NIN + CC = Hi-res Free Music

Nine Inch Nails today released a new album – no, not Ghosts – called The Slip. The Slip, I can only guess, refers to the pink slip they’re giving the music industry. This new album is released under a Creative Commons license, and it’s available as a free, lossless download. Just go to this page on the NIN website, plug in your email address, and they’ll send you a link to the download.

Once you’re there, you have some options for downloading. You can download some basic MP3 files of the 10 songs on the album. Or if you’re looking for CD quality, you can download either FLAC or Apple Lossless versions of the songs. Either one is mathematically identical to the CD version. For people with access to a downstream hi-res D/A converter, you can download 24/96 WAV files. That’s better than CD quality. For free.

The album is released under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-commercial - Share Alike 3.0 US license. Basically that means you’re free to copy the album, remix songs, post it on the internet, etc. The limitations are: you can’t make money from sharing the album and if you create a derivative work (i.e. a remix) you must share it along the same terms as the original.

The fact that NIN released the album in two CD quality, lossless formats tells you something about the state of music today and about a problem with Apple’s approach to high quality formats. Well, the first problem is that iTunes doesn’t support hi-res formats. Simple as that. But more importantly its support for lossless formats is fractured at best. FLAC is a free, open source audio codec that produces lossless, compressed audio files at CD quality. iTunes (and by extension, the iPod) does not support FLAC even though the codec is freely available and widely used in some circles. Instead Apple came out with their own Apple Lossless codec. The problem with this codec is that it is proprietary, and Apple has never published a specification for the format. Some people back in 2005 reverse engineered a codec for Apple Lossless, but for the most part it remains a closed format. You can use it in iTunes and on the iPod, but not anywhere else.

Personally, I use iTunes as my reference encoder. I rip CDs as 320 Kbps AAC files. I find 320 Kbps to be indistinguishable from the original CD. The advantage of the AAC format is that it is open. I then use those AAC files in Linux and in CD burning software for creating audio mix CDs. So Apple Lossless is a dead end without an open spec and Apple doesn’t support FLAC. My preference would be for lossless encodings of my CDs, but there is no easy way to do that in a cross-platform, open and accessible way. Well, that is, unless you rip them as WAV files. WAV can also render CD quality audio, but it’s uncompressed. That means, you’ll be soaking up scads of gigabytes on your harddrive (not to mention your iPod) for the privilege.

Of course, if you want to go the hi-res 24/96 route, you’ll need a good digital-to-analog converter, such as the Linn Klimax DS network D/A processor that was reviewed in March’s Stereophile magazine. It’ll set you back $20,000 and requires professional installation, but hey, those are just details.

The point is that SACD and DVD-A, two DVD-based hi-res physical formats, are dead. It’s time to make hi-res audio accessible. If it’s possible to make a high quality SACD player for, say, $800, which I believe it is possible, then it should be equally easy to create a networked, hi-res D/A converter for a similar price. And it wouldn’t have any moving parts, so nothing to break. The state of lossless, CD quality audio and also hi-res audio is such that nothing is easy. It’s a bad time, frankly, to be a technologically-savvy audiophile. (Tip of the hat to Brandon.)

Tags: audio · creative commons · hi-res · nin · nine inch nails · the slip · torrent

Comments (1) »

Ubuntu 8 due out tomorrow

Ubuntu, the Linux distribution that everyone loves to love, is due out with their regularly scheduled new version tomorrow (Thursday), Ubuntu 8.04. The version number is derived from the date – 8 for 2008 and 04 for April.

I’ve had some concerns about Ubuntu in the past, but they’ve really done a good job with eliminating problems people encounter. The past couple of versions have installed easily for me on both laptops and desktops.

This new version 8 will be getting some LTS love. That’s Long Term Support. So version 8.04 will be around for at least three years. So if you install it and don’t like to upgrade, you’ll be supplied with security and enhancement updates for three years.

The Ubuntu project was started by Mark Shuttleworth, who is a 34-year-old billionaire from South Africa. He made his initial money by founding Thawte in 1995 and then later selling it to Verisign in 1999.

So Ubuntu will be around. It’s got financial backing from Shuttleworth’s company Canonical Ltd., and it has the support of a large, vibrant community.

They have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system available. If you have a fairly recent processor (e.g. Core 2), you can run the 64-bit version. The main reason you’d want to run the 32-bit version is on older hardware or for out-of-the-box support for the Flash plug-in. For some reason, there is still not a 64-bit version of Flash on any platform as far as I know. You can run Flash on a 64-bit OS, but you’ll have to run a 32-bit version of the browser to do it. This Adobe TechNote explains. People have been clamoring for 64-bit Flash for years, as this post on Slashdot from 2005 about Macromedia Flash indicates. Here’s an Adobe blog post from 2006 claiming they’re working on it.

But Flash aside, Ubuntu 8 is looking good. Download available tomorrow.

Update: It looks like 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 has an easier installation process for 32-bit Flash. Now you can install Flash directly from the Add/Remove screen, just like everything else, and in the case of Flash, it’ll automatically download all the 32-bit libraries that it needs. So the installation of Adobe Flash is completely transparent. A non-technical user wouldn’t really even know the difference – although I suppose it could be argued that a non-technical user might be better off running the 32-bit build of Ubuntu 8.04. At any rate, having used Ubuntu 8.04 for several days now, I can easily say that it’s a great improvement on previous versions – Ubuntu continues to get better.

Tags: free software · freedom · mark shuttleworth · ubuntu · ubuntu 8.04

No Comments Yet »

Gracenote to be acquired by Sony

After mentioning Gracenote yesterday as the source of a genre list for music, the news comes today that Sony Corporation of America is going to acquire Gracenote for $260 million. Apparently a database of CDs is a valuable thing. That’s perhaps true when you’re the service provider to Apple, Yahoo and others.

The genres list published yesterday is useful as a guide or a starting point, but mostly it’s up to the individual to classify their music however they wish. It’s not good to get too picky about it, but having a few different buckets to drop music into is definitely a handy thing. For me, when I’m listening to classical, that’s usually all I want to listen to at that point. So having a classical genre smart playlist is a great thing. That allows one to quickly find something to listen to, or more likely allows for shuffle play of a variety of pieces in the same general grouping. And that’s an idea worth money I guess, at least it was to Gracenote.

Tags: acquisition · gracenote · sony corporation of america

No Comments Yet »

Organizing iTunes: Simplify your genre list

As time goes, iTunes music libraries keep getting larger and larger. As you add songs and videos to the library, it can get unmanageable. One technique for organizing your iTunes library is to simplify and codify the genres that are used on the tracks.

iTunes, when you stick a CD into your computer, will look up the metadata about the album or compilation from a commercial database service from Gracenote, which was known as CDDB (or CD Database) back in the day. Gracenote will match the table of contents of your CD against its database and produce the information about the album if it finds a match.

Gracenote uses a specific list of music genres for its metadata that can be useful in giving a bit of shape to the wide range of metadata found in songs downloaded from outside sources. There’s not much point in getting picky about sub-genres and that sort of thing, but working from a basic list of genres can help to normalize the metadata in your iTunes library.

The main advantage to using the following genre list is that it then becomes very easy to create smart playlists based off of this by either including or excluding certain genres. For an example, some people may want a playlist that includes everything except Holiday music. Or they may create a playlist just for Classical.

The point though is not that this is a comprehensive or exhaustive list, but rather that it’s a starting point for organizing an otherwise unwieldy iTunes music library. You’ll probably want to add to the list genres that may not fit the classification, Mashup for example.

It’s an easy thing to change the genre on many songs. Create a playlist that sorts by existing genre data. You can find out what genres are in your music library by doing a Get Info on any song and then clicking the dropdown menu for the genre of that song. So create a playlist that grabs some genres that fit under, say, Alternative & Punk. Then highlight a bunch of songs together and do a Get Info and change the genre for all of those songs. In my case, it took less than an hour to get my 20,000 song library into shape.

So here is the list of genres. There is also a list of subgenres, which can be helpful sometimes in determining what category something fits into, and I’ll provide that tomorrow. But for now, the 25 top level genres:

• Alternative & Punk
• Books & Spoken
• Blues
• Children’s Music
• Classical
• Country
• Data
• Easy Listening
• Electronica/Dance
• Folk
• Gospel & Religious
• Hip Hop/Rap
• Holiday
• Industrial
• Jazz
• Latin
• Metal
• New Age
• Pop
• Reggae
• R&B
• Rock
• Soundtrack
• Unclassifiable
• World

Notes: You can safely ignore the Data genre probably. Also, it’s a little strange that Industrial gets listed as a genre and not as a subgenre of Alternative & Punk. Industrial is great – or at least it was in the ’80s & ’90s, but it seems a little out of place. It took me less than an hour to get the wildly messy data in my 20,000+ song library into shape using that list as a general guide. Now where creating genre playlists was difficult in the past, it has become much easier.

Update: As promised, here is a list using those same genres as guides but with subgenre information. Hopefully this will help in your classification.

• Alternative & Punk
  • Ambient/Dream Pop
  • Art Rock
  • Art-Folk
  • Avant Rock
  • Brit Pop
  • Emo
  • Experimental
  • General Alternative
  • General Punk
  • Hardcore Punk
  • Indie
  • Lo-Fi/Garage
  • Old School Punk
  • Pop-Punk
  • Post-Punk
  • Power Pop
  • Rap Metal
  • Riot Grrrl/Queercore
  • Straight Edge Punk
• Books & Spoken
  • Comedy
  • General Books
  • General Spoken
  • Poetry
  • Politics
  • Religion
  • Short Stories
  • Spoken Word
  • Stories/Fairytales
• Blues
  • Acoustic Blues
  • Blues Rock
  • Electric Blues
  • General Blues
  • Japanese Blues
• Children’s Music
  • General Children’s Music
  • Japanese Children’s Song (Doyo)
• Classical
  • Baroque
  • Chamber Music
  • Choral
  • Classical Guitar
  • Contemporary
  • Ensembles
  • General Classical
  • Japanese Classical
  • Medieval
  • Opera
  • Romantic Era
  • Piano
  • Renaissance Era
  • Strings
• Country
  • Alternative Country
  • Bluegrass
  • Contemporary Country
  • Country Blues
  • General Country
  • Rockabilly
  • Traditional Country
• Data
  • Applications
  • Games
  • General Data
  • Japanese Karaoke
  • Karaoke
  • Operating Systems
• Easy Listening
  • Bachelor Pad
  • General Easy Listening
  • Lounge
  • Love Songs
  • Mood Music
  • Pop Vocals
• Electronica/Dance
  • Acid House
  • Acid Jazz
  • Ambient Electronica
  • Ambient Trance
  • Big Beat
  • Club Dance
  • Dark Techno/Darkwave
  • Deep House
  • Detroit Techno
  • Drum n’ Bass/Jungle
  • Electro
  • Electronica
  • Gabber
  • Garage
  • General Dance
  • General Electronic
  • General House
  • General Techno
  • General Trance
  • Happy House
  • Hard Trance/Acid
  • Hardcore Techno
  • Illbient
  • Industrial Dance
  • Minimalist Experimental
  • Progressive House
  • Progressive/Dream
  • Rave Music
  • Tech Trance
  • Tribal House
  • Trip Hop
  • Turntablism
• Folk
  • Contemporary Folk
  • General Folk
  • Traditional Folk
• Gospel & Religious
  • Christian Pop
  • Christian Rap
  • Christian Rock
  • General Religious
  • General Christian
  • Gospel
• Hip Hop/Rap
  • Bass Assault
  • East Coast Rap
  • Foreign Rap
  • Freestyle Rap
  • Gangsta
  • General Hip Hop
  • General Rap
  • Hardcore Rap
  • Horrorcore
  • Old School Hip Hop
  • Southern Rap
  • Underground Rap
  • West Coast Rap
• Holiday
  • Chanukka
  • Christmas
  • General Holiday
  • Halloween
• Industiral
  • General Industrial
  • Hardcore Industrial
  • Minimal/Noise
  • Old School Industrial
• Jazz
  • Ballroom
  • Big Band Swing
  • Bop
  • Cool/West Coast Jazz
  • Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz
  • Free/Avant Jazz
  • Fusion
  • General Jazz
  • Japanese Fusion
  • Japanese Jazz
  • Jazz Vocals
  • Latin
  • Ragtime
  • Smooth Jazz
  • Swing Revival
• Latin
  • Afro-Cuban
  • Brazillian
  • General Latin
  • Latin Pop
  • Latin Rock
  • Mexican
  • Ranchero
  • Salsa/Merengue
  • South/Central American
  • Spanish/Portugese
  • Tejano/Norteno
  • Tropical/Samba
• Metal
  • Alternative Metal
  • Black/Death Metal
  • General Metal
  • Gothic Metal
  • Grindcore
  • Hardcore Metal
  • Heavy Metal
  • Pop/Hair Metal
  • Progressive Metal
  • Thrash/Speed Metal
• New Age
  • Ambient New Age
  • Environmental Music
  • General New Age
  • Meditation Music
• Pop
  • Acoustic Pop
  • Disco
  • European Pop
  • General Pop
  • Japanese Pop
  • Teen Pop
• Reggae
  • Dancehall
  • Dub
  • General Reggae
  • Ragga
  • Ska/Rock Steady
• R&B
  • Funk
  • General R&B
  • Motown
  • Soul
  • Urban Crossover
• Rock
  • Classic Rock
  • Folk Rock
  • Funk Rock
  • General Rock
  • Goth Rock
  • Grunge
  • Hard Rock
  • Instrumental Rock
  • Jam Bands
  • Japanese Rock
  • New Wave
  • Progressive Rock
  • Psychedelic Rock
  • Rock & Roll
  • Ska Revival/3rd Wave
  • Soft Rock
  • Southern Rock
  • Surf Rock
• Soundtrack
  • Adult Film/Erotica
  • Anime
  • Film Score
  • Film Soundtrack
  • Game
  • General Soundtrack
  • Japanese General Soundtrack
  • Musicals/Broadway
  • Television Score
  • Television Soundtrack
• Unclassifiable
  • General Unclassifiable
  • Japanese Unclassifiable
• World
  • Aboriginal Australian/Didjeridu
  • African
  • Asian
  • Caribbean
  • Central Asian
  • Classical Indian
  • Eastern European
  • Flamenco/Gypsy
  • French
  • General Celtic
  • General World
  • German
  • Hawaiian
  • Indian Subcontinent
  • Irish Celtic
  • Japanese Enka
  • Japanese Folk
  • Japanese Traditional (Minzoku)
  • Jewish/Israeli
  • Klezmer
  • Middle East/Arabic
  • Native American
  • Oceania
  • Polka
  • Québécois
  • Scandinavian
  • Western European
  • World Fusion
  • Zydeco/Cajun

Tags: cddb · genre · gracenote · itunes · metadata · music · subgenre

Comments (2) »

Record Store Day on Saturday

Tomorrow, Saturday 19 April 2008, has been designated Record Store Day. Independent record stores of all stripes from coast to coast will be celebrating. In many larger cities, musicians will be stopping by local stores. Locally, Atomic Records in Milwaukee will be having live performances from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Check their website for the schedule. The Exclusive Co. in Appleton will be open from 8 a.m. till midnight. Pitchfork has the lowdown on events in other cities. So get out tomorrow and support your local independent record store!

Update (20 April 2008): Judging by the crowd at the Exclusive Co., Record Store Day was a success. The bonus was the bountiful freebies that were on-hand for anyone to take. What surprised me was that the freebies were specially made for Record Store Day – most of them had the Record Store Day graphics on them or were in the title. Skipping over the ones that didn’t interest me, I still ended up with two vinyl sampler albums and three full sampler CDs. So without further ado, here is some of the free music that was available at the Exclusive Co. on Saturday.

Fontana Distribution: Record Store Day, April 19, 2008 (CD)

1. War Tapes • Dreaming of You
2. honeyhoney • Little Toy Gun
3. Brandi Shearer • You’re Mine
4. The Egg • Nothing
5. Feral Children • Jaundice Giraffe
6. Rue Melo • This Is My House
7. Nerf Herder • WTC #7
8. Subtle • Unlikely Rock Shock
9. The Jealous Girlfriends • Roboxulla
10. nelo • You Don’t Know
11. Billy Jo Shaver • Everybody’s Brother
12. Two Loons for Tea • Marietta
13. Remy Zero • Prophecy
14. The Misfits • American Psycho
15. The Coup • Fat Cats, Bigga Fish
16. Main Source • Looking at the Front Door

RED: Best of Record Store Day: Indie Rock (CD)

1. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit • Hurricanes and Hand Grenades
2. The Black Crowes • Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution
3. Langhorne Slim • Rebel Side of Heaven
4. Howlin’ Rain • Dancers at the End of Time
5. The Audition • Basbhat
6. Pillar • For the Love of the Game
7. Fireflight • Unbreakable
8. Dead Confederate • The Rat
9. Old 97’s • Dance With Me
10. The Dodos • Fools
11. The Chesterfield Kings • Streaks and Flashes
12. The Ting Tings • Great DJ (Calvin Harris Remix)
13. The Hoosiers • Worried About Ray
14. Absentstar • For God Sakes
15. Alive in Wild Paint • Ceilings
16. White Lion • Dreams
17. Will Dailey • Rise
18. Matt King • Shanty Town

Redeye Distribution brings you a Free Sampler in Celebration of Record Store Day (CD)

1. Peter von Poehl • The Story of the Impossible
2. 3 Na Massa feat. CEU • Doce Guia
3. Jamie Lidell • Little Bit of Feel Good (Radio Edit)
4. Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The True Loves • Take My Love With You
5. The Autumns • Killer in Drag
6. Camphor • Castaway
7. Ernie K. Doe • Here Come The Girls
8. Pete Francis • Case of Bad Love
9. Daniel Lanois • Here Is What Is
10. Bauhaus • Too Much 21st Century
11. Born Ruffians • I’m One Of Those Girls (Alt. Version) (unreleased)
12. Bell X1 • Rocky Took A Lover
13. Nick Lowe • So It Goes
14. Liam Finn • Second Chance
15. Hi-Tek feat. Ghostface Killah, Raekwon & Dion • My Piano

Universal Music Distribution: Choice Cuts (Vinyl LP)

1. Be Your Own Pet • The Kelly Affair
2. Black Tide • Shockwave
3. Switches • Drama Queen
4. Your Vegas • Troubled Times
5. PlayRadioPlay! • Madi Don’t Leave
6. Ludo • Love Me Dead
7. Yoav • Club Thing
8. Ryan Bingham • Bread and Water
9. One Flew South • My Kind Of Beautiful
10. Hayes Carll • Faulkner Street
11. Tift Merritt • Keep You Happy
12. Shelby Lynne • Pretend
13. The SteelDrivers • Hear The Willow Cry
14. Kathleen Edwards • The Cheapest Key
15. Whiskeytown • 10 Seconds

Brushfire Records 12” Sampler Volume 1 (Vinyl LP)

1. Neil Halstead • Paint a Face
2. Mason Jennings • Something About Your Love
3. Jack Johnson • What You Thought You Need
4. Matt Costa • Never Looking Back
5. Money Mark • Summer Blue
6. G. Love & Special Sauce • Crumble
7. Zach Gill • Beautiful Reason
8. Rogue Wave • Christians In Black

Tags: atomic records · exclusive co · independent · record store day · vinyl

Comments (1) »

Brutal! A mix

Brutal! A mix / 21 Mar 2008

1. Tears For Fears • Floating Down The River (Once Again)
2. Queens Of The Stone Age • Make It Wit Chu
3. DJ Mink • Hey Hey! Can U Relate?
4. The Heart Throbs • She’s In A Trance
5. Hamid Baroudi • Trance Dance
6. Zdar • Don’t You Want
7. Queens Of The Stone Age • The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret
8. Baby Ford • Fetish
9. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion • Back Slider
10. Portishead • Strangers (Live)
11. Dave Gahan • Deeper & Deeper
12. Tricky Disco • Tricky Disco
13. Culture Club • Miss Me Blind
14. of Montreal • She’s a Rejecter
15. Justice • Waters Of Nazareth
16. Swervedriver • Kill The Superheroes
17. Tears For Fears • Closest Thing To Heaven

Total time: 78 minutes, 43 seconds.

Tags: brutal · cd · mix · music mix

Comments (1) »

SXSW Music has 775+ songs available for download

Today the SXSW Music conference starts. Each year hundreds of bands descend upon Austin, Texas, to perform and get a piece of the action. And since 2005, SXSW has been releasing a torrent download of songs from each of the bands. This year’s tally is over 775 tracks. It’s an amazing thing — the quality of the bands is high, and there’s tons of stuff to pore over. I linked in 2005, 2006, and 2007 to the torrent. This year SXSW didn’t release a torrent — a handy all-in-one download of the MP3 files. You can download each of the tracks individually from the SXSW website, but seriously, that would be painful. Fortunately someone has stepped in and created a torrent of this year’s tracks. You’ll need a BitTorrent client to download the torrent — I recommend Azureus. But with no further ado, here is this year’s torrent. I should note that that page also has torrents for the previous years of downloads, and supposedly they’re all working now. If you want the latest in what’s up in music, check it out. You’ll never find so much free, legal music anywhere else.

Update: If you need some help parsing through 700 songs, Paul Ford has kindly listened to each track and given a six-word-review of each song, along with a rating. Might be helpful with checking this stuff out.

Tags: 2008 · bittorrent · sxsw · sxsw music · torrent

No Comments Yet »

A biography Robert Fisk did not write

The Independent of the U.K. has a great article written by author Robert Fisk about a biography he did not write. The curious thing about the biography is that it has his name on it. It’s a biography of Saddam Hussein written in Arabic and published in Cairo. It was officially approved by the state censors. Fisk heard about the book when an Egyptian friend sent the book to him in Lebanon. The article tells of his attempt to track down the author of the book. He criss-crosses Cairo getting closer and closer, but the forger remains elusive. He follows leads, but eventually finds a cold trail. The forger has a common Egyptian name, and his exact location is uncertain. So Fisk doesn’t find the man who actually wrote the biography of Saddam Hussein, but his telling of the tale is interesting and compelling in and of itself.

Tags: biography · egypt · robert fisk

Comments (1) »

No network connection on Ubuntu 7.10

Ubuntu 7.10 presented a challenge when I installed it on my desktop system a few months ago. It worked fine on my laptop, but on my dual-boot desktop, there was no wired network connection. I have it setup with Windows XP and Ubuntu 7.10. I’ve seen people having the same problem installing this latest version of Ubuntu and also with openSUSE 10.3. I have a solution for that problem that worked for me, and hopefully will help other people who are booting into Ubuntu and finding that there is no network connection.

I haven’t heard what caused the problem – some change in the kernel or what. But the solution is novel: it actually takes a setting change in Windows XP to fix the problem. And if you guessed it’s a change with the network settings, you’re correct.

So to fix the problem: bring up the Device Manager. There are a couple of ways to do this. One is to right-click on My Computer in the Start Menu and select Properties. Click on the Hardware tab and then click Device Manager.

When the Device Manager comes up, looks for the item labeled Network Adapters. Click the plus and expand it. You might have one or more items show up here. Look for your Ethernet NIC card. Right-click on it and select Properties. Click on the Advanced tab. Change the setting for Wake-On-Lan After Shutdown to enabled. That’s it. Changing that one setting will correct the problem then when you boot into Linux. That’s what worked for me.

Tags: ethernet · network · troubleshooting · ubuntu · ubuntu 7.10

Comments (4) »

Announcing AnalogCulture.org

You may be interested to know that I’ve siphoned off my writing about music onto a blog of its own called Analog Culture. I started it up at the beginning of the year and have been posting there including a post tonight about Dean Wareham’s upcoming book about his romance with his bass player Britta Phillips.

Analog Culture will continue in the vein of music reportage with an emphasis on vinyl recordings.

So hop over to AnalogCulture.org and have a look!

Tags: analog culture · music

Comments (1) »

Dean Wareham’s Black Postcards

Famous for leading bands such as Galaxie 500 and Luna, Dean Wareham has been around for a while. Galaxie 500 was known for its dreamy, laid back pop. Luna was more prolific, and their Penthouse is still one of my favorite albums. Luna disbanded in recent years after Wareham took up with their new bass player, Britta Phillips. Britta was the Bonnie to Dean’s Clyde and a music match was made.

In an excerpt from his new book in Men’s Vogue, Wareham recounts the autobiographical tale of how Luna came to be in need of a bass player, and Britta Phillips took the gig. One thing led to another, and he goes on to talk about the problems of maintaining an affair with his bass player while having a wife and baby at home.

Claudia and I had been in denial about the state of our marriage—we loved each other, somewhere, but we had lost the romantic connection. Our life together was about diapers and chores and being sure not to wake the baby. We were irritable and sleep-deprived, and becoming parents seemed to highlight latent differences in our personalities. Still, I had no intention of leaving her and Jack. The very thought of it struck fear in my heart. And yet I couldn’t stop. I’ve heard preachers say that once you let the devil into your life, it’s hard to get him out, and I have found this to be true.

I promised myself that I would make a move, a decision, do something to fix my life. Soon, I said, soon.

And Britta has become Dean’s muse. They’ve released a few albums together, and you can get the scoop at their website.

Wareham’s new book is called Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance. It’s due out on March 13.

Tags: black postcards · book · britta phillips · dean wareham · galaxie 500 · luna

No Comments Yet »

The death of Computer Science education

Fascinating article in CrossTalk written by two retired computer science professors from NYU that asks the question Where are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? Their assertion is that the computer science curriculum is faltering because of changes made by universities in light of declining enrollments. Dewar and Schonberg, the authors of the article, say that computer science is being dumbed down – the more difficult parts have been diminished or eliminated. Mathematics requirements for example are gradually being whittled down. Also students are increasingly being taught to make use of libraries and other code bases without understanding the underlying code. Programming language theory is also on the out.

James Maguire talked to Robert Dewar about the article and wrote about his comments. It’s perhaps a bit more accessible than the original, academically-oriented article, but you’ll get the point either way: colleges are playing a numbers game to increase enrollments in computer science programs.

Tags: computer science · curriculum · education · software engineers

No Comments Yet »

Queens do a triple-10 inch release of Era Vulgaris

Queens of the Stone Age did an interesting thing with the vinyl release of their most recent album Era Vulgaris. The album is only 47 minutes so it might have in fact fit onto one piece of vinyl, but instead of going the conventional route they released the album on not one but three 10” discs of vinyl.

The package is a unique shape – wider than a typical 10” sleeve and much thicker. It’s a double-folding gatefold sleeve. The front lifts to the left, and then the next layer lifts to the right, so you have a triptych when the album is opened. Each panel holds a 10-inch piece of vinyl in a sleeve.

To get the album to fit on six sides of vinyl, they broke it up to two songs per side of vinyl. Don’t sit for long, because you’re going to be doing a lot of vinyl flipping. You might note that the CD version of the album only contains 11 songs. They did in fact put a vinyl-only bonus track on there after Misfit Love called “Running Joke.”

It’s a cool concept. Not very practical, but it’ll be a unique addition to your collection. If you haven’t heard Era Vulgaris, it’s one of the Queens’ best albums. Very good stuff. This album has a bit more range and variation than some of their albums and is really quite a fine album.

As an aside, I should note that the cover art is a little disconcerting the first time you see the vinyl release. The cover art subtly has the look of a worn album cover – there’s the tell-tale wearing of an album against other records. It’s not that apparent on the CD, but the vinyl made me do a double-take. At first glance it looks like a record that’s been in someone’s collection for the past twenty years rather than a brand new release. Very clever, and nicely done.

Tags: 10-inch · era vulgaris · queens of the stone age · vinyl

No Comments Yet »

Musicogenic epilepsy? Avoid Sean Paul

MSNBC has an interesting Associated Press story about a woman named Stacey Gayle in Alberta, Canada, who has a rare condition called musicogenic epilepsy. Gayle suffered from having many seizures throughout the day, and at some point began to suspect that listening to music was causing her seizures.

Eighteen months ago, she began to suspect that music by reggae and hip-hop artist Sean Paul was triggering some of her seizures. She recalled being at a barbecue and collapsing when the Jamaican rapper’s music started playing, and then remembered having a previous seizure when she heard his music.

Her suspicions were confirmed on a visit to the Long Island medical center last February, when she played Paul’s hit “Temperature” on her iPod for doctors. Soon after, she suffered three seizures.

So watch out: listening to Sean Paul’s music may be damaging to your health. Fortunately she had surgery, which has eliminated the seizures. The doctors studied her condition, and hopefully they found some scientific insights into the strange brain activity that was taking place. Not being able to listen to music would be a horrible fate!

Tags: alberta · canada · music · musicogenic epilepsy · sean paul · stacey gayle · temperature

No Comments Yet »

Mark Cuban’s idea for music: The Album is dead

Billionaire and sports fanatic Mark Cuban has an idea for the music industry: instead of releasing albums, serialize the release of music so people can buy one song at a time over a period of time. He writes:

If an artist commits to release music on a weekly or bi weekly basis, then consumers can make a commitment knowing they are going to get something new and hopefully exciting for their 99c. If the commitment is strong enough its feasible that artists could sell subscriptions to their serialized releases. My guess is that consumers will feel better about subscribing to an artist and getting a song a week or every 2 than dropping 10 dollars at a time for an album.

Cuban looked at the sale of digital singles and sees a market for individual songs, whereas he sees the market for albums has dried up.

I don’t really agree with that assessment. CDs don’t sell like they used to, but there’s strong evidence that there’s a market for albums. I wrote earlier this week about an article in Time that notes that vinyl LP sales rose 15% in the past year to nearly a million records. That’s something. Those are all people who wanted good sound and wanted an artifiact – a physical object to hold and keep in their collection.

I was the fifth commenter on Cuban’s blog post, and read throught the fifty or so other comments after that for some interesting discussion of Mark’s idea.

Serialization for music could only be a niche. It’s not like serializing a novel, where a novelist is writing a novel over the span of months, and segments can be easily chunked out. When it comes to music, the studio time is booked in such a way to maximize bang for the buck. It’s expensive so usually artists are working under some type of deadline. Writing doesn’t have that type of overhead. So while the serialization idea is interesting, it would take some pretty fundamental changes to the way music is typically recorded to make it work well.

Tags: albums · hit singles · mark cuban · music · vinyl

No Comments Yet »