Coffee on the Keyboard

On a whim, I just downloaded the Amazon MP3 Downloader. My first "purchase"—a free example— was an Apples in Stereo track that may be some default or perhaps Amazon got it from my recommendations (they’re a decent band, and this will prompt me to give their last album another listen).

Then I bought a whole album, Aesop Rock’s None Shall Pass, on which I was old solely by the eponymous track—and the rest of which is, so far, just as good, definitely worth the purchase.

Because I was signed in to Amazon—flaunting real security for positional security, I’m always signed into everything—I was able to buy the album using Amazon’s One-Click. I hit a button, Amazon asked me to open a file with their downloader, and in under two minutes, I had the whole album, in beautiful 320kbps MP3, sans DRM.

Having traditionally preferred discs to digital, and shunning iTunes, the colossal flaw with the iPod, I was surprised how easy this was. My experiences with the old MSN Music store and it’s spiritual descendant Urge were nowhere near as easy or fast.

I think this album downloaded faster from Amazon than a single Dave Brubeck track from MSN, for example.

A very nice feature, with perhaps two flaws, is that the downloader will automatically add your purchases to either your iTunes or Windows Media library.

The only changes I would want are 1) the ability to add to both libraries simultaneously, and 2) the ability to customize the directory structure of the downloads. It would be nice if I could say "%artist%\%album%\%num%-%artist%-%title%.mp3" (and yes, I am aware I have a bizarre naming scheme, and yes, I assume everything uses WordPress style variables).

On the whole, this is a very pleasant entrant into the mêlée that is the music downloading business. You need to use Amazon’s oft-cluttered site to do your searching, but at least the familiar should be easy, and there’s no deep discount over other stores, Amazon’s well-known source of power. But the combination of speed, high quality tracks, Amazonian reputation and, most importantly, the utter lack of DRM, makes Amazon my immediate favorite.

Combine Metallica–era Metallica with a healthy blend of slightly more recent metal bands like Staind and Disturbed and you’ll basically have Voodoo Lighthouse. The only problem is all three of those bands were more creative.

I saw these guys live at the Green River Café here in East Lansing last night. I suppose it was fun to ridicule post-UofM fratboys with their entourage of high school seniors, but the music left something to be desired. The highlight of the evening were their covers of the Foo Fighters and one of those catchy-but-non-descript 90s pop tunes that I can never remember the name of.

There were supposed to be two other acts, Joe Sleep and No Fat Chicks, but we didn’t see them anywhere, so we took off after Voodoo’s set.

But the whole experience got me thinking about how the venue effects the music. Would arena rock bands be as cheesy (or awesome) if they were playing in a dank bar? Does being surrounded by hippies make you feel differently about the act on stage?

The Green River Café is supposedly a little indie coffee shop, but in reality it’s a hippy/vegan/wiccan (probably) coven. I support fair-trade and organic coffee, and if people want to be vegetarians that’s all right with me, but I got the distinct sense they didn’t appreciate my leather coat. (If they’d known it’s lambskin they probably would have skinned me to see how I liked it.)

As covens tend to be, it’s also very cliquey. At least 80% of the people there all knew each other. My friends and I were very much outsiders. Of course, high school students and just-out-of-high-school 17 or 18 year old freshman who can’t go anywhere do tend to be cliquey, so it wasn’t wholly unexpected.

But I was also thinking about better venues, like St. Andrews and Magic Stick in Detroit. St. Andrews tends to attract what can best be described as mopey-semi-religious-pop-punk, bands like Mae and Gym Class Heroes and The Ataris. Magic Stick has a much more indie/post-rock line up, like Ted Leo, Blonde Redhead, and Of Montreal.

Obviously, albums are a different category. Some artists are great live and terrible on record, and vice versa. But in terms of shows, I think the venue almost matters as much as the band. It shouldn’t. Why can’t EITS play as well at St Andrews as at Magic Stick? So I’ll suck it up and go anyway and try not to let it bother me.

Modular has about 2 dozen artists, ranging from the relatively insufferable Jack Johnson to Gary Jules, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and NYPC. Check out some of their less well-known artists, they’re pretty good. Gary Jules almost sounds like a latter-day Boss. Think “Sinaloa Cowboys” but less depressing.

You might recognize NYPC from a recent, poorly conceived, Intel ad campaign. They do have other songs, though, and they’re recent EP is pretty good. It’s one of the better dancepunk albums I’ve heard, and certainly the best in a few years. (And there are girls in the band. Real ones! Pretty rare in this scene.)

I’m still trying to find Leave Them All Behind and Rocket Science, so if anyone wants to hook me up with some of their tracks, please do!

Coming up, I talk about last year’s efforts by BSS, Mogwai, Cursive, and Mastodon.

I find myself in an interesting position, music-wise. On the one hand, I don’t really have a radio in my car, all I can listen to is NPR and MMQ, the classic rock station. So I haven’t really heard a lot of new music lately. On the other hand, some stuff is so whiny that even if it’s otherwise good, I can’t take it.

I am firmly of the opinion that one should neither jump on bandwagons and listen to things (or do things, or eat things, etc) just because everyone else is doing it. I am also firmly of the opinion that just because something is popular doesn’t make it bad, in fact it’s probably popular for a reason. (Cynically, because this is what the record exec’s decided to make popular; optimistically, because it’s decent.)

What does this have to do with me? Well, I’m trying to expand my musical horizons. So I’m using Last.fm, an amazing place, to try to find new bands. The problem is that, currently, most of the music I’m listening to is very well-known/main-stream. (Even bands that I liked before they were popular and now aren’t popular anymore, like Third Eye Blind.) So, of course, it’s only recommending other popular/well-known bands, most of which I’ve heard.

That’s not fair: it also suggested I’d like Ricky Gervais’ podcasts on The Guardian, which I’m sure I will.

So how do I get it to recommend things I haven’t heard of before? I need to listen to things I’ve never heard of before. That’s a hell of a catch-22.

But this goes beyond just what music I listen to. I want to make more of an effort to make sure I take advantage of locality. There are places here that aren’t national chains, and even a few that aren’t chains at all. Clearly I need to spend more time at places like that. Screw off, Starbucks.