Worst Band of 2010

Screw this band and their Hyundai holiday commercial. Fuck them.

I'm sure they're nice people, but I don't care.

Why I Shouldn't Listen To Pop Music These Days

SF59: "I only see what I want to see 'cause I only hear what I want to hear. Because I'm right most of the time. That's the way I would self-describe...Call it what you want, it's automatic."

Eric&Magill: "I'm stranded."

Wild Nothing: "It just doesn't feel right when you're not here"

From now on, I'm restricting myself to a strict diet of Mono and Unwed Sailor. Words are slicing up my inside parts.

Audiophiles vs. Audio Files

I'm supposed to be giving a presentation in an hour involving the differences between analog and digital recording. Originally, I thought that this would be fun because I'm genuinely interested in the topic. But the more I learned, the more confusing it became. Also, I'm entirely unprepared for my presentation.

Up front, the differences are plain. Analog recordings, usually committed to magnetic tape, contain actual waves on them that are ANALOGUES of actual compressions in the air, which we hear as sound. Analog sounds, such as real sounds, are continuous frequencies through time. This means their graph will have a smooth curve over time. Digital recordings capture sound and convert the frequencies into numbers, called samples. Because no more than one number can be assigned at any given moment in time, the graph of the wave is not smooth, but boxy. See the graphs below.

Audiophiles argue that this makes a dramatic differences in how the sound is reproduced and is inferior to analog. A common CD, however, contains 44,100 samples every second. If we think of these samples as film, which is a collection of still pictures moving so quickly that the images themselves appear to be moving, we can begin to understand that a rapid rate of sampling would be heard just as well as an analog recording.

There are plenty of factors that serve to determine the quality of recordings such as sample rate, quality of equipment used to record and the quality of the equipment used for playback. So it's no easy task to definitively say which is better or higher quality or anything. They are two different processes that produce similar results. It is up to the user to determine which method they prefer to use for their purposes.

Music For Nothing

Here is an interesting article from the Onion A.V. Club/Milwaukee where they discuss the seemingly large amount of Milwaukee bands that are giving away their albums free of charge. Ryan Weber from Decibully and Eric & Magill has a nice quote in there.

http://www.avclub.com/milwaukee/articles/music-for-nothing-and-the-records-are-free-why-mil,47971/

I'm really intrigued by their reasoning. I've certainly already decided that I'll be giving away my album for free if/when it is ever written, recorded and given access to the internet. But that has more to do with my determination to prove that I can, in fact, despite what people have told me, give my music (that doesn't yet exist) away.

Eric & Magill: All Those I Know

From "Should We All Wake Up":

"Should we all wake up with nothing but our love, that should be enough".

It's a simple sentence that belies the complexity of its implication, which does a better job of describing what the record sounds like better than I ever could.

It may be an unfair comparison, but it's

the only one I can come up with: Eric & Magill's "All Those I Know" sounds like a Bon Iver record without the bullshit auto-tuned layers of falsetto self-indulgence. Actually, to compare the two at all is kind of weak. My first impression was "this sounds like a good Bon Iver record", but, really, it's far beyond that.

Eric Osterman and Decibully's Ryan Weber have crafted a dizzyingly coherent and tightly expansive record. Listening, it reminds me of early Vanderslice records, of mad scientists in t

heir lab. Not experimenting with tried and true pop sensibilities, but with the process of recording, they have crafted a unique sounding record.

There are influences from all over the place here: Irish folk and, maybe the most glaring Bon Iver comparison on "Vegetable Gardeners"; vocals pushed back in the mix a la early shoegaze; melodies that would make Brian Wilson proud, probably a lot of stuff I don't even know about.

Additionally, the songs are strong. If you were to strip away the layers and effects down to just a voice and guitar, they would be as interesting as their final product. The production of the album isn't used to make up for weak songwriting, but instead creates an environment that these songs live in, allowing the listener to explore and find new treasures with each play.

Download it for free from their bandcamp site:

http://ericandmagill.bandcamp.com/album/all-those-i-know

Thirteen

Most everyone that watched a little television in the past seven years are probably familiar with at least one Big Star song. Maybe not familiar with the actual band, per se, but their song "In the Street" was re-recorded for the theme song of that one show about all those stoners not doing anything in the 70's. It ended up sounding like KISS recorded it.

I've been thinking about this band for a while now. My friend Jeremy has their first two albums and had mentioned to me that I should get them. We were driving from Minneapolis to Des Moines one year, maybe for Christmas or Thanksgiving, when he first played Big Star for me. Somewhere along the way, I picked up their album "Radio City". Since then, I've always wanted to explore the band more, but never manage to keep them in the forefront of my mind.

I asked Jeremy a couple of weeks ago if I could borrow the albums that he owns, but he said he was driving to Des Moines for the weekend and likes to have them on hand during road trips. Until then, I'll have to amuse myself with "Radio City". From what I can tell, their first album, "#1 Record" is a little more nostalgic compared to "Radio City", which is a little darker.

I got thinking about about this band again recently after seeing Wayne Everett preform this song on the Lightbulb Mouth Radio Hour.

Called as Paul

When you think about how many people cite the Beatles as influential, it's largely considered a good thing. I always point to Millie Vanilli as one of my earliest musical influences but it is wholly as a negative as they shattered my innocent ignorance regarding corporate music. I think I was 8 or 9 when I refused to watch an episode of the Super Mario Bros. cartoon because Milli Vanilli made a (unwelcomed) guest appearance.

Even after the Beatles broke up, John and Paul continued to have a monopoly on where popular music was going. Just take a look at how Paul and Wings were completely ripped off in this Ratt video.

Granted that there were some other, less obvious and contemporary influences in Ratt's look and sound. But it's hard to deny that, a dozen years after he sang "Maybe I'm Amazed" at that concert, Paul's influence was all over Ratt like Aquanet on, well, Ratt.