Concert Vault

I recently found out about Concert Vault. It's got complete streaming concerts from tons of bands, most of which are free. I listened to a Black Sabbath show and a Cure show on Friday, and the sound quality on both was great. Awesome site.

Radiohead's Golden Ticket

You've all heard by now that Radiohead's soon-to-be-released new album, In Rainbows, due out in a mere two days, is not being released on a major label but will instead be available exclusively on Radiohead's website for a price to be determined by the purchaser.

It's up to you. No really, it's up to you.

I think the whole thing has a Willy Wonka feel to it. The reclusive geniuses have been holed away working on god-knows-what and now, out of the blue, they drop the crazy news that their mystery album will be released in a handful of days, and fans can download it for whatever they want to pay! The announcement generates a storm of worldwide press that nearly crashes the band's website and lands them millions of dollars worth of free publicity in magazines and newspapers, on television shows, and of websites and blogs. It reminds me of the part in the movie where Wonka, a reclusive genius who had been holed away working on god-knows what, dropped the crazy news that there were five Golden Tickets in Wonka Bars, all good for tours of Wonka's candy factory, and the whole world went ape shit.

From the Wik: Wonka's eccentric behavior, inventions, ignoring the rules of science and self imposed isolation and paranoia classify him as a Mad Scientist.

I'm on the email lists of a bunch of music promoters, including Radiohead's U.S. publicity company, Nasty Little Man. This is an e-mail I got from them last week:

There will be no advances, promotional copies, digital streams, media sites, etc. of RADIOHEAD's In Rainbows.

Everyone in the world will be getting the music at the same time:
Oct. 10. That includes us. We don't have anything to play anyone in
the nine days until the record is available. Everyone at nasty has
put his or her order in and just to clarify: you are not being asked
to pay for a promo (as some have inquired). you can pay nothing or as much or as little as you want.

There will be no promotional copies of the discbox either, as each
discbox is being made to order. Sorry.

I can only imagine how inundated they were with e-mails from magazine types after the buzz began.

I read an article on the move in the latest issue of Time magazine, and there are many in the already battered record industry who are afraid of what this new "model" will do to their bottom line. (One record company exec said, "If you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 or 99 cents for music by somebody less talented?") Radiohead insists they're not trying to come up with a new business model, but instead that they just really want everyone to get their music at the same time.

I bet it's really about control though. About controlling their music, their marketing efforts, their schedules. Their business. Their lives. Imagine what an nightmare it must be to produce a big-time record. Imagine how many people are involved in that process, pulling at your art and time in every direction like it's some kind of (Wonka) taffy, trying to find as many ways as they can to make as much money off of you as they possibly can.

Oh and by the way, which one's Pink?

If that's the price you have to pay to make a living doing what you want, so be it. But what if that price is unnecessary? I'm sure Radiohead will still make millions on the digital downloads, even with voluntary pricing. (I plan on paying four pounds, which is like eight bucks, I believe.) Considering that a band doesn't even make 20 percent on album sales these days when they're with a record company, the potentially slightly less revenue is a small price to pay for eliminating all of that other crap, especially when you already have all the money you'll ever need. (And they've got a major tour on the way in 2008, where they'll clean up anyway. The DM and I will see them live, that's for sure. Probably a couple of times.)

Yep, Radiohead is in control. They've used their insane new scheme to weed out all of the liars, the gluttons, the spoiled, ill-behaved cretins who only wanted to juice them for all they could get, and they're passing their music on on their own terms.

Oompa loompa, indeed.



Ten years ago this Friday -- on the DM's birthday, in Raoul Duke's North Carolina apartment -- was the day we discovered OK Computer.

Simpsonized

Okay, I Simpsonized myself. It looks a little like me, I guess. My favorite part is the Homer-style stubble. If anyone else has done this, I'd love to see your results. Post in the comments if you know how.

If you haven't done it and you'd like to, go all corporate at www.simpsonizeme.com.

Some Great Links for Live Shows...content

Hey folks,

I am what you would call a "lurker" (someone that reads others but hardly ever posts) on a number of jamband message boards. Here is a very cool thread started by a girl on the Phish Phantasytour board. It has sendspace and other hosting sites with some great music you can pull down for free and more importantly Legally. Dead, Phish, Miles, Coltrane, Talking Heads and all kinds of other live shows... many of them soundboards. my harddrive has a bellyache ;)

Let me know if you have any success... Cheers its Friday! ~Dru

http://www.phantasytour.com/phish/boards_thread.cgi?threadID=1371459&page=1

Who's the guy on Twenty-One Jump Street?

If you're a fan of Homestar Runner, one of the funniest sites on the inter-web for some seven years now, then you already know the answer.

Started as a goof by two brothers in 2000, Homestar Runner has become a true internet phenomenon and straight-up cultural icon. Homestar Runner himself is the loveable, armless buffoon for which the site is named. Homestar, Strong Bad, his sidekick The Cheat, and a legion of whimsical characters that comprise the Homestar Universe are featured in a hodge-podge of 3 minute cartoons, songs, commercial parodies and random funny things. There are even cartoons and games that are "created by" the characters themselves (such as Strong Bad's Teen Girl Squad).

Every few months I become obsessed with HSR. I watch everything on the site 5 times over and then tire of it and forget about it, only to re-discover it all over again months later. Guess where we're at right now?

I could waste your time rambling on about everything great on Homestar Runner or you could just go there and see for yourself. So what are you waiting for already?

Feel free to ask what my favorites are if you are overwhelmed. Enjoy.

Sarah Smiles (If You Visit Her on IMDB)

Meet my friend Sarah Lieving. Raoul Duke, Spooge, G2theLow and I graduated with her big sister, but she and I have become friends recently because she's into motorcycle racing, and we have some mutual friends. (And she owes me, like, 12 beers.) Sarah's making movies out in SoCal, which is her dream I think, but she's looking to take her career up a notch.

Now, I'm pretty sure I don't have any high-level Hollywood agents visiting RtN, so I doubt this post will do much to affect her career in any significant way. But what my blog buddies could do for Miss Lieving is check out her IMDB.com profile page. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but they've got some sort of rating system, and the more times her page gets accessed, the higher she moves up in the rankings. This is clearly a good thing. So, please!, check her out. (Also at her personal website.)

As for her movies, I'm afraid I've yet to see one. I know The Beast of Bray Road was on the Sci-Fi channel a while back but I missed it, so I'm still awaiting my chance to check out her work. I love horror flicks, though, and that seems to make up most of Sarah's repertoire, so I'm looking forward to it.

I think you owe me 13 beers now, Sarah.

Dream a Little Dream

Ah, the American way. In this great country of ours, we can dream big, take action, and make it happen. Just ask the inventor of the Cruzin' Cooler. This person had a vision one day that the world would be a better place if they combined a motorized Razor scooter and a cooler, and voila, the Cruzin Cooler was born. At first, I thought it was absurd. Do we really need this thing to exist? Then I thought of at least two types of people who could really benefit from this.

1. An enterprising youngster who wants to cover as much of the neighborhood as possible by making his "lemonade stand" mobile.

2. Someone on Dead tour (or Panic tour or wherever the old hippies have gone) who wants to go mobile with their veggie burrito business.

I'm sure there are more. The Dalai Mama wonders if a person could get a DUI on one of these things, which I think is a pretty good question.

Either way, the Cruzin' Cooler got me to thinking about other crazy ideas, which led me to stumble onto TotallyAbsurd.com. I haven't had this much fun on a site in ages! All of the crazy things on this site are actual U.S. patents, along with the actual illustrations that are on file in the patent office. Here are a few of my favorites:

The Duck Shield
Patent issued in 1997

This is supposed to attract ducks. Honestly. I think it's more likely to attract a bullet to the head. Maybe that dude Dick Cheney was hunting with was wearing one of these.

Robo Skater
Patent issued in 1999




Twenty-six wheels. Imagine the possibilities. Look, I'm turning 35 in a month and a half. If all of you pitch in a few bucks, you could get me one of these. I'd be Figure 2kin' it all over the place. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!

Quick Draw McGraw
Patent issued in 2004


Keep missing phone calls? Have a Spider-Man infatuation? Buy one of these and you'll be saying 'hello' before the first ring is through. If they add a watch to the package, they just might have me.

Goofy Goalies
Patent issued in 1989



Uh. Hmmmm. And the cup isn't included?

------------

I could go on for hours. This site is loads of fun, really -- check it out. How else are you going to find out what these are?:

Worlds most hated blogger?

What qualifies you to be the "Worlds most hated blogger?" http://www.iamfacingforeclosure.com Surely there are more devilish blogs out there. Most bloggers have probably come across this guy already, but if not check it out- it makes for an interesting study on how far some people will go to cheat the system.

Book Crossing

I was leafing through an issue of Mental Floss magazine when I came upon an ad for Bookcrossing.com. Pretty neat stuff. Sort of like the well-known Where's George site does for money, Book Crossing allows people to tag books before releasing them as free offerings in some public place. The idea is that whoever finds the book and decides to take it home will go to the site, enter in the book's ID number, write a journal entry about it, and then pass it on for someone else to enjoy. As the person who registered the book, one can track the progress of the book throughout the years to see how it's touched random people's lives.

I sort of like communal things like this. Hell, every now and then, the Dalai Mama and I jokingly consider selling everything and going Zendik. While that's not really going to happen, giving away books to is. I'm starting with Dostoevsky's "The Idiot," which had a profound effect on me when I read it a couple of months ago. This one is going to be a "controlled release," meaning I'm giving it to a friend, but when she's finished with it (and after she logs it into the site), she can put it wherever she wants. Tonight I'll find something cool to release directly into the wild, like at my favorite coffee shop. If you've ever been to the Blue Moose, you know exactly what I mean by wild.

The Soundtrack of My Life, Part 2

I've created my second song.

For the first audio file, I uploaded my version of Aaron Neville doing "Don't Know Much." Ask the Dalai Mama and she'll tell you that I was doing this years before Horatio Sanz did it on SNL.

For the image, I uploaded the cover of Travels With Roscoe.

For the second audio file, I uploaded myself as the devil saying "Come with me for everlasting life."

For the rhythm, I sped it up a bit.

The result is my second possible theme song, "Shithouse Bonkers."

The Soundtrack of My Life, Part 1

My pal GtotheLow turned me on to Pete Townshend's new project, The Lifehouse Method. If you haven't heard of this madness, be sure to check it out. Basically, he and a mathematician/composer friend of his have come up with a method of writing music automatically. It's basically a personal-theme-song generator, and it's based on input that we, the people, upload.

So I gave it a try. The first thing I had to do was upload a voice sample, either talking or singing, and I uploaded me doing the first verse of Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," which has been my boy's lullaby du jour lately.

Next I had to upload a photo. Their computers somehow analyze this? I uploaded the drawing from my profile.

Next, just another audio file of any noise that described how I was feeling at the moment. I sort of hummed a funeral dirge -- wasn't so happy in the wee hours of the morning!

Finally, I had to upload a beat, so I recorded myself tapping out some kind of rhythm. There was nothing distinctive about it, as I'm not that strong a drummer.

Then it whirred and fizzed and bumped and popped, and all of the sudden it spit out my very own, one-of-a-kind, absolutely free theme song! Produced by Pete Townshend no less!

I call it "Sleek's Song." Check it out.

Well, what do you think? Is it a song or a hearing test? And what's up with all of those soaring, single guitar notes? Who would do that?

In my opinion, it's as heartless and soulless as you'd expect from a computer-generated song. For some reason, I keep listening to it, though. I have two more free songs left, and I'll be sure to upload them as soon as they're released.

Travels with Roscoe

At the suggestion of my buddy Josh Williams, I dropped $3 on a book called Travels with Roscoe by a writer previously unknown to me named Roscoe. I'm just getting to know Josh, but I trust his judgment anyway because I like what he says to people, and $3 is a pretty good deal for a book with a cover like this. Little did I know that the price would soon skyrocket by 33 percent (to $4 all of you Journalism or English majors out there), but I got in while the gettin' was good. Sometimes it really pays to commit to something and act without thinking too much about it.

It took a couple of weeks, but Travels finally arrived today. I immediately read it cover to cover. It's fabulous. It's pure. It's about chimps and assplosions and fishing and belligerent Amish men and jail and Confucius and Steve McQueen and Tequila and Tang and so much more ... but best of all it's about motorcycles. It's about Bob Hannah and Chuck Sun and, again, Steve McQueen. And Travels with Roscoe contains perhaps the most unique description of a motorcycle crash that I've ever read.

I make motorcycle magazines for a living, and we have a reader or two. They're gonna find out about Travels with Roscoe in our August issue. Josh, tell Repair Manual to fire up the presses.

Order this book.

Free Joy

If you're a fan of new music and haven't yet discovered the live archives at kexp.org, run -- don't walk! -- on over to that little treasure chest. You'll find hundreds of performances going back to 2001 by many bands you know and many you've never heard of. They used to have it so you could only listen to a song at a time, but newer sets have a full-performance link that's pretty handy. And because these sets were originally aired on KEXP in Seattle, the studio sound quality is really good.

I usually ask for music suggestions from you guys, but here are a couple of artists I'm really into doing songs I really like. I'd love to hear what you think, as there are few things in this world that give me more joy than sharing, talking about, and of course listening to music. And if you post a link to a set or a song, I'll check it out as well.

These are all Windows Media links, but you can use Real Player too if you go to the site.

Joseph Arthur
I talk a lot about this guy, but he's not exactly a household name, so if you don't know him, check him out. He's been playing with a backup band lately and it's cool stuff, but I very much prefer his solo stuff. It's pretty mellow, usually, and it's cool to watch him build songs by looping beats, rhythms, backing vocals, harmonica and more over top of each other. Sometimes, once he gets a song built up, he puts the instruments down and sings over the song he's looped together as he paints a set-long mural in the background that's so good it rivals the music. Talented dude.

Try:
"She Paints Me Gold" - 2005
"Mercedes" - 2004

Beirut
I love this band, but they're definitely not for everyone. They use dozens of instruments to achieve a sort of Eastern European festival sound, but there's nary a guitar to be found. If you like Neutral Milk Hotel, you'll like Beirut. It's very possible that this band would make Rob Zero's head explode.

Try:
"Elephant Gun" - 2006
"Ederlezi" - 2006

Geico Caveman

Not sure if anyone agrees, but I really get a kick out of those Geico caveman commercials. I even heard they may get their own sitcom. Anyway, I was just surfing the web this evening and ran across the Caveman's Crib. This is a website dedicated totally to the Caveman, and once inside you can take a virtual tour of his apartment as he gets ready for a party he is hosting. The level of detail and the content on this website is very impressive. You can click on the iPod dock on the left and change the music that plays while cruising this site. Click on the TV to watch a Geico commerical, and once in the kitchen you can listen to messages on his answering machine, or click on his laptop to read emails. Very cool. Let me know what you guys think.

The casket of Jesus found?

Have you guys seen this?

Speedo Fart

My friend Dave sent me this. It's definitely good for a few laughs.