January 2007

Finally there is something that is indeed better than sliced bread. Introducing iConcertCal – a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city based on your tune-age. You simply toggle between your normal library view and the iConcertCal view which looks a lot like a desk calendar filled in with all the concerts in your neck of the woods. See something you like? Click on it and you’ll go to the web and a site that allows you to buy tickies right there.

It was developed by two brilliant (in my opinion) grad students who were sick of missing concerts while studying for their electrical engineering degrees. I would’ve thought it’d been easier to drop out of school so as never to miss another show, but these two brainiacs would have none of that.

Download this sweet little plug-in now or face the peril of missing the next Drive-By Truckers show because you were too lazy to pick up the Chicago Reader. And yes, it’s available for both Windows and Mac OS X.

Download now: iConcertCal.com

The first time I went to Austin, TX (two years ago), I didn’t have much lined up for live music. I knew I wanted to see Jon Dee Graham at the Saxon Pub and we checked out Bob Schneider at the Pier on Lake Austin.

On our last night, we checked out Antone’s because I knew Stevie Ray Vaughan got his start there. After asking the bartender who was performing, he said a new band called Boombox, made up of some of the remaining band members from The Scabs (Bob Schneider led The Scabs before going solo).

An hour later Boombox exploded on stage with a jazz, funk, hip-hop fusion of sound. I was blown away by their energy. I remember trying to find them online after I got back in Chicago, but they were nowhere to be found. Tonight I found them and downloaded a live track from their podcast. If you’re ever in “ATX”, make sure to check out Boombox. It looks like they have shows weekly.
Boombox – Standin’ (Live)

After reading Oz’s article on the demise of the Compact Disc, it evoked memories of the almighty Cassette Tape and made me wonder if anyone was still purchasing them. After doing a quick search on Google, I found some really weird stuff (Like this http://www.sweetthunder.org/tapes/index.html).

But most interesting were the cassette tape sales statistics. I couldn’t find any US stats, but I did find that cassette sales in the UK decreased from 83 million in 1989 to around 900,000 in 2004. That’s a 98.9% decrease over 15 years. But even more shocking is the fact that 88 million cassettes are still sold in Turkey annually. The streets of Istanbul are echoing with the sweet sounds of Steve Miller Band as we speak. Do you think if you showed someone in Turkey what an iPod was they would erect a large statue in your likeness immediately or wait a few days? And 80 million cassettes are sold per year in India. I wonder if they’ve discovered fire over there yet.

I had some INCREDIBLE mix tapes back in the day. One of my favorites was one that my girlfriend made for me with hearts drawn all over the label. It had a bunch of Big Head Todd, Billy Pilgrim, and other bands I had never heard of before, and was probably my first introduction to real music. I also had a great Pearl Jam bootleg with covers of “The Kids are Alright”, “Baba O’Reilly”, and rarities like “Sonic Reducer”.

But my favorite mix tape of all time was a homemade one I created. It was a glorious mix tape of my very own farts, beaners, cut muffins, beefs, and stinkers. Believe me – I’m as shocked as you that I did this.

I was blessed enough to find an old tape recorder when I was about 14. For whatever reason, I thought it would be a great idea to start tape recording my farts (I clearly had a lot of spare time) and would play the tape for my buddies, much to their delight. I recorded dozens, maybe hundreds, of farts over a several week period. My buddies soon joined in on the fun, until eventually we had a recording of several consecutive minutes of nothing but a cornucopia of farts. It was quite a hobby – we’d be hanging out watching TV, playing video games – whatever – when suddenly one of us would feel one coming on, scurry over to the tape recorder, cozy up to the microphone, and kabbam. The variety of farts we captured on tape was spellbinding. Everything from SBD’s to ones that sounded like a stinky French Horn cupped around your ear. It was a veritable fart bonanza.

That tape was my creative pinnacle. I’ve never poured my heart and soul into anything like that before or since. Sadly, I can’t locate the tape, but if I do it’s going straight to every major record label I can find, because it’s more entertaining than 99% of the garbage out there right now.

I’m guessing everyone is going to be too horrified by this post to even respond.

In producer Kenny Young’s latest project, he pairs Cuban music with popular rock songs in an effort to entertain us and SAVE THE WORLD. That’s right. All of the profits for Rhythms Del Mundo, featuring Coldplay, U2, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, Sting, Dido & Faithless, Franz Ferdinand, Jack Johnson, Maroon 5, and others, go to Artists’ Project Earth, a fund to halt global climate change. This is the first album release for APE and I have a feeling these artists really think they can save the world. I live in the world, so I’m pulling for them.

Buena Vista Social Club is responsible for laying down the instrumentals. This NPR broadcast has an interview with Young and sample tracks by Sting, Ibrahim Ferrer, Coldplay, and the Arctic Monkeys. You can hear the interview below. Feel free to fast-forward to hear the song samples.

Kenny Young is definitely a genius. His strategy boils down to simple mathematics: Sting + Worldly Cuban beats = Happy Polar Bears.

Warning: After listening to these song samples, you may unknowingly buy a Prius and plant a tree.

[video width="320" height="240"]http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=WC&showDate=24-Jan-2007&segNum=1&mediaPref=WM&getUnderwriting=1&mswmext=.asx[/video]

While extremely underrated, Chris Smither’s music has become a good friend to me. He put out his first record in 1970 and his music hasn’t changed much since. That’s probably why I like him so much. I’ve been trying to think of a description for his music and it’s place in my life, and this is the best I can come up with:

I’m in Las Vegas right now and I can’t wait to get home. Vegas is a nice enough place, but I’m getting tired of the blinking lights, the sounds and yes, even the drinks. Today a dwarf Elvis impersonator handed me his business card and my instinct was to scream and run, but I composed myself and just backed away slowly hoping he wouldn’t bite. Once you see a dwarf Elvis, it’s time to go home, relax on the couch, and think about nothing for a while.

That’s how I feel listening to Chris Smither. While I enjoy listening to indie bands pushing boundaries to create new and interesting music, it can sometimes get exhausting. Even when I encounter the random Dwarf Elvis indie band that freaks me out, I know that I can always count on Chris to give me well written, toe-tapping, acoustic blues to take my mind off things. He continues to put out tried and true folk/blues music and the love and passion for his craft comes through in each pluck of the guitar string. Listen to the MP3 below and watch the video and you’ll see what I mean.

I just purchased his newest album, Leave the Light On. It’s another great addition to a Smither’s consistent body of work that is an effortless joy to listen to. I can’t wait to see him at SXSW 2007.

Chris Smither – Leave the Light On

I also found this clip on YouTube that shows off his guitar skill and has some great commentary about the impact the Internet has had on his career and many other talented musicians flying under the pop-culture radar.
Chris Smither – Live at Sidmouth Festival
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Imagine you’re driving down some backwoods road in the deep south and decide to pull off into some run-down honky-tonk. Upon entering you are greeted by a “punk-ass blues” combo and the whole place turns to stare out you as if to say, “What the hell are you doing in here?”

That is how I felt the first time I spun this disc. Black Diamond Heavies are a two-piece outfit with John Wesley Myers on bass keys, fender rhodes, organ and vocals and Van Campbell on drums and backing vocals. Myers voice is unique to say the least; almost as if he is possessed by a blues singer from yesteryear that’s still trying to get his message out. So unique, that I found myself fixating on his vocals and not truly enjoying the full experience.

Once you acclimate yourself to Myers’ vocal offerings, the rest falls into place. Essentially they are just a couple of dudes playing the blues with just enough crazy built in to make it different and a very enjoyable listen. You’ll also soon notice that Myers is a phenomenal musician.

The album has a nice mix of shake-your-hips blues boogie and the nice soulful blues ballads. Fever In My Blood, Leave It In The Road and Pour Brown Sugar are examples of the former. All feature tremendous intros by Campbell that show he’s not just along for the ride.

All to Hell and Stiched In Sin fall into the latter category as Myers shows his soulful, lovelorn self. His organ work shines on All To Hell and combined with the guest horns, it almost reminds me of an Otis Redding song (if Otis’ voice was put through a blender).

The debut from Alive Records comes out on the 23rd. If you are a fan of bands that put their own spin on traditional blues than I suggest you check them out.

Black Diamond Heavies – Fever in My Blood

Guitar World recently put together a reader’s poll to compile a list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time. These rankings should be representative of the thoughts and opinions of Guitar World’s readership.

Have you ever passed by a website or music blog and thought it’d be great if you could easily download all the MP3’s? How about if you could visit HearYa, have a program search the site for MP3’s, and then display them for you to drag and drop into your media player as a playlist? You know what I’m going to say. Well now you can.

I downloaded Songbird a month or two ago and have been tinkering with it ever since. Songbird is described as a desktop Web player, digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. That’s pretty fancy, so I’ll try to describe it in simpler terms. If you use iTunes, this will be easy.

Songbird looks and acts just like iTunes (except it’s black). I downloaded Songbird in a few minutes and used it’s iTunes importer to pull in my entire music library. It was a carbon copy of iTunes, which wasn’t too special to me. Here’s a small picture of Songbird when you open it.

Here’s where Songbird gets interesting. It acts as a browser, so you can type in any url and visit the website within the player. I visited HearYa. It’s hard to see in the picture below, but when you visit a site with MP3’s, it will display the playable tracks just below the website in the player. From there, you can listen to the MP3’s, download them to your desktop, or drag and drop them into your music library.

The picture below shows my library after I dragged the tracks from HearYa’s “Listen” page and dropped them directly into my library.

Songbird must be in Beta, because it says it’s a developer preview. I’m not a developer, but I found Songbird super easy to download and the iTunes importer worked like a breeze. The only negative is that when you stalk MP3 blogs, the files aren’t always tagged properly, so you may need to edit them in Songbird. I also couldn’t find a way to add the songs to my iPod without downloading them and importing to iTunes. I think there’s an iPod add-on to do that, however.

I’m not sure if I would move away from iTunes to use Songbird 100%, but I will keep it on my desktop and keep up with their progress. I know I’m probably leaving out several great features that I’ll run into upon further experimentation. The browser/MP3 feature is too cool to ignore.

Rock Plaza Central (read the HearYa review) just announced today that they have signed a deal with Yep Roc Records, a United States record label. Yep Roc is home to Robyn Hitchcock, The Apples in Stereo, Bob Mould, Billy Bragg, Doyle Bramhall, and many others. Very solid company.

RPC also have SXSW 2007 added to their tour calendar.

http://www.myspace.com/rockplazacentral