I know everyone here might be at a saturation point by now about MJ, but when I read this it made a lot of sense to me on some level, maybe cuz it speaks more about the man and the raw musical genius than the media caricature that his later years became… anyways, I enjoyed it.
Classy the name of the site isn’t, but these recording engineers and studio professionals do pay very nice and earnest respects to the King. Highlights include:
1) pie-throwing,
2) orchestral arpeggiation with a tape recorder and his voice,
3) his dislike of cursing, and
4) my fave: he apparently loved NIN’s The Downward Spiral. Man, to be a fly on the wall and hear that go down if he was singing along.
No idea about the authenticity of this of course, but I did find it posted on HearYa, big thanks to them for a great find. It’s also a great blog with some killer live sessions (like this one with Blind Pilot, also you can follow HearYa here on Twitter).
Sean
P.S. Totally cliche, but if you want/need to smile, look up Moonwalk on Youtube. I lost 2 hours tonight with that to blame.
You won’t be cool, hip, or even effective until you understand design. When you made your rise to hegemonic ruler of the software world back in the 90’s, being ugly and ill-presented was ok as web-culture had not split presentation from data yet. Newsflash: Kerning matters. Don’t stop there: Tracking matters. Product honesty matters. To pretend as if Microsoft is advancing the web conversation by making browsers more robust is like saying GM was advancing the bar of how the public perceived fossil-fueled cars. It’s just not true. Most hacks that web developers have to implement are because IE is so behind the times.
There is no excuse for not having your tracking and kerning down… I mean at very least, your type should remain on a solid baseline, not jumbled up like some 2003 Macromedia Flash text rendering error. Get a clue, you can’t subvert the subversive: you are big brother, not the rebellion. D’uh.
For all the videos, visit idsgn, many thanks to them for enabling this rant.
Grizzly Bear baffle me. Either they are walking into brilliance by happenstance (rumor has it the band didn’t know how to sing when it formed) or they are so beyond me that I cannot put their theory and composition together into some sort of logical system. I guess I feel like they are Animal Collective-light in the chaos category. I have moments of glimpsing the structure and just when my brain latches on, I lose it… it’s like waking up from a nap and trying to explain a dream around the breakfast table as it falls apart in your mind, and your friends just stare. Nevermind. Pass the milk.
I am more of a Department of Eagles fan (a Daniel Rossen side project), but I will say I walked out of the show with two vinyls for Veckatimest and the first single, my mind opened, and my inner musician in knots.
Openers Here We Go Magic were a pleasant surprise and were quite intense, focusing on the beauty of one chord at times for minutes while an undulating bass beat ebbed and flowed. Their lead guitarist was all over the place but formed a great skeleton for the vocals to lay on top of.
And for the icing on the cake, I had my iPhone 3G[S] poised shooting “Southern Point“, the opening track from Veckatimest and first song of the evening set when about 30 seconds from the end of the song security swarmed and kindly informed me I could not shoot video within the hallowed walls of the Fillmore. I thanked them and secretly flipped them off. Here are the fruits of my labor, oh what I won’t do for you people…
Little Joy put on an all around amazing show at San Francisco’s The Independent. Openers Leopold and His Fiction had swagger and confidence despite wielding a pretty boss cow hide jacket WITH fringe on the sleeves… it was decidedly a Hendrix-ian wardrobe choice, but in the end got the job done.
My money is that Little Joy walked into the studio to commit their outstanding eponymous debut to tape and walked out that day in time to have brunch. These are very professional but fun-loving musicians, the set was dialed even without Fabrizio Moretti there. Lead singer Rodrigo Amarante informed us that Mr. Moretti was not at the show as he is fulfilling his duty drumming for The Strokes in NYC as they lay down what with be their newest album (effing awesome, best news I could have heard). Fantastic vibe and intimate setting, pick up their album here.
Thunderous drums, trembling piano and a wailing voice shook the Divisadero’s Independent Theatre on Saturday night. White Rabbits‘ latest effort, It’s Frightening, was produced by Britt Daniel of Spoon fame, and its cover depicts a motion blurred-out young man whaling on drums. It proved to be quite accurate as at several moments in the show there were two or more individuals lambasting the poor drumkit. What a beautiful amount of noise.
Centered around epic percussion and the song writing of Stephen Patterson, White Rabbits are an odd blend of singing that can sound like Cake coupled with music theory that has an angular, baroque Muse-like feel to it. Britt Daniel’s influence can be heavily felt in the arrangements, while retaining the bands earlier sound; it’s a nice evolution. Check out the video of Saturday’s show below, and be sure to pick up Fort Nightly and the new It’s Frightening.
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