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Kenny Wasn’t Like the Other Kids; TV Mattered, Nothing Else Did.
One of the more interesting programs to surface with today’s roll-out of iPhone applications on the iTunes Store is Remote, which was developed internally by Apple. It’s a free program that enables you to control music playback on iTunes, an AppleTV, or an Airport Express. It allows an iTunes library to be browsed and controlled via wifi from either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. It even displays album art right on the screen.
Basically, Apple gave Sonos the shaft, by replicating all the compelling technology in their Digital Music System, and at a fraction of the cost. You can buy an iPhone 3G, an AppleTV and an Airport Express all for less than half the cost of a “Sonos Bundle 130.” And Apple’s offerings will even let you play video on the AppleTV unit. I can’t imagine why anyone would buy a Sonos at this point.
Independent iPhone developers are giving Apple a cut of all application sales made through the iTunes Store. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I would like to think that this kind of financially symbiotic relationship will make Apple less likely to encroach on the turf of existing application developers.
It’s interesting to note that Apple could have easily released Remote as part of the iPhone 2.0 firmware. Instead, they chose to drive download traffic to the iTunes store, which will ultimately benefit independent developers offering their iPhone applications for download.
The Worst Sounding Instrument Ever Made
This MP3 shows why you shouldn’t build a harpsichord out of LEGOs.
It Needs More Cowbell
NPR had a cool feature last week about the important role of cowbell in rock. Enjoy!
What’s on My Party Shuffle?
Everyone seems to be posting the contents of the “Party Shuffle” playlist that iTunes creates based on their library. I figured I might as well give it a go. Here’s what came up for me:
- “Maquiladora” by The Tiny Bell Trio
- “The Dead Man - Rondo” by John Zorn
- “Hallucinating Pluto” by The B-52’s
- “After You’ve Gone” by Django Reinhardt
- “Quartet No. 4 - Child Holding a Dove” by Ned Rorem, performed by the Emerson String Quartet
- “Aranci, Datteri” from La Bohème, performed by Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stephano, Rolando Panerai, and Anna Moffo
- “Addio Querida” by Tim Sparks
- “This Hard Land” by Bruce Springsteen
- “Bringing Mary Home” by the Del McCoury Band
- “Hell Is Round the Corner” by Tricky
Name Five Female Composers of the 20th Century
I’m rather amused by the firestorm over some allegedly sexist comments Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers made last Friday at an academic conference.
Schools of law and medicine are now overrun with women, who often compose a majority of the entering student body. The supposed reluctance of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks, which Summers explicitly mentioned, is not consistent with those trends. Furthermore, I find it extremely difficult to believe that the academic establishments in math and engineering actively fought the inclusion of females either more vigorously or effectively than the legal and medical establishments.
I once asked a friend who studies contemporary classical music why so few women have risen to prominence as composers in the last century. He pointed out that just as barriers to women were beginning to fall in the visual arts, the musical establishment embraced intensely structured and mathematical artistic movements such as serialism.
Maybe this is just the perpetuation of a stereotype, but perhaps there is a fundamental difference in the types of thinking at which men and women tend to excel. Unfortunately, we’ll never really know know if the people raising the questions continue to be silenced in the name of political correctness.
DVForge’s GuitarPlug and MicPlug
These small USB audio adapters for connecting to guitars and microphones look pretty cheesy. What can you really expect for $49?
On the other hand, there’s something to be said for doing the analog to digital conversion before the signal can degrade running through analog cabling.
I might have to give these a whirl.
Nickelback Sucks
All Things Considered had an especially entertaining segment on yesterday’s show profiling the Nickelback anti-fan who brought the world the classic Internet hit “How You Remind Me of Someday.”
If you haven’t heard the remix, be sure to check it out.
Walked the Sands with the Crustaceans
I saw The Pixies on Tuesday night. The show was at D.A.R. Constitution Hall.
Is there any single institution inherently less Rock ‘n’ Roll than the Daughters of the American Revolution?
La Complainte de PJ
The contempt I hold for my fellow man was today fueled by the realization that some people would actually prefer to buy the soundtrack for the new Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea (which features vocals done by Kevin Spacey) over an actual Bobby Darin CD.
It’s like my friend Ray says, “92% of people are not qualified to be human beings.”
Snuff Music
So I get the following Dylan concert bootleg “review” in my email from a friend this morning.
Great 2 CD set from one of my favorite periods. This contains the complete circulating soundboard tape, missing some of the girls’ material, and Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man, the opening Saved and an instrumental jam. This final night of the European tour was marred by tragedy. A concert goer fell into the power grid and was electrocuted. All power was lost at the end of Slow Train, and Dylan and the band improvised acoustic songs on stage until it was restored. The tragedy multiplied when, emerged into darkness, another girl died after falling from a retaining wall. The show must go on, and so it does. And what a show it is. Dylan is focused and powerful. A fantastic effort from all, and the soundboard recordings are near perfect…
The New American Songbook?
On Friday I was walking down U Street with Julian and we saw a poster for Nellie McKay, a fresh-faced recording artist on the Sony label with music “rooted in the taut, witty tradition linking Cole Porter, Elvis Costello and Eminem.”
As ridiculous as the description sounds, it’s reasonably accurate. I would, however, allow for a dash of Avril Lavigne (McKay bears the usual dose of American teenager angst).
Her debut album, Get Away from Me, is available at Amazon and the iTMS. Very interesting. Pick it up.
…All I Said Was Come On In
Over a thousand Grateful Dead concerts are free and legal for the taking online as lossless audio downloads.
Have fun, kids.
Tennis Anyone?
Last year I sponsored a collaborative music project on Yayhooray. I started by uploading an original composition. Various users added to and changed the composition, one at a time, until it was completely unrecognizable.
You can download the tracks from Audio Tennis Version 1.0 below in MP3 or SHN. Each contributor is listed next to their links.
- pjdoland | mp3 | shn | 2003.08.28
- easement | mp3 | shn | 2003.08.29
- mobcarmedia | mp3 | shn | 2003.09.01
- feedmewithyourkids | mp3 | shn | 2003.09.11
- desc0n0cid0s0y | mp3 | shn | 2003.09.12
- zero | mp3 | shn | 2003.09.16
- polyfonken | mp3 | shn | 2003.09.16
- elektronaut | mp3 | shn | 2003.09.19
- da5id | mp3 | shn | 2003.10.06
Who Wrote This Stuff?
For the last week or so I haven’t been able to turn a radio dial without hearing Toby Keith and Willie Nelson singing “Beer for My Horses.”
I was a little shocked the first time I heard it on the radio. It’s pretty jingoistic even for Toby Keith. I’m actually a little surprised that Willie Nelson got involved, but it seems like he’ll do just about anything for a buck these days.
Selected lyrics follow, with my comments in italics:
Well, a man come on the 6 o’clock news, said somebody’s been shot, somebody’s been abused.
You mean like the prisoners at Abu Ghraib?
Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son, a man had to answer for the wicked that he done. Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree. Round up all of them bad boys hang them high in the street for all the people to see.
Ah… Sweet nostalgia for the days of public executions at the hands of the mob! Those were the good ol’ days.
We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces.
Did Willie Nelson and Toby Keith join the Superfriends?
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.
You know the PETA folks just love this song.
This little ditty has got to be pretty damn terrifying if you’re not an American because it confirms just about every anti-American stereotype out there.
Mark my words, it’s only a matter of time before some Italian DJ with a biting sense of irony remixes this into a European underground dance hit.
Out of Kindness I Suppose…
I was sitting around listening to Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter with a friend the other day and he pointed out something I found rather disturbing about “Pancho and Lefty.”
The song never explicitly indicates that Pancho and Lefty ever met. The only link between them is the fact that “the dust that Pancho bit down south, it ended up in Lefty’s mouth.”
I had always just assumed that they were accomplices or something. I guess not.
Carry on.
Apple Lossless
I downloaded the new version of iTunes this morning and was pleased to find a new encoding option in the Preferences panel. Audio can now be encoded using the “Apple Lossless Encoder,” which yields crystal-clear files that are approximately 650-850 kbps.
Why did Apple feel the need to create it’s own lossless format when APE, FLAC, and SHN were all perfectly good options?
I hope the answer lies in future plans to sell DRM protected lossless files through the iTunes Music Store. That would just about make the iTMS the option for audiophiles.
Now I have to re-encode everything from CD, but at least this should be the last time. Now where did I put that 250GB hard disk?
In the Garage
I’ve been playing around with GarageBand over the past few weeks and I must say that I’m quite impressed. The interface is extremely intuitive, if a tad cluttered with useless visual elements and the bundled loop library is pretty good–even though I think I’ll still end up springing for the $99.00 “Jam Pack” in the end.
My only real complaint is that the loop organizer doesn’t allow for tagging of the harmonic progression of loops (e.g. ii-V-I, I-vi-IV-V, etc.).
I’ve been listening to the Kronos Quartet’s Howl, U.S.A. album lately, which inspired me to work around spoken-word samples. I ended up using passages from some of Reagan’s best speeches, along with some of the better loops in the stock library to create this MP3. It’s still rough around the edges, but it’s been a good exercise in learning GarageBand. Feel free to tear it to shreds.
Jay-Z Undone
Hey Weezer fans, check this out before the lawyers have it pulled.
I’m personally thinking of going to town on Tori Amos’s Under the Pink with the Jay-Z Construction Set. We’ll see how it turns out.
The Essence of Eno
I’m watching Leo Laporte interview on Brian Eno on TechTV right now. A particularly noteworthy exchange, regarding Eno’s authorship of the Windows 95 startup sound, really seems to capture the essence of Eno:
Laporte: Would you like that on your tombstone? Created the Windows startup sound?
Eno: I’d like the sound on my tombstone.
Monkeys Stand for Honesty
Erin and I saw Simon and Garfunkel at the MCI Center last night.
It seems that in order to keep the tour chugging along, Art Garfunkel is required to publicly stroke Paul Simon’s ego once for every thirty minutes of stage time.
