"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" or, Yes, Kanye is Insane

Since Kanye West’s latest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy “dropped” a few weeks back, people can’t stop talking about it. Rolling Stone and Pitchfork Media both gave it a perfect score, and the single “Runaway” has over two-and-a-half million views on YouTube. His 35-minute video that accompanies the album has (counting both clean and unedited versions) close to twelve million views. Ridiculous. I don’t even follow any hip-hop/rap releases, and not only did I hear about it, but I sat through the whole half-hour ordeal. Oh, and I watched the single eight times. Why does the press and the internet like this release so much? Heck, why do I like it so much? Of course, West is still a complete egotist - his music is still a reflection of that personality. Allmusic.com puts it well:

“In some ways, [this album is] the culmination of [his] first four albums, but it does not merely draw characteristics from each one of them. The 13 tracks, eight of which are between five and nine minutes in length, sometimes fuse them together simultaneously. Consequently, the sonic and emotional layers are often difficult to pry apart and enumerate.”

What was good about (I think, specifically) Graduation and 808s & Heartbreak, here coalesce to form a holistic view of West, a view only bolstered by his latest media shenanigans. Beautiful...Fantasy is just completely Kanye - these 13 tracks are what he is about, inside and out. It's raw and even embarrassing at times. When, on “Runaway,” he claims to have taken a picture of his genitalia and emailed it to a woman, you get the idea that, so long as the lyric is not a prophesy about a aging NFL quarterback, that it is something that Kanye has actually done. Sad, but that is who he is, so “runaway from me, baby. Runaway!,” he pleads. Pitchfork elaborates:

“[W]ithout his exploding self-worth-- itself a cyclical reaction to the self-doubt so much of his music explores-- there would be no Twisted Fantasy. "Every superhero needs his theme music," he says on "POWER", and though he's far from the virtuous paragons of comic book lore, he's no less complex. In his public life, he exhibits vulnerability and invincibility in equal measure, but he's just as apt at villainy-- especially here.”

Kanye knows that he is fallen and so has to prop himself up. He has to build something out of nothing. And see, I don’t think that that is lost on us. Yes, the tracks are well-crafted and the bass is thumping, but what makes the album so appealing is that Kanye is effectively starving himself to death on top of a pillar in the town square. It’s a spectacle, an aestheticization of his own destruction.

This idea, I have also argued, is why Lady Gaga is so attractive. Just as Gaga “left her head and her heart on the dancefloor,” so to is Kanye baring himself, multitude of flaws and all. And, let’s not forget, Gaga already acted out her own death in a music video. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kanye’s next move echoed those impulses.

It’s said that the best music is that which does not bore the listener, and as I listen to wider varieties of music, the more I find this to be, in fact, completely true. Many things can make music interesting: new sounds, new rhythms, quirky lyrics, etc, but I would argue that most important is the ability to show your personality through your music. David Bowie can change with the times and yet still be himself. Vernon Reid can smoooothly transition from a twenty-something shredder in neon tights to the anchor of a free-form jazz/rock hybrid collaboration. Lady Gaga is a wacked-out plastic disco antibarbie. Each transition inevitably shows in their music, and this is what keeps it interesting. Ultimately, Beautiful...Fantasy is a solid record because it is inseparable from Kanye himself, and this is precisely why we are attracted to it. We aren’t really listening to slick production and bi-polar lyrics; we’re listening to a functionally insane man make music. And functionally insane men are interesting to us.

_DZ

On Cultivation Of Musical Tastes Via Old-School Serendipity

One thing my resolution of not buying music for a year has taught me is that music is more than a commodity. It is more than something to be bought, consumed, and collected. Huge digital music libraries, in this day and age, don’t say much about their owners. Yet we continue to define ourselves by what style or artists we listen to. I think this is misguided - personal musical taste, rather than the musical collection, should be the object of curation.

This is somewhat paradoxical, because the primary way we expand and refine our taste is through acquiring new music. We buy new albums, give them a few spins, and, if we like them, keep them. If we don’t like them, we still keep them because A) the album was an investment and we don’t want to suffer the loss of getting rid of it, or B) the music has been ripped on our computer, and it now pads our iTunes song count. The ultimate end result of both reasons is that we accumulate music we don’t necessarily want. I’m dealing with this right now - I have a couple albums I impulsively purchased from Amazon MP3 at the end of last year, and now I never listen to them. I don’t want to delete them because that would effectively mean I lost $10. What should I do?

I don’t have this problem when I buy used CDs. If I buy a CD and end up not liking it, I give it away to a friend who may like it. If I have no interesting interested friends, I just take it to Goodwill; somebody else may enjoy it, and the money goes to support a good cause. I’ve gotten rid of scores of CDs this way. It’s great. Music on physical media is easy for me to get rid of. But could it be easier? What would be the easiest, most cost effective, legal way to discover new music? Let’s look at where the current options are lacking.

The obvious answer is bittorrent, but that is illegal. Internet radio stations like Pandora or Last.fm, or sweet sites like YouTube Disco, are legal, but they’re not very mobile yet. (You know, for the 95% of the market that the iPhone hasn’t penetrated.) And if you do hear something you like on those services, you still have to go out and buy an album. Besides, the key word in play is discovering new music. There is, almost by definition, a huge serendipity quotient here. This is not music that Amazon, iTunes, or Last.fm recommends to you. This is not borrowing a friend’s CD to give it a listen. This is music you may/would never have sought out on your own. This is browsing the “recent arrival” racks at your local record store.

But browsing racks takes a lot of time. You have to stand there and flip for the better part of half an hour. Also, you don’t know if you’re going to get something good; what if the CD is scratched? There are other downsides: record-store CDs are not (relatively) cheap. Most discs are near the $7 mark - a lot to spend on a album you’re not sure you’ll like. And if you don’t like it, you again have to deal with how or if you’ll get rid of it - kind of mentally taxing for what is supposed to be serendipitous.

So it’s clear we need a music format that is:

*Mobile

*Home to a wide range of music

*Cheaper than $7

*Widely available

*Practically disposable, so that there is no separation anxiety if the album is crap

What am I talking about here?

I'm talking about the audio cassette tape, which neatly fits all of the required categories: You can stick them in a Walkman (which never skips!), you can find every type of music on them, you can buy them at any thrift store in the country for pennies, and because of that you feel no guilt about throwing them away should you not fancy whatever you bought. As the saying goes, it’s a win-win(-win).

Cassettes are so cheap that it is no problem to wolf them down, glean any nutritious value from their music, refine your musical tastes accordingly, and toss them. If you like the music, keep the cassette until it wears out, and then legally download it. That’s the great thing about digital music - you can get practically any music from any time period. You don’t have to waste time tracking down another copy of your favorite cassette.

I love cassettes. A few years back I was driving a borrowed Nissan that only had a cassette player. I went to the local Salvation Army and bought three tapes for like a dollar: David Bowie’s Black Tie White Noise, Nirvana’s Bleach, and Primus’ Pork Soda. Those tapes got really heavy rotation because they were all I listened to when I was driving. The Bowie album was awesome; the other two pretty much sucked. So I bought the Bowie record on CD and the others were lost when the car was totaled and towed.

Experiencing music this way was so easy yet so practical. Musical taste: Refined! Cost? Minimized!

A year later I had my own place and kept a tape player in the kitchen. I spent a lot of time in there and consequently was heavily exposed to the only two tapes I had at the time: Living Colour’s Vivid and Poison’s Look What The Cat Dragged In! Hard rock albums on cassette is a glorious thing. For a reason that I have yet to discern, I took the tape player to Goodwill when I moved. I still don’t know what on earth I was thinking. I recently was given some more cassettes (Public Enemy, Frank Zappa (!!), Smashing Pumpkins, Cream) and now I have no player to play them on. Sigh.

Some might raise the objection that I’m being sentimental. If I was being sentimental, I’d advocate records, which, oops, I already did like two years ago. Records are great for establishing a music collection, not for trying new music out. Try the cassette out, then, if you like it, buy the record. The cassette even mirrors the double-sidedness of a record! Seems perfectly acceptable to me!

Another objection might be in your minds: But cassette’s are only available for old music!

So? The object here is to refine musical taste cheaply. Was there no good music available on cassette? Or have you heard it all? Yes, cassettes are old. So is Hysteria, Aja, London Calling, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, and like a bajillion other albums that weren’t released in the last twenty years. If you’re going to be that elitist, feel free to stick with the Popular Songs Right This Second list on the iTunes Store.

I really do believe that cassettes are the best way to develop a great taste in music - they are the cheapest, easiest way to expose yourself to any and every artist and style of music. It excludes new releases, but who cares? If I want new releases, I can go to Amazon, Ping, iLike, or one of the other dozens of services who want to define my musical taste for me. With cassette tapes, I’m being exposed to music history serendipitously. And much of the music that makes up music history is really, really good. Cassettes deliver that to me. But even if they don’t, that’s OK - in the same motion I can toss it into the trash and pop something else in the Walkman. (As soon as I get one!)

Dann writes from his home in Minnesota, which can be rearranged to spell "Aeon Mints," which, you gotta admit, is a pretty great name for a band.

_DZ

David Bowie - Everyone Says "Hi"

There’s something to be said for being able to write a deeply heartfelt song about an emotion that you haven’t felt in years. It really is a gift to remember so clearly what it was like to be a certain age and feel the things that that person felt then. For a man, for instance, to remember what is felt like to be a boy full of unrequited love. It’s one of those things that can make a song truly great, and it’s what I like about David Bowie’s song “Everyone Says Hi”.

It's off of Bowie’s album Heathen (2002), meaning that Bowie was in his early fifties at the time of writing and had been married for ten years or so. Yet the song conveys what I take to be the sentiments of a heartbroken lad who has just realized that a girl he didn’t really know that well, but still was inexplicably in love with, has left him for a life of adventure. It starts out poignantly:

Said you'd took a big trip

They said you moved away

Happened oh so quietly,

They say

She’s gone and she never told him she was leaving! He had to find out from someone else! Judging by the later lyric (“Said you sailed a big ship/Said you sailed away/Didn't know the right thing to say”) I’m guessing that she sailed across the channel to France in search of a bigger world, leaving behind a boy from the neighborhood whom she didn’t think merited a proper good-bye.

Self-centered remorse is the first reaction for the boy, like it is for so many other teenagers who suffer imaginary heartbreak, expressed here through longing for a memento of some kind.

Should've took a picture

Something I could keep

Buy a little frame, something cheap

For you

Lest he get swept away in his own river of emotions, however, he quickly gets to the main refrain of his letter - “Everyone says ‘Hi’”. A admirable gesture of corporate well-wishing, perhaps, but really only a Trojan horse for expressing his own feelings of abandonment as his “concern” for her well-being continues through listing various fears and disgruntlements common to anyone adjusting to a new environment (“Hope the weather's good and it's not too hot/For you” “If the money is lousy/You can always come home” “If the food gets too eerie/You can always phone home” “Don't stay in a bad place/Where they don't care how you are”).

By the second chorus he is all out of excuses to proffer and instead appeals to her emotional attachment to loved ones she’s left behind. They say, “Hi”, he says.

And the girl next door

(Everyone says hi)

And the guy upstairs

(Everyone says hi)

And your mum and dad

(Everyone says hi)

And your big fat dog

(Everyone says hi)

But notice how he repeats that “Everyone says hi”. This is where Bowie’s expressive voice takes over the song and communicates the true intent behind a seemingly altruistic lyric. With every repetition of communal concern, behind Bowie’s rich tenor the timid teenage voice is screaming “I say hi! Me! I care! Look, I’m writing you a letter! I miss you! I want to be with you...”

But everyone says “hi”, because that’s who you really care about.

The amount of resigned angst in Bowie’s voice is almost palpable, and it’s this kind of performance that makes him, even past age 50, a remarkably accessible artist. The whole song, start to finish, communicates an emotion that resonates with fans 35 years younger in a generation that is realizing that no matter how digitally connected you are, physical separation and loss is still a painful, wrenching feeling.

Maybe she’ll come back. Maybe she won’t. Maybe they’ll live happily ever after. Maybe she’ll fall head over heels for a Frenchman and move to Sicily and live on the coast. Maybe he will rent out an airplane to fly over the Mediterranean trailing a banner, reminding her that

“Everyone says ‘Hi.’”

_DZ

"23" - Then and Now

Have you ever listened to a song where the lyrics mentioned a specific age that seemed really far away and talks about the songwriters experience at that age? I just had one of those experiences.

In high school I listened to a mediocre electro-industrial band named God Lives Underwater, (I actually created that page, way back when) who I thought were one of the greatest things to happen to music. (Admittedly, they made some catchy stuff.) They sounded a bit like Depeche Mode meets Nine Inch Nails and I thought they were “gritty”, “advanced”, “unique” “underrated” and probably some other words that get thrown around by pretentious high school music fans. In reality all of their albums were about heroin addiction and produced on equipment that you could find in any aspiring twenty-something musician’s bedroom.

This didn’t stop me from developing a love for their song called “23”. The seventh track off their sophomore effort Empty, it's the one “slow” song (basically just a synthed-up loop for the verses and then an acoustic chorus) on an otherwise extremely sonically harsh album, which meant that I immediately labeled it “deep”, “emotional”, and “super good”. The lyrics go something like this:

I'm breathing the air
the air i always breathe
I don't have a lot
but i want someone to share it with me

I really only want a few things
they've all been taken away
what does the next life bring
I just want to feel o.k.

I'm searching forever
for someone or something
I want to be high
and i want someone to love me

I spent 23 years now
trying to get by
other people make it day to day
I still wonder why

I only really had a few things
they've all turned to tears
one tried to kill me
the other kept me

i'm still here

It’s so painful and hopelessly full of cynical optimism that I almost want to burn myself with cigarette butts in a way that the scars form a smiley face.

Listening to the song reminds me of not only how far my musical taste has improved, but of what kind of person I was before Jesus saved me. Obsession with the hopeless turned into a passion for God; depression was slowly replaced by joy. God Lives Underwater, a band I liked eight years ago, serves to remind me of what my life was compared to what it is. I was fifteen then. I am twenty-three now. I pray for joy, love, compassion, and wisdom in the years to come.

_DZ

Lady Gaga Is Going Down or Breaking Out

Since a major theme of this blog is commentary on culture, it would be an injudicious oversight of me to not talk about the hottest cultural icon at the moment: Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Germanotta. In talking with people about her, the most comment remark I hear is, “Yeah, she’s cool, but weird. Really weird.” This is true, as she approaches stardom from, what some would say, far left field. Others would say she’s not even in a ballpark, that she’s off on her own planet. Regardless, her pop image, dance-oriented music, and rise to fame are worth examining, as is her worldview.

Since exploding onto the world pop scene in late 2008, Lady Gaga has fast become a household name. Her songs incessantly catchy and her music videos decidedly brilliant yet weird/creepy, she has garnered enough fame to work with numerous other artists, including Beyonce and Brittney Spears. She’s on pop radio twice an hour, TV loves her, and eight million of her records have found a place in households worldwide. But is she a legitimate artist, or just another flash-in-the-pan pop phenomenon?

It’s easy to draw parallels from Gaga to other pop stars such as David Bowie, Madonna, and the late King of Pop. Indeed, Lady herself connects those dots. Some could even claim that she a a gothic Christina Aguilera of the era when she was singing songs like “Fighter” and making music videos of boys’ kissing. Despite Lady’s professions of raw originality, however, her image is merely a glossy amalgam of her own pop idols. Outrageous fashions and the quirky appeal to the marginalized of early Ziggy-era Bowie, unabashed bad-girl sexuality and proto-feminism of Madonna, and the slick production, coordinated dance moves, and seamless choreography of MJ, are all fused together in a girl who can actually sing, produced by people who are thoroughly schooled in pop psychology, and dispensed to the masses radio single after radio single. A grueling tour of live shows, in themselves grandiose productions not un-derserving of a Tony Award, support her recent album, The Fame Monster. She proudly proclaims that she lives for the show, that she revels in the glitter and drama and sound of it.

For Lady Gaga, fashion and music are one and the same. She has said that she writes songs based on an image of an outfit she has in her head; her songs are an excuse to wear something outrageous on stage. Each of her music videos feature her in no less than five outfits, and her taste in dress ranges from avant-garde pop diva to back alley prostitute to haute couture fashion model. Nothing is off limits, from a faux-nostalgic 1950’s dress to her monster ball outfit evoking the image on anime princess, or even a bra that spits sparks, if it fits her vision for art, she wears it. Makeup, outfit, props; the whole shebang is planned and executed in style.

While this is all grand and exciting, I can’t help but wonder what the overarching goal is. Especially in light of her newest single, “Bad Romance,” I have an uneasy feeling about where her career is headed. There is an inherent danger in living just for the show and soaking up the pleasures of a hedonic lifestyle; if you go and paint the town red, you will eventually run out of paint. As much as Gaga admires Bowie and his artistry, Bowie now is a far cry from the Bowie of the Ziggy, Thin White Duke, or “Let’s Dance” fame. He ran out of steam by the eighties and nearly crashed, resulting in him toning down his pop star image. If Lady Gaga thinks she can have all of the fun and none of the consequences, she needs to think again, because as it stands now, I see three possible directions that her career could go.

First, and least interesting, is that, despite her claims, that she is merely a cultivated pop icon whose script is written by record labels, no different from Ms. Spears. This would be incredibly disappointing for her fanbase, and detract a great deal from her ‘raw’ image.

Much more interesting and, in my opinion, necessary for the survival of her music career, is if Ms. Germanotta played Lady Gaga like Bowie played Ziggy; a pop act, no doubt, but an act that arrived, gained fame, and then left. Ziggy was a monstrous success - one that would probably have destroyed Bowie’s career should he have continued to play him. Bowie no doubt lost some fans because of the move, as would Ms. Stefani, but considering the alternative, I think it would be a wise move.

Equally interesting but decidedly hopeless is the possibility that Lady Gaga is all there is. I say ‘hopeless’ because, as I see it, her current persona - exemplified by the lyrics of (celebrating an emotionally parasitical and mentally unstable relationships) and accompanying video to “Bad Romance” - as unsustainable. That video (and other videos like it) is not the work of someone who is opening up new creative avenues; it is the aestheticization of a pop star’s destruction. Lady Gaga got the fame she wanted - the question is how long can she hold onto it? And if she does hold onto it, in which new, exciting direction will she take it?

_DZ

My Top Six Albums Going Into 2010

Chelsea Walls Soundtrack - Jeff Tweedy

I bought this CD over two years ago for ¥100 in Tokyo only because it had the words “Jeff Tweedy” on the side of it. I have still never seen the movie it was made for, nor do I own any Wilco albums. Nonetheless, this album is very enjoyable to listen to, with its mostly-instrumental lineup punctuated by poignant songs. Highlights include Jimmy Scott’s cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” and Robert Sean Leonard’s contribution on “The Lonely 1”. Overall a very relaxing album to put on after a long day.

Electric Tears - Buckethead

After an initial listen I discarded this instrumental album as uninteresting and unworthy of Buckethead. After I let it sit on my shelf for a while I gave it another chance. Color me impressed! The whole album has almost no accompaniment, with Buckethead instead choosing to layer acoustic and electric guitar tracks to create a hollow and dreamy soundscape which he then fills with peaceful melodies and gentle guitar noodling. Standout tracks are “All in the Waiting”, “Mustang”, “Witches on the Hearth”, and “Kansas Storm”.

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno

Prompted to buy the album by the hit single “Strange Overtones”, this was one of the my favorite albums of the year. It sounds like it belongs in the 80s, back when Byrne and Eno were making ...Bush of Ghosts. (Not being able to buy that album this year might drive me nuts.) The song-writing is top-notch throughout, as is Byrne’s tone and Eno’s sonic atmospheres. Best of all, this doesn’t sound like two guys collaborating because they know that anything with their name on it will sell. It sounds fresh; like they're exploring new avenues. These guys have worked together for close to twenty years, and are still able to produce a fun album like this. Go them.

Mr Big - Mr Big

This might be the only album I bought because of the bassist. After hearing Billy Sheehan’s work on David Lee Roth’s Eat’em and Smile, I wanted more bass. I own all four of Mr. Big’s albums, but this one still stands out, mainly because of the top-notch musicianship of Sheehan and guitarist Paul Gilbert. Their hallmark song, “Addicted To That Rush,” is four-and-a-half minutes of them trading solos and trying to out-shred each other. Overall, the songwriting is unremarkable, with popular themes being sex, partying, adolescent irresponsibility, dramatic heartbreak. Gilbert’s tone is flawless throughout, particularly during the solos of “Had Enough” and “Anything For You”, where it is nearly tear-jerking because, unlike his contemporaries, he chooses meaningful phrasing over trying to cram as many sixteenth-notes into a measure as possible.

Tales of the Inexpressible - Shpongle

Psytrance affectionado Shpongle’s sophomore effort, coming after their already-impressive debut Are You Shpongled?, is one of the best $5 AmazonMP3 deals I have bought. It’s trippy, it’s catchy, it’s playful, and, dare I say, it’s even more organic electronica than anything Infected Mushroom can produce. Granted, IM makes faster paced music that takes you with it, while Shpongle are more interested in creating engrossing electronic worlds for your mind to explore. Some might say that this makes Shpongle less focused, but I don’t think so. This whole album is a seamless experience, perhaps best described by a snippet of the lyrics from the “StarShpongled Banner”:

I am a shaman, magician

The sun is purple

3D dimensions

I am for mental extensions.

Ki - The Devin Townsend Project

Ki is the start of a new era for Townsend, as he, in his own words, “has stopped drinking and stopped smoking marijuana.” His previous work, notably with extreme hate-metal band Strapping Young Lad, was offset by the much more mellow Devin Townsend Band albums, one of which I reviewed last year. The two projects showed very different sides of Devin, perhaps rightly, as he had been diagnosed bipolar. SYL was, what Devin callled, “happens when someone who is predisposed to mental illness takes steady amounts of mind-altering drugs.” Devin has since has a life-changing experience, and hence the DTP and Ki. Devin is a man who makes half-albums, and by that I mean his albums are a seamless experience for half of the record. On Infinity it was the first five tracks, on Ocean Machine/Biomech it was the last half of the album, while on Terria various tracks are crafted around and link back to the nine-plus-minute long epic “Earth day.” Ki more or less follows the pattern, though the album follows more of a sensory-experience-type of curve, building with the first six tracks to the holistic set of tracks eight through eleven, with the final two tracks being a comedown. The climactic title track, clocking in at over seven minutes long, is a microcosm of the album, building layer upon layer of sound until the music explodes in all its glory (Devin’s operatic voice does the honors).

_DZ

2010: Goals for the New Year

Not buy any new music (really this time!)

Not drive my car (this should be interesting)

Study the works of Marcus Aurelius, David Thoreau, and Thomas Hobbes

Ride my bikes like crazy

Spend at least one hour a week in meditation (Thursday, perhaps)

Write a novel (50,000 words), or at least half of one.

Study the Biblical books of Philippians, Ecclesiastes, and John

No plans for the blog this year, as I want to be able to dedicate more time to writing on paper with a pen. I also plan to spend less time on the computer in general; hopefully Sunday-Tuesday can be computer-less days, or at least internet-less.

We’ll see what the year holds.

Ready, go!

_DZ

New Music to Listen to in 2010!

A year ago I made a list of music I wanted to listen to more in 2009.

Fortissimo - Virgin Black
1.Outside - David Bowie
Audentity - Klaus Schulze
Mirage - Klaus Schulze
Mistaken Identity - Vernon Reid
Zen Arcade - Hüsker Dü
Wired - Jeff Beck
Real Illusions: Reflections - Steve Vai
Mothership Connection - Parliament

Two of those albums (Mothership Connection and 1.Outside) I didn't listen to as much as I would have liked. That will change this year.

Others, like Audentity, Mirage, and Zen Arcade I really, really enjoyed.

Time to do it again! The list of CD's to listen more to this year is as follows!

Front End Lifter - Yohimbe Brothers

1. Outside - David Bowie

Mothership Connection - Parliament

Terria - Devin Townsend

Goldberg Variations - Bach

Better Living Through Chemistry - Fatboy Slim

In Rainbows - Radiohead

Moving Pictures -Rush

To add to that I expect to spend a month listening only listening to David Bowie. I have thirteen of his albums, so it shouldn't really be that hard.

Also, I plan to be able to recognize each of Beethoven's symphonies by ear by the end of the year. This might be harder than I think. I really want to listen to more classical music in general, so maybe this will be a good start.

_DZ

Shaping How We Listen to Control What We Buy

MP3s are nothing new in 2009. In fact, they’re boring. Most of us have probably been using them since middle school, ripping CDs to our computers and creating a digital music collection that allowed us to listen to our music anywhere, any time, and in any order. We smiled with joy as we looked over our iTunes libraries; no more weighty CD collections to lug around and have stolen!

But what if we missed something? What if we overlooked the peculiarity of being able to listen to multiple tracks by multiple artists out of sequence from their original album format? Maybe we lost something when we all went digital.

Of course, mixing songs into a playlist is not new. Radio stations have been doing it for close to a century, DJs have been creating personal mixtapes for some decades now, and compilation albums have been sold by the millions. All of these examples, however, work under some sort of restriction - radio has but a small sample of radio singles to choose from, and compilation CDs and mixtapes, at least good ones, were arranged and mastered to make a pleasurable holistic listening experience. The tracks were mixed and matched, yes, but usually by a professional with a greater theme in mind.


The mass marketing of CD burners brought to us the ability to create a personal mixtape, and we as a society entered a transitional period where we still conscious of our partaking in the deconstruction on the musical “album,” but, excited by the newfound ability to share custom mixes with friends, staved off thinking about potential consequences.

We often think that new technology can only bring good things, when in fact the introduction of any new technology results in a dynamic give-and-take process. As author Neil Postman writes in his book Technopoly,

“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological...One significant change generates total change. If you remove caterpillars from a given habitat, you're not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions for survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that had none.” (p.18)

MP3s weren’t just a new player in the music environment for which CDs had to make room. They weren’t a new form of the CD. They not only allowed you to pick and choose which songs off your CDs you wanted to listen to, but they redefined how music is made, marketed, and consumed. MP3s made possible online music download stores like Napster, iTunes, and AmazonMP3. For the first time, buying just the single off an album was available to the masses.

This had a profound impact on the whole music market, but in particular on the pop, rap, and rock genres. It pushed them away from making a solid cohesive album and towards focusing more on producing a catchy hit single. In more and more cases now, the album is just used to market the single. Overall quality can suffer, because a successful single will sell a mediocre album. Consider a hypothetical example of Lady Gaga:

Suppose her latest single, “Bad Romance,” was released on the Internet and reached the ears of 50 million fans (about twice the population of Texas) who sent a link to nine friends each, exposing 500 million to a really catchy hit single. Now, if a mere 20% of those people bought the single, Lady Gaga would make $100 million. If just 1% of those who bought the single went on to buy the (mediocre) supporting record, The Fame Monster, it would go platinum. This is simple math, and online music distributors like Apple want to get as big a piece of market pie as they can. The more copies of “Bad Romance” that iTunes sells, the more money Apple makes. It is Apple’s best interest, then, as music marketers, to shape the listener’s consumption habits in a way that will make them more accepting of singles. The sale of the album would just be a bonus. The seamless integration of iTunes with the iTunes Store (introduced in version 4) fosters this acceptance. (That iTunes is marketed as music management software is a telling sign. Managing a few hundred CDs? Not that hard. Managing a couple thousand singles? Well, for that you need a computer program.)

Starting in version 4.5, iTunes had a feature called Party Shuffle (now renamed iTunes DJ), an option that let you to listen to your entire music library in random order. This feature was not new per se, as the hundred-disc changers of the 90’s often included such features, but it did take that idea into the realm of the virtual music library.

In iTunes 8, however, a whole new feature called Genius was added. The idea behind Genius was to take the wisdom of crowds, the collective listening preferences of all iTunes users, and harness it to make recommendations, in the form of playlists, to individual users. One could pick any track in his or her library, hit the “Genius” button, and iTunes would compile a playlist culled from the entire music library based on the listening habits of users with similar tastes. It’s an interesting idea, but only useful if you want to listen to music without context or continuous narrative; in other words, a collection of singles. But not all music, obviously, is singles.

If I’m listening to the first movement of Beethoven’s Eighth, the odds are astronomically higher that I would want to finish the whole symphony rather than skip to Mozart to Handel to Haydn to Liszt. The same can be said about any track off of Radiohead’s OK Computer, Steely Dan’s Aja, Devin Townsend’s Infinity, or any other album that provides a seamless listening experience from start to finish.

The iTunes Genius in itself is not a bad thing, but it is important to realize that not all music falls under it’s umbrella. Apple is out to make money, and selling more singles results in more money. Cultivating a userbase who is accepting of these singles, then, is the raison d'être of Genius. From this viewpoint, that iTunes is pushed as a music jukebox for everyone, when in reality it has several features (iTunes DJ, Genius, the Store) that, at least in my view, clearly promote the consumption of commercial-radio-friendly music, is disconcerting.

We are no longer in an environment with caterpillar MP3s; we now have mature, elegant, butterfly music distribution systems. For those who enjoy the endless parade of pop singles, this is a welcome paradigm shift. For others, like me, the marriage of music marketing to the shaping of consumption habits is a reason to be wary. If continuous exposure breeds familiarity, then using iTunes could result in a decline in demand for holistic album experiences. If diversity in music is to be preserved, it is important that we be aware of technology’s subtle influence on artistic expression.

(Image from paradigmshiftstudio.com)

Thankfully, there are those who are aware and involved in a movement to keep the album experience alive. My friend Dan has extensive experience with the underground metal community, and writes,

“[T]here has been a big push in the underground communities (both in metal and alternative/indie music) to refuse to allow their albums to be released on iTunes, with many bands choosing even to release albums on vinyl (Bon Iver and The Raconteurs come to mind at the moment for good examples of this). I also know that many underground punk bands have been doing this for years, with some of them at the dawn of the 90's even resisting the rise of the CD by using vinyl. Examples of this are The Circle Jerks, Lars Fredrikson and the Bastards, as well as Helmet.”

The Raconteurs, of course, are one of Jack White’s - the man notorious for still recording on reel-to-reel machines - side projects. I still can’t tell if he uses those machines for legitimate musical reasons or just to separate himself from the pack by generating a faux-nostalgia over archaic equipment. Regardless, he is indeed known as a staunch proponent of vinyl. I wrote an article a while back about the resurrection of vinyl, and, judging by Amazon’s vinyl Hot Releases page, it seems that vinyl is still doing pretty well. It’s worth noting that the irony of Lady Gaga’s album being available on vinyl is not lost on me.

Vinyl or no vinyl, the countermeasures taken by bands against the MP3 takeover succeed only because of the Internet, the very device that exacerbates the problem. This is the ecosystem which must be balanced. One one side we have singles dominating popular music, and on the other we have bands who resist and sell their albums to dedicated fans via a website. The masses who want the singles are appeased, and the fans, equally, have a place to gather. It is these fans, with their chant of “A new delivery method doesn’t render an old one invalid!”, who are crucial in maintaining that the two live in harmony. For just like Huxley warned in A Brave New World, the danger lies not in our old system being dominated and forcibly repressed, but in it being appraised and portrayed as useless and thus discarded.

So keep your MP3s, iPods, and iTunes. And keep your CDs and LPs. Find the unique contributions of each one and maximize them. For they are not only important as storage mediums, but as representations of a consumer mindset. Make room in your musical ecosystem for both, and enjoy the fullness that each brings to the diversity and taste of the music market.




_DZ

Album Review: Underworld - Change the Weather

Artist: Underworld

Album: Change The Weather Genre: Unoriginal Year Released: 1989

This is not a glowing, positive review like those on most private sites. I’m not going to plug how great an album is and tell you to go out (right now!) and buy it. In fact, I’ll tell you my conclusion right up front: This album sucks. It is not good. So why even review it? I think I’m going through all of the trouble because it is interesting to see how Underworld, as a band, progressed through the Nineties. This album is what they were doing is 1989. This is what they were doing ten years later. What a change! It’s really amazing, actually, that Underworld stayed a band, because Change The Weather is a stunningly boring album if I ever heard one. There’s not a single original idea on the entire album, and everything from the cheesy gothic synth-rock riffs and the passive-aggressive emo lyrics (”The Beach”) to the pseudo-New Wave black-and-white liner photos screams “we’re a Depeche Mode rip-off”. Singer Kyle Hyde even tries his best to sound like the Mode’s David Gahan by singing in a spacey echo chamber all the time. It’s pathetic. This is a band that doesn’t know if it is goth-rock or synth pop, and the result is an album that sounds like the Stone Roses would have if they dicked around with a keytar while on heroin. Fortunately that didn’t actually happen, because the Stone Roses were too busy doing E and making a fantastic self-titled record of their own in 1989. Again, as someone who was introduced, like most others were, to Underworld through their hit Born Slippy (Nuxx), it is genuinely shocking to see Underworld at this stage of underdevelopment. “Stand Up” and “Mr. Universe” are both rejected feel-good summer anthems, the former featuring an inane guitar solo while the later incorporates pointless vocoding mated to a bland acoustic guitar loop. Bland guitar noodling supports a tale of being a liberated mariachi who is a slave to love in “Texas”. Track five, “Mercy,” is only a song if you count the same verse being framed by the same chorus and being repeated twice. There are some hints of the future Underworld to come, if ever so brief. The tracks “Fever” and “Thrash” are both testing grounds for the classic effect that Underworld would bestow on nearly all their vocals throughout the Nineties. “Fever” also has the beginnings of the synth line that would dominate the future track “Moaner.” Judging from the cowboy apparel and western imagery prevalent throughout the album, Underworld clearly sees themselves as mavericks of the early nineties. Shame on them. As history shows, they did indeed go onto to become major players in the house scene, but these “humble” beginnings showcase only boring conformity to a genre already in full swing. This genre already has superb leadership - mainly Martin L. Gore and his posse. Thank goodness the UK house scene was on the horizon, or the world would have been stuck with a band whose music was decidedly under the weather.

_DZ

I Listened to Eminem?? Perhaps.

If you lived through 2001, I think that a time should come in your life when you realize and can recount the effect that Eminem, that white rapper dude (whose name is really easy to type), had on your life. I’ve decided that now is that time for me, so here is an unabashedly personal essay about Eminem’s influence on me, at the time in the eighth grade.



I was thirteen - a short, skinny white kid with a buzz cut and crooked front teeth. It was second hour algebra and a girl named Ashley, possibly the most popular girl in my grade, bounded up to me and asked, “Hey, do you like Eminem?”

Now, I had no idea who M&M was, nor did I have the slightest clue as to why she wanted my opinion on him, but I did know two things: Ashley was very excited about him, and Ashley was very cute.

“Of course! He’s pretty cool.”

“I know, right!”

Thus ended our conversation - a conversation, I might add, that pretty much embodied and format and duration of every other junior high coed conversation. I actually continued to be pretty clueless as to who Eminem actually was, but I soon gathered that he was a white rapper whose name could be pronounced as “M&M” without one’s classmates being the wiser.

Because the near-universal consensus among the adults that I knew was that Eminem was not appropriate listening for a Christian of any age, I listened to him at every chance I got. I did not have the guts to sneak the whole Marshall Mathers LP into my house, so I taped the radio edit of his single “The Real Slim Shady” off of Armed Forces Radio and memorized it to make up for my cowardice. Not having the album, though, didn’t stop me from contributing my opinion, solicited or not, about how awesome it was whenever the opportunity to do so presented itself.

If I had been a sly, conniving middle-schooler, I would have gone to great lengths to find a copy of Eminem’s first release, the Slim Shady LP, and listen to that for hours on end. That way, whenever the topic of Eminem surfaced, I could always play the universal trump card of, “Yeah, Marshall Mathers LP is ok I guess, but have you heard his older stuff? I actually think it’s way better than any of the stuff that they play on the radio these days.”

It’s funny how the object of music critique is to be elitist about “better” music than “they” play.

ANYWAY, this whole tale of eighth grade music appreciation would be moot if Eminem hadn’t been controversial. The Christian press hated him, denouncing this “vile” white rapper and his musical style on every street corner. It is pretty easy to boil the distaste down to a racial issue. The Christian media, largely white, had always cast a critical eye on rap music, but I think had largely brushed it off as music for black people - for the youth who didn’t browse their websites or read their magazines. Rap was a problem, yes, but for the most part it was not a problem that endangered “our” kids, they said. And then Eminem showed up.

You can attribute his success to quite a few factors (he’s a white fish in a black pond, he’s obscene, he had friends in high places, he made fun of celebrities, etc.), but I side with rock critic Chuck Klosterman and his reasoning. From page 175 of his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, “To me the biggest reason [for his success] is obvious: He enunciates better than any rapper who ever lived. He’s literally good at talking.”

Here was a rapper whose lyrics conservative and Christian white people could understand at first listen, and they weren’t used to that. All of a sudden they heard a white person being immature, obscene, and misogynistic and making bank because of it, and they didn’t like that.

Because our parents hated him, we kids loved him. We called his style “fresh”, his lyrics “funny” and “socially relevant” and his image “relatable”. We embraced him because he looked like us, talked like us, and, most importantly to an eighth grade boy, because he was really, really good at making fun of people.

But now this is 2009, and it seems very unlikely that Eminem will come out with any new material that will come close to topping his records that were released seven or eight years earlier. He no longer makes media headlines or angers Christian media watchdog groups. And while the Marshall Mathers LP didn’t drastically alter my musical preferences or listening habits, it was an album that had a great influence on how I saw music in relation to the social values and norms of society. Eminem, at least in my book, joins the ranks of other musicians, like U2, Bruce Springsteen, or Billy Joel, who have the unique ability to relate to a person on an individual level as well as to society as a whole. It doesn’t matter that a song of theirs goes multi-platinum - it can still be a story about specific events on your life. Eminem did that for me, and I am a different person because of it.



_DZ

How Having A CD Collection is Minimalist.

I have written in several articles posted on here that I enjoy buying music CDs instead of digital downloads because I like the whole package. I like to see what the artist has put into the whole package - the lines notes, the album art, the CD art, etc. In an age where music is more of a commodity than an experience, I believe that the extra effort that an artist puts into the whole package is what sets some artists apart from others. Amidst the flood of music on the Internet, the personal, human touches can be the difference between a sale and no sale.

In response to this, a few fortnights ago my brother asked me, “How does your wanting to own the whole CD package conform with you being a core::minimalist?” This was a good question. Indeed, how DOES my desire for the physical package mesh with my minimalist ideology?

This took me a while to think out because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure. Minimalism as I see it now revolves around two basic ideas. (A) Spending less money is good. (B) Owning less stuff is good. My minimalism is the practice of trying to harmonize these ideas with the human desire to own stuff. Buying a CD that is more expensive and takes up more physical space than a digital download seems to be in direct contention with minimalism, but my justification for it is as follows.

1. Buying CDs is more expensive than digital downloads, resulting, hopefully, in less overall purchases. If one spends a little more per purchase, one will buy less often. Buying a $7.99 digital album in comparison to a $11 CD results in the same quantity of music, but one will be more likely to spread his or her music purchases farther apart because he or she spends more at each purchase.

3. Spending more money on a CD will result in feeling guilty if one neglects to listen to it. Therefore, if music is bought in CD format, it is more likely to be listened to. Feeling guilty over not listening to what ones buys will result in diminished “impulse buys”, and in turn result in less money spent on music.

4. Having the physical product sitting on a shelf or a CD rack where one can see it will remind one that they have music to listen to. This triggers guilt if one feels that they have not been getting their money’s worth out of their music.

As a bonus, if you notice that you aren’t enjoying a CD that sits on your shelf, you will be more likely to get rid of it to free up shelf space. This results in owning less stuff! Also, CDs have resale value. If I spend $11 on a CD and resell it for $3 or $4, my net loss is only seven or eight dollars - equal to a digital download.

So, condensed, the basic reasoning is that buying a music format that is a bit more expensive results in (a) less purchases over time (b) a higher percentage of music being listened to and (c) a well-pruned CD collection that takes up less space. More time is spent listening, less time is spent buying, and the resulting collection is more intimate and thus valued more highly.

I hope I explained that well. If it doesn’t make sense, write a rebuttal explaining your logic and tell me about it. But if it does make sense, I highly recommend that you try the process out for yourself!




_DZ

Your Music Library Should Say Something About You!

If you have a computer at work or school that runs iTunes, chances are you’ve loaded some music onto it. And if that computer is connected to a local area network (LAN), then you most likely have also shared music across computers. Music sharing is a handy feature that iTunes has had since version 4, and it allows everyone who wishes to share their music across a network to do so as well as access other peoples’ music libraries that are shared. You can listen to shared music but can’t copy it, lest Apple be sued for facilitating copyright infringement or something like that. And in a world where our music libraries typically span several gigabytes, what you choose to include in your music selection can say a lot about you.

It’s a fun game you can play in your dorm; trying to tell what people are like based on their music tastes. As you browse through a shared library you note certain bands or musical genres and make personality judgements based on them.

“Hmm, this girl likes a lot of indie pop. She probably dresses a certain indie pop way and claims to be independent.” Or, “Look at all of the speed metal that this guy has. I bet he owns that motorcycle out front and goes paintballing on the weekends!”

If you can be judged by the music you listen to, it only makes sense that having more music - adding more bands to your library - can only add more facets to who you are as a person. Or so one would think.

But is this true? I don’t think it is, and I’ll tell you why. Having an extensive record collection used to say something about you back when it cost you something. When you had to buy each and every CD you owned, buying a CD to enhance your perceived image meant giving up some money - and you assumed that you gained some value from that purchase. If I was going to buy a CD like Back in Black, chances are that I either enjoyed AC/DC immensely or wanted to be known as a raucous party guy who loved to have fun. Probably both, actually. But, now, when music can be downloaded for free, does having an extensive library mean as much, or even anything at all? If I downloaded Back in Black, does that mean I have the same values as someone who bought the disc? I don’t think it does. Granted, there are many reasons for owning a particular piece of music, but just owning it does say something about you. Take a look at the picture below, a screenshot of the results, ordered by number of people who want them, of the word “discography” typed into The Pirate Bay, a popular destination for illegal music swapping.

(click to enlarge)

The total amount of music on this first page alone totals to roughly 92.448GB (yes, I checked), or about 3.08GB per artist. I have a mere 19.5GB of music on my laptop, and yet that already totals to 9.6 days of music. Imagine how long 92GB would take to listen to! And that’s just 30 artists! My music library includes 257!

The point is that when anybody can get that much music for free, having an extensive music library that takes someone a full minute or so to scroll through doesn’t really say much about you other than you like to pirate music. There’s no set pattern of tastes; no established ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ of artists. Based on that screenshot, what type of music would you recommend to that user? Certainly no techno, classical, or easy listening. And this guy has classic acts like The Doors, The Beatles, ZZ Top, and Bob Marley, yet still listens to Metallica, P.O.D, RATM, Slipknot, Tool and Papa Roach? Really? And Kelly Clarkson?? What is that!? A guilty pleasure? Should I recommend Christina Aguilera (whose last name my spellcheck recommends I change to “Uglier”) based on that taste? And I like both Depeche Mode and Rush. Do I try to find common ground based on these bands, or did the guy download them just for looks as well? Because when music becomes free, it becomes really hard to tell what someone likes and dislikes. They might just have a few bands so they can say, “Yeah, I listen to them too.” I have totally been guilty of this.

In the past, having a huge record collection meant, more often than not, that you really cared about music and spent a lot of time listening to what you bought. Now it just means you know where to find The Pirate Bay and how to run a torrent client.

So now it seems the opposite is true. Being able to pick and choose what you listen to, to weed out the stuff that you downloaded “just for looks”, helps you present a cohesive music library that actually says something about what you like and don’t like. Having a lot of music actually says less about you.

So what do yo think? Should people take the time to go through their iTunes and eliminate music that they don’t listen to? Or is it just more fun to have a huge library at your disposal?





_DZ

My Top Nine Albums Going Into 2009

This post is more for my own benefit than anything else. I just think it would be fun to read this next year and see what is different.

In no particular order:

Aladdin Sane - David Bowie

Bowie’s effort from 1973 (the same year as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) is an absolute joy to listen to. The music is so innocent and carefree that it makes me wish I was 16 again, going to a drive-in movie.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports - Brian Eno

Another album from the 70’s, this piece of music shines in that it is interesting and forgettable all at the same time. It plays just as well through headphones as it does as background music for a room. And at only four tracks long, it is easily to keep track of which piece is playing.

Urban Mythology Vol. 1 - Free Form Funky Freqs

I literally cannot stop listening to this CD. This is Vernon Reid’s (of Living Color fame) latest effort, and it is essentially a jazz-rock fusion jam session. Very little of the music seems rehearsed, rather the album has the feel of three musicians who play together all the time taking some time out to record some of their jams. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give the album is that if would be an interesting listen even if it were just the bass and drums. Reid’s backing band is that good. The guitar sometimes seems like just the icing on the cake.

Invisible Touch - Genesis

I bought this CD at the same time as Aladdin Sane, and it has received equal if not greater rotation in my iTunes. This is just straight-up, feel good 80’s pop art-rock. At just eight songs, this album is short and sweet.

En=Trance - Klaus Schulze

This was my first taste of Schulze’s music, and it remains my favorite work of his so far. This CD is just four tracks long as well but, at eighteen minutes a track, listening to it is possibly the most blissful way to spend an hour. Complex synth arrangements and impossibly intricate rhythms intertwine to give the listener a beautiful taste of 80’s electronica.

Ocean Machine/Biomech - Devin Townsend

I first heard Devin on Steve Vai’s Sex and Religion record, and that led me to purchase his 1998 album Infinity. While Infinity is indeed brilliant, Biomech surpasses it in nearly every way, taking Townsend’s brand of metal to new heights. (It should be noted, however, that Ocean Machine/Biomech did come first). The album is produced using the wall-of-sound technique, which will sound harsh to most virgin listeners. Once you get used to it, though, it becomes an inseparable part of the aural experience of the CD. Biomech starts out slowly but solidly, and by the end of the track six, “Voices in the Fan,” the listener is primed for the superb, seamless second half of the CD. Indeed, I could say that the 13 tracks on the CD are only eight - the first seven including Voices and then everything after that.

Oxygéne - Jean-Michel Jarre

Another short album (only six tracks), but a beautifully innocent piece of music symbolic of the early exploration of analog synthesizers. The simplicity and playfulness of the music keep luring me back for more.

Perpetual Burn - Jason Becker

Jason Becker is somewhat of a hero of mine, and the guitar work on this, his solo debut shredfest, is absolutely mindblowing. He was 19 at the time of its release, and should he not have fallen ill to ALS at 21, might have become the greatest guitar god of the 90’s. Again, another short CD, with the eight tracks totaling to 55 minutes of metal.

Ultra Payloaded - Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party

The former frontman of Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros returned in 2007 with this CD, after coming to the conclusion that, despite his fame, if he didn’t continue to make music, no one would care about him. That being said, this album is absolutely rock solid, guys-night-out, party rock. Featuring Peter Hook from New Order as well as ‘Peppers bassist Flea on select tracks, the album is a non-stop showcase of what Perry Farrell is capable of doing when he decides that he wants to make music. Talented musicians flock to him, and he can use them craftily to produce a stunning piece of concept-rock. The guitar work of Nuno Bettencourt (formerly of the band Extreme), was something I had not heard before but greatly enjoyed.

Albums to Listen to More this Year:

Fortissimo - Virgin Black
1.Outside - David Bowie
Audentity - Klaus Schulze
Mirage - Klaus Schulze
Mistaken Identity - Vernon Reid
Zen Arcade - Hüsker Dü
Wired - Jeff Beck
Real Illusions: Reflections - Steve Vai
Mothership Connection - Parliament

2008: A Recap!

This, the end of 2008, is a good time to reflect on the past year, much like I did a year ago. Since then, I have had made eighty-seven posts on this site that chronicled my life and thoughts throughout the year. I suppose now would be an appropriate time to post my recap of things I did and events that happened over the past year. This time, though, it will be easier, since I have written many more of the events down.

In 2008 I:

• Left Pennsylvania
• Sold my first car
• Bought a huge van
• Went roadtripping!
• Saw Buckethead, Saul Williams, My Brightest Diamond, Haale, and Joe Satriani play live
• Rocked a Hitlerstache
• Discovered ASofterWorld
• Discovered TED videos
• Voted
• Sold one Mac G4 and bought another one five months later
• Moved to Minnesota
• Found a new job
• Ate a raw onion whole
• Furnished a room entirely from Craigslist.
• Bought a fixie and learned how to ride it
• Got to drive some pretty sweet cars
• Added at least 52 CDs to my library, and got rid of close to three times that many
• Got into Jane’s Addiction
• Rocked most of Guitar Hero on expert
• Gave away a computer to someone who needed it
• Bought and sold a lot on Craigslist.
• Went kissless (!)
• Had no health insurance (or “self-paid”, as the pharmacy likes to call it)
• Relied on God’s grace a LOT

Rethinking Good Games and Avoiding DRM

Two things I want to talk about today that stuck in my mind as I browsed the Internet.

The first comes from this article at TechRadar that talks about 3D graphics in video games and how they have not been a universally good thing for the gaming industry. While games like first-person shooters and racing simulations have of course benefitted, other genres like platforming games and, my favorite genre, the 2D vertical shooter, were, and still are, better in a 2D environment. The move to 3D, as the article argues, took the charm out of SEGA's Sonic series, and I would add to that the Castlevania series, Kirby series Metriod series and fighting games in general. Some of these, games, thankfully, now have found a more suitable gaming platform in the arena of portable gaming, as the DS and PSP are more suited to 2D gaming due to their technical limitations.

Granted, some game franchises really are better in 3D, such as the Zelda series. But I think Zelda is an example of a series that made the jump to 3D just to keep up with the technology. There was nothing wrong with Zelda in the early 2D games that were made. The jump to 3D enabled some cool things, sure, but Zelda was OK in 2D. Much like there is nothing wrong with the 2D fighting game genre. Sure, the graphics have switched over, but most games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter are still, for the most part, 3D fighters set on a 2D plane. Indeed, I think that most games wouldn't be significantly hurt if made in a 2D form. Devil May Cry 2D? God of War 2D? I don't see where these games would inherntly fail when placed in a 2D environment. They would be different, sure, but they would still contain the essence, if you will, of the series'.

In some cases, 3D has contributed to some horrible gaming experiences. Most of these failures are in the form of poorly implemented camera views. Every 3D game has to have a dynamic camera, and some games allow the gamer to have some control over the camera. Every game from the hugely popular Mario 64 and Tomb Raider series to games like Rainbow Cotton and Soul Fighter (both for the Sega Dreamcast) had serious camera issues that led to many a frustrated gamer. Camera issues are something that games like Starcraft, Gran Turismo, and Guitar Hero don't have to worry about.

All of the above example were given just to say that new technology does not necessarily make a better gaming experience. The PS3 and Xbox 360 can have the fastest processors in the world, but if a game developer can't write a good camera for a game, the flashiest graphics in the world will sit on the shelf. Game developers have to actually create good games, even if it means sacrificing eye candy for substance.

------------------------------------------

The second thing I wanted to talk about is downloading music. As of today, I will no longer download music from the iTunes store (gift cards being the only exception). I have also converted every single DRM-laden song I have into a open format, save for a few singles that are still protected. I did this mostly out of principle - I believe that there is no excuse anymore to support DRM-controlled content. Once I buy something, I do not want any corporation telling me what I can or cannot do with their product. This applies to hardware as well. (I'm looking at you again, Apple, with your new DRM-chipped Macbooks and limiting iPhone App Store.)

The iTunes decision also stems from my preference of the Amazon MP3 service (mentioned in this post) and also my love for the physical product. I like having CDs around that I can look and and browse the liner notes of. Another reason I prefer CDs is that, if I ever decide to sell it, I can actually get 4 or 5 dollars for a disc, lowering the net cost of owning the CD. Sure, it's cheaper in the short run if I download the music, but the tradeoff is that a) I can't look at the physical product and b) I can never resell it. I don't download music very often, and from now on, I'm only going to use Amazon.


_DZ

Select Musical Tastes - Why These?

It’s odd how I remember the exact time and place I first was exposed to select music.

 

I was in 10^th grade, cleaning my room one afternoon the first time I heard the Goo Goo Dolls Gutterflower album.

I was riding a Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto in 8^th grade the first time I heard Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory on a classmate’s MD player.

I was lying on my floor doing math homework the first time I heard the Three Doors Down Better Life album.

I first heard Nirvana’s epic Nevermind on an airplane while traveling from Tokyo to Okinawa in 10^th grade.

The first time I heard any material from Kid Rock, Offspring, or Creed was from a mixtape I made off the radio in seventh grade.

The first time I really listened to the entire Temple of The Dog EP was while painting the outside of my summer cabin the summer before I went to college.

I have a very distinct memory of the first time I heard Radiohead’s 2003 release, Hail to the Theif. I was sitting on a couch in a basement in Minnesota with my friend Alyssa, staring at the green Xbox CD screen. I was 16.

I was doing homework on the computer in my dad’s study one night during my senior year while listening to Yahoo! Launchcast radio. Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” came on, and my music taste was forever altered,

I was standing in my basement room, 16 years old, when I first heard Eddie Van Halen play “Eruption” on the radio. I was speechless for a good five minutes.

Using vinyl and USB drives for the distribution of music: Revolutionary?

CD sales have been dropping every year, and fingers are pointing at every imaginable source. Internet piracy, legal download sources such as iTunes, and internet streaming could potentially to blame, but who can get accurate figures on that data? Surprisingly, vinyl is on the rise, courtesy of the nostalgia factor,the more tangible medium, warmer sound, and supposed better audio quality. A few indie bands have steadily been releasing their album in the vinyl format as well as cd, but distribution has generally been limited to indie record stores, live shows, and online catalogs. This however, is about to change.

I am a huge supporter of the record replacing the CD, and I would love to own records and have all the benefits of the vinyl medium. The huge album cover for more creative art, the feeling of placing the record on a turntable, setting the needle, and listening to the warm, popping sound of the latest effort by my favorite band drifting across the room. Records are just cool.

The main obstacle in the way of the vinyl revolution is the difficulty in converting the record to digital files playable by your favorite digital media browser. USB turntables are still expensive, and generally are not suited for both good audio playback and conversion. The ability to have easy access to the music in digital form will be a big factor in vinyl overtaking CDs in terms of distribution and sales. My suggested options? I have two.

1. Bundle a memory card with the vinyl album with the files preloaded. For the audiophiles who require the digital files to be FLAC in the best quality available, at least 800-900MB of space will be required. Therefore, 1GB SD cards would be the best choice. These cards are priced as low as $5.99, and the more accessible 1GB USB drives start as low as $9. Keep in mind that these are retail prices, and would probably be available for two or three dollars cheaper when bought in bulk or wholesale. If the actual vinyl album could be sold for $9 and bundled with a $6 USB drive containing the digital files, the total is a very reasonable $15. I really think people would pay for this.

2. Another option is for the music industry to sell the records by themselves and include a online way to download the files, using either the label's own dedicated server or even via a online service already in place, such as a redeemable iTunes gift. This could be a cheaper option, though obviously not everyone who buys music will have the means to download an entire album, either because of a slow internet connection or a lack of a computer altogether. Still, this would be the most convenient option for most music consumers, as the trend of getting all of one's music from online sources is growing exponentially with every passing year.

Personally, though, while I do support this growing trend of vinyl, I would decline to join the movement for one simple reason - I travel a lot, and plan to move a great deal. I would not even consider packing up a heavy record collection and fragile turntable and moving it every time I feel the need to have a change of scenery. Being able to put 200 CDs in a box that I can easily lift is something I care about a great deal. I support music, I pay for my music, but I do not like having to transport my music.

Having said that: Kick ass, vinyl! I'll be busy downloading.

A Concert of Hosts

I had the privilege of seeing three American music titans in concert last night: Vernon Reid, guitarist of Living Color, David Johansen of the New York Dolls, and Galt McDermot, composer of the musical Hair. All three were premiering original work at the St. George Theatre on Staten Island, and it was a night of music I will not soon forget.

Honestly the only reason I as interested in the concert was because Vernon Reid was performing. I have been a huge fan of Vernon's ever since I found his Mistaken Identity album on a rack of CDs in a Japanese used-media shop and bought it on impulse after falling in love with the cover art. After thoroughly digesting that disc I went on to buy every Living Color album, sans their most recent, and have continued to be an avid fan of Vernon's work. I found out about the 10/27/2007 show in Staten Island through his MySpace page, and bought second-row seats to the show a month in advance. The chance to see one of my musical heroes live on stage this late in his career was something that I was not about to pass up.

Allow me to expound upon my reasoning behind adoring Mr Reid's work. Vernon Reid, simply put is a musician who faithfully weaves his music around the very idea that music is something to be enjoyed by the listener as well as the performer. Though he is undeniably a guitar player of awe-inspiring skill, he doesn't let that constrict his musical style nor dictate how he conveys his ideas through his instrument of choice. His music is passionate, yet he never falls into the pit of self-indulgent meedle-ing, shredding, and wah-ing his way through track after track of solo material. He delights in textures, sustains, grooves, and flowing improvisation. His encyclopedic knowledge of guitar styles combines with his musical vision to produce unique and original music that has room for many different artists and instruments.

Vernon Reid has a vision for music that doesn't always involve him.

He sees music as a way of communication, possibly more so than it as an art form. Living Color was an outlet for certain ideas, but not others. Reid's own solo albums contain material and themes that he deemed not necessarily 'unfit' for Living Color, but rather better expressed through a different channel - much like a clothes designer chooses a model to display certain fashion styles but not others. Vernon chooses different ways to express what he wants to say to the world, and that in turn allows endless possibilities for reaching people through music. This is what makes him a great musician.