vintage

Remember how I posted about Muxtape biting the dust due to RIAA interference? Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have a successor (who copies much of Mux’s coding, and completely acknowledges that fact). The rebellion continues. Please direct yourselves to this lovely little link:

Opentape.fm

This blog is in no way affiliated with Muxtape or Opentape and absolutely thinks the RIAA is doing a great job cracking down on dirty pirates. You should never share your music with anyone and mixtapes are a horrible idea. Etc. You know.

Also, I would like to draw your attention to a comment left by Charles on this post, in which I commented that Pony Da Look was bringing me more hits than any other search term on the internet. That’s a pretty big deal (and the hits are still rolling in!). I guess if I keep making posts like this …

Well, anyway, Charles here wrote me a review of the band’s record called Shattered Dimensions and I post it here for your viewing pleasure. It’s hilarious.

Here is a review for your blog of what Pony Da Look’s “Shattered Dimensions” sounds like:

You walk into a pub lit by torchlight and candles, and decorated with electronics from a surplus store. Somebody is slamming rhythmically on a jukebox, causing it to skip back and forth through distorted segments of some of Martin Gore’s earlier compositions for Depeche Mode. While this insistent sound fills the air, a bar-room brawl erupts between Loreena McKennitt and X-Ray Spex, who chant taunts at each other from either side of the room, as the tables are cleared aside and the other patrons stamp their bony feet as they begin the first of the many frenzied dances…

Bravo, Charles.

Real Life Update™ – I have moved into a cute little house in Toronto’s east end and am actually posting this on wireless I am stealing from an innocent neighbour. Please send this lovely person, whoever they may be, some happy thoughts on my behalf. Tomorrow is Squeeze! Updates to follow, of course.

Tags: damn the RIAA, muxtape, opentape, pony da look

I am kind of at a loss as to what to write about these days, since I haven’t seen any shows and I haven’t picked up any records. Heaven forbid, I know. However, one exciting thing remains: Neil Young has announced a North American tour in late fall, and I HAVE TICKETS. I am a pretty happy camper. Here’s a list of his Canadian dates:

• Oct 16 MTS Centre – Winnipeg, MB

• Oct 18 Brandt Center – Regina, SK
• Oct 19 Pengrowth Saddledome – Calgary, AB
• Oct 22 GM Place – Vancouver, BC
• Nov 29 Metro Centre – Halifax, NS
• Dec 1 Bell Centre – Montreal, PQ
• Dec 2 Scotiabank Place – Ottawa, ON
• Dec 4 Air Canada Centre – Toronto, ON

See his full tour schedule here.

I also actually had a post in the works about a mixtape I made … but unfortunately, the RIAA got in the way. Some of you may have already been part of Muxtape, a terrific website geared towards those interested in discovering new tunes. It was a very, very simple and streamlined site; no nonsense, no annoying images, just music. Users had a unique ID (username.muxtape.com) and were allowed to upload a maximum of 12 songs to the site; they could then arrange them in any order or rename them, as well name their tape and pick a colour for it.

After that … the listening. Features like “next” and “random” provided gold mines of new music and old favourites; one that I stumbled upon only had songs that were 2 minutes and 42 seconds long, and another person had just uploaded the entirety of Highway 61 Revisited (okay, I can see why the RIAA would not be too happy with that one). You could also add tapes you liked to your favourites, so you could come back and listen to them again later. Recently, Muxtape added a fabulous feature which allowed users to sync with Last.fm, enabling any tracks they listened to on Mux to scrobble onto their charts. Ingenius! Let me tell you, I was listening to Muxtape quite a bit the last few weeks.

Of course, anything good eventually gets shut down by the RIAA, and this one was no exception. Since there were so many tracks being provided in streaming format to the internet, it was only a matter of time before the problem of royalties surfaced; Muxtape has grown quite a bit in the last little while, and this puts them on par with a lot of other websites that have to pay hefty fees in order to stream that much music to listeners. The future is still up in the air for Muxtape, and if you’re like me, you’re crossing your fingers, toes and anything else that will stand still long enough in the hopes that it will come back.

Disney-meets-Kodak-styled sister site Mixwit just isn’t the same (and probably will get shut down eventually too); where Muxtape was smooth, streamlined and no-nonsense, Mixwit looks like an eight-year-old girl’s room was strewn all over the place. Oh well.

In other news, I’m seeing Squeeze in a week.

Tags: damn the RIAA, muxtape, neil young

Pitchfork Media reports that John Lydon of the Sex Pistols, better known as Johnny Rotten, got a little physical last weekend at the Summercase festival. Apparently, Lydon attacked Kele Okereke of Bloc Party after a racist tirade and left the singer “bruised and bloody”.

Lydon alleges that Okereke is making up this stuff and says he regrets that the singer needs to “lie about what was a perfect evening”.

Read the full story here.

Tags: bloc party, oh the controversy!, sex pistols

A few things I have been thinking about lately:

• Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” is an awesome song. It’s #217 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time – a list which is, of course, biased toward American and British acts, left out various influential artists, and includes nothing before 1940, but still! – and it is truly excellent. Not only does Dolly deliver marvelously, but the very structure of the song lends itself to a sound of desperation. Oh my lordy, I have listened to it seven times today.
   

• I didn’t manage to catch on to hip hop well enough in 2007, but Aesop Rock’s None Shall Pass and Buck 65’s Situation are both absolutely amazing (and would have been on my top 10 list, had I been smart enough to hear them when they were released). The former features tunes with the likes of John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, and even has a song called “Bring Back Pluto” that begins And then there were eight, just like that. Um, awesome. Situation features Spanish guitar and quotes of the Clapping Song and Allen Ginsberg, as well as some seriously great singles like the percussion-filled “Dang”.
   

• The Futureheads‘ album This Is Not The World is awesome. I said I would review it and dropped the ball, so here it is in a few words: it is better than News & Tributes and almost as good as The Futureheads. The first single, “The Beginning of the Twist”, is classic catchy, spastic Futureheads fare; the production on everything is a little cleaner than their S/T, but thankfully not as slick as the unfortunate News work. I like it more and more every week. Well done, Sunderlanders. Now bring back Field Music!
   

• I am seeing Squeeze in 17 days. Not that I am particularly excited or anything.

Goodies:
Aesop Rock, None Shall Pass
The Futureheads, The Beginning of the Twist
Buck 65, The Outskirts

Tags: aesop rock, buck 65, dolly parton, the futureheads

I am not getting any real work done, so I might as well write a post. Here is the second half of my folk festival ramblings!

Saturday & Sunday: Workshops

The awesome thing about the weekends at the Calgary Folk Music Festival is that the daytimes – 10:30 in the morning until 5:30 when the mainstage starts – are all workshops and smaller concerts, and the workshops are where so much of the magic of this festival lies. They throw together two or three groups, who have probably never even seen each other before, let alone played together, and let them go for an hour. The stuff that comes out of these stages … man, you have no idea. Here’s what I took in on Saturday:

Machinations & Palindromes
Andrew Bird, Master Musicians of Jajouka, A Hawk & A Hacksaw

Wicked and Weird
The Weakerthans, Calexico, Handsome Family, Torngat

Shout, Sisters, Shout!
Woodpigeon, Basia Bulat, The Consonant C, Julie Doiron

Sweetly Undone
Calexico, Bill Callahan, A Hawk & A Hacksaw, Andrew Bird

A Brief History of Rhyme
Wendy McNeill, Josh Ritter, Woodpigeon, Trish Klein (Be Good Tanyas)

as well as a concert by the Handsome Family.

Things I learned: Andrew Bird is a great collaborator with anyone, and so are Calexico (that horn section! that lap steel!); John K. Samson (Weakerthans) and Joey Burns (Calexico) should always sing together; Basia Bulat covering “Thirty Days” is one of the best things to happen to workshops, especially with a backing band of about fifteen people; Bill Callahan sings about blood a lot; and the Handsome Family write really sad songs about milk.

The workshops, in short, were awesome.

Sunday

OK, by Sunday I was exhausted. Saturday ends at 11:30 and you are back at the park at something like 8:30 to get a spot, so everyone is a bit sluggish in the morning. However, the workshops got people on their feet pretty quickly. Here’s what I got to see:

Indie 500
Basia Bulat, Great Lake Swimmers, Julie Doiron, Sam Parton (Be Good Tanyas)

3 Altered Chords & The Truth
The Duhks, Joël Fafard, John Wort Hannam, Diana Jones

That Ain’t No A Flat Major!
Maryem Tollar & The Toronto Cairo Collective, A Hawk & A Hacksaw, Düvö

Blue Blue Grass of Home
Tim O’Brien, The Duhks, Sparrow Quartet, Craig Korth (Widow Maker)

as well as concerts by Julie Doiron and Basia Bulat.

I think “That Ain’t No A Flat Major” takes the cake for one of the best workshops I’ve seen at the folk festival. To give you a bit of background, Düvö is from Hungary, and they play Hungarian folk music (complete with fiddles, hammer dulcimer, etc). A Hawk & A Hacksaw, interestingly, is from Alberquerque but based in Hungary – when they said “We’re going to play a Hungarian czardas for you,” all the members of Düvö cheered and roared and joined in. CLASSIC. Maryem Tollar is the one behind the theme song to Little Mosque on the Prairie, for all you Canadians, and she and her band are originally from Egypt. You can imagine how awesome that sounded. It was terrific, and there was this tiny two- or three-year-old girl running around and dancing the whole time, which just made it better.

MAINSTAGE

To be quite honest I don’t want to spend an hour talking about all these acts because it is going to sound repetitive, so here is the short version!

Josh Ritter – I knew his stuff already from The Animal Years, and I was thrilled he played so many songs from that record; he was incredibly joyful AND he stopped a rainstorm (only to have it start again after he left the stage, unfortunately).

The Duhks – Amazing. They fuse Celtic-type stuff with folk and rock and all kinds of things, and out comes a really energetic live show. Their vocalist can really belt it out! Well worth checking out, and definitely one of my favourite festival discoveries.

A Hawk & A Hacksaw – I mentioned them already, of course, but they were great. I think some of the crowd were surprised to see an instrumental band, because there were a few bewildered faces in the audience, but they were really incredible, and once they started playing some blistering fiddle tunes everyone was dancing anyway. Bonus points for the indie kids as Jeremy Barnes used to be the drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel.

James Blood Ulmer – Serious, gritty blues, backed by soul vocalist and bass player Meshell Ndegeocello. He was good and fun and really grooved well, but I guess I just wasn’t totally into his set. He plays his guitar in a pretty interesting way! Great voice though, holy. Very dirty-blues.

The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Hands down one of my favourite acts of the festival. Slightly aging folk-punk musicians from across the pond, rousing everybody with rather Pogues-like tunes, these guys were a total blast. It also didn’t hurt that everything was delivered in heavy Scottish or English accents, only adding to the fun. They sold out of their records in a flash – I didn’t get to pick one up, but if I do find one, I will post something here for your enjoyment!

Blue Rodeo – Can I just say, I love Jim Cuddy. And the rest of Blue Rodeo, too, but I just think Cuddy is like a really cool uncle who would play your favourite songs on his guitar and let you sit on his knee and take you out for ice cream when your parents weren’t around. I like that guy. Anyway, I am so glad we didn’t succumb to the rain and miss Blue Rodeo – they were amazing. Hit after hit! “Til I Am Myself Again,” “Five Days in May,” “C’mon” etc. One of my favourite live acts and one that I would love to see again and again.

Sonny Landreth – Another really great blues player, but one that I was more into. I loved this guy. Serious chops and serious feel. He reminded me a bit of Jack Semple, but I think I liked Landreth’s playing a lot more. He got a bunch of people dancing, always testament to how well you are doing at a festival.

Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet – Featuring Bela Fleck of the Flecktones, who were Festival performers last year. These guys were amazing. Washburn, a beautiful Southern belle, has spent some time living in China, and consequently is fluent in Mandarin. She sang some Mandarin tunes for us and it is so mind-boggling to see this very fair, red-haired, Tennessee lady singing Chinese folk songs. I was thoroughly impressed. Not to mention her and Bela Fleck’s blistering banjo over everything – Fleck performed a tune by himself, as well, and it sounded like there were two or three banjos playing at once. What a guy. Add this to my favourites list.

It was starting to rain again after their set, so we took off and missed Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band and Ani DiFranco, although to tell you the truth I don’t think any of us were too disappointed.

And of course, Festival Mini-Sampler Pt. 2:

Basia Bulat – In the Night
Josh Ritter – Wolves
Blue Rodeo – C’mon
Julie Doiron – Swan Pond

Tags: a hawk and a hacksaw, abigail washburn, andrew bird, basia bulat, bela fleck, bill callahan, blue rodeo, calexico, calgary folk music festival, handsome family, james blood ulmer, josh ritter, julie doiron, master musicians of jajouka, sonny landreth, sparrow quartet, the consonant c, the duhks, the men they couldn't hang, the weakerthans, torngat, woodpigeon

In case you haven’t been following, here’s the first post about this.

The Matchstick Zune program is wrapping up shortly and so I am going to toss a few more comments in here while I can. I might actually have to make a switch to the Zune because my Zen has started acting a little funny lately, and I have to remove the battery just to get it to turn off – not a good sign. So I guess we’ll see what happens there.

I just want to reiterate how annoying the software is. I am still not a fan of it at all. I really dislike having to go find the screen to monitor a folder with media in it AND THEN go back and see them being added to the collection, AFTER which I can drag them into the player to sync up. Too many steps. The Zen just has a menu; you explore your computer yourself, select what you want, and in it goes. Really fast and easy and user-friendly. This monitoring business is a pain in the butt at best, and if I wasn’t computer-savvy to begin with I would have a whole lot of trouble with it. Thumbs down.

Also this is not so much a comment about the Zune itself, but all the extra stuff they sell for it (that was sent to me as part of the package), like the extra headphones or the AC adapter, has way too much packaging. I don’t need an eight-inch by four-inch box for a pair of earbuds.

I am really enjoying the videos though, and am starting to experiment with playlists. The player itself has been great and I haven’t had any problems with it so far, so props for that. It’s been fun; I will probably continue to use this (especially if my little red Zen dies – that would be a sad day indeed).

Actual music posts to follow.

Edit: WHOA! My sad face turned into an emoticon. I had no idea those were supported on WordPress. That is pretty awesome.

Tags: creative labs, matchstick, microsoft, zen microphoto, zune