest Stones Throw podcast (i.e. episode 4). It's a bunch of old school 70's R&B tracks that were the basis for countless late 80's / early 90's hip hop tracks. Highly recommended. Subscribe here or stream here or download here [m4a].
If you're a dork like me, and get off on deconstructing old hip hop song samples, or if you actually like to play around with sequencers and samplers, you might want to check out Famous Sounds, it's a fairly large collection of samples heavily used in hop hop etc which you can download and play with. Good times, Clarke.
Apparently The Hip are playing The Commodore for a one-off show. While I can't remember the last time I felt the need to listen to Bobcaygen, I'm curious if anyone is going. I did actually see The Hip play The Commodore in the fall of 2000 for a one-off CFOX show and it was bonkers.
All Things Feist has an mp4 ipod ready video segment from a cooking show that featured Feist. I have no real interest in watching Miss Feist carry on out green beans and the like, but I figured I'd link it, since people around here heart her to bits.
Featuring lots of new summery stuff from the likes of Pheonix, Tapes 'n Tapes, and Robert Wilson. As always, the tape is a gooder, and as always it's a limited time offer - get it while the gettin's good, yo.
recap-a-mundo: vancouver marathon weekend/bender...
For the record, Dave and Curt came in this weekend... and no, I didn't spend the entire time taking pictures of Dave (although, the images above might indicate other-wise).
Dave & Curt ran the full 42Km of the Vancouver marathon, our plans for the 2 days prior were to go to bed early and each mind our own business. Surprisingly, (no really, surprisingly) we ended up wrecking shop all over Kits... we staked claim at every watering hole with a patio and went down the entire drink list... twice. We finally calmed things down at around 10pm last night. Dave & Curt nailed the marathon. Both beat their personal bests by upwards of 20 minutes: Dave finished in 3 hours and 38 minutes. Curt finished in 3 hours and 42 minutes. During that time, me and Roommate Nick drank 2.5 lattes collectively. All of us have never felt so alive.
We're now trying to piece together a post-run pub crawl. But it's really not coming together... we did an Elvis Meat Platter at Memphis Blues, downed a bottle of high-end bourbon, Curt has collapsed on the spare futon, and Dave is getting a bit temperamental about the lack of feeling in his legs. I've heard something about knowing when to say when, but, generally, I try not to listen.
So, yes... this is a picture of me standing on some sort Monster Garage-esque excavation back-hoe type machine, in my backyard, with about two dozen purple helium filled balloons, on a quiet Thursday night.
Shortly after this picture was taken my landlord came over and claimed that I was a douche bag... well, or, something to that extent. Either way, I pretty much have to acknowledge that he was right... at the time.
Let's Tarintino the evening:
Prior to all this I was at some sort of private art gallery reception function thinggy... (I know, WTF!?!) At said reception I filled myself up with gallons of complimentary chardonnay... (I know WTF?!?... although, I still stand behind my belief that if you're drinking the free wine in public, you gotta avoid the reds, or you're gonna end up with old lady teeth after consuming all of 2 glasses).
After said girly wine was knocked back I somehow negotiated the procurement of the two dozen balloons pictured above, through a combination of charm and annoyance persistence from the art gallery staffers.
Based on insisting that I tie half the balloons on my left jean belt loop, and half the balloons on my right jean belt loop (suspenders - 2006 style!), I (accentually) attracted a lot of attention to myself. So much so that a passing camera crew (very egged on by Rob 2) requested that they film me doing bumper segments for the Go Gastown campaign that's currently going on. The result is a slightly confused version of me, carrying on about teh awesomeness that is Gastown. The revenge part: I signed off screaming about how I'm Rob 2 (but using real last names and such). Anyways, they ate it up... so watch for me on TV, pulling serious identity theft on Rob 2. His girlfriend may or may not tollerate me anymore.
Either way, I'm not going out for upwards of 3 weeks... or I'm gonna make some dollars by joining some sort of reality based TV show. You know, something classy.
Anyways, Hi. Feel free to go back an re-read this post, listening to this non-sense ultra-good times jam:
And now, a comprehensive list of things that web designers, hipsters, teenagers, media personalities, bloggers et al. need to collectively stop over-analyzing and discussing non-stop 24/7:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the first rule of blogging to never apologize in a post for any element of your blog?
Either way, this is the part of the post where I'm going to apologize for the delay of publishing in the May mixtape. It was going to go live today, but my work day turned into a 13 hour uber-bonkers marathon... and I'm expected back there in 6 hours. Screw you, internet life... looks like real life wins for now.
Theoretically the mixtape will be ready tomorrown PM. So there you go, assorted people who've emailed/IM'd me about all this.
As a means of appeasement, here's downloadable slice of goodness. Specifically, the first song that came on the ipod "shuffle all" when I finally got home tonight:
A tender/soothing rework of a YYY's classic. Remember a while back when The Arcade Fire did an acoustic cover of Maps? This version makes that one look clunky and amateurish at best.
Fuck it... here's one more acoustic rework:
Feist - Lover's Spit (from the Black Sessions) [mp3]
HOB announced this morning that The Futureheads will be playing at The Commodore Ballroom on Thursday June 15th. As The Futureheads are the greatest/funnest band thing to come out of England since me HP Sauce. I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS GIG.
![vanmega [v5] : what's a wamp wamp?](http://www.vanmega.com/index_files/full_header.jpg)
