General Disarray

Awesome tribute to The Boys of Summer. Deep down, I have a soft spot in my heart for cheesy music.

I just got back from the Jolie Holland concert. I won’t bother to explain who she is or what her music is like. I’ll just post a link to my favorite song from the new album. It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.

Odeo: Mary Jane’s Last Dance - Tom Petty:

A US radio presenter has accused the Red Hot Chili Peppers of plagiaring Tom Petty. Have a listen to how closely Dani California resembles Mary Jane’s Last Dance

Yeah, except:

I minor - VII major - IV minor - I minor

is an incredibly common chord progression, as is the following rhythm:

1&2- 3&4-

Imogen Heap is one of my latest favorite musicians. She makes this kind of soulful electronic music with a strong focus on harmony (rather than beat or instrumentation, though both are present and masterful).

For a sampling, check out this song (mp3) and this song (mp3). If you like Bjork, Postal Service, Ladytron, um, anything cool, give her a listen.

I was searching around looking for some samples today when I came across her website. I’m really struck by how state-of-the-net everything is. There’s a blog, and a moblog, links to Flickr, YouTube and MySpace. Her whole setup is a synth and a PowerBook. And she did a gig at an Apple Store. And did I mention that she’s hot? Reminds me of Matson Jones.

Here she is on Letterman:

Update: I kept thinking that Imogen Heap sounded like the singer from Frou Frou (that you may remember from the song Let Go on the Garden State soundtrack). Turns out she’s the same person.

Odeo used to be a place to find podcasts. You could search them, grab their feeds, or create a custom feed consisting of your Odeo inbox. It was cool, but it wasn’t that cool. I never got in to the habit of synching my iPod to iTunes frequently enough to be able to really listen to all those podcasts. And since the FM transmitter that supposedly lets me listen to my Nano in my car is a complete piece of crap, I never really got much mileage out of the podcast experience. Eventually I stopped downloading them in iTunes.

But Odeo has really transformed itself. First off, it’s really no longer necessary to download podcasts directly to the hard drive, since they’ve basically perfected Flash-based playing and recording[*]. So rather than being subscribing to the podcast in iTunes and messing with automatic downloading, deleting, etc., you can just keep an eye on your Odeo inbox (you can subscribe to the feed if you want) and listen to everything online. If you find something you really love, you can download the mp3. This method makes Odeo more effective as a directory, too, since users are encouraged to visit the website, therefore making it easier for them to tag and star things, making content easier to find for others.

The podcasting creation and distribution center (Odeo studio) has been turned into a (mostly) separate service (now at studio.odeo.com). This is old news, but I haven’t been paying attention for a few months. There was always a quick, web-based recorder, but I think it only held 1 minute of audio. Now you get an hour. Plus you can call a phone number to record a message, or upload an mp3 (as long as you have rights to it, of course).

Basically, Odeo has evolved to make a lot more sense as the meaning and purpose of podcasts have changed. They are now much more of a web application than a directory, and offer features that you can’t find anywhere else.

[*] Funny, they’ve finally found real uses for Flash. It used be a splash-page inducing bandwidth hog, now it’s used very effectively to play and record audio and video.

Updated: 19 July 06
I've long felt that there's a specific art to coming up with creative band names, and lately I've been coming up with them willy nilly. But I'm not in any bands, really, and I probably won't be, at least for a long while. But why deprive the world of my inspiration? So here's the list. And these are all open-source, so have at them. But if I become famous under one of these monikers[*], no suing, okay? I'm updating this constantly.

• Adult Peach
• Lime Juice Douche
• Three Fisted Drunks
• Torturepedia
• Long-hatted Harry and the Discursive Discuses (or just Long-hatted Harry)
• The Buttafucco Fibers

[*] Both "moniker" and "monicker" are accepted spellings. True story.

Update: I couldn't live with myself if I didn't point out that the Onion has a list of the worst band names of 2006. With a little luck, maybe one of my band names will be on the list next year.

Slow Cheetah is a ballad on the first disk of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium. It's a nice song, and it's fun to play. I've seen a few tabs online, but they are written directly in Bb minor. If you have a really nice guitar or incredibly strong fingers, that's just fine. But for the rest of us, I have made a tab of the song in A minor, which is quite a bit easier; and with a capo, you can still play along.

Download the tab here. And as always, if you have suggestions or have found an error, please email [disinterested at gmail].

Thanks and enjoy

The Content

Itunes Music Store Says "In the event that a customers entire music library is lost, the iTunes Music Store does re-grant the purchases history. Please keep in mind that Apple does not offer protection against the loss of purchases, so this is a one-time exception.

I have some albums that I have purchased and lost, but the question is this: should I redownload now or wait until I experience a real calamity? I think I'll wait. But I'm really glad to know that iTunes offers this. I think that Apple is striking a really fair balance of convenience and property rights, even though I absolutely abhor the idea of having to "activate" anything that I have purchased, be it music, software, etc.

PortablePlaylist.com lets you construct a playlist from songs that are already online (using some search engine I’ve never heard of before: blogdigger.com) that you can listen to in a browser.