A Slight Delay

I keep wondering when summer will start this year. I know that on the calendar it starts on June 21, same as every other year. The problem is, that’s not when summer starts for me.

For quite a while now, I’ve always pegged the start of summer to a single auspicious occasion. The bloom of a particular flower, perhaps, or the song of some bird? Oh, no, that’s far too pedestrian. The only thing that will do (for me, anyway) is the first warm day that I hear “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy on the radio.

And it has to be the radio. No CD’s or MP3’s. That would be cheating, since I own “Dedication” on disc, and ripped the song to MP3 long ago. So it has to be the radio. It’s a bit of a crap shoot–sort of like figuring out springtime by a groundhog, for instance–but when you get those goosebumps when Phil Lynott sings… That is a summer day, and a damn good one, at that.

CAN: Anthology
Okay, unabashed geek time. I like progressive rock. Not all of it–you will never hear me debating the merits of Ozric Tentacles versus Spock’s Beard versus Dream Theater, for instance–but I will admit a soft spot for stuff from about 1968-78, in all its bombastic glory. Yes? Yes. King Crimson? Of course. Genesis, with or without Peter Gabriel? Natch. And throw in–among others–some Eno, 801, Roxy Music, Seru Giran… well, you get the picture.

But there’s a problem with a lot of Prog: it sounds too much like Whitney Houston. (more…)

Good post by Archangel over at www.crackteam.org (which you can read here) on the Billboard Hot 100. I think that I can safely say, without blowing Agent Archangel’s cover, that he and I are the same age, grew up listening to a lot of the same music, and have musical tastes that overlap in a lot of areas.

Anyway, after reading the post, I mosied (moseyed? Whilom haven mosey?) over to the Hot 100 myself, had a gander, and a cow while I was at it. Am I getting old, or is Archangel right in asking if it’s all shit? (more…)

A couple of years ago, when I picked up White Limousine by Duncan Sheik, I was surprised to find that it came with a DVD packed with .WAV files, and Ableton Lite. Anyone who wanted to could remix any of the album’s songs, leaving aside for the moment the fact that when one hears the word “remix,” Mr. Sheik’s name isn’t usually the first that leaps to mind.

But I digress. Many artists put up isolated tracks from their tunes in order that fans can do what they please with them. 808 State comes to mind, as do the tracks David Byrne and Brian Eno put on a dedicated site around the time that “My Life In The Bush of Ghosts” was re-released. Other artists, such as Bill Laswell, David Torn and Martin Atkins, have released sample sets for Cakewalk, ACID, and other DAWs. This was the first time, though, that I’d seen someone put up the whole kit n’ kaboodle, with the disc, and at a reasonable price.

A few years on, we have a followup. Trent Reznor has offered the backing tracks from his music before, but with Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D / [CD/DVD Combo] he’s put out an LP’s worth of remixes, and the individual backing tracks for each. Not only are the remixes themselves of a much higher quality than he’s done in some time, the samples (and the entirety of his new album, Ghosts I-IV) have been released under a Creative Commons license, which should go some way toward encouraging some creative responses to his music. Here’s hoping that other artists follow suit.