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Happy belated 40th birthday Sesame Street!

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:13:54 -0800

Happy belated 40th birthday Sesame Street!

Apropos of nothing, but this is where I’m at this evening....

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:32:01 -0700

Apropos of nothing, but this is where I’m at this evening. More details TK.

As I decided I don’t neglect this blog nearly enough, I started a new one, dedicated to just...

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 07:23:17 -0700

As I decided I don’t neglect this blog nearly enough, I started a new one, dedicated to just...

Last week I asked Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, about crafting...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:44:41 -0700

Last week I asked Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, about crafting his songs, with the above song (“Here’s the Thing”) as the example I used:

When in the process of crafting songs do you realize that it will work to go from Quad City DJs to Kelly Clarkson, via Nine Inch Nails?

I don’t think I figure that out until later in the process. I might be listening to music and hear Quad City DJs and say that’s a classic song and I love that verse or you hear Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish” and realize that guitar riff is perfect and it’s isolated with no vocals over it and it’s very distinct. I can fill that in. When I listen to music, certain things come out. I can go home and sample and isolate those elements. I sample a lot more material than you actually hear at a show or on an album. I sample maybe ten songs for every one song I actually use. Maybe for a day, or a week, or a month, a very long period of time, I work on isolating pieces of songs and quantizing them and cutting them up.

Once I have a lot of them organized, I sit down, and using the software I use live, where I trigger samples and load in loops and change tempos and change different things; some things work together and better than others. From there, I work that into the show. I have new ideas where a new song came out of a new song. Maybe I don’t have too much nineties alternative music in the set so I use Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish” and it goes pretty well with Kelly Clarkson. Every weekend, I try to just integrate new parts into the set, small things each week - maybe a minute or thirty seconds, or whatever. Sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn’t, but you learn from that at each show. I try to work on everything, the transitions – how one thing flows into another, the peaks and valleys of the set – and slowly, over time, that evolves and takes shape. When I sit down to make an album I realize that this part goes really well with this part and things that became staples in sets become very normal to me because they work well. Other things I may play once and never play them again. I think by the time I actually do the album, it’s almost a juxtaposition of what I thought was the best material I thought from the performances.

You can read the rest of my interview with Gillis here.

From The Stranger’s “back to school” guide: How to Behave at a Music Show The...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:37:41 -0700

From The Stranger’s “back to school” guide: How to Behave at a Music Show The...

The Capital Choir’s website boasts: The world-renowned...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:25:01 -0700

The Capital Choir’s website boasts:

The world-renowned Capital Children’s Choir can frequently be seen performing alongside pop and classical superstars and is in constant demand for charity galas and other important events.

Here’s a video of the Choir performing the song “Chinese” by Lily Allen, which might be the cutest four minutes and forty-eight seconds on the internet right now.

While poking around on YouTube, I found a whole bunch of Beatles...

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:21:37 -0700

While poking around on YouTube, I found a whole bunch of Beatles Cartoons, which I didn’t even know existed. This video to “Drive My Car” is so campy that it’s also a lot of fun.

I’m sure I’m not the only pop music lover that has had this conversation described...

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:20:53 -0700

I’m sure I’m not the only pop music lover that has had this conversation described...

I had just gotten my answers back from an e-mail interview I did with Emily Haines, of Metric (who...

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:17:45 -0700

I had just gotten my answers back from an e-mail interview I did with Emily Haines, of Metric (who...

The Saturday Knights - Count it Off. I really love the video to...

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:07:52 -0700

The Saturday Knights - Count it Off.

I really love the video to this song, which was from one of my favorite albums from last year. I only wish there was a censored and uncensored version of it. Still, the Sesame Street-inspired theme reveals just how much fun this record is as a whole.

A sneak peak inside The Crocodile

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:58:43 -0700

A sneak peak inside The Crocodile: The biggest story in Seattle music thus far in 2009 has been the...

John Gabriel’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad...

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:05:41 -0800

John Gabriel’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”: “Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad”.

I’m sure this has been passing along the internet for several years. I found it on a discussion of video games on Slog (which I have little interest in) but it neatly sums up the majority of commenters on Brooklyn Vegan better than I could.

The Bird and the Bee performing “Witch” last...

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:16:33 -0800

The Bird and the Bee performing “Witch” last October.

The album this is from, Ray Guns are Not Just the Future, is the first 2009 album I really enjoy (no, I wasn’t going to say Animal Collective). This song sounds like it could be a really sexy theme song to a pre-Daniel Craig James Bond film (although I think that because it sounds remarkably similar to Tina Turner’s “Goldeneye”).

Via Idolator, Pheonix New Times music editor Martin Cizmar: The [Pazz & Jop] poll was founded...

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:00:00 -0800

Via Idolator, Pheonix New Times music editor Martin Cizmar: The [Pazz & Jop] poll was founded...

In the Fountains of Wayne song “Traffic and Weather”...

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 08:13:29 -0800

In the Fountains of Wayne song “Traffic and Weather” there’s a lyric in the bridge where Chris Collingwood sings, “Chuck Scarborough turns to Sue Simmons, says ‘sugar you don’t know what you’re missing’”.

I know this has made its way across the internet months ago, but I just can’t help think that this is Simmons’ response:

Slate: The Worst Pop Singer Ever

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 08:41:13 -0800

Slate: The Worst Pop Singer Ever: I hate stories like this one about Billy Joel. It was written by...

NYT: Christmas Essay Was Not His, Author Admits

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:46:04 -0800

NYT: Christmas Essay Was Not His, Author Admits: I usually don’t take too much joy when...

Jon Pareles had an article in the New York Times last week about...

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:31:45 -0800

Jon Pareles had an article in the New York Times last week about the collision of marketing and music. Rather than saying blasting someone for “selling out” by licensing their music in a commercial (like the above Lincoln commercial that features Cat Power covering David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”), he worries instead that songs will be written with the explicit reason of being sold - as though they are three minute songs built around ten second hooks.

As the influence of major labels erodes, licensers are seizing their chance to be talent scouts. They can be good at it, song by song, turning up little gems like Chairlift’s “Bruises,” heard in an iPod ad. For a band, getting such a break, and being played repeatedly for television viewers, is a windfall, and perhaps an alternate route to radio play or the beginning of a new audience. But how soon will it be before musicians, perhaps unconsciously, start conceiving songs as potential television spots, or energy jolts during video games, or ringtones? Which came first, Madonna’s “Hung Up” or the cell phone ad?

Not wanting to appear too crass, musicians insist that exposure from licensing does build the kind of interest that used to pay off in sales and/or loyalty. Hearing a song on the radio or in a commercial has a psychological component; someone else has already endorsed it. Musicians who don’t expect immediate mass-market radio play — maybe they’re too old, maybe they’re too eccentric — have gotten their music on the air by selling it to advertisers.

I see Pareles’ point - and generally agree with it but it seems like the genie is already out of the bottle. This fate was written when the first kid said “music should be free” (even if pressing CDs, studio time and publicity fees aren’t) - and those same people are often the first to scream “sell out”.

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of other options for artists to make money - if album sales are down as well as concert ticket revenues.

A few weeks ago I saw Amanda Palmer (of The Dresden Dolls) play at the Showbox at the Market in Seattle and during her set she auctioned off a guitar (it was used in her “Guitar Hero” video, it went for $1300) and then asked for donations for the drama nerds that were part of her act (called The Danger Ensemble). That bugged me far more than Cat Power singing a David Bowie song to sell cars because the auction was boring to anyone who didn’t have $1300 to spend and with the tickets being upwards of $20 in a 1200+ capacity club, shouldn’t the burden of paying for bit actors in the production rest with the performer - especially one who has referred to her band as an “empire”?

Isn’t licensing your song to Lincoln at least slightly more dignified than asking your (historically very loyal) audience for their pocket change so the rest of your entourage can eat?

2008

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:58:00 -0800

For me, 2008 was a disappointing year overall for music. Not because I was disappointed with the...

"Our first rock critic president"?

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:27:14 -0800

From Jody Rosen in Slate: I ended our conversation last year by wondering aloud about the contents...