technologize yourself

I wanted to check out the new live Hold Steady album yesterday and went to the itunes store and came across a full live concert from The Hold Steady at Lollapalooza in 2006.

All the press surrounding A Positive Rage seems to treat it as their first live album, which would be fine if they hadn't released the 2006 concert on itunes.

This got me thinking about what constitutes an album in the music world today. When is it part of a discography or able to be played on the radio?

at this point, once an album is available legitimately to the public, it should be considered a release like anything that is available on CD in your favorite record store.

this may seem like a small, minor gripe of no significance, but I think it says a lot about the music and radio industries and technology. if an artist has a million friends on myspace why not treat the music like any other new release.

for 2 industries that are trying to remain relevant, it sure seems like they are just giving up sometimes.

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btw in case you were wondering, the 2006 live Hold Steady is pretty good but Craig Finn's voice sounds pretty rough and scratchy.

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on another note, despite being out of print on CD, it turns out that the Lifter Puller albums Fiestas + Fiascos and Soft Rock are available digitally on amazon (F+F on itunes as well).

appreciate the notice that these are sort of re-issued

2008 Top Ten

It is that time of year when fellow musicheads begin to look back at the year in music. 2008 has been a mixed year for me. on the one hand, I have been really into dubstep and buying lots of 12"s, but on the other hand, there has been a huge number of disapointing albums released by bands I really like this year. The shear number of less than stellar albums made this a little more difficult than in years gone by but in the end this is what I came up with.

Erykah Badu - New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War); Best album of the year-period. now where is that part 2?
Cat Power - Jukebox; a lot of people don't seem to like this album but I think her arrangements of the covers performed within are incredible. add a couple of stellar new songs and you have a great album all around
Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold; what can you say about Atmosphere? Every album rocks and every album is better than the last. I have no idea how they do it.
Menahan Street Band - "Make the Road by Walking"; members of the Dap-Kings, Budos Band, and Antibalas. They also cover "Going the Distance" from Rocky. How coudl you possibly go wrong here? Simple you can't, awesome album that I will be listening to for many years to come.
Jeremy Messersmith - The Silver City; yes the Dan Wilson production makes it a sound like a Dan Wilson album, but the songs!!! great storytelling inside great songwriting point to a great future.
Nick Cave - Dig! Lazarus! Dig! ; I've never really been into Nick Cave before, but I am sensing that I may have to start investing in his back catalog after this album.
Nomo - Ghost Rock; Discovered this album late in the game via The Current and I don't really know anything about them. One of my new year's resolutions however is to learn more because this is an awesome update of afro-beat to dance around the house to.
Various Production - Versus; of collection of remixes they have done of others and that others have done of their tracks showcases the wide variety that comes out of this incredible production group. add to this the various new songs that have come out online and on vinyl and it has been a productive and strong year yet again.
The Heavy - Great Vengeance and Furious Fire; part lo-fi indie and part Curtis Mayfield and all awesome. This has been in regular rotation on my iPod since I bought the album.
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes; I didn't want to succumb to the hype machine but this album really is good.

issue #2475 why the music industry is failing

So L really likes Rufus Wainwright and with his album coming out tomorrow I have been on the look out for any songs to download or stream for her to hear some of it and last week I found out that VH1 has/had the whole thing available to stream.

Perfect I thought, but that was before we tried to listen.

Try as we might it didn't want to work on the Mac so this weekend I gave it a try on the PC and low and behold it worked. It seemed to only be available to stream via media player, but here is where my complaint comes.

TO play it I had to download an "Upgrade."

Well what was the fabulous "upgrade"?

**DRM**

Yes that's right. To be able to listen to an album that is being streamed for free they want you to download digital rights. What a crock of shit. This is being offered online for two reasons. to get existing fans excited and to entice new fans to give it a try.

There is just no reason for this and I think it is yet another example of the problems in the music industry. They just don't seem to be able to update their business models to account for the new technology that is a fact of life.