...i just saw the m&m's commercial featuring the Iron and Wine cover of such great heights followed by a jaguar commerical with hardcore days and softcore nights by Aqueduct...
apparently i wasn't the only one paying attention to TV Licensing 101.
i'm not sure what to do, can i have a musical crush that essentially has a commercial jingle... in all reality, am i going to stop listening to either of the afore-mentioned artists...? probably not. if anything, this situation just goes to show the increasing parity and a leveling of the playing field between indie and major labels when it comes to exposing their bands to mainstream audiences.
8.21.2005
what have we become...
8.18.2005
abort, abort, abort...
so the laptop crashed... and it will be out of commission for about 2 weeks and they will probably have to replace the hard drive, brilliant... re-installing all software programs, reorganizing all the music... just damn.
all of that to say that i will post as often as i can from the varied and sundry places that i can get to a computer, so please be patient and if you read this regularly know that you might be the only one...
here is my latest music crush:
hailing from oklahoma these guys put out an EP and full length (this year) on Barsuk Records, former home of the ever popular and increasingly influential Death Cab for Cutie. this is the kind of electro/synth-pop that i love, some guitars and/or piano but mostly synthesisers with underlying boom-bip beats and immediately catchy melodies. i have had some mp3s on my ipod for a few months but i only just finally bought the full album. my measure of a good album is one that you really want to start again when it is finished so that you can experience it again, it's been a while for me on that count....so i sing this album's praises. have a listen for yourself, especially the g'n'r song....perfect:
- assignment #1: heart design
- growing up with g'n'r
- dinner mints demo
- post rock & slightly seasoned
please be patient and keep reading.
btw... this was not the "revelation" that i mentioned before. that will be my cliffhanger to keep you coming back...
8.16.2005
a little help from my friends...
if i were to try and go legit and get my own site and then posted a select few songs from my own back catalog, would i get slapped with a C&D, or worse, a lawsuit? is it considered illegal if it is just a few songs to showcase an artist or something? does anybody know the correct answer to this?
...or, can anyone recommend a good web hosting service, taking into consideration that i know nothing about building websites?
8.15.2005
"you go and save the best for last"...
so the last day of the conference was by far better than the first 2 days combined....for me anyway. i have so much to write about and so many pithy comments to make that i have actually been trying to put off writing this post because it looms in my mind as this monster that deserves all of my time and goodness, it needs to be funny and poignant and blah.... anyway, yesterday i was recovering from the day that you are about to read about by going to a wedding shower in big canoe, ga, so that gave me excuse #1, then it was the end of the weekend and there was laundry, etc...(excuses #2-7) and then there is this introduction and explaining why i'm not writing about that day that is helping me not write about the last day....
so i'll just get on with it... i'm going to be horribly original and just work my way through chronologically:
12pm (noon) - finally get out of bed after watching nick cannon's "wild 'n out" and laguna beach for like 2 hours... like, oh my god.
1pm - 2:30pm - eat mellow mushroom for lunch, for the second time in as many days....its just really good food...
3pm - 3:45pm - watch more of the same MTV drivel and nap some more...
4pm - 5pm - this was the first AMC+F event of the day that we attended. it was a panel entitled DIY: true confessions of indie artists and entrepreneurs. this was the first industry panel that i have ever been to and i was very underwhelmed and unimpressed. apparently, the people who work behind the rock stars run on the same schedule as their puppets and show up a good 20-30 mins late. however, this wasn't as bad as the constant stream of people that were coming and going while everyone was trying to listen. its very hard to concentrate when people are trying to give you demos and cds in the middle of the panel and then coming back 5 mins later to reclaim their wares when they realize that you really aren't as important as they might have thought (yes, this actually happened to us...humbling to say the least). although, concentrating on the panel might have been easier if i didn't hear a constant stream of self-promotion coming out of most of them. one guy kept talking about this super-influential band that he was in from 1971-1974 that never recorded a retail album and only distributed to rock journalists....hey thanks, now i know what it takes to put out an album....to nobody. this other guy's position was that being on an indie or major is irrelevant because they are all being bought out by each other, brilliant!, just what i like to hear from a panelist talking about indie artists and entrepreneurs. the most helpful and interesting people of the whole lot were John Szuch (owner, Deep Elm) and Shaun Rogers (vp int'l marketing/a&r, SubPop). they described what it's actually like for indie artists to get heard and what the labels can and cannot do to help (tv licensing, promotion, etc....). it was very informative and i would kill for Shaun Roger's job. most painful moment: a panelist referenced how many albums Death Cab had sold on SubPop before going to Atlantic, Shaun looked a little exasperated as he pointed out that Death Cab was on Barsuk and The Postal Service is on SubPop. (i'm a snob...)
oh, i almost forgot ... 2-foot long fingernail girl was there with her entourage, but left 10 minutes into the thing as part of that neverending stream i mentioned.
5:30 - 7:30pm - i didn't think that my second opportunity to see second shift would come so quickly....but it did and at the tiny tapas cafe, fuego. this performance, with my readiness in place, far outstripped the performance at 10high. i thouroughly enjoyed the show in this small space, and i realized that i have always enjoyed shows more in smaller spaces....so i may stick to those from now on. the guitar parts were more distinguishable, the vocals were clearer, and it seemed that the band was really playing off the crowd. here's the thing that struck me the most: i was singing along to some of the hooks....already, after only one live performance....apparently i wasn't as distracted the first time as i thought. this is huge for me because i'm not usually much of a sing-alonger these days and i rarely find songs that stick in my head after one listen....even if they do it's usually from a CD or radio source, not a live show. me and my "asst. editor" have moved from enjoying the live show to wanting to hear something from the studio to clarify their sound even more in our head-ears. good stuff...good times.
8:00 - 10:45pm - we left the small party and went to the big party.... downtown rocks, known as dtr to the cool kids, is a free concert series put on by 99x at underground in which thousands of teenagers pack themselves into the narrowest street in all of atlanta and crowd-surf and mosh to the filler music between sets....needless to say, not my scene. it quickly becomes my scene when the words backstage/vip become involved. i now will go into this completely elitist and self-serving rant about how cool it is to have access: it is really freakin' cool.... i was standing just a few feet from Butch Vig and couldn't say a word to him, what do you say to the guy who produced Nevermind, Gish, and Sonic Youth? exactly, mouth agape wonderment....nothing, speechless, and i'm a total dork. one i recovered, we went up to the vip "loft" that overlooked the street and ate free food and drank free booze and hung out with "the beautiful people"....which was also pretty cool. standing apart from the unwashed masses and observing is definitely an experience, people do really stupid shit in crowds....it was so stupid that shirley manson stopped singing and pointedly asked a few members of the crowd to join the army if they wanted to fight and leave the rest of us to enjoy the music ... i thought that was great.
11:00pm - 11:10pm - we were advised to go and see a band named lennex play at future (while trying to find a link for this club, i found a posting for a vampire meet-up there, but no website, a sign of things to come). there were pictures of naked anime girls on the walls, then a little guy dressed inleather carrying a whip... somthing should have tipped me off as to the sound of the band, i'm not sure what but i feel like i should have noticed something.... the band was "incubus doors down" or "three doors incubus", maybe "incudoors down"...i'm done now. anyway, there was a trumpet and we left....what is it with random brass instruments and bands?
11:15pm - 11:50pm - back to the loft, more drinks, food and hanging out with other people who felt out of place... who feels in place at these things? everybody i met got in through a friend of a friend and couldn't believe they were hanging out there ... is there just one central friend that everybody in atlanta knows?
11:55:30 pm - 11:56:30 pm - i tried to be cool while introducing myself to John Szuch(the deep elm guy) while he was standing in line for a drink at underground and failed miserably... but at least i said "hi"... he told me to joing their e-mail list and check out their new bands, i said ok.... but the new will never be the old (pop unknown, camber, brandston, planes mistaken for stars, the appleseed cast, etc...) , oh well....maybe i'll give it a shot.
12:00 (midnight) - 1:00am - why is it that the 30-year-old guys rocked my face more than any other "new and upcoming" band that i saw all weekend. i haven't seen five eight play in about 4 years and they have/have not changed a bit .... they still write really good pure rock songs in the old-school athens way, but the songs also have a great indie-rock edge that i am in love with again. the self-titled album put out last year is light years better than the good nurse album put out on deep elm, for the love of all that is holy...buy it. oh by the way, you have never seen such a good live show, mike was actually hanging upside down from the framing of the stage, throwing guitar stands, and yelling at the crowd...it was awesome!!
here are some songs from the new album:
- criminal
- i'm still around
- magnetic fields
- the liquor song
- square peg
- bad juices
find some of the old stuff from their site and give it a listen also, you won't be disappointed.
1:00am - ? - hanging out, drinking, sleeping ... weekend done.
i will now return to a regular schedule and normal, regular guy postings.... i already have a huge emo-geek revelation to make, maybe tomorrow, or maybe i'll take a day off.
8.13.2005
day two...
my plans for last night completely went to pieces as far as the list that i put together earlier.... instead i went to the loft to attend the 99x local's only event. i would like to say that i made a good choice, but, apart from hanging out with some really good friends, good friday experiment was the best band that played last night and remains the best that i have seen this weekend...
the whigs put on a high energy show and play some good tunes but did not hold my attention as much as i thought they would. anyway, i can't even find any tracks of theirs so that you can make up your own damn mind...
this is a very short post because i am hungover as well.
8.12.2005
holy crap i forgot about the breakdancers...
the only reason that we stayed at the loft so long was to watch these 2 guys freakin' kill it on the dance floor while dj quiz was spinning... it was like poetry, so fluid and captivating. this was the closest i have ever been to people who actually know what they're doing, not the drunk guy at the wedding reception who does the worm and then spins into a little pose at the end....this was body-bending slack-jaw inducing "fo' real" breakdancing... and that's all i have to say about that.
i've been told to go see the whigs at the loft tonight, so i'll probably do that.
"that's how it was on the first day"...
so day one of Atlantis is over and it was quite an interesting day... i will start with the negative and move onto the positive to finish on a high note going into tomorrow.
lowlights:
1. parking - i feel like i spent most of the evening driving around trying to find a parking spot that wasn't going to cost me anywhere from $10 - $15. i have this inbred desire for the "quest" - the neverending search for the best/free parking, so i spent quite some time driving in circles around venues. i ended the night having visited 4 venues and only paying $5 total....score.
2. drop bombz collective - we went to the loft to try and catch some Arc the Finger Records acts (will be discussed later) and got there too early... we ended up enduring only as much of the "collective" as we possibly could, and being illegally parked was not worth the show. unfortunately we left to try and find better parking and never found any so we drove away for good apparently about 10 mins before all of the good shit dropped. they didn't so much as sample old recordings so much as play the entire songs with a beat underneath them and imcomprehensible rhymes over the top. i'm usually loathe to criticize any individual's artistic efforts, but i feel like they could have been more creative with their musical stylings.
3. unknown band at the star bar - there was a saxophone involved and a funny hat and an empty room, 15 minutes later we were gone.
4. it was my friend's bithday and he ended up as DD - and that just sucks all around.
highlights (starting at the beginning of the night):
1. Minamina Goodsong - i went back out to fuego to catch some of the devil stole the beat showcases that they were holding early in the afternoon. i arrived just in time to catch this hip-hop act and was much more impresssed than i thought i was going to be. These guys are one of the acts on Arc the Finger that I was going to try to catch at a larger venue later in the night. the beats were orignal and catchy the performance was not affected and did not feel overly rehearsed. the flow of the performance was very good and they had some damn catchy songs, here are a couple of them:
- big
- the porch
the album Four Farmer Circus just came out and can be purchased here...
2. Good Friday Experiment - wow, i was really impressed with this band... they followed minamina at fuego (odd mix) and began setting up your basic drum, guitar, bass things then came the myriad of piano and organ things and i began to became very intrigued. the sound is updated psychadelic 70's organ rock.... at times mellow and atmospheric and more like experimental noise pop in others, whatever you want to call it, it all equals good and a band that you should definitely check out:
- full crush
- early ideas about light
- halocline
3. Second Shift - on a night that was marked by almost empty venues where i had been, second shift packed out 10high, an indication of the solid local following that they have garnered through their live shows. admittedly, this was the first time i had seen them live. i have met the lead singer on a couple of prior occasions, and he is a super nice, quiet, almost unassuming kind of guy.... however, put him on stage and he becomes a performer, literally a young Mick Jagger/Scott Weiland-esque performance that fascinated me. honestly, because of my fascination i was thouroughly distracted the entire show, it was like someone had flipped a switch on the guy and all i could do was stare. i've heard of rock stars having on-stage personas, but never having met anyone like that i never really bought it, until now. i don't mean to harp on this, but it really was an interesting revelation. anyway, the more i dwell on the show and try to pick out other parts of the performance, the more i liked it as a whole. the band was good and cohesive, they know how to perform and keep the crowd engaged. if i had to describe the sound i would say that they are a filled-out garage rock band... so take say, the strokes, add fuller, more complex guitars with good solos and then give julian casablancas some speed and backing vocals. they like to stray away from the standard song structure which i appreciate, as it adds some uniqueness to their songs, but the songs maintain a singalong, hooky quality at the same time. i also would really like to see them at a different venue with a better sound system and better acoustics (the system at 10high has always sounded a little "muddy" to me, and that may be because it is such a small space), maybe when they open for Louis XIV at the roxy. to make a long story short, i hated when it was done that i had been distracted....needless to say, i'm really looking forward to seeing second shift perform a second time...
- power in numbers
- *stream*
that was the end of the night, then there was sleep and an early alarm... my sleepface has been stolen for sure now...
8.11.2005
you never forget your first...
so i have have had an internal conflict coming up to this weekend as this is my first article ever concerning event coverage. you see, i wasn't sure what tone to take... do i try to write as a jaded, cynical know-it-all music journalist (like most major publications do) which i'm not or do i tell the truth that having a media badge and some VIP access was really cool and, whether or not people thought i was much more important than i really am, almost everyone i met was really friendly and nice.... i ended up deciding to go with what i know at the risk of geeking out and sounding like a dork.
so last night was a night of firsts for me....
my first "industry" party which included my first experience of waiting behind a velvet rope followed by my first experience of "knowing" somebody to get me on the other side before the unwashed masses. thinking about it, if the party was a first for me then i guess that everything that happened once i crossed the threshold would be a "first" (first step, words, drink, food, person i met, etc...at an "industry" party). the party was held at club eleven50 in midtown which is actually a pretty cool little space for an event. i met a lot of really nice folks and the people watching was incredible (i saw this one girl with fingernails that, if i had to guess and they were straightened out, had to be a least 2 feet long...as they were they were all curly and mangled, as a master of the obvious i would say that they are an attention getter... but seriously how do you get anything done? apparently she has 2 assistants). the event was well attended but musically speaking not much to cover, there were a lot of local personalities and "celebrities" but as i mentioned before putting faces with names is not necessarily my forte. the dj for the evening was DJ T’Challa of local ATL hip-hop act Minamina Goodsong and, with my limited knowledge of dj'ing skills, it was good....well, people seemed to be having fun.
now for the good stuff... following the official kick-off party was my first "industry event after-party", the devil stole the beat (again, instead of listing all new things, suffice it to say that once i walked through the door all was new to me, words, steps, people, etc...). this is an event thrown by Caren West and Wicked West PR (the folks who are handling the media for Atlantis) across the street from eleven50 at fuego, and exactly the kind of party that i was looking for and thought i would find earlier in the night but didn't. the folks at WWPR are some of the nicest people i have ever met (no, i'm not sucking up) and they throw a great party. the dj for this event was jay harren host of the radio show sunday school (great show on sunday nights from 8-10pm) on local alternative station 99x, he spun a great mix of indie, classic, and new rock (including the remix of "banquet" by Bloc Party, which is a great remix). i met a lot of local atlanta band members and some other, i'll say it again, really great people. fuego will actually host the rest of the devil stole the beat event over the weekend. they have lined up an impressive collection of bands who will play 45 minute sets from the hours of 3-6pm daily.
tonight will be spent between several clubs and i haven't nailed down exactly where i will be and when i will be there, but i will see second shift play at midnight at 10high in VA Highlands....hopefully i will see you there.
here are some tracks from a couple of bands whose member(s) i met last night....enjoy:
passerby (raw recordings, but good potential. jangly, noise pop)
- symptoms
- majority
- fast one
- t-shirt
morning state (i really like this.... mellow in places then hooky and poppy in others... a great sound)
- stream the music here and here
oh, another first for me .... finding out how widespread the use of myspace.com is. apparently, every band from the largest down to the smallest have a myspace site with which to disseminate music and news. i am woefully behind the curve on this and one might actually be able to download mp3s from the band's sites but i can't figure out how, maybe you have to sign up to get access? i don't know, but i need to get caught up with this...
8.09.2005
updates abound....
i have added 2 bands to my list:
city sleeps
one way letter
this also means that i have nailed down my friday night whereabouts ... i will be in hell.
Fri Aug. 12 - doors @ 6pm
hell(otherwise known as the basement) at the Masquerade: one way letter, city sleeps, goodnight city, lakeside, hank shaw, last november.
that takes care of three on my list.... any more help for me out there at all?
does anyone actually read this?
lost in a mythical city...
in preparation for going to the Atlantis Music Conference this weekend, i have been trying to narrow down the list of bands that i am going to see. here is my list so far:
jet by day
last november
the gates of berlin
the working title
the track record
so having said that, i would like any input that anyone has as to what bands need to be seen and which, if any, of the above i should skip. here is a list of the bands playing the Conference, please help me with my decision making process.... if you don't i can't be held responsible for the quality of music that will be posted this weekend.
i plan on attending the DIY: True Confessions of Indie Artists & Entrepreneurs panel on Saturday featuring label types like Shaun Rogers, VP of International Marketing/A&R for Sub Pop Records but more importantly in attendance will be John Szuch, owner of Deep Elm Records, and hopefully you will see an interview with him here post-facto....if he will talk to me, here's to hoping.
there are also parties of all types to attend; opening, VIP, "pool", and breakfast. i'm wondering if i will spot any music celebrities.... problem is, i'm not very up to date on my celebrity watching and knowledge, definitely not as much as this guy.
8.04.2005
one hell of a week...
so i've been quiet for a few days now but not for lack of desire (or good music, i even bought a CD) but for a lack of time, sleep, and an internet connection in my office....it has been the best worst week ever. i will now list the things that have conspired to render me with or, in most cases, without all of the aforementioned items:
1. scotch: NOUN: (used with a pl. verb) 1.The people of Scotland, 2. Scots English, 3. Scotch whisky. today, class, we will focus on definition number 3, which usually leaves one entirely unfocused.... so there we were, at an "Under the Sea" loft/warehouse party (all that was missing was Michael J. Fox playing Johnny Be Good on stage after not disappearing, i love those movies...i may or may not have owned the DVD box set at one point) and i had, for some reason, decided that scotch would be my poison of choice for the night(by night i mean day... starting at 3pm). girls may or may not have been wearing small bikinis, and the guys may or may not have been dressed like pirates (yarrr!!) and lifeguards, to be honest after too much of a bottle of whisky there are a lot of things that may or may not have happened. but i'm pretty sure i saw my brother there, and i know the local ATL hip-hop act Psyche Origami played and i think it was good .... i also was taken home....at 4am... with a sunday bruch date looming...
2. e-vet: NOUN: 1. (abbr.) emergency vet. also could be defined as "a good way to go broke in a hurry". i'm not complaining, thank god they exist, but for the love... i'm in the wrong line of work. anyway, earlier in the day the dog had an allergic reaction to a bug bite of some sort but it looked fine, we went out for a few hours, there was chewing, then bloody flesh-pulp, then came the e-vet, and now there are antibiotics, other assorted drugs, and that ridiculous looking "elizabethan" collar that they make the poor animals wear..... then it was 2am ... with a 6am alarm looming ... so i did what any red-blooded englishman who's been living in america most of his life would do and called in sick/late to work...
3. agitation: NOUN: 1. The act of agitating or the state of being agitated. so i'm not sure who this refers to, myself, my wife, or the dog. we, the humans, were agitated at the dog's constant agitation of his wound and collar ... at 4.30am in the damn morning, which is when i finally coaxed him down the stairs and out into the yard to relieve himself. i'm sorry, did i forget to mention that he started refusing to walk at one point because his collar kept getting caught on everything in sight, even the air itself.... by this time, i'm now functioning on even less sleep.
4. poker: NOUN: 1. Any of various card games played by two or more players who bet on the value of their hands. in this case various equals one, NLH, and i can assure you that the game i played in last night was decidedly on the "more" side of "two or more", although not quite to WSOP levels at times it felt that way as it took me 6 hours just to be able to finish in the money. i can also assure you that "the value of their hands" is a very subjective notion that usually is irrelevant if you are playing correct poker.... it would be more accurate to say "the value of the hand that one player can make the other player think that he has at any given time"(....unless you are playing free poker, in which case the concept of "value" is almost as meaningless as the term "bluff" and where "all in" and "call" seem to be the extent of most people's vocabulary.). fortunately, i was playing very un-free poker and with some very good poker players. i won't mention who or where (legal and safety reasons), but thanks for the invite guys .... the play was good, the cards were even better (for me).
5. profit: NOUN: 1. An advantageous gain or return; benefit, 2. The return received on a business undertaking after all operating expenses have been met. this "return" is what most companies and organizations use to purchase things like updated computer systems, software, and other such useful business aids. inversely, without profits one cannot buy those kind of items. i work for this antithesis, a non-profit organization, and as such there are no....well...profits with which to procure...well...anything. as a result of this, i found myself without my office internet and e-mail for the last 48 hours. to all of my friends in the corporate world, imagine what would happen if your entire head office was without an internet connection and corporate e-mail for 48 hrs., yeah exactly.... pandemonium. what happened at my office you ask? i can now challenge all-comers to a freecell deathmatch, and i will kick all of their asses. i would play spider solitaire but we run only Windows 2000 here at my office, no shit.
i think i'm done now and so is this week.... on to the next and a brief list of things that will contend to steal my sleepface in the coming days:
1. the wife got a job, so there will be celebrating...
2. i have media credentials for the Atlantis Music Conference, so look for posts covering this event and hopefully some new musical discoveries.
i bought the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights finally and it is awesome and so are Explosions in the Sky. if you missed my previous post concerning both of these things, read it.
here are some tracks for your listening pleasure:
Enon
- shave
- natural disasters
- believo!
- rubber car
- come into
TV on the Radio - dreams
Bear vs. Shark - 5,6 kids
Innaway - threat hawk
7.28.2005
i'm done now...
i'm now going to bring my aspirations and expectations down to the correct level.
thanks to one of my favorite music bloggers, mystery and misery, i have discovered the band The Potomac Accord, y me gusta mucho. here is how m&m describes the music (he does a fantastic job of it):
here are some songs:"The Potomac Accord create beautiful piano driven songs (along with a bass, violin, and percussion) that fall into the same realm of Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor, but with emo-esque vocals (Slint and Cursive if you will). Their music is dark, melancholic, powerful, and full of passion (post-rock slo-core)."
(from In One Hundred Years the Prize Will be Forgotten)
- a quiet white
(from Silver Line on a Black Sea )
- are they careless
- maya
- to portland, maine
here is some other music from First Flight Records...
emery reel:
- his hammer is my axe
the floating city:
- kansas city
- where are you
anamude:
- urban comfort #2
the best post ever...
so my wife told me to write a post and title it "the best post ever" and then actually write the best post ever ... what kind of pressure is that? i mean, come on, the best post ever? do i find the most intense emotional music that will change my life and yours forever so that you will actually never read this blog again because you have finally reached a musical epiphany and no longer feel the need to explore or encounter new music of any kind... or do i write some interminable diatribe that lays bare the fabric of our society with cutting insight and scathing irony mixed with subtle, yet undeniable, humor while exposing my soul in an endearing and tragic manner.
i have no idea what any of that meant and i have now buckled under the weight of it all....
oh, the tortured life of a blogger.
i'm so emo right now... or am i
7.27.2005
dragonfly in the sky...
i'm pretty sure the reading rainbow song was "butterfly in the sky" but i have adapted the lyrics for my needs...
my best friend, and author of the blog chinese food or pizza?, is now the head chef of the restaurant Dragonfly in Tamarindo, Costa Rica...
i've never been so proud... *tear*
ironically though, he will be serving neither chinese food nor pizza...
7.22.2005
scary good...
these are things that are good, but sometimes in a scary way...
- Tiger Woods / Phil Ivey ... you know the first name but you have probably never heard the second. Ivey is considered the Tiger Woods of poker, mainly because he is young, black, and scary good at what he does. there is a great quote about this parallel that I read in an article by ESPN.com Poker Analyst Steve Rosenbloom:
"Take Tiger in the sand. We see his situation, we watch him consider his options, we wait for something magical. Now take Ivey with pocket 5's in the small blind. Same thing."
Much like Tiger, Ivey is approaching the record books with alarming speed. Tiger has hit 10 majors at a younger age than Nicklaus did looking to equal the 18 major feat at a younger age than his idol, and so Ivey has reached his fourth WSOP bracelet on track to hit the record 10 WSOP bracelets at a much younger age than poker legend Doyle Brunson. According to Phil Gordon, if Ivey keeps playing at this level he will get his 10th WSOP bracelet within the next 4 years. To put that into perspective, Doyle Brunson just won his 10th bracelet at the age of 73...Ivey is only 28.
- there is a great, nay magnificent, scream from 1:25 - 1:30 in Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast". the scream is a little Roger Daltry-ish (listen to "Won't Get Fooled Again) but that doesn't make it any less brilliant. the song is good but scary lyrically, "sacrifice is going on tonight"....come on *shudder*.
still here...
7.21.2005
...and by request
here are some tracks i was told to check out and some that i wasn't...
sufjan stevens - the lord god-bird
the arcade fire - no cars go
the go! team
- huddle formation
- bottle rocket (this song is awesome!!)
the salty pirates
- the alien invasion
- i lost my virginity to the voice of Per Gessle
- my academic beard
joanna newsom
- peach, plum, pear
- what we have known
- bridges and balloons (cover by the decemberists)
elefant - now that i miss her
sigur ros - staralfur
that's all for now but i'm still here...
7.20.2005
...and i'm back in the game
it has been a long time since i have posted anything or actually even read a music blog and while i don't usually like to make excuses for things, i feel that there are some decent reasons to explain what has taken up so much of my free time lately.
1. we moved... from Denver to Atlanta about 3 months ago. I have a new job which is way better than the old job. this is where i work now...but i don't have a house yet, however thanks to my gracious in-laws, i do have a roof over my head.
2. i got caught up in the whole texas hold 'em phenomena that is sweeping the country, and i am still caught up in it. i played in a tournament last night and i may play again tonight. at the junction of the new poker craze and the increasing relevance of the blog craze comes the obvious "poker blog". i now spend some of the time i used to spend reading music blogs reading about poker instead, i need to learn to balance this out better. this is my favorite and this is also good. in my opinion, poker blogs got a shot in the arm during the recently completed World Series of Poker in Vegas because ESPN won't be showing the $10,000 buy-in NL "main" event until oct.-nov. and die-hard fans didn't want to wait until then to hear about the action, so the almost play by play blogging of media types at the event provided an insight into what i'm sure we will all still watch on tv in a few months.
3. playing poker online can be fun and is usually free, i play here and here and am thinking about going here because the Full Tilt team is sick.
4. i got burned out... i kept trying to find new and better music that no one had ever heard of ever, so i was spending a lot of time downloading and streaming trying to find the next big thing for me....i just got bored of listening to a lot of mediocre music and trying to be excited about it. sure, i found some good stuff but i found a lot of really bad stuff as well. i've decided to slow it down a little and ease back into things and post music that appeals to me, not just continuing to try and be the guy who "heard it first" or "posted it first" in this case.
some bands e-mailed me their mp3's to post, so i will do so. some of these i have heard great things about, some nothing at all....and i appreciate that i was probably just the recipient of a mass marketing tool but i appreciate the effort to sway the blogging world:
The Hypertonics - these guys have shunned record labels and the usual melee of shopping an album around and have just posted their entire album on their site....and it's good.
Soft
- droppin'
- all that you're shown
- you make me wanna die
- lucky jam
that is all for now, hopefully this will last.
(does anyone enjoy that i write this blog as if people read it...?)
3.06.2005
a quickie...
Areovox - hailing from the NYC, these guys put together some solid tracks.
have a listen:
Rewind 2001-1
1. Don't Fade Out
2. A Million
3. Beat You Up
4. Could've Been A Contender
5. Home
The Skyhighatrist EP
Running on Empty
Take Me Apart
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