Apropos of our recent blogversation about the contents of our mp3 players (Mike apparently plays "air mp3"), here's an article our paper picked up from the San Francisco Chronicle about how our mp3 playlists, like an Internet Explorer security flaw, may be an unguarded window into our souls.
To obfuscate, some are placing music onto their players that they never intend to listen to, like buying furniture for a room that you never sit in except when in-laws are in town. As one guy said:
Christopher Breen, editor in chief of Playlist, a San Francisco magazine covering the digital-music scene, said he keeps his own library in pristine condition.
It's similar to when "your mother tells you always to wear clean underwear because you never know if you're going to end up in the emergency room," he said. "Now you have to worry if someone sees you have 'Me and You and a Dog Named Boo' in your music collection."
Thievery Corporation is performing tonight in Seattle. Mrs. Perils and I have been enjoying their music for a couple of years, and she mentioned last night that they were in town. We discussed going, but she had a bad night's sleep last night and was dragging her ass around the kitchen like it was an Airstream about 6, so I figured there was no way.
She just came into the den and switched on KEXP's Wo'Pop show, a world music show that lights up our Tuesday nights, and suddenly remembered about the Thievery Corporation show and said, "we should go!" So, we're outta here, on a school night yet! Film at 11 (or 12, or 1).
None of the above (below). I was sorta kidding about at least some songs on that list, anyway. There were a couple of votes for Green Eyed Lady, including one from Mrs. Perils, but Mrs. Perils has decidedly not-green eyes, and I wondered if she was setting a trap of some kind.
So, I went for Since I Fell For You by Lenny Welch. I've had a soft spot for this song since high school, when one of our radio stations played it each night when it signed off (yes, they did that back then back in the heartland), and I would gaze out my window and wish I had had a girlfriend to feel that way about.
One of the more beneficent things about my Milwaukee client is that they have Diet Mountain Dew in the beverage machine. The current promotion the Dew is running awards a free song at iTunes if the right code appears insde your bottle cap.
I have me one of those right here next to my computer and I'm contemplating:
Green-eyed Lady?
Town Without Pitney?
White Bird?
Afternoon Delight?
Baby I'm-a Want You?
If you were headed for a desert island and could take just one song which one would you download?
If we can stay awake and the band doesn't cancel, we'll be going to see Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra Friday night at Neumo's. This is an exciting group of 10 - 13 musicians based in New York. We first heard them at our Bumbershoot festival 2 years ago, and got to see them again at Chop Suey.
With some trepidation, I again paid multiple "convenience fees" and "handling charges" in order to buy tickets online from Tickets West, but I'd rather do this and have a leisurely Friday evening prior to the event instead of going and standing in line at the venue after working a full day. The smart rats, they don't hit the same button that gives them the electric shock more than once. I hate the smart rats, I think they're elitists.
I mean, them and their hoity-toity E-Vo-Lu-Tion. Pah. There were myriad noble species, species with resolute genetic principles, damnit, which perished while the cringing Australopithecus and his opposable thumb survived, then flourished. The awesome dentition of Tyrannasaurus Rex undone by the stunted appendage that couldn't even claim "finger"status. We know what Australopithecus did with his opposable thumb, and its development was directly traceable to the frequency of "headaches" in Mrs. Australopithecus. In short, he survived because he avoided being brained by Mrs. Australopithecus. This evolutionary quirk is honored in ritual re-enactments in strip clubs throughout the land. Thus, it's not because of the bared female flesh that fundamentalists so vehemently oppose strip clubs, it's because of the homage to a vision of humanoid evolution that they simply do not wish to countenance.
Anyway, I bought the tickets, and I await the judgment of natural selection.
In an effort to atone for our embarrassment a couple weeks ago (when we planned to go out for some beats and fell asleep instead), we bought tickets to hear Yerba Buena at the Paramount Wednesday night. I got turned on to the band after hearing an NPR feature, and bought their President Alien album, and it's been at the top of my listening rotation ever since.
Yesterday, I got an email from Ticketmaster saying that the show was cancelled (no reason given), and that I could request a refund by mail. Bummer, but things happen, I thought. Then I read the next sentence, which said:
The $3.10 per order processing fee and any UPS delivery charges are non refundable
and I started to boil over. I mean, I knew how much I was paying Ticketmaster for the "convenience" of purchasing the tickets online (click by click, two $25 tickets ended up costing $73.10), and traded the fees off against the time it would have taken me to trudge down to the Paramount box office and personally buy them. Still, if they can't deliver the product, why should they get to keep any money?
I wrote a snippy little email to the band's manager, and got this back:
Sorry you feel this way, but your anger is misplaced.
The local promoter cancelled the show on us. As a result the group has lost thousands of dollars in airfares which are non refundable. Please do not add to this the loss of a fan.
Regarding Ticketmaster, their contract is with the local promoter and/or venue. The group has no relationship to Ticketmaster whatsoever.
So now I feel a little sheepish about the email, in which I said something to the effect that if they brought out a new cd, I'd find a way to steal it without remorse, or something similarly cool-headed and mature. As soon as my pride squeezes the rest of the way down my esophagus, I'll send him an apology. Then I'll try to think of something withering to say to Ticketheisters
In the meantime, we're free Wednesday night. Anyone for pinochle?
Thursday my wife was listening to KEXP and heard an interview with the two principals of a band called The Soul of John Black and liked what she heard, so we went to hear them at the Tractor Tavern that night.They were comprised of a standard kit drummer, a hand drummer, a turntable/sampler and the two principals, JB on vocals/lead guitar and CT on electric bass.They had driven up from Los Angeles on tour, and that day’s travel had undoubtedly been through the same sheets of rain that were drenching the street outside the Tractor, and were keeping the turnout low, at about 25 – 35 people.You could tell they were underwhelmed.
Nonetheless, they played an energetic set of original, contemporary R&B tunes.The performance was tight and polished in a way that only assiduous rehearsing could make it, and I thought, “good for them, a new band making a sincere effort.I hope they get some mileage out of it.”I was thinking that they were engaging ingénues.It was only after coming home and reading the resumes of the two principals that I was reminded of the grueling nature of the music business.Among their separate experiences were gigs with Miles Davis, Betty Carter, Macy Gray, Marianne Faithful and Fishbone.These were no neophytes by any means, but here they were playing to an enthusiastic but sparse audience on one of those Seattle winter nights that reminded you of the inside-the-sub scenes from the movie Das Boot.
This feeling that the live music scene is a constant flirtation with futility was reinforced when the bass player from a terrific jazz/funk group we’ve stalked the last few years, The Living Daylights, stopped by our table briefly, sounding just a little forlorn.The Daylights made a real run at “making it”, touring ceaselessly all over the country.I guess the wheels have sort of come off, as they’re only occasionally performing in town, and the band members are pursuing other projects.
We love going out to small venues to hear these wonderful musicians, arguably doing a better job at their music more consistently than I do at my job, for a fraction of the remuneration.I’m so glad they do it, and I consider it an act of faith to pay their covers, buy their cds and vociferously return the love.
As it turned out, John Black was the opening act for a jazz group from San Francisco called Will Bernard and Motherbug. These guys have been playing together quite a bit longer, and their command and professionalism was apparent as soon as they struck their first note.One of the four of them played a Hammond B3 organ.The B3 is wooden and is paired with an improbable-looking spinning disk that is used to make its distinctive tremolo.The console was open, and disclosed glowing vacuum tubes that must be the very devil to replace.The whole thing looks like a piece of 50s furniture that some amateur has converted into audiophile stereo equipment using some kind of Heathkit contraption.But it plays righteously.
One of the cool things about living in Seattle, as I believe I've mentioned before, is having KEXP to listen to. It started life as a step-child "college" station at the University of Washington with the call letters KCMU. However, when the UW NPR station, KUOW, started getting pissy about sharing funding with it, its days on the UW campus were numbered.
Enter Paul Allen's Experience Music Project to offer studio space and funding independent of the UW. Those of us who loved KCMU's independence and insouciance feared that Allen's fixation with Jimy Hendrix would change the flavor and attitude, but that hasn't happened, and we're blessed for now with something like a college graduate station with a trust fund.
Anyway, we listen a lot to Derek Mazzone's Wo'Pop (World Pop) show on Tuesday nights. One night a couple weeks ago, he played a cut from a Serbian brass band called the Boban Markovic Orkestar. As a devotee of brass instruments (you're already sick of my references to the Ohio State Marching Band and their all-brass makeup), I was immediately enthralled, and ordered their "Live In Belgrade" album.
From the first cut to the last, it's a full-on gypsy brass band festival. They have somehow managed to convey the quarter-tone Arabic/gypsy scaling into Sousa-band instrumentation. I'm just lovin' it.
What I'm Listening To
One of the cool things about living in Seattle, as I believe I've mentioned before, is having