We are loving Mike Skinner at the moment. His last album was brilliant (pity not many people listened), and now he’s just giving away his music, and a lot of it is pretty great.
But his new song is the best yet. It’s called ‘He’s Behind You, He’s Got Swine Flu’. It’s fun, it’s hilarious and it taps right into that strange end-of-the-world-in-a-sci-fi-way of this epidemic. There’s also a great clip to go with it that is taken from old Zombie movies.
Skinner has gone some way to say that these releases have nothing to do with his label.
We are loving this. And it sounds like Skinner is loving this as well, after two albums pretty much devoid of fun. Not sure if there is another album around the corner, but as long as he keeps giving us cool tracks like this, we’re not sure it matters.
At times, it feels like we have little good things to say about reality TV or guitar hero. But do two wrongs make a right? We might find out soon. Activision, owners of Rock Band, has mentioned an interest in creating a TV show, and maybe even a tour.
OK, so we grant you the quote may well be a flippant comment on behalf of one exec. Still, the mind boggles.
Reality TV we can’t really say much about. But Guitar Hero, and it’s cousin Rockband, are just so interesting at the moment. We like the game. We were complete cynics before we tried it, and we will admit happily that it’s a lot of fun – for a bit. But it’s not a way to listen to music. It’s barely a way to discover new music.
It’s just a dead end.
All this hoopla about Metallica, Aerosmith and others, having exclusive versions of such games, is just over blown. Sure it’s great exposure, but those are some of the biggest rock bands in the world. What works for those nutty bands have never worked for anyone else. KISS coffins, anyone? We’re talking about metal and hard rock here. Most of the hard rock record shops I grew up with had more t-shirts than records. Chains, stickers, and just lots and lots of stuff. It’s cool – we own a lot of that stuff – but that’s where Guitar Hero falls into.
There is also the purist argument. Why not just learn the guitar? We get the flaw in this argument – most people can’t. It’s friggin hard. But in the long run, it’s more rewarding.
Guitar hero is also just keeping it’s head above the credibility waters. We cannot imagine those bands appearing as judges on a show. Unless Guitar Hero are REALLY making a lot of money.
(As an aside, we love the new, free, simple feature in Apple’s Garageband. It comes with free guitar and piano lessons. That warms our slightly snobby, liberal hearts)
So, who knows what TV show Guitar Hero could spawn. It should just be like Don’t Forget the Lyrics. A fun little game show for Joe The Plumber Whose Hobbie Is To Rock Out. But maybe it will be awesome, and I can happily eat my words. The music, at least, is bound to be good. More likely, if this show is ever made, it will last a season. And we will laugh about this like the Super Mario Brothers movie.
We’ve all seen them flood youtube. Amateur and home recordings of people, every day folk like you or I, performing the music of others. Thousands upon thousands of guitarists, piano players and singers showing off their chops.
It is this phenomenon that kicked off the new album by Ben Folds. The album is called University A Cappella, and it does just what it says on the tin. It’s University A Cappella groups covering Ben Folds songs.
The idea came from Folds being sent a link of a university a cappella group performing one of his songs.
Once he decided to record these a cappella versions, he put the word out online and University groups submitted 250 versions of his songs for consideration. 14 groups make the final tracklisting, and Folds himself contributes two tracks.
It is a surprisingly varied recording. The ‘Loreleis’ stand out by being an all girl group. The female voice also counter points on You Don’t Know Me performed by ‘With Someone Else’s Money’. Folds himself flew around the US to halls, studios and whatever rooms he could find to help oversee the recordings.
We don’t see this as being a major work. It will sit along side ‘Fear Of Pop’ and the Shatner record as curiosities in Folds’ career. What is cool is how this record came together. There is a link to a video below, and seeing these kids very excited to be recording is a blast.
It all came full circle in February when the Nasoons, the a cappella group from Princeton who started it all, supported Ben Folds at a gig. So next time you put up that video of yourself playing a song, you might end up supporting the band one day!
The big news this week from gadget land is the new, bigger, better, faster, stronger Kindle. It has yet to be released outside of the US, but it’s already making quite an impact. In short, it’s a digital reader, capable of storing thousands of books. The model released this week, the DX, is magazine sized.
We like this. We like this A LOT. We really want one.
But lucky for us, we’re in Europe and can’t actually get one yet. We think it’s one or two more versions away from really, really kicking ass.
Here’s some of the things we like about it:
– It’s a great idea. Hey, I like books. I also like some of my CD box sets, my vinyl etc. But I still have an iPod. And I have hundreds of books that I don’t want to throw out, but I don’t have the space. The e-reader is an idea whose time is almost upon us.
– The readability. Not that we have actually seen anything other than photos, but the ‘e-ink’ technology has always been Kindle’s big hook. This is not a computer screen, the thing reads like ink on paper.
– The whispernet service. Sounds like sci-fi TV show, but it’s basically the 3G book delivery service. You don’t even have to plug it into your computer. And it’s free.
– Amazon tracks all your purchases. You’ll never accidentally delete something.
– It’s robust. 3,500 books can fit on the thing. And can last two weeks on a single charge.
– The books available seem pretty cool. US only newspapers only of course, but I can see this really expanding. You can also keep your own documents on there.
– Pretty cool features. Auto rotate. Text size adjust. Dictionary included. Bookmarking. We have not ever held one, but we’ve only read decent-to-good things about the interface. Apparently there is basic web access as well.
What is bugging us:
– Colour. Really. It took the print world a while to get it together, but the time for this to happen in the digital world should be a lot less. If we are really looking at graphics rich magazines, textbooks and newspapers, then this really needs to be colour.
– The design, still a bit clunky to us.
– Price. $500US? I will have to buy a lot of books for this to become worth it. Plus you need to buy a cover for it.
– It plays music and podcasts (and has a headphone jack) but who wants an iPod the size of a small pizza?
– I wonder if you can print the odd page here and there if, for some reason, really needed to?
– There’s a big of a rigmarole involved in converting files for the Kindle. Setting up an email address, emailing your file and if you want it sent to your Kindle, there is a small fee. This has to get better.
So, lucky we don’t live in the US because we would be tempted.
But that’s all so nuts and bolts.
Imagine the possibilities! We love comics here at GLF, imagine having our favourites sent to us automatically every month? Add our favourite magazines to that thought as well.
It will be great for extended travel. But imagine a collection of Lonely Planet guides that are instantly update-able? And in interchangeable languages?
Speaking of languages…Language textbooks with embedded audio?
And speaking of embedded audio…Clinton Heylin just released a book about every Bob Dylan song. Imagine being able to hear the songs right there and then. And while I’m at it, can my Amazon Mp3s come with Kindle booklets as an option?
The possibilities are great for business. Imagine being able to send documents across a boardroom table. Have that weekly TPS report update automatically for you.
So, did we mention we love it? We also like the highly pretentious and philosophical approach they have for this device, currently painted on the front of Amazon.com. The ‘paperless’ society. I want to go to there.
We think people are more excited about the idea than the device right now. But Amazon are making big moves. This year we have seen two models and (strangely?) an iPhone app. They are rightly proud and it’s only a matter of time before all their hard work pays off, and the world at large will be ready for this.
Last.fm is one of our favourite music sites. It basically counts what you listen to, and makes recommendations. It sounds simple, but with 30 million users and 7 years of constant information, it is the best recommendation engine out there.
Last.fm has two parts. The site, and then a program called Audioscrobbler. Audioscrobbler can be installed on your computer, or as a plug-in for your media player. However you do it, Audioscrobbler starts to tell the site (through your signed up account) what you listen to, and logs it.
Then the fun starts.
We’ve had an account for years, and it’s amazing to see that we listen to a hell of a lot of REM. It’s just full of interesting stats – if you’re into that sort of thing.
You can discover more about your listening habits in many ways. Top tracks, albums and artists split into 7 days, 3 month, 6 month, 12 month and all-time.
But that’s just scratching the surface. You can see what your friends are listening to. You can also see what the most popular track by an artist is. You can also see, generally, what most of the world is listening to at the moment.
You can confirm to yourself that Dylan’s biggest song is Like A Rolling Stone. Radiohead actually is the most popular band in the world. Almost 20K people listened to ‘I Kissed A Girl’ yesterday. Utterly fascinating (if you like that sort of thing).
There’s some great community stuff too. A simple but functional friends system, groups and a powerfully accurate recommendations engine. As it’s actually based on lots of people’s real listening habits, it gets it mostly right.
This all comes on the news that Last.fm’s owners (CBS, who bought the company in ’97 for a whopping $280m), is going to roll the site into it’s radio and interactive music departments. Not sure what changes this will mean for us users…we’ll see.
Regardless, as of right now, it’s simple to hook up. Join if you haven’t already. Add to the great wealth of information that the internet is good for. And find out a little more about yourself in the process.
We haven’t really listened to his music since the Downward Spiral. But we still follow Trent Reznor’s career as a pioneer in the digital playground. The man is in the press a lot. So, follow us as we take a stroll through some of Trent Reznor’s other greatest hits.
1. NIN Access – the Nine Inch Nails iPhone App. It’s pretty great actually. Solid, well made, with plenty of news, videos, forums, messages and more. Pioneering but not groundbreaking, this app is so fantastically functional it should be standard for bands.
2. Even after the success of the app, he’s not resting quiet. Just this week, he’s been a vocal critic of Apple’s app store rejection policies.
3. Attacking Chris Cornell on Twitter. The man even uses the latest tech to insult his contemporaries. The full tweet -“You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly YOU feel uncomfortable? Heard Chris Cornell’s record? Jesus,”.
4. Forget a t-shirt or a sticker. The tie-in for the album Year Zero was a video game.
5. He’s going to go down as a pioneer of direct-to-fan packages. His last album, the Slip, was announced on his website and sold 250K limited edition versions.
6. Beyond the deluxe versions, he offers his albums five different audio formats. The lowest quality is VBR V0 MP3, followed by two lossless formats, FLAC and Apple Lossless. Also released were 24-bit, 96 kHz FLAC and WAV files. And why the hell not.
7. He produced Saul William’s 2007 album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! He also distributed by his standard new age method. It was offered both for free in a low quality version and a paid version for high quality. And complained loudly when no one paid for the better one.
8. When he saw the prices of the CDs in Australia, he openly attacked his record company from the stage. He actively encouraged his fans to steal his music. The man is a rebel.
9. Alongside the regular studio albums, there’s more experimental pieces like Ghosts I-IV and remix albums like Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D
10. Hey, and somehow the man found time to get engaged to his sweetheart Mariqueen Maandig of West Indian Girl (and looks like he saw the Star Trek movie too).
Bonus 11th point! His new collaboration with Jane’s Addiction is called…NINJA. So great.
So, Trent Reznor, we salute you for being such a crazy new age old coot. Congratulations for the wedding. Give us more madness soon.
Coldplay live Birmingham 2009 - from Life Is Calling
Has it really been a year since Viva La Vida? Coldplay are in the headlines again, this time thanks to the former Cat Stevens.
Silly plagiarism cases aside, we really enjoyed the Coldplay album (definitely a step up), but we really love how they made all the right moves – yet again – with their fans. As it’s almost been a year, we thought we would look back at all the cool things they did.
Firstly, we at GLF really loved how there wasn’t a super expensive, existing-fans-only package. Everyone is welcome and equal in Coldplay’s world. Even when there was a bonus edition, Coldplay took the almost forgotten step of making the EP (named Prospekt’s March) available separately. And it wasn’t a bunch of terrible remixes or the sound of Brian Eno scraping a barrel. Heck, two of the songs from the EP became singles. One of them Life In Technicolor II, we think is the best track on both sets.
Secondly, they did great small launch shows, before launching on a real man’s world tour. Starting with those small club shows in New York and London (also a lovely live set on the front steps of the BBC for passers by), it escalated to a tour of the world’s biggest stadiums. And when we mean world, we don’t just mean the Us and Europe. From Singapore to Perth to Mexico, Coldplay are going everywhere, and playing to record crowds by doing it (who else is there to see?). And they are not just stopping by once. They have gone back and forth, playing countries like Germany in 3 cities before moving on. Dates run until September this year, ending in London’s Wembley Stadium. Yes, support for those shows will be Girls Aloud. At least it’s different.
Third, they have been great to the fans. We handed over our email addresses to get that free download of Violet Hill over a year ago. We don’t read every word, but the not over whelming amount of mail we get from Coldplay is usually great. Lots of prizes like signed setlists, plectrums and more in every mail. There’s updates from “Roadie #42”, our friend on the inside of the Coldplay camp, giving us access from backstage. We also love “The Oracle“, and place for people to ask any question. Find silly facts like Coldplay uses Macs (good boys)! It’s quite funny. Oh and don’t forget their Twitter, MySpace and YouTube sites. The occasionally free Mp3 for no reason. They are really active and engaging fans. At a level never before tried by a band.
Lastly, they have just announced a free CD giveaway on all their (non-festival) shows this year. The CD, called ‘LeftRightLeftRightLeft’, contains nine live tracks, all of recent vintage. You can download the tracks for free from the site, or pick up a disc shaped souvenir at a show.
So they may not be your favourite band, but darn it, Coldplay are doing very well at being a HUGE band. We are sitting in May and the U2 and Bruce Springsteen albums of this year are already history. Yet people can’t get enough of Coldplay. We like them, and we like what they try to do, and it has been a joy to casually follow this band for the last year. How many bands can you say that about?
After the jump, the very funny film clip for Life In Technicolour ii
We are pretty excited about the upcoming, 7th studio album by Wilco – called Wilco (The Album). We loved their last, Sky Blue Sky and their new one is due from Nonesuch in June.
The official Wilco site has posted a new mp3, but it’s not from the new album. It’s the cover of a Woody Guthrie track, and their is an option to donate money to the Woody Guthrie Foundation And Archives. Wilco’s association with Guthrie goes back ten years to the Mermaid Avenue albums, where the band recorded new music for existing but forgotten Guthrie lyrics.
It’s a laid-back, lo-fi recording by Wilco standards. We can’t imagine it allows us any hints to what their new record sounds like. But we love the donation idea – much better than Radiohead’s self serving indie-ism.
Ashton Kutcher made headlines by beating CNN to a million followers on Twitter. But who are the music stars on Twitter?
Britney Spears has blitzed the 1 million mark right behind Kutcher and CNN. Today she is on 1.307,497 followers. Other stars?
As of May 4th, 2009 – John Mayer comes close with 948,413, P Diddy has 804,531 Coldplay sits on 722,533. We couldn’t find any other musicians over the half a million mark other than Dave Matthews who has 558,618. Trent Reznor bubbles just under at 438,868.
(Can you find anymore? Please let us know in comments).
It doesn’t bode well for Twitter being a place to discover music, especially new music. Even artists considered to cutting edge, like Lily Allen, hasn’t broken the 100K mark. The stars on Twitter seem to be existing megastars – not the next breaking wave, like in Myspace.
And of course, many of those megastar acts don’t have Myspace. U2, Kings Of Leon, Metallica and Radiohead are represented by fan twitters. The Killer’s ‘official’ page has but one post, four months old. There’s a big gap, and music fans on Twitter are bound to have a unsatisfactory experience.
This comes hot on the heels of the news that Twitter is not shaping up to be the future. News this week shows that 60% of Twitter’s audience do not return to the site in the following month. In short, not much is happening on there.
What will come of it now? It seems that almost everyone has heard of Twitter by now, but how does it explain it’s low numbers, and lack of activity?
Maybe Facebook and Google both made the right call to NOT buy Twitter…
Free Comic Book day started in 2002, and as far as we’re concerned, was the first time indie retail of any sort banded together to make a difference in the Walmart age. Record Store Day and similar events owe it all to Free Comic Book Day.
In 2002, the comic book industry was in dire trouble. Having barely survived the deluxe edition boom of the late 90s, retail and creators suffered. The idea for Free Comic Book Day came from Joe Field of Flying Colors Comics in Colorado. It was accepted with open arms by an industry in crsis and willing to take a risk. All the major, and soon minor, publishers created free comics for the annual event.
So far, over 12 million comic books have been given away with Free Comic Book Day.
This year, Free Comic Book Day is on May 2nd (tomorrow). The fun extends internationally. It’s a bit hard to find on the site, but the ex-US store locator is at http://www.freecomicbookday.com/fcbd_global.asp
The comics also come in all varieties. From standard superhero fare (there’s a Wolverine title, Green Lantern etc), TV and movie tie-ins (Star Wars, Cars, Simpsons), classic kids comics (Archie) to acclaimed alternative titles (Love And Rockets). Full list is here – http://www.freecomicbookday.com/comics.asp
So if you’re walking by a comic book store tomorrow, why not drop by and grab a free comic.
