TerryB's MixTape

Wild stuff

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total
mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the
huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but, the wrod as a wlohe.

Ptetry amzanig huh?

Old 97's, or my foray into album downloads

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:22:00 +0000

So the Old 97's are playing at Higher Ground tonight. My Bro and I will be catching this one, I've wanted to check these guys out since the turn of the century. When I first picked up Too Far To Care that disc as well as some live shows off dimeadozen.org were in my car deck for weeks on end. Since that peak, the 97's may have faltered a tad, slipping into semi-generic alt-pop territory a bit. Where the writing on TFTC was simply amazing ("If that phone don't ring one more time/ I'm gonna lose what's left of my mind' you make a big impression for a girl of your size/ now I can't get by without you and your big brown eyes", "So I sidled up beside her, settled down and shouted, "Hi there."/ "My name's Stewart Ransom Miller, I'm a serial lady-killer."/ She said, "I'm already dead," that's exactly what she said. ", "Just like California was not even there/ Since it's gone I'm so withdrawn/ I ain't got no one nowhere/ Right beside the ocean my darlin' Clementine/ Well the water got high and she never got dry and She was a water sign"), later material was merely pretty damned good, especially "Muder or a Heart Attack" off Satellite Rides.

So I saw this spring that a new album was out, on New West Records nonetheless, a killer label that I have high respect for in terms of putting out quality product, both in terms of artistry and sound quality. I heard a track, "Dance With Me" on a promo compilation and was a bit dismayed; it sounded squashed like most new releases today. Having been burned on some new records I chose to sit this one out even though the reviews were really solid. I've seen the LP at Pure Pop, but haven't picked it up. This morning, I decided that I had to hear this album if only to be primed for the show. No time to buy it, needledrop it, and dump to digital so I can play it on my Sansa while driving the tractor, so I did the Amazon download thing. I haven't downloaded an album since my foray into eMusic years ago, and their 128 kbps downloads left a lot to be desired. Well click away I did this morning, and the album was loaded up and ready for the car in about ten minutes.
Sound quality? Not bad at all, and the squashed mastering wasn't there from that one track I had heard. Sure it would be nice to have on vinyl, but after dropping $9 for the download I doubt I'll drop another $18 for the record. I don't plan to d/l my music from now on, and this did break my NY resolution to but my music locally, but in a pinch, when i just had to have it, it worked.
So now I'm just pretty psyched to see these guys live, finally.

TB

Don't know what to say about this one...

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:41:00 +0000

Crate digging....

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:47:00 +0000

Here's a pretty funny blog post about 'crate digging', or the practice of digging through pile of used, dusty, often crap records, in search or that 'special one'...

TB

the 90's...the latest great music era?

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:04:00 +0000

This is a really good time to be buying used cd’s, especially at yard sales. While decent vinyl stocks seem to have dried up a bit in the backyard market, casual music consumers are wither changing tactics or dumping music collections altogether. Thank the Ipod and downloading for this I guess- with some more tech-savvy folks dumping their cd’s onto hard drives, the physical media is often tossed as an afterthought (bad idea, IMO). On the other hand, with the ubiquity of shitty-sounding music out there makes listening no longer special, so folks are dumping cd’s and their bulky packaging for invisible mp3’s and DVD’s. So I’ve loaded up on a lot of stuff at garage sales this year, all for $0.50 – 1.00 each.

I picked up this Carpenter’s tribute last weekend, remembering it a bit from back in the day (and being reminded by its inclusion in “Juno”). Not being a major Carpenter’s fan, my history with their music is simply through its position on pop radio while I was growing up. I will never deny these sibling’s ability to write a great pop song. So this collection, produced in 1994, contains tracks by many bands from that era that were hitting on ‘alternative’ radio at the time (and a good few who should have). American Music Club, the cranberries, Johnette Napolitano, Matthew Sweet, Cracker, Sonic Youth, Babes in Toyland and Shonen Knife contribute tracks (along with Dishwalla, 4 Non Blondes, Sheryl Crow, and others that may not have been in my playlist at the time). Like any good tribute album, this one is held together by the songs; even those I don’t know have a familiar feel that unites the rather different artists. So listening to it on the way home last night felt like a weird time warp to 1992-1994, when a few of these characters played a not insignificant role in my soundtrack.

Which brings me to my point. I’ve heard it said that one’s musical tastes generally are set during their years from 18-25, and this little window fits in there for me. So many changes in life happen during that shift to adulthood, and those changes are accompanied by music that brings us back to that time when our eventual ‘grown-up’ selves are forming. Certainly I can very specifically identify with the music of Matthew Sweet, the Cranberries, Concrete Blonde, and American Music Club with a very particular slice in my time, and the other bands on this comp are peripheral but certainly contemporary with this feeling. And I find myself buying (and listening to) a lot of cd’s from that window, say 1992-1996, this summer. Maybe it’s that folks my age are growing up and out of their music collections, and dumping them at the garage sales along with baby books and that bike they don’t ride. I’ve been gobbling it up though, and I feel for another reason- this was the last great era of mass recorded music.

Yeah, that’s a bold statement, and one every generation makes when the new kids come along with their version of the latest noisy racket. But I but a lot of music, not just at yard sales, and feel a little tuned in to what’s playing nowadays. Just a peek at my stack of records here in the office finds The Sadies New Seasons (2007), Drive-By Truckers Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (2007), Band of Horses Everything All the Time (2006), The Kooks Konk (2008)The Cure The Cure (2004), Ray Davies Working Man’s Café (2008), Interpol Turn on the Bright Lights (2002), and Tapes n’ Tapes Walk it Off (2008). Granted these are just the vinyl LP’s I have at my office, and even represent a more adult contemporary/alt-country sensibility than a pop music one, but I do work around college kids. Sometimes they use my computer to charge their ipods. What do I find on them? Bob Marley, Grateful Dead, Phish, moe AC/DC, Aerosmith (and Coldplay, Radiohead, and U2). Yeah, this is UVM, where a good bit of pop music is the music of the previous generations or its recreation thereof. But I also have working for me one of the music directors of the uber-indie college radio station, WRUV. We’ve swapped some music, and I played DJ with the week’s current review discs when he drove me to Maine for a meeting. None of the music stuck- I was just swapping cd’s and skipping tracks.

Much has been written on the indie rock explosion of the early nineties, when the underground hit the masses with sometimes great results. Today’s pop artists don’t seem to have that tension resulting from the dichotomy between these worlds. And that’s not because the underground doesn’t exist, but rather because the mass pop market is in the toilet. I really think that a lot of this has to do with the new digital distribution. I’m not bitching about downloading per se, although that doesn’t help, but rather the switch from listening to music as a social activity to listening in earbud seclusion, where our soundtracks are no longer shared, and memories no longer associated with the music. Add to this the ridiculous mastering bullshit of most modern releases, where the loudness levels make a listener want to shut the music off, as well as the poor lossy compression that listeners accept by default, and our culture is actively discouraged from actively collecting music as a cultural commodity. So the good music that is created tends to either stay in the indie circles, or make it to AAA radio (now that I’ve heard Spoon on The Point), but stay out of the kid’s hands. And isn’t that where new music belongs, playing the theme to our newest generation’s coming of age?

Amazing.....

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:51:00 +0000

I'm just really discovering YouTube a little (now that we have high-speed). Amazing what creatvity and a littleediting can do. This is absolutelyhilariousand yet could be a hit single....

Gear Daddies, Billy's Live Bait

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:22:00 +0000

I forget where I found this record, but it has a $4 price tag on it. These boys were second-tier contemporaries of the Replacements, Soul Asylum, Jayhawks, and others from the late-eighties Minneapolis scene. Playing understated, competent roots-rock, the Gear Daddies pulled a nice one off with this record. Too bad the band name, and album title for that matter, brings to mind some lunkhead covers bar band who finally got a shot at recording an album.

Two things lift this record from mediocrity. First is the production and mastering. While the band doesn’t go out on any limbs musically, their basic sound crackles and snaps with well-recorded authority, and without heavy-handed (nor overly light) production. On “Where Your Crown” and “Time Heals” the rhythm section in particular snap with a crisp authority that keeps the listener interested.

Songwriter Martin Zellar brings the other real highlight to this record, a great batch of tunes that explore the sunless underside of daily life. This isn’t some mopey stuff a la Mark Eitzel or early Cure, but rather focuses on his own self-deprecating outlook. Take “Where Your Crown” for example:
Open your eyes and look around / Then slowly get up off the ground / First figure where you are / Find your keys, your coat, your car / I don’t want to wear your crown / I’ll only let you down

Maybe it wasn’t meant to be / I’ve got a past keeps haunting me / No matter how hard I try / It’s there, it stares me in the eye / I don’t want to wear your crown / I’ll only let you down / Please don’t make me wear your crown / Don’t you know I was born to let you down? / I don’t want to wear your crown / I’ll only let you down

Doesn’t get any clearer than that, huh? How about “No One Home”:

And the clouds move in / Out of nowhere / Then they’re gone again / My hands are shaking and I’m out of cigarettes / My mind turns over fourteen years of regrets / I lock the doors and unplug the phone / Ain’t no one home

This would all be pretty depressing stuff if it wasn’t delivered with such solid and non-downer music. And that explains why this record stands out so well, that dichotomy between lyrical focus and sharp musicianship presents a pretty ironic package that grabs you, pulls you into the story. Too bad these guys didn’t make it. After breaking up in 1992, Zellar went out on his own, although the GD’s have reformed for a few reunion gigs since.

New Metal

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:58:00 +0000

Well it ain't exactly new, but I've had a hankering for some metal sometimes for that long drive home, or sometimes while I'm sitting in the tractor now that I have an MP3 player to drag along. Since I've discovered my 'lost' stash of low-res MP3's from the old days of the early 21st century, and I've had a player to bring them along, I've been able to sample stuff I've owned but didn't listen to because the fidelity was not that great and made them not worth constantly burning cd's for portability's sake. Flash memory is a godsend for portable tunes- dump 'em on, listen, and toss 'em off when done, no waste. It's great that I got a fancy car stereo that let's me play files off a usb drive, and makes tuneage portability that much easier. And since some may say I'm a hypocrite for going MP3, I need to stress that these are for portable use only, and not for 'home listening', or for archiving, for that matter. Who gives a shit anyway, I'm talking about my latest finds in METAL.
Sacred Reich. Jason Goodrich used to listen to these guys in high school, and I may have borrowed a tape once. Anyway, I'd forgotten them, but tossed them on recently while in the tractor cab doing the back-and-forth monotony thing. Wearing earbuds under earmuffs in an air-cooled 73HP German diesel tractor with an airblast sprayer wailing at full speed is not a situation for 'critical listening', so this sort of music fits the bill. These guys play balls-to-the-wall no frills speed/thrash with a decided leftist lyrical bent. Vocals and major songwriting are handled by bassist Phil Rind, with the resulting sound a rhythmic and bottom-heavy speed stew. Heal, their 1996 release, is some pretty solid stuff, and the title track stands out as among the best metal songs out there. What I like most here is that unlike the new breed of metal where bands seem to feel a need to up the 'scary factor', complete with those brillo-throated vocals, Rind's voice is just basic metal shouting.

Mercyful Fate. These guys certainly have the melodrama that Sacred Reich lack, with operatic, wailing, sometimes hushed, somewhat boogity-boo scary lyrics thanks to vocalist King Diamond. The music is tight, full of changes and dynamics, and superbly played. Well worth picking up, since I'm sure you can find it in the used bins by now.

Yours in RAWK,

TB

The piss-poor state of modern music professionals expands...

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:56:00 +0000

In a recent blog post the music editor for our local Alternative Newsweekly laments the loss of his hard drive on his MacBook, and the resulting loss of some 60,000 songs collected through. There's a few problems I have with this, and his slight whining about it. First, I thought Macs were indestructible? Actually I knew they weren't, but the hubris exhibited by many Mac owners who feel that their machines are so good that the most basic computer safety procedures can be ignored is amazing. I mean, backup drives are ridiculously cheap, and software will automate it for you. There’s no excuse.
Second, 60,000 songs on a laptop drive? Maybe my math is off a bit, but my 250 GB drive at home is holding 10000 high-res FLAC files and 15000 mid- and low-res MP3’s (most are copies of the FLACS for car listening) and it's approaching full. That many songs on a single drive would require low bitrate files as a default. My problem with this? The city’s (state’s?) arguably highest-profile music editor doesn’t need to be an audiophile (a word he often uses in the completely wrong context), but the music samples he reviews and uses for reference should be of reasonable sound quality, and <160 kbps MP3 simply is not. On that note, it amazes me that this resource, that being the reference music library for the state's preeminent Arts rag, contains no physical media? I mean, what about liner notes, fidelity, and protecting oneself from this hard drive business?
I don't mean to be a dick, but I would expect more from 7D and their music man. But then again this is the guy who steered me towards buying that Tapes n' Tapes garbage...

TB

Greg Calbi on the Loudness Wars...

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:44:00 +0000

A good YouTube Explanation of the Loudness Wars...

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:35:00 +0000

...and the death of modern recorded sound:

Tapes 'n Tapes, Walk it Off

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:23:00 +0000

I picked up this little slab of vinyl based solely on a bit in Seven Days touting their ultra-cool indieness. I don't know why the music press doesn't warn us about absolutely atrocious sound quality when turning us on to a band and convincing us to plop down our $17.
Having never heard these cats I was intrigued when I plopped the platter on the turntable. I thought it funny that a twelve-songer was on two records, and the initial sound told me why, it was pressed at 45 rpm. A flick of the speed switch got things timed right, but I was then immediately assaulted with one of the worst sounding recordings that has ever graced my ears. There's lots of info out there about the problems of modern engineers and mastering techs who over compress music and blast the base volume to give an impression of 'loudness," but this one takes the cake. And not only is this compressed at the mastering end, but the actual recording is so distorted and clipped that the resulting track just plain sounds like shit. THE INTENDED EFFECT IS TO MAKE THE RECORD SEEM LOUD WHEN PLAYED ON A RADIO OR IPOD BUT IT REALLY JUST MAKES IT ANNOYING AS HELL LIKE WRITING LIKE THIS. Funny thing is that vinyl recordings tend to be better in this regard because it's hard to smash all that shit into the groove without making the needle jump. Hence, the 45 rpm speed, which allows for wider groove spacing.
As for the music, I guess the Pavement comparisons make sense, but I have a really hard time listening to it to give it a fair shake. Look for this record on eBay soon. This band either has their heads up their asses or got a raw deal on the production/engineering/mastering end.Here's a screen shot of the waveform, notice that the level is completely maxed out with no room for subtlety or dynamic:

For comparison, here's a shot of a vinyl recording of The Clash, Brand New Cadillac, a song that I consider to have great slam and impact thanks to its use of dynamics:

Another Ray Davies vid

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:05:00 +0000

"Days", from that same BBC video:

Ray Davies does "Shangri-La"

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:02:00 +0000

HOLY SHIT... I'm a huge kinks fan, and this track literally gave me goosebumps:

A pretty funny (and interesting) thread on cleaning vinyl

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:53:00 +0000

Located here

"...So after a good bit of scotch I have concluded that you can probably clean your vinyl with most anything and it will sound better, that vinyl doesn't deteriorate very quickly under full strength of either substance, so I can't imagine you'll do much harm with short cleaning sessions of either. Long term problems? Maybe, and I'm going to hang onto this record and test later, but I doubt it...

OTOH, the much gentler water/alcohol/Dawn combo worked as well and probably has NO negative effect. I'm sure the expensive record cleaner also works and makes the owner feel good. Nothing wrong with that either.

Off to more scotch! Might try carb cleaner and WD-40 next....:

Drive By Truckers on Vinyl!

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:08:00 +0000

So I have this New Year's resolution that I'll buy my music locally. I spend a lot of my discretionary funds on tunes, and often have been known to order over the 'net. But I love record stores, and I hate to hear of them generally being in bad shape these daysand closing down. So I hear a while back that the Drive-By Truckers are rereleasing their back catalog on vinyl, and Music Direct has them all. They're limited to 1000 copies each, so I'd better get them quick..... Then I rethink. I go down to Pure Pop in Burlington, a solid bricks and mortar indie shop whose vinyl selection has been pretty good and getting better. I'm talking new stuff here, including overpriced rereleases as well as brand-new offerings. Low and behold they had the whole catalog. I skipped the first two (Pizza Deliverance and Gangstabilly) which I understand were put out before they found their songwriting groove, and pick up the rest; from New West records there's The Dirty South, Decoration Day, and A Blessing and a Curse, from Lost Highway I got Southern Rock Opera. I already have the latter two on cd and love them. Only quibble? Lost Highway's SRO is, like most of their releases, of pretty bad pressing quality: many 'pimples' per side and both records with pretty good edge warps. The New West releases however are pristine, like the best I've ever seen. I'm a happy man and no resolutions broken.

Jen Trynin

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:43:00 +0000

Way back in '94 or so my brother was telling me about this woman, Jen Trynin, and her incredible debut cd. Bro had picked up on her in a local Boston rag and had ordered her disc direct before she had been picked up by a label. At that time there was talk about how she was the next big thing, and I heartily agreed upon hearing the tunes.

Cockamamie was initially released on her own Squint records label and is one of the greatest debuts ever in rock, and is probably one of the best power-pop records of the 90's. That opening drum roll, those down chords, and the lines "What could make me happier than sitting right here/ trash in the walkway and boys on the street/ screaming bloody murder/ cause that's what you do/ when you don't have a chance," signaled a cry of pop desperation that shook with honesty. The album is truly a solo affair with Trynin on guitar and vocals and a hired-gun rhythm section that really complements her well. The general focus of the lyrics is on love affairs good and bad (mostly the latter) and seeing a sense of hope in that aforementioned desperation.

This theme is really developed on the second track and should-have-been-a-hit "Better than Nothing." The opening lines "Maybe we could talk in the shower/ I bet we'd be gone in an hour/ I bet we could leave all this behind/ or we could just stay home," detail a woman who is struggling to find goodness in a blase situation. The jangly pop and keen drum beat accentuate the hope to be found, and the chorus "It's Better than nothing/ I'm feeling good for now/ But I know that tomorrow, I'll probably come around" hammer home the point that maybe we just have to accept our plight and take what life is giving us.

The remainder of the album continues that theme with great songwriting and especially killer guitar playing from Trynin. Titles such as "Snow", "Everything is Different Now", "All this Could be Yours", "Knock Me Down", and "Beg" hammer that lyrical theme home. I popped this in last week after a long hiatus and was struck by how personal this record is to me. That probably has to do with my situation back in the mid-nineties when this record was an essential part of my soundtrack. I was in my early twenties, going through some of the same relationship issues as the songwriter, and sometimes just trying to make sense of messed up love affairs and my own shortcomings as a partner. "One Year Down" was a particularly close to home tune: "One year down and I'm no hero/ One year down and there is not a sound/ One less year that I'll be lonely/ With one ear to the ground."

I never understood why this record didn't take off into the stratosphere, and when it's followup Gun Shy Trigger Happy (killer title, by the way) was released, there was very little push behind it. Trynin had toned down the rocking a little bit, and even had a short-lived single on the local AAA station, but the damage was done, and she faded out before long. I caught her live gig at Club Metronome in Burlington for this record, and was pleased that she brought her rockin' pop up to Vermont. Chatting with her after the show she seemed a little disenchanted with her plight in the industry...if I'd only known. Her records are now found in cutout bins and for $1.99 on eBay.

So last week I had some time to kill in Barnes and Nobles and picked up her 2006 biography Everything I'm Cracked up to Be. I cranked through it in no time at all, and learned of how she was chewed up and spit out by the major labels during their insane bidding war for Cockamamie, how the initial tour was fraught with false expectations, too much drinking, inter personnel conflict, and was, by the time it hit the West Coast, a failure. It happens that the first record was released the same day as Alannis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill, and parent company Warner Brothers decided to put its full marketing power behind that one. Too bad, because Morrissette was a flash-in-the-pan (with an undoubted killer single), while Trynin really had the skills to go for the long haul. Fed up with it all, Trynin quit the business after GSTH. The sad thing is that even in her afterlife as a writer, she gets crap for respect. I bought the book in the closeout section of B&N for six bucks.

Track down her records and give them a spin. Hell, Cockamamie even saw a vinyl release, which I ordered last week off the 'Bay (ten bucks, shipped). And learn more at her website.

Papas Fritas

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:13:00 +0000

Back when I was downloading those MP3’s from eMusic around the turn of the century I often would do so based on the text/review for a particular release. I wasn’t too discriminating, obviously with the 28 gigs I would end up downloading, and it took me awhile to sort through things (still am, really). One descriptor in those reviews which soon meant nothing was ‘pop’. I know what pop music is to me, and I guess it’s like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography…it’s not easy to define, but you know it when you see/hear it.

So I was digging around these piles of bits and bytes for good tunes at a time when I had to burn an audio cd to listen them in my system. When burning ‘pop’ music from the likes of Piebald, The Promise Ring, and others of that emo-crap genre, I was turned off. And somewhere in there I had lumped Papas Fritas in with those characters, much to my loss for the next five or six years.

Now contrary to my previous posts on shitty 128kbps bitrates, I have not put any PF tracks into another format nor sought out the better (cd, vinyl preferably) formats yet. But this music is so incredibly catchy, so fuckin’ POP! that I don’t mind those scattered highs so much on my music player.

The wonderful trio Papas Fritas formed in 1992 or so at Tufts University and released a debut EP, three full-lengths, and a compilation/best-of that seems to have closed the lid on these fine chaps. What a shame. I’m not going to go into an album-by-album rundown here, save that for the all music guide, and since these are loaded onto my music player I tend to listen them not as individual albums but rather as a big chunk of singalong. I can say that the group, basically guitarist Tony Goddess, drummer Shivika Asthana, and bassist Keith Gendel with a few additions near the end, evolved a bit over the course of their albums from stunning-what-they-could-do-with-it-lofi indie pop through better produced (but not Produced) indie-pop to slightly more mature (read sometimes slower) indie pop. All three write songs, sometimes credited collaboratively. Goddess and Asthana trade vocal duties, from his slightly reedy/geeky tone to her boppy/exuberant and sometimes plaintive foil. To simplify their sound, imagine the New Pornographers play early 90’s era twee/cuddlecore with Jay Bennet circa The Church at 4 AM at the production console. Subject matter spans the range; lost love, happy days, playing clubs as a small act, relationships, sunny days. I’ll hit just a few highlights (files are ~1 meg Mp3’s…after the taster, buy the records!):

“Passion Play,” debut EP and LP: A downbeat ode to a relationship, with great use of strings on the latter version.

“Holiday” S/T LP: “Take one of these/ on your holidayyyy…”

“Say Goodbye,” Helioself: Asthana sings this beautiful postscript a friend (lover) who has left set to a steady pulsing backbeat. Understated and brilliant.

“Hey Hey You Say,” Helioself: A throbbing little piece that will stay in your head all day.

“People Say,” Buildings and Grounds: Very nice vocal from Asthana on this one.

“Way You Walk,” Buildings and Grounds: Crazy hooky riff that makes you strut. "I can tell by the way you walk that you want to be alone with him..."

See more on these guys at their website: http://www.papasfritas.com

Discovering the Lost MP3s

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:22:00 +0000

Way back in the dark ages of 2000-2001 I dipped my toes into the developing world of downloaded MP3 music. With a particularly sluggish dialup connection at home, a fast work connection that blocked filesharing sites, and too much holier-than-thouness to ‘steal from the artist’, I looked into eMusic.com. What a friggin’ deal! Unlimited downloads, cheap ($12.95/month, now limited to 50 songs/month) subscription, and access to a wealth of mostly indie music. I started downloading with fervor, setting my work computer up in the morning to download piles of stuff on their T-1 connection, burn it to cd at lunch, then start again for the afternoon. Over the course of eight or nine months I pretty much downloaded all I wanted from their library. Then I didn’t listen to it.
Around that same time I was getting into vinyl and picking up the pace of my music collection in general. I was also starting to pay attention to sound quality, not from the audiophile point of view but rather just searching for good sounding playback of the music in my life. Often I would burn a 128kbs MP3 to disc for the drive to work, and I just couldn’t listen to it for more than five minutes, that shrill low bitrate MP3 sound literally gave me a headache especially with jazz or other music with a lot of cymbals and other natural high sounds. I played around with some ‘sound optimizer’ software to make things more tolerable, but basically I shelved all of that music, some 20+ gigabytes and 400 or so albums. I hadn’t even listened to many of them at the time, and downloaded based on the description.
Fast forward to 2006. I picked up an outboard AD/DA unit for our laptop so that I could make recordings of my vinyl (Edirol UA-EX1, works great). So while I had the ‘puter hooked up to the hifi, I figured I’d dump all of those MP3’s onto an external drive along with some select cd’s (in FLAC format, mind you). Suddenly those lost tracks were at my fingertips and playable on a better setup than my then truck cd player. They are still low-quality MP3’s, but they are good enough to sift through, play for background music, and look for higher quality copies of those that I really like. In future postings I’ll mention a few of these ‘lost tracks'....

Goodbye iPod... hello iVinyl

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:48:00 +0000

Sometimes I wonder if I look like this guy...

Men at Work, Business as Usual

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:11:00 +0000

When I was just a wee duffer, say ten years old or so, I thought that Men at Work was the greatest thing to hit the music scene ever, save maybe for Bruce Stringbean. With their catchy, slick melodies and songs about that imagined land of Australia, they had the pop hooks to bring home a far-off world. I must have spent hundreds of hours with this cassette in my Emerson portable tape player (we were too poor for me to have a real Walkman). Hell I even got their other stuff, including Two Hearts, making me one of maybe five people on the face of the earth that picked up the band's final album. Well time went on and like much of the new wave music of the 80's, Men at Work fell by the wayside.
I picked up a copy of Business as Usual on vinyl some time ago, and last night dropped the needle on it and must say that this is one of the finest pieces of 80's pop produced. All these years since it has not only held up, but rather increased in relevance. These five lads whipped up a rockin' new wave sound that wasn't really a product of the slick, synth-heavy times but rather combined elements of that era with a solid pub-rock foundation and great songwriting. Besides the great hits "Who Can It Be Now", "Down Under", and "Be Good Johnny", great songs themselves, the deep tracks really hold their ground, even stand out. I always dug "I Can See it in Your Eyes" as a kid and this one still holds its ground, same for "Touching the Untouchables". And "Down by the Sea", played on a decent mid-fi/modest hi-fi setup, has a touch of ambience to it that really carries it home. I have sort of meant to catch up on frontman Colin Hay's solo career, and with this reintroduction to his early, stellar work I just may need to follow through. This is a five star record.

TB

What's the Point???

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:13:00 +0000

Julie called me a couple of Wednesdays ago telling me to listen to the Point to try and win us some Bob Dylan tickets. The Point used to be known simply as 96.7 WNCS when I was a kid growing up in central VT. Back then, late 80’s early 90’s, they were truly an original station and an island of great programming amidst the classic rock and hair metal culture of Orange County and the greater Barre area. It was on NCS that I discovered Elvis Costello, the Clash (outside of “Should I Stay or Should I Go”), Talking Heads, and all sorts of other great music. It can be said that their unique mix of semi-formatted music and huge library pioneered the Format now known as Adult Album Alternative. So yeah, I was once a fan.

Then in the mid nineties things started toi go downhill. The station was sold to a small regional outfit, certainly no Clear Channel, but changes soon began. First was the frequency change to 104.7, still out of Montpelier. Then the change to a branded station, The Point. This was a real bad sign of things to come, because once a unique station begins branding itself it’s obvious that the programming is going to be tweaked towards ‘focus groups’ and demographics. They picked up another frequency, then another, and now have four or five. Now the advertisers began controlling things. The music library began to shrink, long time DJ’s started to leave, and they were becoming a caricature of themselves, another ‘The River’ or ‘Alice’.

I’d say it was a couple of years ago that the latest shakeup really came. It was suddenly obvious that their playlist, now with a library of maybe 1000 songs, was being tweaked to reflect their aging demographic towards more safe and familiar stuff- lots of Eagles, Springsteen, and simple stuff like Bonnie Raitt and Indigo Girls. And of these they played the same three songs or so. Then their last original DJ, the morning guy, was canned and the clichéd morning show two-man banter bullshit was added. With this show came more of the canned, formatted contests and features repeated ad nauseum in keeping with the Branding concept. One feature was the “Nine at Nine” where at nine AM they would play nine songs from the same year. A year or so ago I was tuned in and 1977 came up. Great year for music. They played some safe stuff from the Police and Elvis Costello, then came the most offensive thing I had heard on the station to date: Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded”. “HOT BLOODED!?! YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!” I remember shouting at the radio. I haven’t turned that crap on since.

So I’m listening to “Ticket Window Wednesday” (notice the Branding) and they’re giving away a bunch of stuff today, usually to caller six or whatever. Well they come on with the Scratchy 45 contest where they play a snippet of a song and you have to ID it. The tickets weren’t anything I was interested in (passes to the lift at a local mountain/bike trail deal), but when they played the track, the music collector in me had to call in because I knew that most of the listeners wouldn’t be able to ID Rockpile’s “If Sugar Was as Sweet as You Honey”. So I won the little game and the DJ’s did their thing of playing the caller back over the air, something the old station never did because they were about the music, not some novelty crap. Then they played the track and I sung along, thinking that maybe the playlist was picking up a bit. A few minutes later they do their ‘nine at nine’ thing again, this time for 1984. Great year for music. They played Some Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and then I was again slapped by their offensive crap: The Scorpions’ “Rock You Like A Hurricane”. This bullshit is everything that this station was once up against, and the reason why they were so great in providing an alternative to it. I don’t mind hearing it on a classic rock station, but this is a total insult to any music lover. The Point, you suck my nuts.

So the Saturday after my little experience with the Point’s suckness I’m going through Montpelier with Alice after a grocery run and see a sign for a Yard Sale listing cd’s and such. I stop by and it’s a frickin’ Goldmine, probably 1000 cd’s for sale, lot’s og great stuff. I picked up 20 or so for $25, mostly radio promos but some still sealed legit copies. Spoon, My Morning Jacket, Built To Spill, Front 242, Penelope Houston, Hammell on Trial, Mudhoney, Ani Difranco, Belle and Sebastian, Drums and Tuba, and this is just the stuff I picked up. So someone at the sale asks the proprietor if he’s in the music business and he replies that he has been for 15 years and has been music director at The Point for the past six, “So if you don’t like the music, I’m the guy to talk to.” “What the hell were you playing the Scorpions for the other day?” I asked. He then blamed it on the two-man morning doofus team, saying that they like to play that stuff on their nine at nine thing to show the diversity of the music in that year, and said he himself cringed when he heard it. Hey buddy- you’re the music director. Every track in the library is your responsibility, and that station is so formatted that every track that is played is directly approved by you. Don’t give me that horseshit blaming the DJ’s. If we want to hear the ‘other’ music that came out in a certain year, we can listen to an ‘other’ station. Your station sucks because you let it suck. I used less and nicer words to him, but I hope I got the meaning across. Doesn’t matter to him anyway, I’m outside his ‘demographic’ I suppose since I actually like to find unique music and spend my money on it so that I have plenty in the car and don’t have to listen to his crap.

What makes this matter worse, I thought on the way home, was the whole yard sale aspect of it. Here was a guy in the ‘music business’ (actually advertising business) selling the promo albums he received from labels and breaking artists hoping to get airplay on his station. He was clearly profiting from selling his gifts (unethically, and probably illegally) albeit at really cheap prices. The artists were getting screwed by having their goods sold for nothing, but moreso because they lost the chance to get airplay and further increase legitimate sales. Particularly bad in that regard was the 1993 Penelope Houston album I picked up; this woman is an amazing musician and deserves much more exposure than she gets. Were the Point (or WNCS back then) to put her in rotation while they were still a relevant and even groundbreaking station, she may have been picked up by other station that were copying the AAA format, and we would have her instead of Tori Amos as a Legacy Artist. I was getting screwed because this idiot was selling off the best music given to him rather than playing it on his station, thus depriving myself and other true music lovers of a good ‘venue’ to discover stuff. So now I have a stack of cd’s that are ethically questionable on many accounts. Did I contribute to this crap by buying them? Probably, in a sense, but I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it. I spend a lot of money on music, including other releases from the artists I picked up, and arguably support the real players of the industry (the musicians) more than many listeners out there.

One final note….As I was briefly impressed by the station playing that Rockpile track a few days ago, I still thought that they might keep some good stuff buried deep intheir library. So what cd was this moron selling at his little yard sale? Rockpile, Seconds of Pleasure. I guess they wrung just a little coolness out of that one before hanging it out to dry with all the other good music they could be playing instead of another spin of Tears for Fucking Fears.

What's "indie" mean?

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:04:00 +0000

A great post from the Audio Asylum forums:

In Reply to: RE: What's "Indie" BTW? <486010.html> posted by
Feanor on July 07, 2007 at 13:49:11

Indie is just short for independent which in simplest terms just
means you have no affiliation with a major label.

However the meaning goes deeper now. Back in the 70's depression
when all US indie labels died (and most major ones too) everything
changed. Pop music, as in the "pop" scene, started it's death spiral
because majors no longer had indie labels feeding them talent. (like
the guy in the camper in the movie "The Wonders")

It used to be majors just wanted the #1 song, they didn't care who
it was because they knew some other act would come along next week,
next month, and next year. But when indie labels stopped feeding
them acts, and they couldn't find them on their own (because they
never did) they started trying to manufacture "stars". Instead of
selling 50 thousand copies of 20 different albums, they now sell a
million of just one.

The indie scene revived itself in the UK in the 80's and was
referred to as alternative, and many bands from it became known here
(Human League, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Modern English etc etc..)
however by the early 90's most of these UK indie labels tanked also.
The majors then stepped in and started offering what they called
"alternative" (which would be bands like smashing pumkins or green
day) only there was nothing alternative about it. They were marketed
just like anything else the majors touched and you didn't find out
about new, upcoming bands.

The majors thought they killed Indie but it found a home on the web
in the mid late 90's. Most of the best stuff right now comes from
scandinavia, but it exists everywhere and these are kids motivated
by the UK bands of the 80's and as a result they all sing in
english. You NEVER hear about any of them, but I see the music
getting used on TV commercials all the time. The song playing in the
Geico commercial with the caveman going thru the airport terminal is
Röyksopp and features vocals by Erlend Oye from Kings of
Convenience, whos music has also been used in AT&T ads. Target used
a Concretes song for their jingle once, Postal Service songs have
been used in car commercials, and some wireless companies new ad is
using an Architecture In Helsinki song for example.

So if we were to extrapolate back, indie is essentially old
fashioned "pop" music. Get Dick Clark, spin the cut and let the kids
dance. In other words, music for people who like music. The stuff
that makes brains go dead and puts smiles on faces."

From Peter Gunn, http://www.indiespinzone.com/

Old school...video games encoded into vinyl!

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:27:00 +0000

A cool blog post on old-school video game code recorded as hidden tracks on vinyl records:

http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/000053.html

A quick update of tunes this season

noreply@blogger.com (TerryB_VT) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 18:46:00 +0000

Little time to update nowadays, but I've picked up some new tunes and
wanted to touch base on them. Still planning to update on LAST WINTER's
system upgrade. On dialup, so no album cover links:

Wilco, Sky Blue Sky: So the boys have 'settled down', unfortunately
after finally recording with guitar wunderkind Nels Cline. Rather 70's
soft-rockish, with one guitar workout on "Impossible Germany" that I
always look forward to as the album highlight but which still leaves me
underwhelmed. Sorry guys, this one's a 6 at best.

Spoon, Girls can Tell: Picked up at Buch Spieler for five bucks,
probably the best bang for the buck I'll get in 2007. I've known of
them for some time but never sought them out. Killer hooks, excellent
songwriting, easily a 9.5 or better.

Drive by Truckers, Blessing and a Curse: Seven bucks at Buch Spieler.
Another outfit that's been at the corner of my radar screen but always
missed. Solid alt-country in the vein of Bottle Rockets and Marah. Dig
this much.

Stooges, The Weirdness: Detroit Garage Skuzzbags return a lot wealthier
with Mike Watt (or 'shit stain, as my wife calls him, more on that in
another entry) on bass. The playing is pretty standard, but Iggy is a
real let-down on this one. Sorry, a no better than a 6.

Buzzcocks, Singles Going Steady: Got this 4 Men With Beards reissue,
and holy motherfucker do these guys rock! This is often lumped in with
London Calling (agree) and Never Mind the Bollocks (shitbag album IMO)
as the essential first-wave British punk. Helluva album.

Talking Heads, Fear of Music: More Eno-Byrne dancerock. Good stuff.

Mastodon, Whatever their major label record is: I was looking for some
good metal, and instrumentally this is it, very Iron Maiden with maybe
some newer 21st century metal influences. Not crazy about the vocals,
they lean a bit toward the contemporary Dark Metal cookie-cutter crap
that's on Headbanger's Ball.

John Mellencamp, Freedom Is: Bought this one that was supposed to be
his best album in years, if ever. It sucks enough to deserve a full
entry of its own.

Jesus and Mary Chain, Psychocandy and Automatic: Been wanting these on
vinyl but I did my semi-annual Columbia House cycle and picked them
up. Good shit.

Beth Orton, three of hers: Same Columbia House deal, don;t listen to
them enough but not bad for a mellow commute.

Rachael Yamagata, ?: Picked up through CH too for Julie. Okay
singer-songwriter stuff but nothing too special. Same for KT Tunstall,
although she probably has more staying power.

I know there's more, but that's all I can think of.

And no, haven't picked up Corinne Bailey-Raye.