music

I’m going to Lollapalooza this year in Chicago (which just might be my next home) and I’m pretty excited about it, because I like a lot of the bands that will there. I know this isn’t an exciting post for some of my readers - but for those that are into trying out new bands, here are my picks for best acts to see this year at Lollapalooza:

Ordered by start time of performance:

Day 1:

• The Fratellis
• Illinois
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Silversun Pickups
• The Black Keys (Akron’s Finest Rock Band)
• LCD Soundsystem

Day 2:

• Dear and the Headlights
• Tokyo Police Club (Must See)
• Cold War Kids
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Spoon
• Interpol

Day 3:

• The Cribs (Must See)
• Los Campesinos
• Kings of Leon
• Pete Bjorn and John
• Yo La Tengo
• Modest Mouse
• And a band I used to love: Pearl Jam

So these are my feelings today, and I will update all after I’ve been to what I’m predicting will be a great event.

The Cribs:

I consider myself reasonably well connected to information. Yet lately I’ve somehow missed out on a few things I would like to have known about. They happen to be album releases. First was Beck’s: The Information, and now Clap You Hands Say Yeah’s: Some Loud Thunder. I use pandora all the time, and while I haven’t listened to my Beck station in a while, I’ve given enough thumbs up to both Beck and CYHSY that Pandora knows I am a fan. So, why not somehow tell me they have new albums coming out? I’d prefer RSS, but I’ll even let you email me that info with links containing your affiliate codes. Go ahead.. do it, I dare you, and then maybe we won’t have this conversation anymore. [and if you already do this and i just don't know about it, I apologize... but I should know about it.]

But it’s not just music, this idea should apply to all sorts of products. People want to know when new stuff comes out. Especially stuff they’ve told you countless times that they like. The choice is simple, it doesn’t take much to set up this type of feed and I’m fairly certain you’ll be happy with the return (which will also be easy to measure).

a little band by the name of Cold War Kids has a free song available on iTunes this week. If you haven’t heard of them or checked them out I highly recommend downloading the song from iTunes.

Oh and I’m starting a new blog in the near future dedicated to books, music, and movies - any interested writers?

While we’re on the topic of music discovery, I thought I’d take this opportunity to point you to a new concept in music discovery that I think has definite potential after a little refinement. Family Band is a new concept in music discovery that allows you to explore bands that are in some way related to the band you enter into the service. It breaks bands down into band members, and then you can see other bands the members are affiliated with in some way. As you can see in the screenshot below, this creates a visual map of related bands. In my search I started with Wolf Parade which led me to Frog Eyes and Swan Lake (both pretty good bands), based on the affiliations of members of Wolf Parade. It’s a really cool concept, that I hope gets developed further.

Family Band gets bonus points for being started by one of my family members, you can see more of Tom’s work at WorkingIdea.

Everyone needs to eat, but Pandora has officially upset me with its newest revenue source: pre-roll commercials. I loaded a station on pandora expecting to hear music and instead heard a commercial for McDonald’s Dollar menu. One of Pandora’s big selling points is that it does not have commercials, the more commercials that find their way into the service, the less likely I am to use it. Pandora already makes money off sales of songs that people discover on the site and click through to buy on itunes or amazon. I did this last week, I had an itunes gift card and chose to buy some songs I had bookmarked on Pandora, I used the links on Pandora to make the purchases. That’s one Pandora revenue stream, but they’ve also sold out their site design in the past turning it into an ad. Now they need another revenue stream? I understand that this is guaranteed revenue compared to the click-throughs which I’m sure most users rarely use, but this goes completely against what the service is supposed to be about. So, should I switch back to last.fm?

Update: Because I love when companies do this, I’d like to point out that Tom, Pandora’s CTO, has left a comment on this post.

I don’t know who suggested that I blog “what’s on my ipod” but I do have a pretty good idea of who requested that I not blog that. So, to spite said person, here is the list of bands currently occupying my ipod:

A Roman Holiday
Andrew Bird
Asian Kung Fu Generation
At The Drive-in
Beck
The Black Keys
Bloc Party
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The Decemberists
Eddie Vedder
Franz Ferdinand
Interpol
Jay-Z
The Killers
The Kinks
The Mars Volta
Mike Doughty
The Mountain Goats
Oh No! Oh My!
Phoenix
The Pixies
The Rakes
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Shout Out Louds
Son, Ambulance
Sparta
Spoon
The Stranglers
The Strokes
Swan Lake
The White Stripes
Wolf Parade
Volcano, I’m still excited
and some podcasts

It’s really a pretty short list, I’m not even using half of my ipod right now. We’ll see if any of them are around next year as well.

It’s Hawaiian shirt day, so today I attempt a little Musical critique. I recently acquired Beck’s newest album: The Information. In a way this collection of ‘didn’t make it to Guero or Sea Change’ songs reminds me of Beck’s Mutations - his leftovers from Odelay. But this is better than Mutations, it hits more often than it misses and has enough unique and diverse content that it could almost be thought of as a summary of Beck’s major label career (I don’t think we’ll ever hear another Satan Gave me a Taco out of Beck).

Like Guero’s Geurolito, I have to believe the information will be opened to the interpretation of others. The album ranges from the softly melodic “New Round” to the highly experimental “1000BPM” a song that already sounds like a remix. If the album misses anywhere I think it’s Beck’s tendency to over do it with the experiments - I’d have to believe he’ll let others try out their experiments as well.

If you like anything by Beck you’ll likely find something to enjoy about The Information - Movie Theme feels like it was plucked from Sea Change, while Think I’m in Love feels like it could have easily come off any album since Odelay, there even seem to be elements of Midnight Vultures in We Dance Alone.

I recommend the album, but then again I’m a huge Beck fan. I can’t say it’s his best work but if you’ve enjoyed any of his work you’ll find a song or two to like on The Information.

Maybe it’s because Lopico has been getting a large number of visitors from Japan lately, or maybe it’s because I just really like this band. Anyway, I just felt like posting something from one of my new favorite bands - which I of course found on Pandora. This is Asian Kung-Fu Generation and the song is called Loop & Loop.

Now back to the usual dorkery…