Good Morning Internet

Josh and I went to see Tron: Legacy over the week­end. Despite its 49% rat­ing on Rot­ten Toma­toes at that point, I still thought it might be a fun 3D thrill ride.

Boy was I wrong. The movie opened with a title card that instructed us to keep our 3D glasses on for the whole movie, even though only cer­tain scenes were in 3D. It was if the film apol­o­gized to us before even get­ting started.

And then it was two hours of bor­ing. I don’t want to post spoil­ers here, even though I’d save you $13 and two hours, but the plot would be pretty dif­fi­cult to encap­su­late any­way. There were plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for smart, clever writ­ing, but it felt like they were made dull and con­fus­ing on pur­pose. To that end, I guess, it was faith­ful to the orig­i­nal. Oh, snap!

So then there’s this Daft Punk video, made with the same aes­thetic as the orig­i­nal Tron. There’s more awe­some packed into these three min­utes than all of the new movie, and who­ever directed it should have directed Legacy. Maybe then we could have seen the evo­lu­tion from the orig­i­nal 80s look to the rubber-and-leather sex­i­ness of the new com­puter world. Oh well.

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I can’t believe I haven’t posted these videos here yet. I blame the end-of-semester madness.

The Posies played an amaz­ing, short-ish show at the 9:30 Club. Granted, I got there fif­teen min­utes into the set after I raced down to DC directly from class in Bal­ti­more as quickly as I could. Check out these quick high­lights. If you ever have a chance to see them live, do your­self a favor and bask in some power pop greatness.

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• The Posies return to the 9:30 Club Nov. 17
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I saw the Posies for the very first time on June 26, 1996 dur­ing the tour for Amaz­ing Dis­grace. I was 16 years old and it was my first show at the 9:30 Club in Wash­ing­ton, DC. They played with an infec­tious inten­sity that fed the crowd, all of us fans who knew every word to every song. We delighted in the small vari­a­tions of the live ver­sions, pressed up against the stage as we savored each supremely loud note.

After an encore in which they destroyed their gui­tars and drum set, we still didn’t have enough. The club turned on its lights and brought up the house music. We didn’t leave. We cheered and chanted. The tech crew packed away the micro­phones and broke down what was left of the drums. About half of the audi­ence cleared out and left the rest of us beg­ging fool­ishly for more. Ken stepped back on stage, plead­ing with us, explain­ing they just destroyed their equip­ment and couldn’t play another encore. For some rea­son, that didn’t seem like a good enough excuse. We stood firm and he ducked backstage.

Moments later, some­one brought out a pair of stools, fol­lowed by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfel­low, armed with acoustic gui­tars. They asked us sit on stage with them. Then, as if know­ing exactly what we wanted to hear, they dug deep into their cat­a­log, took requests, and even cov­ered “I Am the Cos­mos” and “Sur­ren­der”. And then, finally, after essen­tially giv­ing us two com­plete shows in one, they exited the stage for the last time.

In the months that fol­lowed, I learned all of their songs on my gui­tar. I exper­i­mented with the crazy alter­nate tun­ings they used. I con­nected with some­one on the Dear 23 mail­ing list who sent me a tape of the show, recorded right off the 9:30 Club sound­board. I started to write my own songs. Because of that show, I got more seri­ously into music than I had been before. I was furi­ous that their tal­ent and on-stage charisma hadn’t brought the Posies the super-stardom so many mediocre artists enjoyed at that time, but secretly I was happy that nobody else in my school lis­tened to them. I felt like I was in a secret club. I became obsessed with find­ing other rel­a­tively unknown and obscure bands. My friends would joke that I car­ried around a book of CDs that “no one ever heard of.”

After the “Amaz­ing Dis­grace” tour, it was a few years before the Posies returned to DC. I saw them at both the the old and new Black Cat on acoustic and full-band tours. I saw Ken Stringfel­low open for Juliana Hat­field. I saw Jon Auer on his solo tour. Most recently, at SXSW this year, I saw Jon and Ken, also mem­bers of Big Star, per­form in the trib­ute to Alex Chilton mere days after his shock­ing and unex­pected death.

On Wednes­day, Novem­ber 17, the Posies return to the 9:30 Club with Bren­don Ben­son and Aque­duct. That’s a ridicu­lously cool lineup. It’s going to be a sort of home­com­ing for me, a return to the spot where my love of music and live per­for­mances began half a life­time ago.

Tick­ets just went on pre-sale.

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I’m totally jump­ing on this meme.

As you may or may not be aware, some clever young Inter­neter took Just Bieber’s “U Smile” and slowed it down 800% to cre­ate a 35-minute epic that sounds vaguely rem­i­nis­cent of Sigur Ros or some more experimental-sounding m83.

So, yeah, it was awe­some and I was smit­ten with the idea. I fol­lowed the instruc­tions on Life­hacker and gave Weezer’s “My Name is Jonas” a sim­i­lar treat­ment with the free­ware app Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch. (In fact, I used the Mac OS X port.)

Jonas Epic by charm­c­i­ty­gavin

Update: I tried this with a cou­ple Nine Inch Nails songs. They ended up sound­ing like long, epic, Nine Inch Nails songs. Amazing.

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Update: It appears Apple has resolved the issue. A few hours after writ­ing this post, my mom tried the codes again and they worked. She’s the proud owner of “Broth­ers” by The Black Lips and “Sea of Cow­ards” by The Dead Weather. Still, it would have been nice for her to have them a week ago, as planned.

Last week, I pur­chased two gift codes for albums from the iTunes Store. I slipped them into a card and gave them to my mother as part of her birth­day present. I thought it would be fun for her to type in the codes, down­load the albums instantly, and sync them to her devices.

So you can imag­ine how upset I was when she politely men­tioned to me over the week­end that she had trou­ble redeem­ing the codes. Switch­ing into Mac Geek Son Mode, I hopped onto her com­puter and tried it out. I got the same generic error she did: “The iTunes Store could not process your request. Please try again later.”

My mom had been try­ing “again later” for days, and got the same unhelp­ful error each time. I double-checked my receipt and check card. The trans­ac­tion was processed and Apple took my money, so why wouldn’t the codes work?

On Fri­day, I sent an email to iTunes tech­ni­cal sup­port. Two days later, I got a response from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive who apol­o­gized for the delay (they nor­mally claim a 24-hour turn­around on sup­port requests) and issued me a two-song credit to my account to make up for it. Okay, that’s nice, but it doesn’t address the prob­lem of get­ting music to my mom.

The tech sup­port rep went on:

After research­ing fur­ther, I tried to open it from my end and I received an error as well. I was then informed by my senior super­vi­sor that there is an issue with redeem­ing gift codes and the Apple is cur­rently work­ing toward a res­o­lu­tion for the issue you have reported.

If you do not pre­fer to wait for the issue to be resolved, which I can’t pre­dict when will that be. Please reply to this email and I will cer­tainly refund the gifts back to your credit card. Thank you for your time and I look for­ward to your reply, Gavin.

Gift codes don’t work, sup­port can’t pre­dict when the prob­lem will be resolved, and the best solu­tion Apple can offer is a refund? Isn’t “Gift This Album” sup­posed to be a major fea­ture of the store? It’s unac­cept­able that the top music retailer in the US can’t han­dle a request this simple.

I wrote back, ask­ing if I could get replace­ment codes, or if there was any pos­si­ble way I could get these two albums out of the store and into my mom’s iTunes col­lec­tion. While I await a reply, my lovely mom is waits patiently for these two birth­day presents.

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Thurs­day, March 18, 2010

I was 14 in the sum­mer of 1994, and Stone Tem­ple Pilots’s Pur­ple was my sound­track. That was also sum­mer I learned how to play elec­tric gui­tar, so nat­u­rally STP songs were among the first I learned.

I never made it to a Stone Tem­ple Pilots show in the 90s, though I did see Scott Wei­land per­form solo at an HFS­ti­val.

Flash for­ward 16 (!) years. STP played SXSW Thurs­day night at the Austin Music Hall, and it was my first chance to see them live. Hon­estly, I was ner­vous. Would the show hold up? Would the old songs sound tired and empty? Would the new songs be bland and boring?

As soon as they launched into “Vase­line” as their set opener, I could tell they brought their A-game. STP rocked. They were as ener­getic and tight as a band could be, com­plete with Weiland’s style of front­man show­man­ship that I don’t think many other bands have.

Of course, they played some of their new songs, too. I’ll have to lis­ten to the new album to pick out the ones I heard, but a cou­ple of them were quite catchy. Still, I don’t think the new mate­r­ial is as iconic as their break­through hits, but maybe I’m just being hard on new songs by com­par­ing them to their well-established counterparts.

For the encore, Robby Krieger from the Doors joined STP for a cover of “Road­house Blues”. It was the kind of epic moment I’d heard about at SXSW in years past.

It was a totally awe­some show. Stone Tem­ple Pilots rocked SXSW 2010. I think I took over 400 pic­tures, and I’ll put the best up on Flickr once I finally sit down and sift through all of them. If you can catch them on this tour, I highly rec­om­mend it.

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Wednes­day, March 17, 2010

MC Frontalot, ytcracker, Ran­dom, and Dan­ger­ously held a panel about the nerd­core hip-hop move­ment. Observe the above video taken dur­ing 101 ses­sion. That’s ytcracker rap­ping while Dan­ger­ously beat-boxes.

First and fore­most, these guys are great rap­pers. Nerd­core artists some­times get labeled as par­ody artists or come­di­ans, and taken less seri­ous as “real” main­stream hip-hop artists.

But these guys are as real as any­one. Writ­ers, as the cliche goes, should write what they know. The same applies to rap­pers. Some of the best hip-hop comes from hon­est artists who rap about every­thing from the small­est mun­dane detail to the most epic story, but keep every word hon­est and heart­felt. I’d say that’s what makes “under­ground” hip-hop seem so genuine.

Nobody on the nerd­core panel tries to be nerdy on pur­pose. They’re nerdy because they can’t help it. Frontalot jokes that they’ve found a way to “take shame and mis­ery and turn it into profit.”

Still, the press hasn’t fig­ured out a way to cover these guys with­out appear­ing clue­less. In “real life”, Ran­dom is a mid­dle school teacher, a huge video game nerd, and uses sam­ples from old Cap­com games in his songs. In fact, Cap­com approached him and asked if they could offi­cially endorse his music, some­thing vir­tu­ally unheard of in the music indus­try. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing tale about a cre­ative musi­cian and a com­pany that gets it.

But because Ran­dom is black, many music writ­ers and jour­nal­ists take a “No bling for this guy!” angle. A lot of that, he said, comes from the neg­a­tive stigma asso­ci­ated with hip-hop. The moment some­one approaches the genre from a per­spec­tive that devi­ates from “rims and bling”, they’re unfairly per­ceived as a nov­elty act. At the core of his music, Ran­dom is true to him­self and cre­ates com­pelling music and lyrics, yet he’s unfairly posi­tioned as some sort of hip-hop outsider.

I think the music indus­try at large could take a les­son from the artists involved in this style of hon­est, DIY music. It tran­scends hip-hop and crosses genre bor­ders to rock musi­cians like Jonathan Coul­ton. The “big nerd con­ven­tions”, as the pan­elists put it, are more lucra­tive than tour­ing. Frontalot makes 25% of his annual income from sell­ing merch at Penny Arcade.

While peo­ple the music indus­try lose their minds over the exag­ger­ated and mis­rep­re­sented ram­i­fi­ca­tions of file shar­ing, these guys under­stand tech­nol­ogy, their fans, and the future of mak­ing money in music. “It’s not a pirat­ing prob­lem,” Dan­ger­ously said, “it’s a pirat­ing oppor­tu­nity.” They use file-sharing tools to con­nect with peo­ple and turn them into fans. The music industry’s stance? File-sharing tools a uni­lat­er­ally evil, they must be all shut down, and the con­sumers who use them must be sent threat­en­ing letters.

What nerd­core rap­pers are doing, espe­cially on the busi­ness side, is rev­o­lu­tion­ary. It’s a shame they’re mar­gin­al­ized as nov­elty acts. The peo­ple in this ses­sion have helped invent sus­tain­able prac­tices that artists of all styles and pop­u­lar­ity can adopt. Why does the music indus­try con­tinue to fight remark­able progress?

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Tues­day, March 16, 2010

Devo has a new album com­ing out, so they had a ses­sion about it at SXSWi. Naturally.

My friend Jake and I ran over to the con­ven­tion cen­ter after the Beer and Brat Bash and grabbed seats in the front row. The panel con­sisted of Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Jerry Casale, “mar­ket­ing execs”, a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, and a focus group study. Through­out the life of the band, Moth­ers­baugh said they’d never played by the rules. So, for this album, they decided to do noth­ing but play by the rules. It was hilar­i­ous, tongue-in-cheek, and smart.

Also, Mark and Jerry signed my com­puter. It sure beats lap­top stick­ers. Observe:

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Sat­ur­day, March 13, 2010

It’s not easy to describe Ze Frank to some­one unfa­mil­iar with his work. Most famously, a few years ago he posted a short video five days a week for an entire year. It was funny, thought­ful, and often included great songs he wrote and recorded. He sim­ply called it the show and it was a big hit. If you don’t know about it, I sug­gest a trip over to the Internet’s social stud­ies class­room, Wikipedia.

After the show, Ze moved to Los Ange­les, wrote a TV pilot, wrote a movie, tried to land act­ing gigs, and has found him­self explor­ing a vari­ety of his own cre­ative projects and exper­i­ments, much like he did in his pre–show days.

The ses­sion was billed as “liv­ing a cre­ative lifestyle”. I was hop­ing for a lit­tle more prac­ti­cal advice on how to pur­sue cre­ative projects that mat­ter while simul­ta­ne­ously find­ing ways to pay the bills. But instead, the inter­view, led by Scott Kirsner, evolved quickly into a dis­cus­sion about find­ing emo­tional value in the dig­i­tal con­nec­tions peo­ple make through social media.

Ze shared some heart­felt and really great sto­ries about peo­ple find­ing those con­nec­tions, and reviewed some high­lights from recent projects to illus­trate his points. He reached out to peo­ple that emailed him with prob­lems. He enlisted Twit­ter fol­low­ers to record vocal parts for a vir­tual cho­rus in a new song. He took over a woman’s Face­book account for a week (with her per­mis­sion) as a bit of a social experiment.

It was cer­tainly inter­est­ing, even though it quickly strayed from the topic of “liv­ing a dig­i­tal lifestyle”. But per­haps that was kind of the point. In order to really live a cre­ative lifestyle, there aren’t any firm rules. You sort of have to feel it out for your­self, take chances, and find what works as you make con­nec­tions with other people.

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SXSW was amaz­ing. I had more incred­i­ble expe­ri­ences packed into one week than I can remem­ber. Inter­ac­tive sparked new ideas and helped me develop new ones. Film encour­aged me to approach my writ­ing from dif­fer­ent angles. Music con­vinced me that I need to start writ­ing songs again. All three com­po­nents of SXSW were sources of seem­ingly end­less inspi­ra­tion, and that made the trip com­pletely worth it, air­line delays and all.

I learned a few things about the SXSW expe­ri­ence itself, too. In the pre­ced­ing weeks, I made a sched­ule of every ses­sion and show I wanted to attend. In the­ory, I thought I’d be able to string one after another seam­lessly, bounc­ing from talk to party to band. In prac­tice, some­times events would over­lap, it took more time to get from one event to another than I thought, and some­times there were lines to deal with.

I also learned that blog­ging and pod­cast­ing dur­ing SXSW are near-impossible feats.

Back here in the “real world”, I’ve never been more moti­vated to take on ambi­tious projects, trans­form my pro­fes­sional life into some­thing I enjoy and am proud of, and ded­i­cate more time and effort to my cre­ative writ­ing. I feel so for­tu­nate to have so many smart, tal­ented, and encour­ag­ing friends off of whom I can bounce ideas and get feedback.

Tonight I plan to go through my note­book and recap my favorite moments from SXSW 2010. I have over a thou­sand pho­tos to sort out. I can’t wait to share the high­lights with you.

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