I finally got around to watching the video to Death Cab for Cutie's "Grapevine Fires", last night. I first heard about it via this post over at Boing Boing. You'll find the video there as well.

I didn't like the animation style at first, but as the story progressed, I found I didn't care. It's beautifully done, and a great accompaniment to the song. This is how I think videos should be done.

I never saw much need for the iPod Shuffle. I suppose for some people it's a great idea, but I have a large library and like listening to albums. On the other hand, I do like using the shuffle feature on occasion, but it is a bit of a pain: I find myself skipping over lots of songs that I don't really want to listen to.

I knew there had to be an easy way to fix this. Back in 7.0, Apple added the "skip when shuffling" feature to iTunes. At that time, they changed podcasts to be skipped by default.

So I used this feature to force my iPod to shuffle only certain songs.

So, in the main song list, I selected all the songs, right-clicked, picked "Get Info", and, near the bottom right of the dialog, set all the songs to be skipped by default. Since I already had a play list of my top rated songs, all I had to do was select the songs in that play list, right-click, "Get Info" and then change these songs to not be skipped during shuffle.

If you don't have a "Top Rated" play list, it is very easy to create: Just create a smart play list that only contains songs with ratings of 3 stars or up. Or you could use some other selection of songs that you prefer to shuffle on.

Anyway, now when I use shuffle, my iPod only shuffles the ones in my "Top Rated" play list.

Much better. :)

I sure hope so.

Pitchfork talks about an unofficial agreement where corporate radio will promote independent music.

Unofficial. That's a disappointing word. There is no guarantee that the agreement will be honored, or even if it is, the implementation will be meaningful: How does promotion at 3am sound to you?

There is a lot of exciting music out there that is never played on the radio. You just need to go out and find it.

I saw this via Digg: The Who sees live music as the future of rock.

Pete Townshend may have a point, but he neglects the fact that it is a chicken-and-egg problem. Tickets to concerts and festivals are expensive nowadays. People are not going to shell out dollars for artists that they don't know about. Corporate radio has its own agenda so it isn't going to highlight the truly exiting artists. So, how can people break out of the corporate radio straight-jacket? The Internet is pretty much the only way. So what if it doesn't deliver 100% of the time. It's better than the alternative.

Groklaw reports on an important win RIAA's aggressive lawsuits. The important thing: "One infringes a copyright vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit it." Since the mother (in this case) was unaware her daughter was using the account to download music, she was not liable for infringement.

I love The Blue Man Group. I saw The Complex tour, which was awesome. And, in March, they'll be here in KC again. I can hardly wait.

One of my favorite songs off from them is "Up To The Roof":

All I see, it's not for me
What I want you have not got

Tried to use things you sold me no matter what the cost
Tried to go the way you told me but each time I got lost
The stairs didn’t lead me anywhere

I’m taking the fire escape up to the roof
Don’t care if it’s not the way you find the truth
Time to make this climb, to rise above

This room and all of you
Who say I should do like you would

Tried to live the life you sold me no matter what the cost
Tried to walk the way you told me but each time I got lost
The stairs didn’t lead me anywhere

I’m taking the fire escape up to the roof
Don’t care if it’s not the way you find the truth
And when I get up that high, I don’t know what I’ll find
But I’d rather look at the sky than wonder why I let you take my time
Time to make this climb, to rise above

It's a great song about finding your own way in life. It reminds me a lot of software development, especially the first verse.

A meme with

"It works like this: You reply to this post and I give you a letter of the alphabet. Then you think of 10 songs that start with said letter and put them in your journal (with these or similar instructions)."

Fade Into You -- Mazzy Star
Fall Down -- Toad the Wet Sprocket
Far Behind -- Candlebox
Fast Car -- Tracy Chapman
Fifty-Mission Cap -- The Tragically Hip
Fire And Ice -- Pat Benetar
First Drink of the Day -- 7 Seconds of Love
Fisherman's Blues -- The Waterboys
Freaky Be Beautiful -- Moist
Fuck You -- The Headstones

Over at Chromewaves is a nice write up on The Grates. Oh yeah, they also talk about The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Remember The Grates? I wrote a mini review about them back in June.

According to Chromewaves, the band has been travelling from Australia just to open for other bands. That's a lot of work, so it's obvious that they are trying to get a foothold in the US market.

A Google search using "The Grates Australia" nets 354,000 hits. As a comparison, using "Red Hot Chili Peppers" nets 28,900,000 hits. So The Grates are still relatively obscure. I wish them luck, but they may be too quirky to succeed.

If you haven't heard of Jonathan Coulton, then you need to check out his stuff. He's got a definite knack for writing catchy funny songs.

One of his latest songs is Code Monkey.

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting
With boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very dilligent
But his output stink
His code not “functional” or “elegant”
What do Code Monkey think?
Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud

Over the weekend, I was happy to see that the Barenaked Ladies have released a 3 song EP on iTunes. It's good stuff, with Easy being the best song.

I really hope that the new album will be better than Everything to Everyone. They've always put out some good music, but I was disappointed with that album. In my opinion, they have never quite surpassed Gordon. Maybe I just like quirky.

Based on what they've posted in their blog, they like quirky too. Apparently they are talking with Rhino about releasing a box set--will it have 6 discs?--that will contain a lot of their b-sides and unreleased material. That will be great since BNL is an awesome concert band. I guess I need to keep my eyes open for this one.

Finally, Ed mentioned that they've recorded several songs for an upcoming The Sims expansion. I've never played the game. The interesting thing to me is that they recorded the songs in Simlish. This got me thinking about virtual worlds. In particular, I'm thinking of Second Life.

Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot written about Second Life. What's most interesting is that it isn't a game. It really is a virtual world that allows you to do all sorts of things including running your own business. There have even been a number of "personalities" that have hosted conference and talks in Second Life. What I've not heard about is artists releasing music and/or performing concerts in Second Life. It makes me curious to see if any of that is actually occurring.

While MySpace has become a hub of artist released music, it will be interesting to see when virtual concerts take off. Sounds like the perfect venue for Gorillaz.

You need to check out $ The Grates $. This Australian band pounds out some fun rocking songs. They have a weird mix of styles, including The Breeders and Save Ferris.

"I Won't Survive" is just trippy strange.
"Inside Outside" is a great ska song.
"Science is Golden" is lots of fun.
"Feels Like Pain" reminds me of The Breeders.

It looks like Gravity Won't Get You High is their only full length album.

Chromewaves pointed me at an interesting band from Montreal called Land of Talk. The band's stripped down style really reminds me of bands like Belly and Throwing Muses, especially with lead singer Elizabeth Powell's vocal style.

In particular, check out Seafoam and Breaxx Baxx. Great songs. Seafoam also sounds great live.

I'm trying to catch up on my podcast listening--I'm still way behind after my trip--and only just finished listening to episode 40 of the Rock and Roll Geek Show Indiecast . The Indiecast is always interesting, but more often than not, I don't find much that really catches my attention.

Surplus Sons is different. They remind me a bit of Sweet, but with a more modern feel. City Nights is a very catchy rock song that I really enjoyed. I hope you do too.

Listening to Coil, I forgot how much I liked "Rings" from Toad The Wet Sprocket:

Are you the plane
That shapes the board
Part of a history
Smoothed and worn
And oh, the windy weather
Dry spells, brushfire

Isn’t it strange
To see my life
You must cut me down
To look inside
And oh, the simple pleasures
This ring tells of rain
And this one summer
Good years, nightmares

How is it I remember
Knowing that I would live forever
Isn’t it strange
How truth can change
And oh, the windy weather
This ring tells of rain
This one, summers
Dry spells, brushfire

No filler on those albums. Toad gave you an album's worth of good songs, not a couple of singles that don't sound anything like the rest of the album. But, in the days of iTunes, the value of albums is underappreciated. For people that like singles, that's great, but not for me.

CNN has an article on the worst songs. There are some pretty bad ones on the list, and I'll admit that I never, ever want to hear "Muskrat Love" again, but I just have to ask: where the hell is McArthur Park???

For amusement, check out this list of The Worst Songs Ever.

What is the worst song you can think of?

In the mid 90's, there used to be a music recommendation service called Ringo. It didn't live very long, but I had a lot of fun playing with it. Ringo made great recommendations and gave me some music gems.

Ringo was a Social Information Filtering (SIF) system. In other words, people would email Ringo with a list of albums, including how much they liked the music. That's the Social Information. These selections were then compared to everything that people previously entered and then Ringo would email you your recommendations. That's the Filtering.

Ringo was the first music recommendation system that I know of and it obviously inspired Amazon's system, which isn't quite as good IMO.

Well, there is a new music recommendation system called Pandora and it looks like it could be much better than Ringo.

Unlike Ringo, Pandora does not do SIF. Rather, it relies on a large number of music experts that listen to thousands of songs every week as part of the Music Genome Project. All the music is categorized based on "DNA", an assessment of a song's characteristics. So, when Pandora makes recommendations to you, it is based your song's DNA.

I've played with Pandora only a little and I like what I see. IMO, Pandora has the potential to be very cool. Let's face it, when we want help or recommendations we often go to experts for their opinions. Since music experts are "feeding" Pandora it stands to reason that it will make great recommendations.

Of course, there is always a downside: Pandora might not make unusual suggestions. Ringo had the potential to surprise you because, at some level, most people have eclectic music tastes. Will Pandora just supply us with more of the same, or will we be surprised? I don't know, but I aim to play!