I just saw a JCPenny commercial featuring The Flaming Lips' track The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song. WTF? I thought artists waited a while before selling out.
I bought their album for that song alone…
Nathan passed me the musical baton. I was feeling left out. :-)
Like Taylor, I'm gonna provide a link to my Audioscrobbler profile. It would be updated a lot more if it included songs played on my iPod.
Billy Corgan now claims that the breakup of the Smashing Pumpkins was James Iha's fault.
I really liked believing that the breakup of the Smashing Pumpkins was due to everyone agreeing that they had made their mark on the world and needed to move on. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case - it sounds like Billy and James had some sort of pissing contest, and nothing good came of it.
Listening to the breakup announcement again, when Billy went to KROQ on May 23, 2000, it's interesting to hear Billy speaking about how he wanted to "end on a good note" with the entire band. This was certainly true - the Pumpkins went through a lot - drugs, Billy's mother passing away, members leaving - and still managed to put out great music.
Truthfully, I think Billy should have continued to keep quiet. Now is the perfect time for him to make news - he wants to branch out as a solo artist. Whatever, we'll see.
On another note, our new Web site was featured on The Weekly Standards today.
There's a lot of people with iPods on campus these days. I'm still surprised that people use the earbud headphones that come with the iPod - I didn't find them very comfortable, even with the the foam. They also sounded a little tinny, but good for earbuds, I guess. I'm even more surprised that people just hold them in their hands while walking. I'm clumsy enough that I'd probably drop mine.
I finished watching most of the Björk live DVDs and I have to say that - overall - I'm disappointed.
I started with Björk - Cambridge (1998), which Suresh let me borrow. I was thoroughly impressed with not only her performance, but that of Mark Bell and the Icelandic Octet. The filming made me feel like I was at the concert. In fact, I was so enthralled by the DVD that I went onto Amazon and started buying the others in the live set.
Next, I watched Björk - Live at Shepherds Bush Empire (1997). Overall, this was a disappointment for me. It has a nice selection of songs - including "The Modern Things", "Isobel", "Hyperballad", and "Violently Happy" - but the camera work and editing is nowhere near Cambridge.
Björk: Live at the Royal Opera House (2001) returned my faith. This one felt more relaxed, which was nice. The orchestra and choir mixed well with the electronics, surprisingly. Indeed, the DVD gave me more respect for Verspertine than I had initially.
Finally, I watched Björk - Vessel (1994) and Björk - MTV Unplugged & MTV Live (1994). Neither lived up to Cambridge or Royal Opera House, and the MTV one was an utter disappointment for me. The MTV Unplugged portion was okay, and I enjoyed the saxophones, but the MTV Live section was horrible. One, I couldn't even tell that it was a concert - it looked more like a series of poorly edited music videos. Two, the video effects were simply distracting. Oh, well.
I've yet to watch Björk: Live on Later... With Jools Holland (2000) or Björk: Minuscule (2001), but I'm not going to rush out to purchase these like I did the others. If you're going to buy any of the Björk live DVDs, I suggest you start with Cambridge and Royal Opera House. If you like those, consider purchasing Vessel, but don't bother with MTV or Shepherd's Bush.
On another note - watching Björk do MTV Unplugged has reminded me of Nirvana's performance. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it on DVD at Amazon, which is a shame. I can't say that I like Nirvana all that much, but their MTV Unplugged performance was amazing.
"The first thing I want to do / Is to overcome my temperament / Let the arrow find its purpose" ~ Rainer Maria, "Save My Skin".
From Rolling Stone's review of Bishop Allen: "If Modest Mouse spent a year in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit, they might emerge sounding like the delightful Brooklyn quartet Bishop Allen." They have a few MP3s from Charm School on their Web site; I especially like "Little Black Ache" and "Things Are What You Make Of Them".
I'm trying out the Audioscrobbler plugin for Winamp and XMMS. It's basically my music app on steroids, and it's got a great social element on top of that. I just wish I could make my iPod keep track of what songs are played.
I've been able to find the XMMS plugin source (now available in SourceForge CVS). The Winamp 3 plugin is in SourceForge CVS, but not the Winamp 2 plugin. Maybe this will be enough to get me interested in Windows programming.
Overall, since I would like to be able to do a little more analysis of what I listen to, I might tack on my ideas to Audioscrobbler.
If you've never heard Lisa Loves Milhouse, I recommend you listen sometime. Nathan originally sent me the link from Mac Hall Comics, at which point the group was called Public Static Void (great name for a band) and had produced two songs: Best Song Ever (Honk Honk) and Pac-Man Lunchbox. They made two more songs before breaking up, Photographs of Places on T.V. and Concentric Circles. Photographs of Places on T.V. is a low-key guitar song, while Concentric Circles reminds me a little of Built To Spill.
Spudnik is apparently where some of the Lisa Loves Milhouse members ended up. They have two songs on MP3.com - both have a nice upbeat guitar sound. If you get the chance to listen, Spudnik will be playing March 16 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm on WMUC, the University of Maryland radio station.
I saw Daredevil last night, but this isn't about the movie so much as the soundtrack. In Daredevil, there is a song played throughout that sounds as though it's from the American Beauty soundtrack. Since the Kingpin likes roses, it's an interesting link between the two movies.
Recently, it seems that movie studios are using music from other films instead of coming up with a new score. Even the movie trailers are using music from other films, such as the Two Towers trailer that used music from Requiem for a Dream by Clint Mansell and the latest Hulk trailer that used music from Run Lola Run.
I bought Zwan's album, Mary Star of the Sea. I'm still trying to really absorb it, but it's got some catchy songs. It's good they released "Honestly" first, since it's arguably the most Smashing Pumpkins-like of all the songs. It's interesting - Billy seems to be trying a new singing voice, which is on the whole less whiny. I dunno, check it out.
Theory. The iPod has twenty music directories, named from F00 to F19. This is much more efficient than having one music directory, since the filesystem (be it HFS+ or FAT32) doesn't have to do long directory searches. However, ephPod, the program I use to synchronize my iPod, doesn't seem to use more than one of the music directories.
With a normal FAT32 reader (like the driver in Windows), this wouldn't really be a problem. The iPod apparently gives up rather quickly in searching for a file, meaning it will sometimes skip over a song. Usually, it's the first song on the playlist that is skipped, and you can often force the iPod to play it by pressing back a few times.
Why doesn't the iPod skip later songs as often? I think that this is due to the way the iPod buffers data.
This is just a theory, probably a pretty bad one. I don't know much about filesystems, and I know next to nothing about the iPod.
Okay, more on this later...I have to go home.
Basically, it's bad that ephPod uses only the first music directory. A simple hashing algorithm would probably reduce the directory search time significantly - just use the file size or the sum of the character codes in the filename. (Unfortunately, twenty is a bad key. Maybe use nineteen as the key and F19 as a directory for overflows - when the number of songs in a given directory exceeds a specific number.)
Hey, wait a minute: ephPod allows you to specify how many directories to use in the Configuration -> Advanced Options screen. Ugh, now I have to resync my entire library.
I know that Pearl Jam probably doesn't have much say in the matter, but I don't think I'll be buying this album. I'll be avoiding products from Epic and Sony from now on.
I found an interesting review of Moby's new album. I think the reviewer is pretty much right, but Moby does redeem himself with "Signs of Love". If you liked Play, you should consider picking up 18.