A blog about music and technology by Jordan Hirsch
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| photo by flickr user Merelymel13 |
It's list time! What with the end of the year looming, not to mention the end of the decade (well, not really - technically this decade ends next year, but whatever, it's the end of the Aughts), list season is upon us. I haven't made my own yet (working on it), but in the meantime, here are some tasty lists to tide you over:
Tomorrow morning, I will be moving away from the Washington, DC area for the first time in my life. For as long as I can remember, I've been seduced by the thought (and sometimes even the reality) of living in New York. And in 24 hours, that long-held dream will become a reality.
The reasons behind the move are many and varied, but a few key ones include a longing for expanded artistic opportunities, the itch to live somewhere new, and a need to grow and push myself in ways that I might never do if I stay in the same comfortable place. I'm sad to be putting distance between me and my family, my friends, and the city I've called home for 10 years (and the area I've called home pretty much my entire life). But I'm also excited, and scared, and happy, and several other emotions all at the same time. But underneath it all, I know this is right (plus we've already paid the deposit for our new apartment so there's no backing out now).
So what better way to celebrate this milestone than with a new playlist? This one mirrors our upcoming week somewhat - starting in DC, heading to New York, and finally ending up in...Hawaii, where we will be heading for 2 weeks at the end of the week. Yes, this will be a big week. The New York songs on this list express a variety of emotions about the city - like all great cities, it inspires a multitude of reactions. I'm excited to have my own.
See you in a few weeks!
Boo! It's Wired For Music's favorite time of year - ever since I can remember, I've been a bigger fan of Halloween than any other day on the calendar (possibly even my own birthday). The combination of pumpkin-flavored things, intentionally-induced fear, and candy is a powerful one. Every year I try to find as many ways to celebrate Halloween as I can - decorating the house with all sorts of cheesy decorations, drinking pumpkin beer, eating way too much candy, watching scary movies, and of course, listening to Halloween-themed music.
I've found a few decent Halloween playlists out there - this one from Flavorwire that I linked to last week is pretty good, and I just saw this one from NPR [UPDATE: that link no longer works, so here's some more Halloween goodness from NPR]. thanks to Public Media Girl. But of course, it wouldn't be Wired For Music if I didn't post my own. So I did.
There are too many tracks in this one for me to do a writeup for each one, so jut know that I pared this list down from the much bigger (over 6 hour) playlist I started compiling last week. The tracks range in tone from funny to silly to scary to pretty to rock-and-rolly-y and back again. Some of them are explicitly about Halloween or other spooky themes, some of them just have a nice creepy sound, and some I just picked for the title alone, even though the content of the song isn't entirely relevant. Still, I think collectively they make for a great Halloween playlist, and I hope you feel the same way.
(While you're listening, check out my guest post for Creative DC about movies to put you in the mood for Halloween.)
What do you like to listen to this time of year? Tell me in the comments. And have a happy Halloween!
A few week ago, Pitchfork posted their list of the top 20 albums of the aughts. Pitchfork hasn't generated this much excitement since they famously gave "Music" a 6.8 back in 2007. I read through the list several times, and finally decided that my readers shouldn't have to take the time to listen to all 20 of these albums 5 times in a row like I did. As a service to you, dear readers (both of you), I did all the heavy lifting so you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy one track from each of their top 20.
I agonized for some time over which track to choose from each album - should I pick my personal favorite, or a track that best represents the album as a whole, or the one that might be considered the "best" track from each album? The good-looking genius over at Creative DC advised me to pick the song that, if the listener were to die tomorrow, they would be happiest having heard today [Editor's note: I'm paraphrasing, the original was more clever]. So that's what I tried to do.
Enjoy!
Hi gang. I'm still working on my Pitchfork playlist, and I'll have it up by Friday, I promise! In the meantime, here's a few things you can do to keep yourself entertained:
Get your ears and eyeballs ready, folks, it's time for the Reading Roundup!
The weightily-named Future of Music Policy Summit is happening right now, right here in Washington, DC (sadly, I am not there). They claim there will be a live webcast starting today, but I can't find it anywhere. You can register to view the webcast here, but so far that hasn't helped.
Bob Boilen from NPR's All Songs Considered is speaking, so maybe he'll tell us more about it on his Twitter feed.
Anyway, I thought you guys would want to know. Maybe one day I'll actually attend this thing! Until then, I'll try and watch the webcast if I can and let you all know if I learn anything interesting.
Where have I been? Not blogging, that's for sure. But that doesn't mean I haven't had my ear to the ground on your behalf, gentle reader. Despite my pending move to the Big Apple and all the attendant madness that has brought to my life, I'm still making time to find awesome music to share with you all. Enjoy!
I'm sorry, Beyoncé. Kanye West's little outburst at the VMAs this week is - by far - the most interesting thing about the "Single Ladies" video. Since when is 3 women dancing over an alternately white and grey background "Video Of The Year" material? In fact, none of this year's "Best Video" nominees are memorable beyond a few seconds after watching.
Come on, MTV! Don't you remember when videos were interesting? Well I do. This is not in any way a "best videos of all time" or even a "most interesting videos of all time" list, this is just a few videos that came to mind when I thought back on some music videos that never violated the cardinal rule of television: don't be boring.
It's another beautiful chilly day here in DC, and I'd like to say that these songs are all somehow relevant to that. But I ran out of time to make that playlist, so here's some stuff I've been listening to this week.
Enjoy!
This week we in the DC area saw some beautiful weather, temperatures in the 70s, nice breezes, and an overall sense of a season on the way out. Of course, we in the DC area are smart enough to know that this is all a horrible trick and summer will most likely be back for another few months of horribly high temperatures and unbearable humidity. But still, it was a nice week, weather-wise, and so I dedicate today's playlist to the end of summer, whenever it really comes. Enjoy!
I'm a bit crunched for time, so these descriptions will be brief - I'm pretty sure no one reads them anyway.
Hi everybody. Sorry for the radio silence of late, but don't worry - I haven't forgotten you. And to prove it, I've rounded up some reading/viewing/listening material that I think you'll find interesting.
Enjoy.
Well, it's Friday, and you know what that means. Yes, you guessed it: it means you can see me and my lovely wife in a total of 15 10-minute improv shows this weekend. It also means it's time for a new Friday playlist! This week's is a roundup of some music that's either new or new to you [Editor's note: "you" in this case being "me"]. Enjoy! Descriptions below.
This week I had the opportunity to attend an interview with (and ask a question of) Justin Ouellette, the founder of Muxtape. The interview was hosted at a very cool space in Soho called "Meet @ The Apartment" which is run by Marc and Sara Schiller from the Wooster Collective. Justin talked mostly about what Muxtape had been: a simple, free, possibly illegal way for people to share a 12-track mix of songs with the world. Like its cheekier cousin, Mixwit, Muxtape was forced to shut down due to pressure from those bastions of innovation, the RIAA. He talked a little about what Muxtape has become: a platform for bands to market themselves and share their music, like a very stripped-down version of BandCamp.
Justin is primarily a photographer and designer, and his design sense comes through in the Muxtape aesthetic - streamlined, slick, simple. He gave us a peek at the backend of the site, and it's no more complicated to use than the front-end. I'm glad to see that Muxtape is still alive in some form, and it was interesting to hear that Justin had never really planned for any of this to happen - he just made a cool and useful tool for himself and his friends to share music online, and when confronted with the option of folding completely, he chose to try and make a business out of his great idea. Kudos to him.
What was less inspiring was his answer to my question, which was about the future. I think it's bizarre that on every site you go to nowadays, you see ubiquitous messaging urging you to "share" content - on Twitter, Facebook, email, whatever - just share. On the other hand, corporate interests are constantly suing people and organizations that try to share content the way they want to, often pretending there is no such thing as "fair use." Justin mentioned that he would have days where record label marketers would call him and ask that their music be posted to the site, right before lawyers from the same label would call and demand that the music be pulled. Meanwhile artists are increasingly speaking out in favor of file sharing and new distribution methods. I asked him how he thought this tension would resolve itself in the future, and his view was bleak: "The internet is only going to get more locked down." He talked about a recent German censorship law, new methods ISPs are using to do deep packet inspection on user's data streams, and his own experience getting mixed legal advice in the face of an implacable foe.
He ended on a slightly optimistic note, saying that "things will only change when kids who grew up on MySpace are senators." What do you think? Are things going to get worse before they get better? Or are we perhaps coming to the end of a surprisingly young age of ridiculously overbearing copyright law? Tell me your thoughts in the comments.
Here's a quick roundup of some recent Music 2.0-related articles and blog posts that you might find of interest (I did):
This week's Friday Playlist is a roundup of tracks from some albums that have come out in the last month or so (with 1 exception that falls under "if it ain't new, it might be new to you"). Yes, there are some notable exceptions: in particular, the new Wilco, Regina Spektor, and Mos Def albums seem like they should be represented here, but frankly none of those albums has really grabbed me yet. "Wilco (the album)" is growing on me very slowly, but "Far" has too much sap for my taste and "The Ecstatic" has too much beginner's Spanish.
Instead, this playlist features some new tunes from old favorites, some new bands who are probably going to become favorites, and hopefully, a little something for everyone. Enjoy!
Hobnox is a site that calls itself "a new world of online entertainment." I have to say that even after watching their "What is Hobnox?" video I still had no idea what they were really all about. However, they do have at least one very cool feature, which I heard about from my friend Jim (who can often be found DJing at the Wonderland Ballroom in DC's Mt. Pleasant neighborhood): Audiotool.
Audiotool is a super-cool flash-based app that lets you create and record your own songs using a variety of mixers, samples, synths, beats, and all sorts of dials and knobs the likes of which I have yet to figure out. They get you started with a library of beats which you can then customize pretty completely to create your own music. It's set up in such a way that even a beginner can make things sound good just by blindly turning dials and poking at buttons, which is basically what I did to create this little ambient number:
I haven't yet found a gallery of other people's recordings, but I'm sure it's on their site somewhere, obscured through bizarre IA and lots of German. But if you make your own recording, post it in the comments!
Recently my friends Greg and Christina enlisted my help putting together a summertime playlist that they could share with clients of their real estate business. The mission was simple: come up with a CD-length list of songs that "felt like summertime," would "make people happy," and would appeal to (or at least not frighten) a potentially broad audience (i.e. keep it clean).
I had to vary from my usual style of song choices here and err on the side of commercial, family-friendly tunes. I also erred on the side of upbeat as opposed to nostalgic. Of course these constraints led to several notable ommissions (Will Smith's "Summertime" was just too slow, for example) but I still think it's a satisfying mix, and it definitely feels like summertime to me. What do you think? What songs say "summer" to you? Let me know in the comments.
(By the way, the photo at the right is 'Boombox' by flickr user lorigoldberg who was kind enough to let me use it. I couldn't make captions work right in Blogger.)
I've been a subscriber to eMusic since 2005, back when they let you download unlimited files for a low, low monthly fee. They realized pretty quickly that this was an unsustainable business model, and over the years they've tweaked their pricing/number-of-downloads tiers and ended up somewhere pretty reasonable. For a long time now, eMusic has been a great alternative to iTunes, offering (relatively) cheap, DRM-free, well-tagged MP3s from a wide variety of independent record labels and artists. And that's the way we liked it, dagnabit.
Recently, eMusic announced that they will be adding nearly 200,000 tracks to their download library from Sony's catalog. Coupled with this news is the far less welcome news that they will be lowering the number of monthly downloads for all their plans and simultaneously raising their prices. Predictably, reaction from their subscriber base has been pretty negative. I for one have little interest in the Sony catalog - I love(d) eMusic because it was the place I could go to find independent music for a good price. Unlike many subscribers, I don't feel like they "sold out" in any way by working with a major label - the more music, the better. What I do take issue with is the lowered number of downloads, the higher pricing (in my case, the price will actually double for me, since I was on a grandfathered pricing plan based on how long I've been a subscriber), and the confusion I suffer whenever I try to understand all of their pricing plans.
I'm not sure yet what I'll do when my account comes up for renewal next year. It's cool that their new 180-day plan lets you download up to your limit at any time in the 180 days (much nicer than having a limited number of downloads every month), but the sticker shock may just be too much for me. It's too bad, I've loved eMusic for a long time and up until now I've been very happy with them.
What do you think? Are you a member of eMusic? Will you be keeping your subscription? If you're not a member, are you more likely to join now that they're offering more music? Tell me in the comments.
Inspired by seeing Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction last week, I've been thinking a lot about other music I used to listen to in high school. It was an odd mix of stuff, influenced by my friends, my brother (who in addition to recommending music directly, would often mail home CDs he received as promo items at the college radio station where he worked), and to some extent "alternative radio" which hadn't yet been completely extinguished by this point.
What follows is a big list of some of the songs and artists to which I listened most frequently during my high school years. I tried to pare it down, but I couldn't get below 22 tracks. Sorry, everybody. Time doesn't permit me to do a per-track explication (much as I'd like to) but just assume that I like all this stuff for various reasons. [Editor's note: vague enough?]
It's worth noting that for some of these bands, I listened to their best or most iconic albums in junior high, or didn't really come to know their back catalogs until college. It's also worth noting that despite the length of the playlist, this is actually a very small sampling of what I was listening to in those days - completely ignoring tons of great music like the Beatles, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, etc. and also glossing over tons of crap like Cypress Hill and Danzig (not to mention all the death metal). But i tried to keep this all to music was either released within my high school years or stuff I listened to mostly during my high school years. Heavy metal is a notable exception here: that might have to be another playlist altogether, but I was listening to a lot of it in between all the grunge.
Enjoy, and please tell me in the comments what you used to listen to way back when.
If you had told me 16 years ago that I could see Jane's Addiction and Nine Inch Nails together at one concert, I probably would have started gibbering incoherently and asked what horrible acts I had to perform in order to get a ticket to said magical dream show. Well, it turns out that the horrible acts included little more than handing over a huge fistful of cash and 16 years of patient waiting. Last night, my dream concert came true, and I couldn't be happier.
We got to Merriweather Post Pavilion in the middle of the Nine Inch Nails set, which was a bummer, but I still got to hear the second half of "The Becoming," as well as great renditions of "Burn," "Dead Souls," "Hurt," and "Head Like A Hole" which was a fantastic closer. NIN definitely seemed more focused than the times I'd seen them in the past, and a bit louder as well, but the rage seemed toned down. Maybe Trent's just in a happier place these days, but while there was plenty of yelling, he just didn't seem as pissed off - he's too obviously happy to be on stage performing songs he loves in front of huge crowds. I can't blame him.
But the real star of the show was of course the always entertaining Perry Farrell. At the ripe old age of 50, he pranced his skinny frame around the stage all night wearing little more than what I'm generously calling pants and sporting some sort of feathery tail. Swigging from his signature bottle of wine, dispensing bits of "wisdom," and dancing around like a gay peacock, he called to mind some bizarre mixture of David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Tony Curtis, and a Jewish grandmother. While his voice has never been his strong suit, Perry worked the knobs and dials of his "make-me-sound-good" machine to great effect, essentially making his voice another instrument in the mix on every song.
While Perry did his "rock star from another planet" routine, Dave Navarro rocked the "too cool for school guitar god" persona all night, replete with a cigarette sticking out from between the strings on the neck of his guitar. My friend Matt made a comment earlier in the evening that Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses are essentially 2 sides of the same coin, and watching Navarro, I could definitely see him as sort of a bizarro Slash who used his talents for good. Stephen Perkins looked happy as hell to be on stage, showing not a shred of ego despite being one of rock's best drummers. And Eric Avery did his best to look like his appearance on stage was his fulfillment of some court ordered community service. You could see him wince every time Perry got too close, which of course only made Perry all the more likely to stay close once he got there. I have no idea how these guys haven't all killed each other yet.
Personalities aside, the music was simply incredible. It's hard to be objective about a concert I've essentially waited half my life to see, but the fact that they lived up to my expectations has to mean something. They didn't really vary from the setlist they've been performing on this tour, but that's OK - those were the songs I wanted to hear. From the opener of "3 Days" to "1%," "Whores," "Ted, Just Admit It," "Ocean Size," and more, they brought to life songs that have been part of the fabric of my musical memory since I can remember being interested in music. They even made "Then She Did" (a tune I'd never really cared for) sound alive and interesting. The only low point was "Been Caught Stealing," which the band didn't really seem to care about, nor did the audience. I wonder why they played it?
Of course, I owe all this musical love (as usual) to my brother, who one day randomly walked into my bedroom and handed me a CD of "Nothing's Shocking" and said something along the lines of "I think you'll like this." Whether he meant to or not, he changed the way I would listen to music forever - i.e. I would henceforth hear all other bands through the aural lens of Jane's Addiction. And that's fine by me. I'll be there for their next reunion tour, and my inner 16-year-old will be delighted.
Jason Feinberg has a good writeup of the SanFran MusicTech Summit over at the PBS blog MediaShift (managed by my friend and all-around new media guru Mark Glaser). If nothing else, this blog post convinced me that I would have had a good time at this conference, even though I am definitely not an "industry insider." I'm definitely an outsider looking in, but I do try to be an informed music consumer, and conferences like this one and SXSW seem like good ways to continue that education.
Anyway, check out Jason's post, he makes a good case for why you can skip most music conferences.
Is Last.FM's parent company CBS handing over users' scrobbler data to the RIAA? TechCrunch seems to think so, and they offer some pretty decent evidence to back up this claim. Of course, Last.FM is denying everything, but TechCrunch is not convinced.
I hate to perpetuate a rumor like this, but A) TechCrunch does seem to have some good evidence and reliable sources, and B) I'm a blogger, it's my job to perpetuate unsubstantiated rumors.
Apparently this all started back in February around the leak of the new U2 album. Hat tip to Dave for bringing me up to speed on this while I was away on vacation. Speaking of which, I technically still am away on vacation, so I'm outta here. But tell me: are you planning on uninstalling the Last.FM audio scrobbler utility?
I've been a bit behind the proverbial 8 ball lately, but I didn't want to let yet another Friday go by without a Friday playlist, even if it doesn't auto-publish until Monday. I don't have enough gas in the tank [Editor's note: how many metaphors for tired/busy can I fit into this post? TBD.] to do big writeups about each song, but there's a few tidbits below.
I'm going on vacation tomorrow, but I'll be back before you know it with another Friday playlist, I promise. Enjoy!
Mashable has a nice little writeup of Pandora's new subscription-based offering, Pandora One.
Key features include:
I'm not cool enough to go to this, but if you're in the San Fran area, you should go to the SanFran MusicTech Summit [Editor's note: wow, they sure do love their CamelCase] and write me a guest post!
From their site:
The SanFran MusicTech Summit will bring together the best and brightest developers in the Music/Technology Space, along with the musicians, entrepreneurial business people, press, investors, service providers, and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We will meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.My hero Paul Lamere will be there - don't miss his panel, he's a smart dude.
Here's a quick roundup of some cool new (or just new to me) stuff happening in the exciting world of Music 2.0 (or whatever it's called nowadays):
I can still remember pretty clearly going on a road trip in college with some friends of mine, and the guy who was driving had a CD player in his car (which at the time seemed pretty fancy). So I eagerly opened up his book of CDs...only to find that every single one was a movie soundtrack. I don't mean a mix-type soundtrack like The Big Chill or High Fidelity, I mean original score soundtracks like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, etc. And those were the ones good enough to be memorable. Suffice it to say, I was a sad puppy for most of that trip.
But time has passed and I've come to appreciate the value of a great original score. In large part, I have Carter Burwell to thank for that. Burwell wrote the score for Raising Arizona, among his many, many other movie credits. Nearly every time I find myself noticing how much I like the music in a film, it turns out to be Carter Burwell's work.
Raising Arizona was probably the first movie I saw where I can remember feeling like the music was an integral part of the experience for me. This isn't like the Imperial Death March or Superman's theme - those are great pieces of music that add to their respective movies, but they work more as leitmotifs that are more or less associated with specific characters or things in their movies - and they stand alone so strongly that I can hear them without necessarily picturing their associated movies.
This music was something different - it was simply part of the fabric of the movie for me, and I couldn't think of the movie without hearing that music. The second time this happened to me was while watching Buckaroo Banzai - one of my favorite hobbies that year was to recreate Michael Boddicker's theme on the piano over and over again, much (I'm sure) to the delight of my family. Hearing that music put me into the world of that movie in a way that almost nothing else could.
I could go on and on, but I have cupcakes in the oven, so let's get to the playlist. What follows are a handful of my favorite songs from movie scores over the years by an even smaller handful of artists.
Here's the breakdown:
