Looks like the Indigo Girls got a great cover for their new album from the awesome Jamie Hernandez.
It makes me so happy that Los Bros Hernandez continue to tell the stories they began in Love & Rockets. In terms of storytelling, I’ve never been able to settle on a favorite brother. But when it comes to the art, Jamie has always kept me spellbound.
Kuro5shin offers a guide to online music, with links to tens of thousands of legal music downloads.
Nina Simone has died, but her voice will never fade.
It seems that most of the new CDs here in Japan are being released with copy protection. I’m wondering whether Japanese consumers are complaining about this?
As far as I can decipher from the labels (the image here is a big sticker on the front of the CD; there’s more detailed usage information on the back), you cannot rip music from these CDs into a digital format of your choice. You can listen to the CD on a computer, but only if you’re using Windows and a media player with digital rights restrictions. You can’t listen to one of these CDs on your computer if you’re using a Macintosh. They also won’t work in DVD players (including Sony’s PlayStation).
At least they’re labeled well — you can’t miss that you’re about to buy music that limits listening options.
There have been several new releases that I’ve wanted to purchase, but I don’t even own a CD player. All of my listening is done on my Mac or with an MP3 player. That means no new CDs for me.
The strange thing about these copy protected CDs appearing in Japan is that there’s a huge market for renting CDs here. At any number of big rental stores, you can grab a CD along with the DVD you rent for the night. I thought I remembered reading once that the Japanese music industry never really complained about this because there was a tax built into either the rentals or the sale of blank CD-Rs, and that money went to compensate for any copying that occurred. Or maybe it was because widespread CD copying didn’t occur until just recently. Anyone know more about this than I do?
We all need to remember that unless consumers complain about these copy protected CDs, the recording industry is going to get away with restricting the lawful rights of fair use. You pay for the music — it’s yours to do with what you want (within the law). Listening to the music you purchased on the device of your choice is not breaking the law.
Tatu is rocketing out of Russia on a tidal wave of titillating press coverage. This manufactured pop confection takes Britney’s schoolgirl act to another level — or to new depths, if you’re one of the concerned citizens apoplectic about the short skirts and lesbian posing. Sure, it’s all manufactured for a good, strong shock. But they’re meant to appeal to the thirteen-year-old girls who drive the development of popular music, not to dirty old men (who spend money on porn, not pop music).
Surprisingly, Tatu isn’t just another tired, roll-your-eyes,
Listen here…
Heavily produced and definitely bubblegum music. But all bubblegum music should be this good.
Keep your ears open for Scissor Sisters. Their debut album will be out sometime soon. An advance copy of said album mysteriously ended up in my possession here in Japan, and I’ve been listening to it non-stop for the past week.
Their cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb as channeled through the Bee Gees has already been generating interest. But the whole album is excellent.
A few songs from the album are posted on the band’s site, but the quality is not so great. Head over to their label’s site for a chance to listen to (or download) a few good-quality MP3s.
My Rio MP3 player is no longer working. For almost two years, this great little gadget has been my music machine.
About a year ago, I got a letter from the company that makes the Rio, telling me they were going to be sending me a replacement power charger (for the rechargeable battery) because there were reports of people inadvertently sticking the power plug in the USB hole and frying the device. At the time, I remember thinking that someone would have to be an idiot to put the plug in the wrong hole. Today, I was that idiot. In my haste to plug in the charger as I rushed out to work, I ever so briefly put the power cord in the wrong end before realizing what I was doing. It wasn’t until later when I tried to listen to some tunes that I found my poor Rio now makes only a radio static-like buzzing sound.
I never did get that idiot-proof replacement power adapter they told me they were sending. I’m sure there’s a liability issue here somewhere.
I just listened to a bluegrass medley of Madonna songs on KCRW. Has anyone else heard this? KCRW doesn’t stream playlists, so I’ll have to wait until they post the playlist tomorrow to see who the brave — and successful — interpreter is. She covered Like A Virgin, Burning Up and Lucky Star.
UPDATE: Just found the song and artist information. Madonna Trilogy by The Meat Purveyors.
I had iTunes on random last night; it was trolling the entire collection for tunes (with the exception of songs from my generously-defined trance genre—jumping from Billie Holiday to club music? I don’t think so).
I don’t normally listen to music this way in iTunes. If I had the newer, OSX version, with its Smart Playlists feature, I’d do random more often (although it wouldn’t really be truly random with the Smart Playlists, would it?).
I brought about 4,000 songs along with me to Japan—that’s where my 30GB hard drive max’d out. This allows for a fairly large library from which to pluck random songs. And it’s amazing the things I’ve forgotten I had. Barbra Streisand singing The Love Theme from “The Main Event”? That obviously came from those glory days of the Napster smorgasbord.
Ah… What a time. And what perfect timing—getting laid off from a dot-com, with a small severance package and unemployment benefits inflated from the ridiculous salary I’d been getting from said dot-com, and an endless library of songs to be downloaded. Free time, free music. Oink, oink.
I was obviously delirious when I decided I needed to build a Barbra library. Most of my time was spent looking for MP3 versions of the hundreds of cassette albums I was carrying around from the 80s. Am I really supposed to pay for the same music again just to upgrade hardware? Yes, I know… I am.
Anyway, laying in bed last night listening to random music from a large song library, I wondered which music I’d choose to take with me if I were carted off to jail for stealing so much of it. The RIAA, generous souls that they are, would allow me to take a handful of albums (good old fashioned CDs, of course—and I’d have to pay the $21.99 retail price for each) to help me spend those lonely hours in the clink.
My “handful” would include twenty albums, and this is the list I came up with last night. I did this in about ten minutes, so I’m sure this list is going to need revisions in the future. But these are some of the albums I’ve enjoyed over and over, and which stick out in my mind as “must have” if had to get rid of all the rest.
Chameleons UK – Strange Times
Blade Runner Soundtrack
Kid Loco – DJ Kicks
Miles Davis – In A Silent Way
DJ Phil B – Music For Clubs
Brian Eno – Music For Airports
Everything But The Girl – Walking Wounded
Dusty Springfield – Dusty In Memphis
The The – Mind Bomb
Dolly Parton – Little Sparrow
Massive Attack vs. The Mad Professor – No Protection
Peter Gabriel – Passion
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Talvin Singh – Soundz Of The Asian Underground
Personal ABBA mix
American Beauty Soundtrack
Beck – Sea Change
Roxy Music – Avalon
Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball
Ella Fitzgerald – The Intimate Ella
Note: I paid for every one of these albums except for the Nick Drake one.