I might have a music addiction

Winwood!

So, you don't have to pay for music anymore.

OK, that's not news. Stay with me.

For a long time I had been relying on this Google search algorithm to find free music online. Replace "Judas Priest" (...shut up) in the quotes at the end with whatever band you're looking for and let Google do the heavy lifting for you.

Lately, though, that's gone to crap. Nothing but links to long-dead FTP sites and spam.

Then, today, I found Elbo.ws. It aggregates MP3 blogs, a class of blog that I understood to exist but, clearly, vastly underestimated. MP3 bloggers are, on the aggregate, crazy willing to save me some money.



Seriously. Give their blog search a try. Search for your favorite band or song on there. You can refine by album, artist, or song on the results screen to clear out some of the unrelated crap.

I'll wait. ...

...

I KNOW, RIGHT?! How hadn't I heard about this site before?

I seriously just "saved", what?, $50 bucks or so by scanning my long-neglected iTunes shopping cart, searching on Elbo.ws for those same tracks, and relying on the kindness of strangers to get the MP3s that I otherwise would have paid a buck for.

Pretty much any major single from the past 60 years? It's out there for the taking. Especially if your tastes run indie.

This isn't going to save you if you're an album lover. But if you need to hear Steve Winwood's "Valerie" right this second? You're set.

The question no one asked: what did I download tonight? Be happy to tell you! It starts with a sampling from some upcoming and recent releases and then gets, um, less reputable... then swings back to this blog post with half of the Big Lebowski soundtrack. Shouldn't be hard to track down the MP3s yourself, but have some music videos while you're here. The Cloud Cult and Wisely ones (with Pam from The Office) are especially cool.

• Cloud Cult - "Everybody Here is a Cloud"



• My Morning Jacket - "Evil Urges"


• Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal"



• Fleet Foxes - "Ragged Wood"


• Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos"


• House of Pain - "Jump Around"



• Mungo Jerry - "In The Summertime"


• Hanson - "Mmm bop"


• Loverboy - "Working for the Weekend"


• Nena - "99 Luftballons"


• Marc Cohn - "Walking in Memphis"



• Wisely - "Through Any Window"



• The Stranglers - "Golden Brown"


• Deee-lite - "Groove Is In The Heart"



• Donna Lews - "I Love You Always Forever"


• Sonic Your - "Superstar" (Yes, the one from Juno)


• Carpenters - "(They Long To Be) Close To You"


• Peter Bjorn & John - "Young Folks"



• Steve Winwood - "Valerie"



• Mark Ronson f/ Amy Winehouse - "Valerie"


• ? and the Mysterians - "96 Tears"


• The Crests - "16 Candles"


• The Commodores - "Three Times A Lady"


• Paul Simon - "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover"


• David Bowie - "TVC 15"


• Dusty Springfield - "I Only Want To Be With You"


• Harry Nilsson - "Everybody's Talkin"


• Elvis Costello - "My Mood Swings"


• The Gipsy Kings - "Hotel California"


• Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)"


• Bob Dylan - "The Man in Me"

The lesson, as always: I'm hopeless. The Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket albums coming out in June sound like they're going to be really awesome.

And can I say a hearty "SCREW YOU!" to people that disable embedding of their videos on YouTube? What the hell is the point if I can't embed the damn music video?? How am I supposed to share Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up"?? Yes, that's the first time anyone's warned you about being Rickroll'd. You're welcome.

Do you really hate the Eagles?

So I was scanning The AV Club's latest Inventory column about 'great bands with more than one prominent lead singer.' Since the Eagles made the list, I wasn't surprised to see the following about 3 comments in:



The section I've highlighted says:

Also, the Dude taught me along time ago to question the greatness of the Eagles

I'm going to refrain from mocking him for his "along" typo, since that would reveal just how thoroughly white I am...

But what I really want to talk about are fake bullshit opinions like this. What Mr. "Hans Sprungfeld" is referencing, of course, is cult favorite The Big Lebowski, wherein a character named "The Dude" expresses disdain for The Eagles. See below, and all video clips in this post contain NSFW language!



Since Lebowski is a pretty big deal for our generation, I know a fair number of people that automatically respond, Pavlov-style, to any mention of The Eagles by quoting that scene. They can't help it. And it's not just quoting the film; they really actively hate the fuckin' Eagles.

Now, there are many legit reasons for disliking The Eagles. Perhaps you feel worn out on them due to their ubiquity on oldies radio. Maybe they're too pop for your tastes. Maybe you're of the mind that "Hotel California" should be, like, 4 minutes shorter than it is--call it "American Pie syndrome". Maybe you get tired of falsetto singing really fast. You've got options for Eagles-hate, and I'm not here to convince you otherwise.

But if you hate The Eagles just because The Dude hates The Eagles? I hate you. You are worthless. Do you really hate The Eagles? Really? Who in our age demographic cares that strongly about The Eagles anyway? Are your opinions so malleable that an unlikeable character in a cult movie can shape them?

You know people like this. They're the same people that refused to drink merlot for two years after seeing this scene in Sideways:



They also hate Sonic Youth after seeing that scene in Juno when Ellen Page says, "I listened to some more Sonic Youth, and it sucked! It's just noise!" Now, I happen to agree with that one, but I had a few Sonic Youth albums around and already had decided that they're a decidedly unlistenable band. I also hate playing Kool Thing in Guitar Hero 3.

Yeah, you know these people. Lemmings. Sheep. Uh... spies that are chasing after a Macguffin briefcase of opinions, the contents of which are unimportant but after which they are compelled to give chase. ... Right. Should have stuck with 'sheep.'

Telling you what to think is NOT the point of characters expressing opinions in movies like this: the character is expressing their (and arguably the screenwriters') opinion as insight into their personas. The Dude occupies a universe of his own choosing and has no time for contemporary popular culture. Sideways's Miles is an insufferable, unyielding snob who is incapable of fitting in with less exacting peers. Juno rightly prefers melody, harmony, and resolutions instead of aimless drifting and abstract noise experiments. I'm not reaching too hard here.

These expressions are not meant to change your opinions. If you happen to agree, you nod approvingly and bond with the character. If you don't have a solid opinion either way, maybe you should look into it before you express a movie character's opinion as your own, mmm 'k? Or, worse, letting a screenwriter change your mind about what you like to listen to.

In the interest of full disclosure, I think The Eagles are just ok. Their songs are cover-friendly though, like this heartbreaking cover of "Desperado" sung by an 11-year-old girl as part of the Langley Schools Music Project.



Or this cover of "Hotel California" by The Gipsy Kings:



That song is featured prominently on the soundtrack to... well... take a guess.

Music died for your sins

Great article on Slate today reviewing a book about the parallel Christian pop culture that has exploded in the past 15-20 years.

The whole article is fascinating, but the part about the stresses that Christian rock bands face was most interesting:

The Christian rockers Radosh interviews are always torn between the pressure not to lead their young audience astray and the drive to make good music...

They want to make good, authentic music. But they are also enlisted in a specific mission which confines their art.

Here's where I have to disagree. When I'm wearing my graphic and information design hats, I always have to be aware of constraints. Whether it's audience or media or choice of colors or word counts or legal requirements or whatever, constraints define my work. And here's the thing: limitations make it better.

How? Constraints force you to focus your work. If a few aspects of your project have already been decided ahead of time, you have to work around them. You have more time to be creative with other aspects of the project. You find clever ways to turn those limitations into advantages. You aren't paralyzed by limitless choice. You have to think. You have to work harder! And your work will overall be better for it.

As this article from Wired points out, Hemingway thought his greatest story was only six words long: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

This music blogger did a similar trick by reviewing almost 800 MP3s but limiting his thoughts to six words for each. Most of them are pretty clever.

This cartoonist forced himself to write 200 comics in under 12 hours, and I don't think he would improve on the tight, clever, stream of consciousness humor if he took 12 months.

Back to design, these guys made a fairly beautiful webpage/flyer for a conference with only Times New Roman, the much-maligned default font. Hell, some of the greatest typographers who ever lived only had one typeface available to them. They worked with what they had.

This applies, of course, to music as well.

Only a few truly, absurdly gifted musicians can get away with doing whatever they want. Radiohead comes to mind. Beck can almost pull it off.

Remember OutKast's split double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below? Andre, set loose to fulfill his every wacky fantasy on his half, created "Hey Ya!," which was undeniably perfect but was sadly surrounded with 9 relatively crappy, aimless songs.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes have made an entire career out of their self-imposed restraint: they only do punk covers of popular songs from other genres. And they're awesome at it.





I always wondered how good the Smashing Pumpkins could be if Billy Corgan would have just lived with, say, 2 guitar tracks per song instead of arguably wasting his time laying 64 guitar overdubs in pursuit of perfection. Such excesses worked for a while:



I always thought they did their best when they briefly lost their drummer and Corgan had to write better songs to make up for it:



Ryan Adams is another great example: he's clearly absurdly talented, but his genre hopping dilutes what he's capable of. He's pretty good at rock and roll:



He's even better when he sticks to alt country (whatever that means) and focuses on the songcraft a little more (not that he has to that much; like I said, he's ridiculously good):



The Magnetic Fields' stock in trade has always been arbitrary limitations, like their triple album 69 Love Songs, which hops genres constantly but the songs are all love songs (albeit with a variety of definitions of 'love song'). Here's one example:



Or their latest album "Distortion" where all instruments and vocals were arbitrarily drenched in, you guessed it, distortion. All the better to focus on the delightful lyrics:



They also had an album ("i") where every song started with "i". Why? Why not? Now you don't have to decide what letter your songs will start with. Get cracking on making every other aspect of the album better.

So what's the point? If Christian pop music groups can't work within their arbitrary constraint (ie, every song is about loving Jesus instead of a lady), they're doing something wrong. This limitation should force you to be more creative in every other aspect of your songcraft. It should make you better.

The expectations of your Christian audience aren't holding you back.

You just suck.

Fake Steve Jobs is Daniel Lyons ... and still awesome

Awww, man. The New York Times has discovered the true identity of the blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs (Tagline: Dude, I invented the friggin' iPhone. Have you heard of it?).

Here's the short story:

1) Anonymous blogger adopts persona of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple

2) Fake Steve does not hold back. Writes hilarious, bitter posts mocking, well, everyone.

3) Remainder of bloggers split two ways: a) The true identity of Fake Steve is our Holy Grail! We must find it and share its bounty! or b) Don't unmask him! You'll ruin the fun!

4) Almost a year later, Times reporter Brad Stone takes a week or so to figure it out. Here's the evidence, a combination of writing tics, location, and other slips that led to the unmasking.

5) Fake Steve owns up to being Daniel Lyons, an editor at Forbes magazine. Of course, he takes a stab at the blogosphere while he's at it:

One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong. For six months Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth put their big brains together and couldn't come up with the answer. Guy from the Times did it in a week. So much for the trope about smarty-pants bloggers disrupting old media.

I'm kind of sad, but it gives me an excuse to dump all the links I've been hoarding of Fake Steve's best posts since I started reading a few months ago:

There's the one where he shows how the iPhone can charm even the Amish.

There's the one where he explains why Apple is cutting back on iPhone production; it's to make you feel special:

[This is] a product that makes you smarter and, well, better than other people. Can't do that if everyone has one, right?

We figured we could keep things under control using our usual overpricing strategy. Who in their right mind was going to shell out 600 bucks for a friggin phone, right? Especially if it lacks all sorts of features that people really want. Just to be doubly sure we put it on the AT&T network and gave it an unbearably slow wireless connection so that Web browsing is practically impossible. Well, much to our amazement, it turns out there are just loads and loads of people willing to spend 600 bucks on a feature-lite phone as long as it has one crucial feature, which is our Apple logo on the outside. Who knew?

My personal favorite, there's the one where he tears the music industry a new one after they whined about iTunes dominating the MP3 market:

Here's the thing. These guys could have done what we did. In the early days of the Internet, everyone figured the majors would build digital distribution arms. But they didn't do it, because they didn't understand technology, and they didn't want to invest in building this expertise, and they were freaked out about piracy and paralyzed with fear. So we stepped in. We made the big investment. We hired programmers. We developed software that's easy to use and works flawlessly. (If you think that's trivial, think again. It's huge.) We ran the system. We promoted it, we marketed it, we haggled with all the majors and struck deals. We took all the risk, which was considerable. Now we're reaping the reward. And the majors want a bigger slice. Um, for what? We did all the work. Ain't gonna happen, slick.

Here's the back story. The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them.

The guys running the labels are pretty stupid -- most are just dirtbags who started out as band managers or promoters -- but now at long last they are kinda sorta finally vaguely getting clued in to the fact that both parts of their business model are fucked. Their loan-sharking business is being eliminated by low-cost digital recording technology that lets people make an album for very little money. And by letting us build the online music store they've taken themselves out of the distribution business. In the days of vinyl and then CDs, the labels managed to control the value chain by having loads of retailers in a highly fragmented market, and playing them off each other. In the digital world they've got us. And that's it.

Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. I hope Mr. Lyons stays this insightful post-unmasking.

Mock Draft: Albums that never get old!

After today's relatively disappointing Kissing Suzy Kolber commenter draft (Topic: Restaurants where you would like to eat your last meal), Scott (who posts under Hats for Bats on his group baseball blog) and I decided to start our own diversion:

Mock Draft: Albums that never, ever get old

Rules: Not a lot to explain here. One album per round. No repeats of artists.

Round 1

BiweeklyBrilliance: Who's up first?

HatsForBats: I'll give you first pick since I proposed the topic.

BwB: I would stick it to you and take The Verve: Urban Hymns, but I'm not that cruel. (Yes, he is--ed.)

H4B: I wondered if you would try that. I was going to take it with a lower pick since it's too obvious for me.

BwB: I figured. OK, I'll start with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: "Hearts of Oak".

H4B: Good one. I'll go with Counting Crows: "Across a Wire Live in New York City".

BwB: Ooh, a fine choice. I could listen to the 10-minute version of "Round Here" forever.

H4B: I love both discs separately.

BwB: Related: you should pick up the live Wilco double album, "Kicking Television: Live in Chicago". It's like a greatest hits, but they added this wicked awesome 3rd guitar player (Nels Cline) who really adds some bite to a lot of tracks.

H4B: Nice. I'll check it out. You're still on the clock, by the way :-P

BwB: Sue me.

Round 2

BwB: AC[lightning bolt]DC: "Back in Black".

H4B: Good one. All right, I'm hitting you where you live: Smashing Pumpkins: "Siamese Dream".

BwB: Ass. But for the record I would have taken "Adore" before "Siamese Dream."

H4B: I knew you would. ... we know each other way too well in this regard.

Round 3

BwB: Led Zeppelin: Houses of the Holy.

H4B: Hmm. All right, I'll swing it back newer. Postal Service: "Give Up".

Round 4

BwB: Hmm, I'll go a little out there. Eminem: "Marshall Mathers LP".

H4B: Interesting choice.

BwB: It still amuses me to this day. I never expect it either.

H4B: Okay, I should have taken this one earlier. The Refreshments: "Fizzy Fuzzy Big and Buzzy".

Round 5

BwB: You're going to hate me: Jeff Buckley: "Grace".

H4B: Oh, that's so good, it should have been mine. ALl right, The Verve: Urban Hymns. I gotta protect now.

BwB: Yeah I knew Jeff Buckley would get you sweating.

H4B: Big oversight on my part.

Round 6

BwB: Nirvana: "MTV Unplugged in New York".

H4B: Radiohead: "The Bends".

BwB: Wow. Monster pick. Lot of upside potential. Big wingspan... etc.

H4B: I had to recover from Grace.

Round 7

BwB: Ozomatli: "Ozomatli".

H4B: Damn. OK, you hit me where I live now.

BwB: Know what? I stole album from you. Call the RIAA. (He did not steal. Please do not call the RIAA--ed.)

H4B: Miles Davis: "Kind of Blue".

BwB: Nice. By the way, I think my favorite part of "Kind of Blue" is how every single "best albums of all time" lists always places it at, like, #6.

H4B: "We need some jazz on there, but it doesn't need to be first."

BwB: There's always a pissing war between "Pet Sounds" and "Revolver" and "Sgt. Peppers" and "Blood on the Tracks"... but there's "Kind of Blue" at #6 every single time. I think that qualifies it for #1 ever.

H4B: By the way, I'll just say it: I was happy for that Thriller video this morning, because I had the Beatles in my head, and I didn't want them there. Stupid deli radio. "Let it Be." Ugh.

BwB: That's how I respond to "Are you a Beatles or a Stones guy" questions. I say I'm in MJ's court :-P (Hopefully not in his bed!--ed.)

Round 8

BwB: Oh, you're going to want to reach through the series of tubes and murder me: Over the Rhine: "Ohio".

H4B: Ahh! I knew it was out there.

BwB: I admit that's a mean-spirited pick. Thanks for turning me on to Over the Rhine, by the way.

H4B: Grrr, and you've already got Ted Leo off the board. Okay, fine, you wanna play that? Sufjan Stevens: "Illinois"

BwB: Oooooooooooooooooh! You MONSTER. It cuts like a knife!

H4B: You brought this upon yourself!

BwB: Damn you for taking away one of my favorite songs, "Casimir Pulaski Day."

H4B: Ditto, "Suitcase."

Round 9. Final round!

BwB: Drive-By Truckers: "Decoration Day"

H4B: Now you're just doing this out of spite. I commend that. My last pick: Arcade Fire: "Funeral"

BwB: I hadn't considered that. Nicely done.


OK folks, let's hear what yours would be in the comments.

Shitty Mixtape In Action

Here's some wonderful lunacy from the gentlemen behind that new MTV show HUMAN GIANT (yes, it must be in all caps). The gist of it is the guys held a contest to pick 5 shitty songs for a mixtape. The tapes were judged for (poor) quality, and the loser had to walk around town blasting all the songs on a boombox. Must watch, especially if you didn't get enough Miami Sound Machine from this week's American Idol:



And, for the record, here would be my five songs I would absolutely not want to blast on a boombox (but since I'm a pseudo music snob, I've allowed a +1 slot for obscure indie tracks):

1. Goo Goo Dolls – "Iris"
2. Cardigans – "Lovefool"
3. Night Ranger – "Sister Christian"
4. Heart – "Crazy On You"
5. Avril Lavigne – "Skater Boi"

+1. Tegan & Sara – "Walking With A Ghost"


And since I never do music lists without a consult, here would be Scott's 5 +1:

1. Vengaboys – "We Like To Party"
2. Survivor – "Burning Heart"
3. Tiffany – "I Think We're Alone Now"
4. 4 Non Blondes – "What's Up?"
5. Verve Pipe – "The Freshman"

+1. Piebald – "American Hearts" (look it up on iTunes.... trust me)


By the way, while scanning my iTunes library, I rediscovered that I own the Woody Woodpecker theme... it's 3 minutes long!! How unreasonable is that?

[Full disclosure: I own every song mentioned here except Piebald--no one should own them. Just because I don't want to blast a song on a boombox is not a sign that I don't like it.]