Daft Punk to launch new album at local farm show
I have checked the publication date on this story ten times and it’s not April 1st, so I guess Daft Punk really is launching their new album at a farm show in the small town of Wee Waa, Australia.
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kottke.org posts about music
Rdio introduces streaming video service
Streaming music service Rdio (which I have been enjoying the hell out of for the past couple months1) is launching a streaming video service called Vdio.
The first thing you’ll notice about Vdio is that it’s designed to solve the “what to watch” problem. It’s not just that we’ve got amazing content, but that the experience is now geared to get you from searching to watching faster. We’re introducing the notion of Sets — playlists for TV shows and movies — so anyone can make and share lists of their favorites, making it easier than ever to discover new stuff. Or, you can just check out what your friends are watching in the moment and jump in. Beyond that, Vdio has the beautiful design and social features that people love about Rdio, with plenty more to come.
I haven’t played with it too much, but it looks like it’s not an all-you-can-eat service like Rdio…you buy/rent movies and TV shows just like iTunes, Amazon, etc.
[1] And that’s actually a huge understatement. I ignored streaming music services like Rdio and Spotify when they came out, opting for the familiarity of iTunes, but Rdio has completely reignited my love of music over the past two months. Should write a whole post about this at some point. ↩
Lester Bangs’ obituary for Elvis Presley
When Elvis Presley died in 1977, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs wrote a piece on the singer for the Village Voice.
I got taken too the one time I saw Elvis, but in a totally different way. It was the autumn of 1971, and two tickets to an Elvis show turned up at the offices of Creem magazine, where I was then employed. It was decided that those staff members who had never had the privilege of witnessing Elvis should get the tickets, which was how me and art director Charlie Auringer ended up in nearly the front row of the biggest arena in Detroit. Earlier Charlie had said, “Do you realize how much we could get if we sold these fucking things?” I didn’t, but how precious they were became totally clear the instant Elvis sauntered onto the stage. He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn’t real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection. I mean, Mick Jagger, whom I saw as far back as 1964 and twice in ‘65, never even came close.
(via @gavinpurcell)
YouTube is the dominant force in music
This is a nice article about how memes are often made or promoted deliberately by financial interests and not because of a spontaneous popular uprising, but mostly I wanted to highlight this statement:
Google’s YouTube, not Apple’s iTunes, is now the dominant force in music.
I’ve been convinced for awhile now that YouTube and not Android or Google+ will be their main source of revenue if/when Google’s search business wanes. (via @claytoncubitt)
First photo of Radiohead
Technically this photo was taken several years (probably in 1986 or 1987) before Radiohead officially came to be, but it features four out of the five members, back when the group was called On a Friday.
From left to right, Thom Yorke, Phil Selway, Ed O’Brien, and Colin Greenwood. This occasion marked one of the last times that Yorke smiled for a photo. (via buzzfeed)
New. Daft! PUNK!!! ALBUMMMMMMM!!!!!
Daft Punk is coming out with a new album called Random Access Memories. It’s out on May 21 but you can preorder on iTunes. Here’s a brief ad for the album:
The music that inspired Daft Punk
For Homework, their 1997 debut album, Daft Punk drew on a large number of musical influences. Here’s two wonderful hours of the music that influenced them.
Call Me Maybe Mashed Up With NIN’s Head Like a Hole
Weird day (fuck, weird week) but this totally totally made it. Some genius took Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe and mashed it up with Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole:
Totesally amazingballs. Way way better than I expected. (via the verge)
Beethoven’s pulsing dance beats
Late in his life, just after the invention of the metronome and after completely losing his hearing, Beethoven went back and adjusted the tempos of his symphonies to much faster than you might expect. Radiolab investigates.
Soundtrack for Upstream Color
The entire soundtrack for Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is available for streaming on SoundCloud.
From what I can gather, Carruth did the soundtrack himself. So for those keeping track at home, Carruth wrote, directed, starred in, did the soundtrack for, produced, edited, did the cinematography for, and operated a camera for Upstream Color. Oh, and he’s self-distributing the film through his own production company. No wonder I like this guy.
The film opens in US theaters beginning in mid-April and will be available for sale in early May: pre-order at Amazon or on iTunes. (via @gotrlelo)
We Buy White Albums
Artist Rutherford Chang only collects first pressings of The Beatles’ The White Album on vinyl. Dust & Grooves recently interviewed Chang about his collection.
Q: Are you a vinyl collector?
A: Yes, I collect White Albums.
Q: Do you collect anything other than that?
A: I own some vinyl and occasionally buy other albums, but nothing in multiples like the White Album.
Q: Why just White Album? why not Abbey road? or Rubber Soul?
A: The White Album has the best cover. I have a few copies of Abbey Road and Rubber Soul, but I keep those in my “junk bin”.
Q: Why do you find it so great? It’s a white, blank cover. Are you a minimalist?
A: I’m most interested in the albums as objects and observing how they have aged. So for me, a Beatles album with an all white cover is perfect.
Q: Do you care about the album’s condition?
A: I collect numbered copies of the White Album in any condition. In fact I often find the “poorer” condition albums more interesting.
Chang’s collection is currently on view at Recess in Soho, NYC until March 7th. Gotta get down there and see this. (via mr)
The Postal Service’s new song - “A Tattered Line of String”
Close on the heels of their announcement to reunite after 10 years, The Postal Service have released a new song called “A Tattered Line of String.”
After a decade of anticipation, I’m not sure whether I’m happy or disappointed that a new Postal Service song sounds exactly like I hoped it would.
The 2013 Sony World Photography Awards
Photos from the shortlist of winners of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards. Some stunning shots in there.
Edith, Hellrider, and Dadmonster pose for a photograph. In Botswana, heavy metal music has landed. Metal groups are now performing in nightclubs, concerts, festivals. The ranks of their fans have expanded dramatically. These fans wear black leather pants and jackets, studded belts, boots and cowboy hats. On their t-shirts stand out skulls, obscenities, historical covers of hard-rock groups popular in the seventies and eighties, such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, and AC/DC. They have created their own style, inspired by classic metal symbolism, but also borrowing heavily from the iconography of western films and the traditional rural world of Botswana. Their nicknames, Gunsmoke, Rockfather, Carrott Warmachine, Hellrider, Hardcore, Dignified Queen, may appear subversive and disturbing as their clothing, but they are peaceful and gentle. “We like to get dressed,, drink meet friends and feel free , this music is so powerful . We are lucky to live in a country tolerant and open” argues one of the leaders. A precious rarity for Africa.
Botswanian heavy metal fans and other great selections from the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards
Nordstrom’s piano man says farewell
Because of “the evolving experience in the stores” (aka live music is too expensive), after 27 years of playing the piano at Nordstrom in the Tacoma Mall, Juan Perez was let go in January.
Perez remembers his audition at Nordstrom, one morning in January 1986.
“There were five of us. Four beautiful young ladies, and me. They were carrying music books.”
They were dressed, he said, as if they had shopped at Nordstrom. He was not. They were carrying sheet music. Perez did not, and does not, read notes. He plays by ear.
“I was the first one to play,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting they would hire me, and I was dressed in a regular shirt. I started playing and playing as the store opened up. I didn’t even have an application.”
After playing, he drove home.
“My wife said, ‘They called. They want you to start tomorrow.’ I almost cried.”
Perez arrived in the US with $300 to his name and through hard work at the piano, has put seven of his children through college, with two more currently in college and one more attending private high school. (via brooks review)
Update: Here’s a quick update on Perez. After leaving Nordstrom, he quickly got some other gigs, including one at an upscale steakhouse and another at the Space Needle, but was also diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo surgery.
On that last Sunday in the store, Perez ended with “Piano Man” and “How Great Thou Art.”
And “Unforgettable” was the first song he played following a five-surgeon, 10-hour surgery last July to remove a tumor tangled near his heart.
A round of radiation followed surgery, and Perez has continued playing at El Gaucho, and at the Space Needle, Bellevue Square, the Bellevue Hyatt Regency, the Tacoma Yacht Club, Tacoma Golf & Country Club, the Old Cannery in Sumner and the Weatherly Inn and Narrows Glen retirement homes in Tacoma.
Recently, the management and co-workers at El Gaucho decided to help Perez with medical bills and other expenses. Management would donate half the house receipts one Sunday night, and the servers and other staff would offer all their tips.
Total raised: $31,000.
A co-worker established an online funding request.
Total raised: Nearly $12,000 at the time this story was written.
Last year, Perez returned to Nordstrom for a final performance, which was attended by the three co-presidents of the company and hundreds of his fans.
“I’ve known him for 25 years. He’s a beautiful man,” said George Lund, a 40-year Nordstrom employee who is now retired.
“Juan was the face of this store. He was the personality of this store. He could be the mayor of this city,” Lund said. “It was a magical time for a lot of customers. He made them feel comfortable, relaxed.”
After 20 minutes of greetings, of hugs and embraces, Juan returns to the piano. Four friends gather behind him and sing along to “Edelweiss.”
Then Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”
The crowd fills the aisles between women’s shoes and fine jewelry. Shoppers ascending on the escalator look down and smile.
Toes tap.
“He is a blessing,” says Patricia Reynolds of Steilacoom. “He is helping people with his music.”
Perez shifts from a swift boogie-woogie riff into “Canon in D” by Johann Pachelbel.
“He just brings such beauty into people’s lives,” says Maria Fleischmann of Tacoma.
“I don’t even have words for this,” said Juan and Susan’s daughter, Agnes.
Then, “The Way You Look Tonight.”
Entire Gangnam Style video drawn by hand
Well, this is amazing (in the way that things requiring a ton of organization, commitment, and time are amazing, not in the way life-saving vaccines are amazing). Artist etoilec1 drew the Gangnam Style video, the entire thing, and presented it as a flipbook. Here’s his original Youtube where he says he had to remove the music because of copyright, so the embed below will likely not last long. Visit etoilec1’s page for several Dragon Ball Z flipbooks.
(via ★stellar)
17-Year-Old LL Cool J Plays a Maine Gymnasium in 1985
In June 1985, 17-year-old LL Cool J and his DJ Cut Creator played a gymnasium at Colby College in Waterville, Maine with maybe 120 people in attendance. At this point, his debut album hadn’t even come out yet and rapping/scratching was not widely known, so LL and CC give the unenthusiastic audience a little demonstration of what it’s all about.
This is amazing. The footage was digitized from VHS by the show’s organizer’s son and he adds more information about it in the comments:
LL was paid $500 for the show. Since he was the only rap act, he was worried it would a be short performance, so my dad suggested he fill it in with the scratching and beat boxing.
LL was signed to Def Jam. My dad tried to get RUN DMC, but could not afford them, so Def Jam told him he should bring up LL Cool J.
(via @sampotts)
Update: Here’s some more information about the show and the recording. (via @kaf19991)
The Postal Service to reunite
The musical duo, who only ever released the one album, will play Coachella and some other dates. But no new album. Yet.
After years of inactivity, the group’s website now features a graphic that reads, “The Postal Service 2013.” As part of the reunion, Sub Pop is prepping a deluxe edition of “Give Up” next month to commemorate the album’s 10-year anniversary, Billboard has learned. Since being released on Feb. 19, 2003, the set became Sub Pop’s second highest-selling album, next to Nirvana’s “Bleach.”
(via @matthewbaldwin)
Dubstep cockatiel
The owner of this cockatiel taught it how to sing dubstep.
Nice try, bird, but this is still the best dubstep video of all time. (via stellar)
GoPro camera on a trombone
This is a clever use of a GoPro camera…attached to the slide of a trombone and pointed back at the player.
And thus the motion is timed perfectly to the music…reminds me of Michel Gondry’s video for Star Guitar in that way. (via @dens)
REWORK_: Philip Glass remixed
REWORK_ is an album of Philip Glass’s music remixed by the likes of Beck, Amon Tobin, and Nosaj Thing. There is also an interactive iOS app that lets you play around and remix your own Glass compositions.
REWORK_ features eleven “music visualizers” that take the remixed tracks and create interactive visuals that range from futuristic three-dimensional landscapes to shattered multicolored crystals, and vibrating sound waves. People can lean back and enjoy REWORK_ end to end, or they can touch and interact with the visualizers to create their own visual remixes.
In addition to the visualizers, the app includes the “Glass Machine” which lets people create music inspired by Philip Glass’ early work by simply sliding two discs around side-by-side, almost like turntables. People can select different instruments - from synthesizer to piano, and generate polyrhythmic counterpoints between the two melodies.
The app was made by Scott Snibbe’s studio…I fondly recall his Java applets. (BTW, “fondly recall his Java applets” is neither a euphemism nor something that anyone will understand 5-10 years from now.)
Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI file
Earlier in the year, Rich Jones at Gun.io filed a Freedom of Information request for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI file. It appears Wu-Tang may not actually be for the children. Here are the parts Jones noted.
“The WTC is heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjacking and other types of violent crime.” [p5]
Connections to the murder of Robert “Pooh” Johnson and Jerome “Boo Boo” Estrella. [p6]
Connection to murder of Ishamael “Hoody” Kourma. [p13]
A shoot-out with the NYPD. [p15]
Arrest for felony possession of body armour. [p16]
Connections to the Bloods Gang. [p17]
Found in possession of large bags full of paper currency. [p40]
Details of his being robbed and shot while staying in the Kingston projects. [p45]
But also, Wu-Tang Flan, creator unknown.
The 50 greatest hip-hop songs
Rolling Stone asked a panel of experts (Busta Rhymes, Questlove, Rick Rubin, etc.) to vote on the best hip-songs ever produced. Here’s the list of their top 50 picks. Dre and Snoop’s Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang comes in at #6.
Climbing to Number Two on the singles chart in early 1993, “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” made Dr. Dre the undisputed flag bearer of West Coast rap, while also ushering that genre into the pop mainstream. The song’s secret weapon was a relatively unknown pup named Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose verses are packed with effortless quotables. The song also introduced Dre’s masterful “G-Funk” style of production, which updated George Clinton’s legacy with slow, rubbery funk and layered synth hooks. “We made records during the crack era, where everything was hyped up, sped up and zoned out,” Chuck D explained. “Dre came with ’ “G” Thang’ and slowed the whole genre down. He took hip-hop from the crack era to the weed era.”
Listen to the entire list on Spotify. (via @gavinpurcell)
Visualizing the Rolling Stones tours
The Rolling Stones have been touring for almost 50 years, starting with a British tour in 1963, and this tool allows you to visualize their travels. It’s really cool. The craziest part to me is how dramatically the length of their tours has increased since they started out. Their first tour in 1963 (actually one of their longer tours early in their career) was about 28 shows over the course of a month. Their last tour in 2005 had about a gabillion shows over two years and grossed $528 million.
On a personal note, I read “The Rolling Stones” several times on this page and still spent parts of two days looking at it and thinking it was The Beatles tour visualization. Twice. I read “The Rolling Stones,” thought it was The Beatles, corrected myself, and then thought it was The Beatles again. (via @pbump)
The hurry-up marching band
As the pace of play-calling in college football has sped up, college marching bands have had to adjust as well.
What followed was something like the movie scene where every non-essential part on the plane is removed in order to make it light enough to take off from the short, improvised runway. First to go were any tunes longer than 30 seconds. Then, after the 2009 season in which Kelly became Oregon’s head coach, Wiltshire ditched the flipbook on which the songs were written in favor of hand signals. “By the time I flipped a page,” he says, “it was already too late.” Knowing he had to serve two masters — playing faster while still engaging the audience — Wiltshire hit upon a new idea: theme music. Now whenever one of Oregon’s star players gets a first down, the band plays the first five chords of a recognizable song: the “Hawaii Five-O” theme for quarterback Marcus Mariota (because he’s originally from Hawaii); “Mambo No. 5” for De’Anthony Thomas (because his nickname is “the Black Mamba”); and the “Superman” theme for Kenjon Barner (because he’s really good).
Country cover of Snoop Dogg’s Gin and Juice
Revisiting a classic today: a cover of Snoop Dogg’s Gin and Juice by The Gourds.
Making Gangnam Style playable
Polygon visited Harmonix to learn about the process for Gangnam Style to become a part of their Kinect game Dance Central 3. The result is partially a look at the challenges in that process, but also ends up being a good profile of Harmonix. The “cat cow” move was particularly hard to put into the game.
The “cat cow” requires the dancer to get on hands and knees, thrust their hips and swing their head from side to side. It is but one of a handful of ridiculous moves in a dance inspired by playing cowboy and humping things, but throughout the day we will hear from almost everyone we talk to that in spite of how ridiculous it is, it has been hellish to recreate it in the game. A lot of magic has been thrown at solving the problem of the cat cow.
Kurt Cobain’s favorite albums
From Kurt Cobain’s journals, a handwritten list of the late Nirvana frontman’s 50 favorite albums, including those from Sonic Youth (duh), Pixies (double duh), and Mazzy Star.
Make your favorite songs infinite
The Infinite Jukebox analyzes the self-similarity of music to create neverending and everchanging versions of songs.
The app works by sending your uploaded track over to The Echo Nest, where it is decomposed into individual beats. Each beat is then analyzed and matched to other similar sounding beats in the song. This information is used to create a detailed song graph of paths though similar sounding beats. As the song is played, when the next beat has similar sounding beats there’s a chance that we will branch to a completely different part of the song. Since the branching is to a very similar sounding beat in the song, you (in theory) won’t notice the jump. This process of branching to similar sounding beats can continue forever, giving you an infinitely long version of the song.
Love this idea. How could I not with disclaimers like this?
you can get stuck in a strange attractor at the end of Karma Police for instance
Try it out with Call Me Maybe, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, or Little Fluffy Clouds. (via waxy)
Jehovah’s Witnesses to the deaf: no masturbation in da club
Some genius paired 50 Cent’s In Da Club with a video put out by the Jehovah’s Witnesses to encourage deaf people not to masturbate.
(via stellar)
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