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June 10, 2006
Shorties
YouTube offers some amazing videos of Ramona Cordova playing an intimate acoustic performance under the bar La Flèche d'Or in Paris. The band's The Boy Who Floated Freely album is one of this year's most pleasant surprises.
The Houston Voice reviews one of my favorite books of the year, Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home, A Family Tragicomic.
The author also talks to Pride Source about the book.
Bechdel, calling herself "a method cartoonist," enjoyed writing her autobiography as a graphic story, relying on her childhood drawings and diaries, as well as her father's letters and family photos to craft her tale. "You can do things in graphic storytelling that you can't do with words alone. There's a whole different syntax at work. 'Fun Home' is a labyrinthine story that jumps around a lot chronologically. I don't think I could have told it coherently using just words."
Billboard examines the "buzz band" phenomenon.
"Everyday mainstream media is sourcing stuff off the Internet and putting it into a different perspective because their footprint is so large," says Mark Ghuneim, CEO of New York-based digital marketing agency Wiredset. "The Independent in the UK will do a story on blog buzz about a band like the Arctic Monkeys, and then the next day Fox News here is putting it on the 10 p.m. broadcast saying it's the next Beatles. That doesn't do anybody any favours. Once you get into mass media news cycles and those types of trends it's like walking into the undertow. You have no type of control."
Aside from the Petty track having a high lonesome harmonica and the Peppers track running at a faster tempo, the songs are definitely in the same family. If daddy wants to litigate, that's another matter, especially since the choruses are as different from each other as ``Give It Away" is from ``Free Fallin'." And as for the subject matter, well, they are both about girls.
John Sakamoto's Anti-Hit List praises the "invaluable Chromewaves blog."
The Independent offers tips on cutting your music download costs (for the UK, at least).
The Streets' Mike Skinner talks to the Guardian about songwriting.
Outside of making music, he has a concentration span of about three seconds; but he can sit down, worrying at a lyric, for hours on end. "It's very important to have this really brutal attitude to the song, because this idea of how much time you put in is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the end result."
"This isn't intended to attack Apple and its innovations, but really to draw attention to the existence of DRM technologies, and how they restrict what consumers can do with their music," says Ted Teah, who maintains a directory of free software for the Free Software Foundation.
Former Monkee Michael Nesmith talks to the Scotsman about releasing his latest album online.
"For years stores were the first point of purchase, after radio introduced the music," he says. "That's all changed. Radio is shrinking as a sampling window, and many others are opening that spread the music further and faster. Acquisition of the music is quickest via the internet, then by online ordering, and finally the stores can make available the hard copy with its pictures and package and whatnot. Everyone still has their place, but the hierarchy has shifted. I am just following that."
Ryspace offers several live tracks from Nada Surf's June 6th Sayreville show.
Emmylou Harris talks to harp about singing duets with Gram Parsons.
“I can’t say I really prefer singing lead over doing a duet,” Harris says in her perfectly articulated crystalline voice, offering only a mere hint of her Alabama roots. “I feel like I started as a folk singer in my teens. And then working with Gram as a duet singer, just opened up something in my heart and my head, and the world that I live in now is really because of singing with Gram. He led me to my solo voice, in a way. I guess I approach duets in the same way except that I have to pay attention to the person who’s singing lead. I always think of the harmony as just another melody, but I’m following the lead. It’s just like catching a wave."
Yep Roc is holding a Cities remix contest, and the winner's contribution will appear on the band's remix EP.
