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 Posted June 29th, 2009 at 9:59AM
Saturday June 27th, I saw Blonde Redhead play at MASS MoCA. In case you’ve never been, MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) is a quality museum in North Adams, MA, in a refurbed industrial site. (The whole project and N. Adams itself is a prime model of revitalizing these dead industrial towns all across the US.) In addition to a lot of great, rotating exhibits, they also have a solid music line-up throughout the summer months.
Depending on weather, concerts can be held inside or out. There was the constant threat of rain on Saturday, so Blonde Redhead played inside. In either case, space is limited and sell-out crowds happen (not this time, it looked like). The upshot to a small, modern venue is good acoustics and seating. We sat mid-audience and it was plenty loud with a clear view of the entire stage. The crowd was a little dead and so got heckled a bit by Kazu Makino. But as expected, they played a good live show. No opening act so the evening was a little short, but I’ll take an enjoyable short show over a less enjoyable long one anytime.
Posted August 7th, 2008 at 10:50AM
So this past weekend we drove to Chicago for Lollapalooza. For those not in the know, the touring Lollapalooza of the 90s has given way to a one-stop, multi-day festival held in Grant Park, along the shores of Michigan Lake. Last time we went was three years ago. This year’s was twice as large, taking up the entire park. More than 100 bands played on multiple stages spread out over a mile of park. I was able to catch Radiohead, Bloc Party, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West, Gnarls Barkley, The Raconteurs, The Black Keys, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Mark Ronson, and a few others I’m forgetting at the moment.
Highlights? Radiohead’s fireworks display, Rage doing their thing just as I remember, having to climb 8 stories because the elevator was broken (again), and Reznor’s varied set. It was a very enjoyable time with nice weather, beautiful people, lots of shade, clear views of the stages, and even a variety of good vendors selling food and schwag. There was rumor of Barack Obama showing up to introduce an act (perhaps Chicago natives + Obama supporters Wilco or Kanye West) but that didn’t pan out. Shoot.
The drive from our doorstep to Chicago is about 14 hours, which is definitely a haul. We had a little spare time to spend around the city and ate some tasty food (including a Thai restaurant around the block from our hotel, and an African restaurant where I had fufu with spinach sauce, which was unexpectedly great).
It was one of the most enjoyable concerts I’ve attended and a really nice escape from the 9-5 drudgery.
Want pics? I didn’t take any (they don’t allow SLRs in without a press pass), so check out what’s on Flickr.
Posted February 8th, 2008 at 2:18PM
I’ve been a member of last.fm for two years now, and am still discovering more things to like about it every day. Originally I signed up because a few friends had, and I wanted to record the music I listened to, as I love pretty charts and graphs. I’ve never been a huge listener of any type of online radio, aside from a podcast here or there. (The quality is usually poor, I have music that I know I like already on my laptop, and the lack of DJs on most sites makes for a real lacking of personality or human touch.) I would occasionally listen to the online feed of an actual station (WICB Ithaca College, WSPN Skidmore, or WEQX), but the quality was still poor.
Recently, however, I transfered all of my music to an exterior hard drive. This means I’m without anything to listen to when I go roaming in search of free wifi. Enter last.fm.
I load up the last.fm program and select from any of their channels – particularly “my neighborhood,” which pulls music that I don’t currently listen to, but which is similar to the music I do, which is always “scrobbled” and collected by the website. It works very well, giving me unknown artists and some I’ve heard of but haven’t investigated. The quality is also great, considering its streaming full-length mp3 tracks.
So problem solved, I have good music to listen to while away from my iTunes playlist. Check out last.fm if you haven’t already, and add me to your friends list.
And because I’m feeling charitable, here’s another website you should definitely check out: CD Baby. It’s a very intuitive and well put together site highlighting tons of independent musicians. I recently watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai in the 8th Dimension (one of my top favorite movies), and heard some really great, textured electronica in one of the special features. With a little searching, I found the album: En-Trance by Brothers Price Music, a digital-only release. While I was at it, I added one of the more than 400 albums associated with Massive Attack and trip-hop, via CD Baby’s “Sounds Like” page. I’ve been looking for more trip-hop other than Massive Attack and Tricky, but it’s hard to stay up-to-date in upstate NY. Problem solved. Very cool.
Posted May 29th, 2007 at 3:14PM
Yoko Ono — Yes, I’m a Witch
‘Witch’ features an assortment of indie artists who have reimagined classic Yoko Ono tracks by mixing elements of the originals (mainly the vocals) with newly recorded music. The roster includes the Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Spiritualized, Cat Power and the Polyphonic Spree.
Posted February 26th, 2006 at 8:05PM
Eighteen years after their debut album, Public Enemy has put out studio release number 10, entitled New Whirl Odor. This album finds all of the original members back together, sans Terminator X (DJ Lord once again taking over duties on that front), on Chuck’s new label Slam Jamz. The album sounds both similar and different from every previous Public Enemy release, something fans will tend to enjoy while others might not.
The new sound comes from different producers than those used in the past – Johnny Juice and Abnormal Dubose take over major duties, which results in a different sort of Public Enemy. But it’s still Public Enemy, through and through – meaning that it sounds a lot like an album that should have been released 20 years ago.
The biggest failing is the album’s monotony. There are big, fat thumping bass beats, turntable scratches, and synthesized snares, loops, and miscellaneous thumps – in every single track. (Compare “Bring That Beat Back†with “Makes You Blind.†The latter is perhaps a few BPM slower, otherwise they’re nearly identical tracks, with different hooks.) Each track sounds more and more like the last. If this is your thing, Public Enemy brings it in spades. Others might be checking to make sure that their track repeat wasn’t accidently switched on.
Rapping over the beats is Chuck D’s habitually angry, intense flow, blending stabs at current events with nonsense lines more suitable to t-shirts or bumper stickers than politically charged music. Chuck D jumps about any number of topics from line to line, ranging from terrorism and the president to “bio microchips in the arms of pimps†(“Yall Don’t Knowâ€) and the failings of the music industry (“Preachin to the Quietâ€). Flava Flav occasionally injects a line, and Professor Griff has his bits (including the track “As Long As The People Got Something To Sayâ€). These Professor Griff moments are less than spectacular but provide some variety from Chuck D.
And included as always, are those quintessential Public Enemy moments – quotes from black leaders (this time around, Reverend Al Sharpton discussing rap in “…And No One Broadcast Louder Than… (Intro)â€), an interlude with a radio call-in show discussing Public Enemy (“66.6 Strikes Againâ€), and as many references as possible to current events, people, and institutions that Chuck D can lyrically violate in 15 tracks.
New Whirl Odor is a lot like any other Public Enemy release in the past decade. It lacks the relevance and uniqueness of their first few albums, but at the same time sounds as if it were made at the same time – in the Eighties. It’s as if Public Enemy releases albums in a bubble, independent of present music trends. This has a certain appeal, yet it’d still be nice if they grew some. That said, this is probably the best album since Apocalypse ’91…The Enemy Strikes Black.
Public Enemy was one of the original politically conscious rap groups – not to mention the best and most controversial. Now they flirt with irrelevance, all of their tracks and lyrics sounding rehashed, as other rap groups do the political thing better (acts like Dead Prez and Common immediately spring to mind). Yet Public Enemy aficionados will likely enjoy the new album. The uninitiated might, provided they’re not looking for relevant political lyrics, and don’t mind beats pulled from a decade or two ago.
Posted October 30th, 2005 at 6:29PM
Today I tested out iTunes a bit more. Yes, I turned to the dark side three or four months ago, but I still learn new things everyday about the Mac.
The music video feature? Not worth using unless I either bought the music videos from the online Apple store, or if I had an iPod that could play music videos. As it is, keeping everything in a folder, and playing them with Quicktime, works much better.
The continuous radio feeds? Where have you been all my life! For being someone who is almost always on the computer, hacking at codes, surfing the interweb, and all this other crap, I’m woefully behind in some areas. I chalk it up to the fact that back home, I’m on dial-up and can’t experience half of all of this. But Wi-Fi throughout my flat totally owns.
Anyways, so I discovered that streaming radio doesn’t suck anymore. I use to try it every once in awhile, using RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player. It sucked. But using iTunes, streaming mp3 files, it rocks.
I’m using entirely too much slang on the blog these days. Ah well.
So I googled for some streams, after setting up an essential: WAMC, the local NPR station back home. I forget what I searched for, but ended up with a bunch of cheesy synth, electronica, trip-hop, drum and bass, jazz, house, jungle, ambient, and god knows what else. Even a bitching punk stream. Check out TastyCast.com for some of the streams I subscribed to.
Some have been better than others. Some have been rotten. And some have totally rocked. Currently I’ve been listening to Proton Radio for three hours.
I wish iTunes had a feature that could track how much time you’ve logged on each stream. The ‘play count’ will have to substitute as a rough estimation.
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