Korean Baby Sings "Hey Jude"

My sister sent this to me. What's more amazing, the fact that such a young child can sing a song so well, even when the words are not in its native tongue, or that the video has been viewed over 4 million times?

Elliott Smith Speaks From the Grave

I was camping up in Mendocino County this weekend and played the album that Elliott Smith was working on when he died, "From A Basement On The Hill." Someone asked, which album is this? I've never heard it. Another said, it's hard to believe he killed himself. I said, I thought he was murdered by his girlfriend.

One thing led to another and no one was certain of the details, so I made a mental note to look up the story when I returned to civilization. Its been over four years since Elliott Smith died and at least one journalist and a lot of fans, including myself, don't believe that Smith committed suicide. The details in his autopsy suggest homicide. His girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, who called police, seemed all too eager, at least by police accounts, to explain that Smith was suicidal and had a history of drug abuse. Of course, it didn't hurt that his music tended to be dark and introspective.

Who would stab himself in the chest, not once, but twice?

Why would someone misspell his name in his "suicide" note, or did the police just get that detail wrong?

It's easy to over analyze Smith's lyrics, especially on his last album, but I wonder if he's talking about Chiba in "Don't Go Down."

I met a girl/ Snowball in hell/ She was hard/ And as cracked as the liberty bell

And I got her to/ Come on and move in with me/ And I said I'll find a better place/ Where we can spend eternity

But don't go down/ Don't go down/ Stay with me, baby stay

She had a dream/ Woke up in shock/ She had seen/ Her own body outlined in chalk

And I split the scene, the globe's been spun/ And her ghost beamed down to kiss me/ With a message from the sun

As of last October, a judge denied Chiba's claim to Smith's estate. As far as I can tell, nothing else has come of the case.

Elliott, wherever you are, I hope you're resting in peace.

Flaming Lips' "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" in Kraft Commercial

I used to cringe whenever a TV commercial featured a song by one of my favorite artists. No longer. Now I smile, glad to know that the band I like will be heard by others, who may in turn wonder, what is that song? Who is that band? I must buy their new album!

I just saw a TV commercial for Kraft salad dressings that uses the Flaming Lips' "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song." It got my attention.



Note: A friend pointed out that The Flaming Lips have sold their songs for use in several other commercials, including ones for Sync by Microsoft, Land Rover and Dell.

She writes:

i guess i'm sort of a curmudgeon when it comes to the music that i hold dear to me...especially if it's something i've loved for a long time that was rather "obscure"...it makes me sad!! i'm getting better and better (because i sort of HAVE to :p) but, like, the beatles on target ads?? the rolling stones for chase visa?? i dunno...it kind of creeps me out.

strangely enough though, not so with the lips on commercials..maybe because they always have such a big multi-media aspect included in their shows-it doesn't feel as funny??

man, you should have seen how sad i was the ONE time i heard "mountain song" for coors back in the day. yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!

but by that same token, there's tons of music that i don't know that i look for when i hear it on t.v...right now in fact, the new audi commercial has something really kickass! i have to find it still...

have you heard supergrass for the r.v. ad yet??

Nine Inch Nails' "Ghosts": Free Download

Jonny Evans writes for MacWorld:

Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails made $1.6 million in a week through direct sales of the band's latest album, Ghosts I-IV.

The sales included free and paid downloads as well as orders made online for the slew of physical products the band has also made available, including boxed sets and vinyl. A special edition CD is set to ship in April in the UK.

Fans are being offered the first nine tracks taken from the album as DRM-free MP3 files at no charge. If they enjoy these they can also purchase all 36 album tracks in the DRM-free MP3 format for just $5.

Paul Weller's "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" on "The Wire"

Last night we watched the season four finale of "The Wire" and I was surprised and pleased to hear Paul Weller's version of "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" used in the final montage. (With all due respect to Dr. John, I prefer Weller's version to his original.)

If you don't watch "The Wire," you should. Its one of the finest shows I've ever seen and worth getting Netflix just to watch it from start to finish. If you already watch it, but haven't gotten to season four yet, don't watch this clip. Its full of the revealing little details that make "The Wire" such a rewarding show to watch.

God, Satan and...

From the Harper's Index, March issue:

Rank of "god" and "satan" among the top Google searches beginning with "who is": 1, 10

Rank of "buckethead": 6

"Hells Angels plotted to kill Mick Jagger"

Here is an excerpt from today's Telegraph:

The Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger was the target of an assassination attempt which only failed because the boat the would-be killers were using was swamped in a storm.

The attempt to kill Sir Mick was made by a group of Hells Angels after the infamous Altamont Speedway Free Concert in 1969, which the Rolling Stones had organised and for which the motorcycle gang reportedly provided security.

Meredith Hunter, a black 18-year-old member of the audience, was stabbed and kicked to death by a group of Hells Angels, in an attack captured on film cameras. As a result, Sir Mick allegedly refused to use their services again.

According to Mark Young, a former special agent, interviewed in BBC radio series The FBI at 100, which begins tomorrow, a boat of Hells Angels set out to take revenge on the singer at his holiday home in the Hamptons, Long Island, New York.

"The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger's treatment of them that they decided to kill him," said Tom Mangold, who presents the series. "A group of them took a boat and were all tooled up and planned to attack him from the sea.

"They planned the attack from the sea so they could enter his property from the garden and avoid security at the front. The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard. All survived and there was not said to have been any further attempt on Jagger's life."

Just imagine, had the Hell's Angels succeeded, the world would never have known such great albums as "Sticky Fingers" (1971), "Exile on Main St." (1972) and "Some Girls" (1978). Their 1969 masterpiece "Let it Bleed," might still have seen the light of day, but the title would have taken on an even more ominous meaning.

Radiohead to Headline New San Francisco Festival

This is great news for the Festival Freak!

The U.S. festival frenzy continues with today's announcement that Radiohead, Tom Petty and Jack Johnson will headline San Francisco's inaugural Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, to be held Aug. 22-24 at Golden Gate Park.

Additional acts for Outside Lands will be announced in the coming weeks, says Mayers, who promises a "strong and diverse" lineup of such musical genres as rock, blues, reggae, jazz, hip-hop, world, soul, Latin and electronic. The festival, which will boast five main performance stages, will also feature a number of local Bay Area artists.

Outside Lands will arrive approximately one month prior to San Francisco's Treasure Island Music Festival (Sept. 20-21) and several months ahead of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival (April 25-27) in Indio, Calif. Despite the competition in California, not to mention other large-scale festivals throughout North America, Mayers is confident that Outside Lands will draw about 60,000 nationwide concertgoers per day.

The lineup will be announced on March 24 and tickets will go on sale March 30.

Supergrass & Sleepwalking (video)

I finally got around to buying Supergrass' 2005 release "Road to Rouen," only to learn that Supergrass' sixth studio album will be released this Spring.

You can catch a video of the first single on YouTube:



The first thing I noticed in the video was that Mick Quinn was missing! Has Supergrass become a two-piece, a la The White Stripes? No, it turns out that Mick had a freak accident:

The bass player and vocalist sleepwalked out of a first floor window of the villa where he was staying in the South of France.

Quinn was rushed to a specialist spinal unit in Toulouse where surgeons operated to repair two broken vertebrae as well as a smashed heel.

He is expected to make a full recovery, although it could take several months.

Weird, huh? Thank god he didn't kill himself. I was a somnambulist as a child, so I can empathize with Mick. One time I walked to the girl next door's house in my underwear. I awoke to find myself on the front porch with the girl's parents staring at me, not sure why I was at their door in the middle of the night. The last episode I know about was in boot camp. I was told by a friend that I got up out of bed and walked to the end of the barracks, ready to proceed downstairs. My friend asked me, "Where are you going?" I mumbled something and then he led me back to my bunk. He told me what happened a few days later and although I don't recall a thing, I trust that he was telling me the truth. Why did it come up? A few of us were talking about other recruits who were talking in their sleep. I was fortunate that he was a friend, otherwise I might have been discharged. Even luckier was that I didn't make it to the outdoor staircase -- our barracks were on the fourth floor.

"Yes We Can" (video)

How long does it take for a viral YouTube video to go from being launched to reaching me? Six days, apparently. I must not be one of the cool kids anymore.

From the Los Angeles Times, "Obama song resonates on the Internet":

The Barack Obama-boosting music video "Yes We Can" hit the Net on Friday and by Super Tuesday it had been streamed a staggering 10 million times on YouTube and the website www.yeswecansong.com.

Produced by multi-platinum-selling rapper-producer will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, the elegiac, reggae-tinged composition isn't a campaign commercial, per se.

"This is an ode to inspiration," will.i.am said. "Barack's speech inspired me. It changed my life as far as how I look at myself as an American. If that's what he does, the world could use some of that. It's about making people think about change and hope."

The video features clips of the presidential candidate in New Hampshire delivering his Jan. 8 "Yes We Can" stump speech, inter-cut against a cross-section of A-list actors, musicians and athletes: Scarlett Johansson, John Legend, Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Herbie Hancock, rapper Common and Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls among them. In black and white, they sing, mouth and recite Obama's messages about hope, change and social uplift against a plain black backdrop.

will.i.am said he does not plan to sell downloads of the song, preferring to keep it free so that its core messages reach as many people as possible. And trying to come to grips with the video's out-of-nowhere impact, the normally loquacious rapper-singer-producer is for once at a loss for words.

"This is the nuttiest thing in the freaking world," he said. "It's not propaganda. It's not part of a campaign. There's no corporation behind it -- the record company couldn't get involved. I did it on my own. The only thing behind it is the people. And that's like, wow!"

I have no idea what it cost to produce this video, but its worth a million bucks.

CNET's Download.com (MP3)

I was looking for new music on eMusic and came across a link that led me to free downloads for American Music Club's classic 1991 album, "Everclear."

CNET's Download.com site has over 100,000 free MP3s! Here are a few of the bands I found on the site:

Band of Horses
Her Space Holiday
Super Furry Animals
Nada Surf
Death Cab for Cutie
Postal Service
Viva Voce
The Shins
The Apples in Stereo
Jens Lekman
Stars
Of Montreal

Enjoy the music!

Turn It Down!

If you've ever made a mix with music from different eras, you've noticed that music made in the iPod era is much louder than what was made in the vinyl, 8-track, and cassette eras. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

From The Seattle Times:

How much louder are recordings now? Engineer Charles Dye, co-founder of Turn Me Up with artist John Ralston, estimates that records today are 6 to 8 decibels louder than they were 15 years ago, the equivalent of about a quarter turn of a volume knob. Katz said some music that is heavily compressed has gone up almost 20 decibels in 20 years.

Advances in recording technology have allowed sound engineers and producers to raise recordings' overall volume by compressing the dynamics of the audio during the mixing process. The compression technique removes the peaks and valleys, making all parts of a song equally loud.

It's something the average person might not even notice, unless he/she listened to a recording from 1992 next to one made in 2007. People are used to being bombarded by sound, from movies and blaring TV commercials to their iPods cranked up to drown out background noise on the bus or street.

Compression has been used for years in television commercials — which are often louder than the program they are sponsoring — to catch people's attention with the loudness, sound engineers say. Now that songs are frequently bought as singles or heard on commercials rather than as part of an album, artists and labels feel the same pressure to grab listeners in a few seconds.

Sleeveface

n. one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion

Coachella 2008

Have you seen the lineup for this year's Coachella Festival? I'm stoked!



You'll find more unofficial lineups here and here.

1/23 UPDATE: The 2008 Coachella lineup is now official, and no it doesn't include Mark Mark or Paula Abdul. It does include a lot of bands I hope will play ACL or Bonnaroo this year, especially The Verve, Portishead, Love & Rockets, My Morning Jacket and Spiritualized. Why am I hoping that these bands will play other festivals? I've been to Coachella three times -- 2001, 2004, 2005 -- but haven't seriously considered going back. Even if the tickets weren't getting more and more expensive, why spend a three-day weekend in the desert heat when you can see the same bands in Manchester, TN or Austin?

New Stuff on eMusic

Are you an eMusic subscriber yet? You should be. It's cheap -- less than $.25 a track for DRM-free, high bitrate music -- and eMusic has a great selection of music, including some you won't find on iTunes.

Not sure? Sign up for a trial membership by clicking on one of the links below. You'll get 50 downloads for free. Here are some albums worth downloading now.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Blonde Redhead - 23
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
The Octopus Project - Hello Avalanche
The New Pornographers - Challengers
World Party - Best in Show

The Octopus Project (MP3s)

Somehow this band managed to escape my notice, even though its debut came out in 2001; the band is from Austin, which I called home for six years and still visit annually; the band has played festivals like Noise Pop, Wall of Sound, and SXSW, where the trio snagged the title of Best Experimental Band.

Thanks to my cousin, Douglas, for turning me on to The Octopus Project!

Here is what David Fricke had to say about The Octopus Project in Rolling Stone, which I also somehow missed:

Machines don’t make music — people do. And going by the bright action-packed gurgle, bam and squeak of their third album, the Octopus Project — a mostly instrumental analog-electronics dance band from Austin, Texas — are smart pop scientists and total party animals, like Stereolab with happy feet. And a stopwatch — the thirteen songs on Hello, Avalanche (Peek-A-Boo) are all tightly composed bundles of synthesized whoop and circus-calliope cheer, dotted with throaty Duane Eddy-treble guitar and powered by prancing-elephant drumming. The closest thing here to conventional club-remix electronica is the thumping near-techno of “MMAJ.” But for all of the willful yesterday in the Octopus Project’s discothèque blend of Switched-On Bach and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, there is a delightful, disciplined modernism in the album’s brisk parade of hooks and the songs’ densely layered brevity. Compared to the purple-surf rock of “Bees Bein’ Strugglin’ ” and the mermaid-choir effect of Yvonne Lambert’s theremin in “I Saw the Bright Shinies,” the Prodigy are so 1997.

You'll find about a dozen great songs by The Octopus Project on their website. Enjoy!

Lala.com: The more you ship, the more you'll receive

I had been hearing good things about Lala.com in the media for the past year, but never got around to checking it out, until last month. What got me to finally sign up? This article in the latest issue of Wired magazine, "Free Music Now! Lala.com's Plan to Give Songs Away Could Upend the Industry."

Lala lets you create playlists with songs that can be streamed in their entirety ... sometimes. And it has aspects of the social networking sites. So while Lala is evolving into something more than a CD swapping site, that's primarily all it is now.

My experience with swapping so far has been less than impressive. I shipped two CDs by The Smiths before I received my first CD by Handsome Boy Modeling School. I've since shipped four more CDs, including that Handsome Boy CD and others by Fiona Apple, R.E.M. and The Thrills, but have yet to receive my second CD.

I've shipped six and only received one?! This doesn't seem like a great deal to me. Lala says:

The more you ship, the more you'll receive

Lala is based on trading. The number of CDs you receive will depend on how many CDs you ship to other members.

Ok, but how many CDs do I have to ship for every one I receive? Five? Six? Ruling out the Handsome Boy CD, which is a wash, I could have sold the five CDs that shipped to Lala users for anywhere from $20-$50 on Amazon. I could have then used that cash to buy one or two of the CDs I've included in my Lala want list.

I'm not giving up on Lala just yet, but I am beginning to wonder whether or not Lala is a good deal.

"Are record labels dead?"

From CNN:

Prince freed himself from record labels years ago. Paul McCartney, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have followed. Now the Material Girl appears to be kissing her big-name record company goodbye for a cool $120 million.
Madonna

Madonna is expected to sign a recording deal with entertainment producer Live Nation.

Could U2 be next? Justin Timberlake? Coldplay? Do superstars even need traditional multiyear album contracts when CD sales are plummeting and fans are swiping tons of music for free online, or tuning in to their favorite bands via YouTube, MySpace and other Internet portals?

"There's a prevailing wisdom that many established acts don't need a record label anymore," said Bruce Flohr, an executive at Red Light Management, which represents artists such as Dave Matthews Band and Alanis Morrissette, and ATO Records, home to David Grey, Gomez and Crowded House, among others.

"This is the new frontier. This is the beginning of a new era for the music business," Flohr said.

Executives at the four major record labels would not comment on the record for this story. But several noted privately that their companies are still the best at artist development, promotion and physical distribution of their product -- something even big acts can't entirely do without.

The four majors are Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. They accounted for more than 88 percent of all U.S. music album sales this year.

"The game used to be really simple," Flohr said. "You get your record played on radio, you get your face on Rolling Stone (magazine), and you get on 'Saturday Night Live.'

"Now, it's you put your video on YouTube, you get your MySpace page happening, you do your deal with Facebook, you tour ... all these things add up, hopefully, to a successful record."

Some established major acts are using the same tactics as their new albums post lackluster sales but their concert tours keep selling out.

The strategy doesn't help record companies. The industry has seen a 14 percent drop in the number of CDs sold in the U.S. compared with the same time last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. The music industry has only itself to blame for the steady decline in CD sales. Greed motivated them to collude on pricing and keep CDs priced at $15+ even though 20 years had passed since the technology's introduction. Piracy was on the rise, yet still the labels didn't lower prices. But not every artist bought into that. I recall that the Flaming Lips released "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" priced at $9.99, which I thought was a smart move. And then there is Radiohead's digital-only release of "In Rainbows."

Clearly, high CD prices have created an incentive to steal. But with the exception of college students who have broadband and endless storage at their disposal, I think most consumers are willing to pay $5-10 for a new CD. It's worth paying some amount to know that a recording is legit, high quality and includes liner notes, art, lyrics, etc.

Why the record companies haven't yet figured that they could sell and gross more by asking for less is beyond me.

Marisa Miller: Stones Fan?

I'm a fan -- of Marisa Miller, but not the Rolling Stones, at least not since 1981's "Tattoo You," or more accurately 1980's "Emotional Rescue." Ok, make that 1978's "Some Girls."

What have the Stones given us in the last 26 years? Not much, except a sample for The Verve's biggest hit, the royalties for which went to former Stones manager Allen Klein. And a song about George W Bush, "Sweet Neo Con."

I wonder what Marisa Miller thinks of the Stones later work? You'll find some hot photos of Marisa "wearing" a Stones shirt in the 2007 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

The Verve - The Thaw Sessions (MP3)

After listening to 14 minutes and 9 seconds of what is essentially an excerpt of a jam session by The Verve - the band's first new music in ten years -- I'm excited and a bit leary of hearing what the band will do now that they're back together.

Rather than kicking off their reformation with a band meeting, the Wigan legends met in a studio in Richmond and jammed out some musical ideas together.

The first fruits from that session can now be heard today in the form of the 'The Thaw Session' - the title a reference to 'Deep Freeze', an experimental bonus track on the band's last album 'Urban Hymns' - a 14-minute track you can get for free.

I'm excited because The Verve were one of the great rock bands of the 90s, managing to produce four extraordinary works -- three albums and an EP -- in just five years. I'm leary because part of what makes The Verve's catalog so great is that it had a beginning and an end.

Depending on your perspective, "Urban Hymns" was either a sign of more greatness to come from The Verve or a sign that the band might give up artistic freedom for increased marketability.

The Verve's "The Thaw Sessions" are no longer on NME.com, but if anyone asks in the comments section, I'll be happy to post them somewhere.

Ok, here it is. Enjoy.