Que es?
The Weblog of Brett Singer. Bringing the world what it needs most - a blog.
Note: Sorry about all of the 'hot deals' entries (someone referred to this blog as
CorporateShill.com).
The deals and things are being fed into Multineedia.com. We will
soon move the deals category over to Multineedia so you don't have to read it, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
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Wed, 07 Sep 2005
The main problem with Eminem, apart from the homophobia and whatever else, is that now every fucking white guy thinks he can rap. This stuff isn't that bad, I guess. But, you know, why?
Tue, 30 Aug 2005Haven't we all, at some point in our lives, wanted to put on an iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth? Great song.
Mon, 22 Aug 2005 Sat, 13 Aug 2005What the fuck? At least, that's what the made this guy say. Includes Bruce Springsteen doing Viva Las Vegas. No really.
Thu, 11 Aug 2005Some 'Lost Jazz & Swing' from Hepcat Willy, a site with a LOT of music.
This Is Phoenix, Not The Circle Jerks
Album share on MisterSwank.com. Found link on WeirdoMusic.
In January of 2005 I invited a bunch on frends to join a virtual band. We would start with a track and pass it on to a member, who after editing and adding would pass it on to the next member. The musicians were asked to bend, fold add and have fun, take the music to there creative place. The only rule was that we would all use Apple's Computer Garage Band, an application that has been shipping with all Macintoshs for the last 2 years.
Link to the page, which has many an mp3 file for your listening. Via the OddioOverplay Group.
Wed, 20 Jul 2005Mas Mashups, por favor. Shit, soon there'll be more mashups than there are regular songs.
Tue, 19 Jul 2005
Godspeed You Black Emperor! at archive.org
Great band and I don't have any of their stuff, so its nice to find a freebie like this. There's lots more, so I guess this isn't exactly a secret, but it's the first time I found it, so maybe its news to somebody else too.
Thu, 14 Jul 2005Oooo, lotsa cheap mixtapes, which are, of course, actually CDs.
Mon, 11 Jul 2005Lucas is right, The African Hip Hop Project is a great playlist. Particularly liking this one.
Thu, 07 Jul 2005I don't read Russian so I'm not 100% sure what all of this is, but it appears to be radio segments of metal bands. Some Motorhead here, and some Ozzy as well. Find more on SingingFish.
Tue, 05 Jul 2005Video Games Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Proof that Video Game music is for real. Or something.
Paul's not dead, but he is old
Watching Helter Skelter from Live8, and I gotta say it: Paul looks old.
Sat, 02 Jul 2005live8 - doing everything we can except giving Africa money
I have a question.
If the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
, which was available on iTunes 45 minutes after it was performed, costs 99 cents, and Universal [is] donating its share of the sales to Live 8 (article link), what does that mean exactly? That is, if Live8 isn't raising any money, what exactly is Universal donating to? And what about the other portion - is that the artists' share, iTunes share, or what? Who's getting the money here? I guess it doesn't matter, but it'd be nice to know.
live8 - it's not a party until the Canadians boo.
Yes, Celine was booed when it was announced that they would be going to her in Vegas. At least the band tried to be amusing by saying "she'll be coming live from a craps table...", although they also tried to tell the audience that they should be nice to her because she's, you know, Canadian.
She is SOOOO annoying. Her spiel included an appeal to world leaders to give "the necessary help" to African nations. Hey Celine. How about donating a little of the billions of dollars you earn in Vegas, instead of letting your freako husband gamble it all away?
live8 - saving the world one annoying platitude at a time.
One of the bands on Toronto (I have no idea who) just read part of a column from today's Globe and Mail that basically says that this is a non-event in terms of anything actually getting done. There was much booing, and the band said ARE WE GOING TO TELL OUR CHILDREN THAT WE DID SOMETHING OR THAT WE DID NOTHING? WE DID SOMETHING! WE SHOUTED!!!!! and there was much loud cheering from the gathered throng of Canadians. Um, you shouted? And people in Africa can eat your shouts?
live8 - the crankiness continues...
There are people out there 'liveblogging' (as opposed to the usual dead blogging that goes on) non-positive vibes - that is, saying what they think and not following the herd.
Live8Insider looks like an official site of some kind, but I don't think it is.
live8 - another Cranky Person found!
This guy is annoyed too. Good.
live8 - it ain't no LiveAid.
Linkin Park was on MTV and gave out the wrong URL - www.Live8Live.org. It's www.Live8Live.com if anyone cares. What's funnier is that it wasn't a live interview, and still nobody bothered to correct them.
CMON DOOD ARNT U DOWN WIT LIVE8????!?!?? Y NOT????!!! WHTS YR PROBLM?????????????????????
In this climate, you can't question ANYTHING. Is this concert going to help anybody? Did LiveAid help anybody? I don't know the answers to those questions, but nobody is going to ask them because that wouldn't be... positive. You have to be positive these days, because you know, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
At least some people are starting to blog something other than glowing praise. There's not much there, but it's a start.
Don't get me wrong. If this helps, great. But it's so crassly commercial - AOL gets to launch their new free music offerings and sell a buttload of ads, all of the bands (and there are a lot of them, even if they only play for about 5-10 minutes each) get to sell more CDs, and various people, rich and poor, get to feel like their doing something reactionary and political when all their really doing is what they probably do the rest of the week - participate in the global entertainment economy. Wow, what a great event.
Schedule?
live8 - yeah, I'm still here.
Why is it so difficult to get a fucking schedule of performers? If one exists, I haven't found it. I didn't look that hard, but I did look here, on live8's site, and all I found was a list of groups in alphabetical order. So if there were something I actually wanted to see (there's not much, although I wouldn't mind catching A-Ha, I'm out of luck.
Okay, somebody tell me: was LiveAid this crassly commercial? I guess it must have been, although there's no way it could have felt quite as overwhelming because we didn't have the sheer volume of media outlets that we have now. That said, I know someone who doesn't read the entertainment press at all but does read the New York Times every day, and she didn't know this was happening. So that's interesting. I wonder if this is really such a big deal to people who aren't, like, big fans of Coldplay.
Just watched a bit of the fawning MTV coverage, which, as is MTV's wont, contained no music whatsoever. I guess they'll put some on at some point, although who knows. [sarcasm]I can see why they would do things this way: Damien interviewing Rob Thomas is really MUCH more interesting than watching a live performance.[/sarcasm]
What really struck me about what I saw on MTV was the audience members, who all sound like they'd been coached. They probably weren't, and that's scary. What I mean is that they all seem to be saying the same things, and the 'right' things. This is so great, it's so excellent that we're ending poverty, the music is so cool, I pulled an all-nighter...Whoo-hoo! They sound like the same nitwits who show up for TRL every day. I know it's edited, but is it possible that there are no individuals who came out for these shows? Of course it is. Is it possible that we are experiencing the greatest amount of group-think ever in the history of the world? Of course it is. Could all of these celebrities and musicians wipe out poverty and African debt in about three seconds by donating a teensy portion of their astronomical earnings to the causes they babble about, instead of getting up on stage and speechifying? Of course they could.
A friend of mine just said that the the audience at Live8 looked like a proctology convention - tons of assholes. Heh heh.
live8 - it's here.
All of the posts seem to staggeringly positive, although sometimes something slightly negative peeks through. What I wonder is if there's filtering going on, or if everyone is just so frigging positive. It could be the latter, which would be freaky. Where are the cranky dickheads? Are they just so cranky they're ignoring live8 entirely?
I'll post more later, probably something cranky.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005Very cool. Not because I love Beethoven so much, although I guess he's, y'know, okay. But the fact that BBC is doing this is great. Hopefully others will be inspired to do similarly.
For some reason I found this funny. They also started with one of the crappier Metallica songs.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005
This page has links to all sorts of stuff. As Sasha Frere Jones says: Get up on this.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005Some interesting stuff here. Found here.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005If Le Tigre
Yes, it's very hot out today.
Fri, 10 Jun 2005Sandor who? Pleasant piano music, and a great album cover. Check it out, courtesy of Splogman.
Mon, 06 Jun 2005No, really. The Big Takeover, done on two Ukes. Wow.
This guy is a better player, but gotta give points for... I don't know, for thinking of covering the Bad Brains on the Ukulele.
Sun, 05 Jun 2005Lucas say: Babajay is a gnarly bastard of a hacked version of Webjay by 808. I like it.
Find BabaJay here. As near as I can tell, it's a different front-end for Webjay, and although it's a little bit slow at times, the functionality is tremendous. You can, for example, search for songs that have the word cat somewhere in them, and then play them right on the page with the XSPF Web Music Player. Boy, a guy takes a couple of days off from blog-reading, and the entire nature of web-based music listening is changed. You snooze, you lose. HA!
Tue, 17 May 2005That show had a funky ass theme song. Features the song Fire It Up by Busta Rhymes.
Tue, 10 May 2005
Exploitika Radio
Exploitika plays great music from 'exploitation film soundtracks'. Very funky. Plays tracks by The Giallos Flame, a band whose CD I've wanted to buy since I heard them and can't find anywhere.
Great idea and very well done. Not a flashy (literally or figuratively) page, very basic, easy to read, loads fast. All good things. Also does something smart: make automatic Amazon.com affiliate links based on, I think, the names of the artists whose MP3s are being offered up. I'm guessing this is XML/SOAP or some other acronym, I'll have to investigate further.
Thu, 21 Apr 2005
MORE FREE MUSIC
SO MANY MP3'S, SO LITTLE TIME...
This survey is on Coverville, a plodcast that actually pays ASCAP and BMI for the right to play music, which is great. The fact that he asks people to fill out a short anonymous survey in order to support the site (presumably so he can have data on his listeners and sell ads) is also great.
A few comments on the data: With all of the press coverage the show has gotten (it's a lot), the survey has 283 votes as of 4/20/05. Dominant age range is 25-44 (60%, that's two categories), and household income is surprisingly spread out. Most people listen alone, which makes sense since this is a plodcast, meant to be played on a portable player. What struck me the most was that 85% of the survey takers are male. This makes me wonder if a large percentage of plodcast listeners are male. Anecdotally, most of the plodcasters themselves are male. So is this another dopey boy's club? Will that keep it from getting more popular? I read a criticism of Dave Winer (can't find the post) where he apparently said that female bloggers were kinda lame (that's a huge paraphrase, so don't kill me if I got that wrong), and the backlash, though mild, was against blogging being portrated as a boys club (which it really isn't). This is more curiosity than it is criticism. There are a lot of things that guys like more than gals, such as superhero movies. With any new and seemingly popular technology, though, it's worth looking through the hype to see who is really participating. I'm wondering if very few people actually listen to plodcasts. In fact, I wonder if there are almost as many plodcasters as there are consumers of said plodcasts.
Fri, 08 Apr 2005Listening to Kyiv Chamber Choir on Magnatune. Beautiful stuff. I'm slightly surprised since religious music tends to put me off. Maybe because it's not in English. I do like some Gospel, although the ever-hip Blind Boys Of Alabama have some tunes that I can't listen to because of all the Jesus references. This has nothing to do with the passing of the Pope, btw.
Tue, 05 Apr 2005Listening: Nice Nice, found via Rhapsody. A couple of free tracks are here. It's instrumental music, just guitar and percussion. These guys call it the definitive experimental funk album. It's worth listening to.
Mon, 04 Apr 2005Listening: Dom Um Romao via Rhapsody. Good stuff.