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Thursday, May 25, 2000 --- 09:43 p.m.
More stuff about napster and mp3's in general: Dave 'drummer in Blur' Rowntree is pro and thinks copyright laws are outdated; Jeepster, the label of Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol et al, is against in an article in the NME. The Jeepster people also say something about independent labels being more affected by the whole mp3-business because:
"Their music is in the most demand by people that love music, and it is this sector of people who are most likely to feel that music is a right, because they classify music as being vital to existence - unlike pop music and major label fodder which is largely disposable.
"So whilst independents are in the lowest-earning bracket of the entire music industry, we are the biggest-moving target for Internet piracy since we can afford to do so little. Though we create some of the best music, it is increasingly difficult for an independent to have the resources to track piracy globally."
Which I don't think I totally agree with, but I have to think about it some more.
And here is an article about a study 'proving' that mp3 will affect recordsales. To be honest I've only scanned the article briefly because I have to leave to go and see Brassy in a minute (A band I have downloaded some mp3's from, at wiiija, but I will probably still buy their album. Maybe a review of the gig here tomorrow as well as a review of last nights Kevlar, Springrain, Burning Airlines gig...), but the 'prove' seems to be that recordsales in shops near university-campuses grow slower than the total average sales. anyway, gotta run now... otherwise I'll miss the train...
Thursday, May 25, 2000 --- 09:31 a.m.
Napster killed my recordstore
Wednesday, May 24, 2000 --- 03:54 p.m.
Some more links for today: Konketsu has new interviews online with Beachwood Sparks and Blonde Redhead... Duel is a new feature at Freaky Trigger, where you can choose between bands to decide which one is worse, today's victims are Eels and Mogwai. Understably Eels are currently in the lead with 69% of the votes because they are really crap and pathetic while Mogwai are, in fact, quite brilliant actually... a very enthousiastic Daphne & Celeste review and, finally, listen to a couple of tracks from the forthcoming Badly Drawn Boy album, in realaudio, and see the video for single Another Pearl, in Quicktime.
Wednesday, May 24, 2000 --- 12:55 p.m.
Global Goon's Garden
I've checked this page before but at that time it was too late to enter but it seems the closing date has been moved and you can still help Rephlex recording artist Global Goon 'grow' his third album by giving specific suggestions for new tracks. You can use the questionnaire-form to suggest styles, titles, duration, instruments etc.; even what the artwork should look like. Global Goon will make the best ten or eleven ideas into actual songs for his new album.
Tuesday, May 23, 2000 --- 11:34 p.m.
What I had planned was a quiet night in watching Friends and the second series of Big Brother and maybe even writing some albumreviews, but around 7:30 I got a call from a slightly stressed person from the local community-radiostation asking if I could fill in as a technician tonight. Usually I would make up some lame excuse about having a paper due for tomorrow or something, but I felt a bit guilty since I've been doing my own show, Subbacultcha, there for about 5 years and I hardly ever do anything back. So I gave in and did a two-hour shift behind the mixing-desk. The first hour was a show dedicated to the Eurovision Songcontest, of course the top3-songs of this years edition were played - the Russian entry Solo by Alsou does indeed sound like a cheap Britney rip-off -, but there was also some older stuff from the Olsen Brothers (this years Danish winners) and a number of tracks from the 1974 edition, the year Abba won with Waterloo. It was not all that bad actually, altough very middle of the road of course. Best song of the hour: Berlin by Jorgen Olsen. Next up was the blues hour and it mainly made me realise how necessary the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is. I consider myself to be rather openminded about music but I just can't see how someone can listen to music that is mostly an endless collection of cliches. Every song - they played stuff by Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mayall, Keb'Mo, The Hoax - sounded exactly the same. Practically the whole hour was one big riff with guitar-and/or-mouthorgan-solo's that went on-and-on-and-on and singers going 'when I woke up this morning' and 'baby, I've got the blues'. Song of the hour: something, probably called The Happy Blues, by Loudon Wainwright III, mainly because he was poking fun of the whole genre: 'waking up this morning, I felt quite alright' etc.
Monday, May 22, 2000 --- 12:15 a.m.
Freaky Trigger's I Hate Music-blog is up and running. First ones to be slaughtered include My Bloody Valentine, the Beatles' Abbey Road and - No!!! Not the Happy Mondays!!!- the Happy Mondays.
news just in: Bjork wins 'best female performance' at the Cannes Film Festival.
Sunday, May 21, 2000 --- 04:20 p.m.
Saw bis last night and, just like every other time I've seen them so far, they were great. Any band that can make grown men (and women) jump about with smiles on their faces like they are a couple of 4-year-olds with a piece of candy is more than okay as far as I'm concerned. Biggest surprise was that they played Kandypop, their 'big hit' from 1996, when they were the first unsigned band ever to perform on Top Of The Pops. Since then they've been very determined to move away from that 'basic' drumcomputerpunk-sound, even going almost triphop on their last album Social Dancing, and refused to play songs like Kandypop. Tonight they played a few older songs actually, Kill Yr Boyfriend, their very first single, and Starbright Boy and Monstarr off their debutalbum, but it was mostly songs from Social Dancing, their second, 'more mature' album. And a couple of new tunes of course. I thought I recognized Kiss And Tell from the last time I saw them - at the same venue actually, Rotown in Rotterdam -, it sounds like the Vengaboys gone punk gone speed garage and is thus absolutely great. Wasn't too sure about the other new songs. Are You Ready is completely electro, not an uninteresting concept but the song itself sounded a bit like a rejected Les Rythmes Digitales b-side. Why Are We Waiting is based around the same beat as Eurodisco but has a chorus that sounds like it thinks it is in the Eurovision song contest. With lyrics to match: 'Why are we waiting, why can't we start changing??'. Anyway, they've got a new ep out in June, should be interesting.
Saturday, May 20, 2000 --- 05:58 p.m.
Good news: a new Daniel Johnston album on Pickled Egg in July. It's his first new studio album for 6 years, 'featuring 15 classic trademark themes of unrequited love', according to the pressrelease anyway, and will include the 1998 single Dream Scream. Americans will have to wait until áfter the summer until it's released there.
Other links for today: 5 stages of blogging (via harrumph) and they've started a new popquiz at Dotmusic.
Wednesday, May 17, 2000 --- 08:20 a.m.
Spend almost an hourandahalf last night doing a musicquiz. The current edition is mostly about hiphop so I had a lot of help from The Rap Dictionary - apparently OPP (as in the big Naughty By Nature hit) means Other's People Pussy/Property/Penis - and
The Sample FAQ where you can type in just about any hiphop/r&b-song and it tells you what samples are used in it and vice versa. Sadly it doesn't give an answer to the question which sample Mos Def uses in Ms Fat Booty and I'm not entirely sure that Quincy Jones's Soul Bossanova is the sample in Dream Warriors' Definition Of A Boombastic Jazzstyle. I mean it sounds neither 'soul' nor 'bossanova' but rather 'bigband', if you see what I mean. Anyway, I'm currently in nineth place, even though I only entered the last two editions, which I thought was pretty good.
Tuesday, May 16, 2000 --- 09:42 p.m.
The lovely people from New York London Munich Paris are starting with a new, temporary blog to coincide with the Bad Music-issue of their 'webzine' Freaky Trigger. So the theme is Bad Music and the concept is that you can suggest a band, a genre or a particular song and they will slag it off for you... Sounds like a great plan
and, of course, also some mp3's for today: Atrecordings has a couple of tracks of the recent Atomium 3003 compilation on Bungalow-records available. That Dauerfish track is actually one of my favourite songs on the comp but Valerie Lemercier's Bungalow isn't half bad either. The song by Blas y las Astrales is originally only on the vinyl-version and since I've got the cd I'll be downloading that in a minute. My favourite mp3 of the last couple of days is Baxendale's remix of Barcelona DC's Studio Hair Gel. Strangely they don't mention this song (yet?) on their homepage but somebody from the band posted the url of the file on the indiepoplist. I must admit I don't know the original - the single will be released in July - but Baxendale turned it into an ultracatchy synthidisco stomper.
Sunday, May 14, 2000 --- 08:44 p.m.
For some time now mp3.com has been publishing the revenues of the different bands on the site. The bands can make money by selling cd's via mp3.com and some other ways as well I understand. Protest has risen against this policy because, according to the protesters, it is hard to present yourself as a 'professional' band/artist when on your page it says you are making absolutely no money at all. To be honest I don't care about it one way or the other but I had a look around at some of the bands on mp3.com I downloaded tracks from and it's pretty interesting. Centromatic for instance has a couple of tracks available, some from their most recent album All The Falsest Hearts Can Try and some older ones, and so far they've made a grand total of 37.60 bucks... Tripping Daisy have earned $19.24 and Sebadoh $19.30. Spearmint have made a staggering $1.31 so far with an acoustic version - recorded for Japanese radio - from Isn't It Great To Be Alive. Dutch indieband Persil, who had a single of Oxfords Shifty Disco last year have, sadly made no money at all yet, even though their Tabletennis Superstar is a pretty good song. From all the artists I've checked MC Paul Barman has made the most money, but with $66.87 I don't see a reason he should give up his dayjob...
Other cool links today: an interview with Beulah and, thanks to Skykicking for the link, we can now philosophically dissect Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Angel). Excellent!!
Saturday, May 13, 2000 --- 19:11 p.m.
Having a bit of trouble updating this page because of problems with Netscape Communicator. It keeps freezing and crashing down, usually only seconds after I started it all up. I've got some old versions of Netscape Explorer installed on my computer as well but they can't handle java or anything.
Only a couple of links then: Zerobros is a new recordcompany out of Belgium; focusing on postrock, posthardcore, postpunk, jazzcore, postemo, experimental etc according to the website. For now they have some mailorder stuff from the labels Slowdime and Dischord, but their first own release is planned for later this year, hopefully the summer. It'll be an ep by Appleton, Wisconsin's the Transpire Ton, a band - again according to the website - playing US melodic rock inspired by bands like Hoover, Fugazi and The Crownhate Ruin. There are some mp3's available at the website.
Aaah, mp3's...
At Tiny Telephone, John Vanderslice ex-MK Ultra's page, there are a couple of tracks available from the cd released by the tape-op fanzine. Includes songs by artists such as Grandaddy, Apples In Stereo and Elliott Smith.
Friday, May 12, 2000 --- 11:21 p.m.
For those, like me, eagerly awaiting that new Blonde Redhead-album here's another free mp3 for you to download and while This Is Not (still available here) was a bit of a surprise with its more synthesizerized sound In Particular sounds like old-fashioned Blonde Redhead ie a bit like Sonic Youth actually. Blonde Redhead will play the Paradiso in Amsterdam Thursday June the 8th. Hopefully I will be able to attend because the Paradiso has this peculiar policy of putting on (relatively) smaller bands like this very late at night in the upstairs room after the act in the main hall has finished. Next week for instance Six By Seven will play but áfter Lambchop and Yo La Tengo. They are scheduled to come on stage around half past midnight which, to me, is nearly impossible to go and see on a regular wednesdaynight, no matter how good their new album The Closer You Get is.
Anyway, here is a track from Ween's new album, White Pepper.
Wednesday, May 10, 2000 --- 09:24 p.m.
Morrissey Duets With Johnny Depp?
Wednesday, May 10, 2000 --- 09:14 p.m.
Poptones
So the poptones.com address still points to clickmusic and poptones.co.uk to a page that's part of a creation records fan page, but from nme.com comes the news that Donna Matthews, ex-Elastica, will be one of the first signings from Alan McGee's new label.
Wednesday, May 10, 2000 --- 09:06 p.m.
Us Against Them
If you're too lazy, or simply don't have the time, to check all those interesting webzines and music blogs like Pitchfork, Western Homes, Buddyhead, Rocket Fuel etc yourself there is Us Against Them to do the job for you. The site compiles, links and keeps you generally informed. Great site if your into (american) indierock. (via New York London Paris Munich)
Wednesday, May 10, 2000 --- 12:43 p.m.
Things To Download
More interesting mp3's today. At WIIIJA they've got a couple of new songs online. Such as Sergeant Rock's We In Heaven, sounding a bit like Fatboy Slim, with its hiphopbeat and funny noises. There's even more in the archive section: the excellent Eurodisco by Bis (saturday may 20th Rotown, Rotterdam and sunday may 21st Virus Festival, Eindhoven. I am só there), more Sergeant Rock and no less than two of Brassy's singles for your essential dose of hiphop-beats meeting new wave guitars.
Soft Posh, one of my favourite new Dutch bands of the moment - 'a dutch Mogwai' is probably the easiest but not necessarily only way to describe them - has also some new tracks online. I admit I am not familiar with all of the 15 songs but I do know both tracks on the La Source Presente single are very beautiful as is Hoover Bag - Waiting For Yr Breath from one of their earlier demos. I myself am very eager to check out the three unreleased tracks, but from what I know about the band so far they are rather unpredictable and sometimes go a little 'freejazz'-y and/or completely electronic, so I am not entirely sure what to expect from them.
Tuesday, May 9, 2000 --- 10:05 p.m.
MC Paul Barman
MC Paul Barman is not like other MC's. He was discovered by Prince Paul and sounds a bit like Eminem's nerdy older brother. In Joy Of Your World - one of the tracks you can download at mp3.com - the chorus goes 'the joy of your world is Paul Barman, beautiful, beautiful Barman' but 'if you want to sex with me be prepared for bad sex and slapstick' is not y'r usual bragging and boasting, isn't it. Enter Pan-man, the other song you can download here, really has something to do with the mythical Greek figure Pan, as far as I can make out anyway, and samples Satie. His official page is worth a visit as well.
Tuesday, May 9, 2000 --- 09:27 p.m.
Clinic
It's hard being into British indie here in the Netherlands at the moment. Or maybe 'expensive' is a better word. Both the Elastica and Delgados albums - two albums I've been really looking forward to - won't be domestically released for a couple of months. I have no idea why the respective recordcompanies take that long. My only guess is that they want to wait until the bands have the time to do promotional visits - interviews and maybe gigs - but isn't such a strategy of creating a 'buzz' in different countries at different times a bit outdated in this 'globalised internetage'??. Anyway, the Elastica album ís available on import in my usual recordshop but I refuse to pay 60 guilders (mostly thanks to the incredible strong UK pound at the moment, the normal price of a cd is about 40 guilders) for a record with about 30 minutes of music, some of which was already on last years Elastica ep. The Delgados album simply isn't available yet. One good thing that came out of all this is that I've had more time to play the excellent new Clinic album. It's every thing you'd expect after all those ace singles they've been releasing the last couple of years. Velvet Underground influenced indiepop with that almost constantly buzzing organ but also the occasional dubby sound-effects (The Return Of Evil Bill), twangy surfguitars (Internal Wrangler), bits out of Bach's Air (DJ Shangri-la, sadly only 50 seconds long), lofipunk (CQ) and hiphopreferences (or am I the only one who things the 'ticki-ticki-temomenon'(sp?)-bit in The Second Line is reference to LL Cool J's 'It's a, it's a phenomenon'???).
Sunday, May 7, 2000 --- 05:22 p.m.
The Scream On Later
Brilliant performance by Primal Scream in last nights Later... With Jools Holland. Later is a programma that, even though beforehand you know 90% of it is gonna be dull, boring and predictable and that Jools is gonna play his silly boogiepianothingies everywhere he can, I still watch every week, or at least try and tape it because there's always at least one band that makes all the tedious rhythm & blues bands (this time Bill Wyman) and random 'worldmusic'-acts of the Peter Gabriel/Sting/Paul Simon-variety (this time Youssou N'Dour) worth watching. This week, no surprise then, that band was Primal Scream. They even made the opening jam - where Jools Holland starts with a pianoriff and all the bands performing on the show join in - sound interesting, mainly because they sounded like they tried to derail the whole thing. Anyway, they played 3 songs in total and especially Swastika Eyes sounded awesome, 'discopunk' in optima forma.
Alan McGee also dropped in for a short chat with Holland and mentioned that his new recordcompany poptones will start next week, but at the moment the website just transports you to Clickmusic. If I remember correctly Poptones was gonna be very much an internetbased operation.
Saturday, May 6, 2000 --- 6:30 p.m.
Atomium 3003
What an incredible day today: blue sky, sunny, 25 degrees, it's like it's summer already. So I spend all day in the backgarden reading the saturday supplements with a new bungalow compilation called Atomium 3003 on the stereo - not too loud of course; think about the neighbours. It's the third release in a series that started with Sushi 3003. Atomium 3003 is the follow-up to 1997's Ro 3003 and has the subtitle A Spectacular Collection Of European Clubpop. And, well, it ís a spectacular collection of European Clubpop. Lots of catchy, lounge-y sometimes even jazzy (electro)pop from France, Spain, Sweden, Finland etc with the occasional St. Etienne wannabe and/or Astrud Gilberto soundalike. Bands that contributed a track include Eggstone, Club 8, Dauerfisch, the excellent Euroboys, Shy, Arling & Cameron and more. It's all a bit too cheesy and sugary at times, but a perfect soundtrack for days like these.
Friday, May 5, 2000 --- 11:55 a.m.
Hirameka Hi-fi
Good news: we can expect more Sonic Youth-influenced indierock from the great Hirameka Hi-fi. They're back after a couple of months of inactivaty - they split up right after they released their excellent lp A Proud Tradition Of Failure somewhere last year - although with a slightly different line-up. There's a new ep to come later this month, and you can download a track from it, called Miriam Vele, here.
Other news today: The Super Furry Animals are gonna remix the Beatles.
Wednesday, May 3, 2000 --- 11:51 a.m.
Chuck D's Napster Contest
From Davey D's hiphopnewsletter: Chuck D is having a contest on his Rapstation site, where you're invited to come up with lyrics explaining "Why you support Napster" to go with the beats of Public Enemy's Power to the People and the Beats, and have a chance to win $5,000. Of course all submitted clips will be made available through Napster. On the site you are actually encouraged to go and download the original track via Napster as inspiration.
Tuesday, May 2, 2000 --- 09:38 p.m.
London Calling
A while ago I promised to write a review of last weeks London Calling festival at the Amsterdam, Paradiso but I have been too busy with other stuff to even start thinking about it - ah, the joys of trying to combine two full-time studies at once. In the meantime, TheKindaMuzikYouLike, a webzine I occasionally contribute to, now has its own review online. I don't agree 100% with what they say, but still it's something. A couple of things I wanna add though. SEAFOOD were indeed not very original, but personally I can't get enough of this kind of Sonic Youth/Sebadoh/Pixies-esque indieguitarpunkrock; Urusei Yatsura are better though. ECHOBOY were the highlight of the festival for me, although they were far more Hawkwind than I expected, but still with a lot of 'electronica' and humour. CHICKS ON SPEED were mainly very loud. They've been getting a lot of bad press here because of 'being manufactured' i.e. all the music is made by German and Austrian techno-producers like DJ Hell and Patrick Pulsingar, but I just think they are just not very good. Glamour Girl is a brilliant popsong, but the rest of the album Chicks On Speed Will Save Us All is all very newwavey. Live, they seem to just crank up the volume a lot, shout a bit and show some slides. SEAFRUIT come about 5 years too late with their Pulp/Menswear-ish Britpop. Still, I liked it and a song like Rocket Fuel is just as good as anything Bennet did in their heighdays. I found BEULAH a bit disappointing. Their album was one of my faves of 1999, and I understand that kind of orchestral, Elephant6-pop is hard to recreat live but this was very blunt and unsubtle. All the lovely Beach Boys-harmonizing was gone, for instance. As a result they sounded like Weezer but with complexer songs. BROADCAST, finally, I thorougly enjoyed but mainly because I love the album, The Noise Made By People. I knew where to find the beautiful melodies amidst all the noisy bits and the very static presentation of the band. Like every year, I was really looking forward to the festival, but in the end it's always only just a couple of gems that make these nights worth it. For this handful of memorable moments we had to endure hours of bands like JJ72, Ben Christophers, Feeder and Terris. But, of course, I'll be there again next year.
By the way, you can listen to all the performances (except for the Bluetones) in realaudio here. Thanks to the nice people of VPRO's Radio 3voor12.
Tuesday, May 2, 2000 --- 07:29 p.m.
Shirley v Jennifer
I don't know what it is - the weather?? spring is in the air?? - but after Beck v N'sync & Britney and Eminem v Christina Aguilera it's now time for Shirley Manson to start a fight with Jennifer Lopez.
Sunday, April 30, 2000 --- 09:40 p.m.
Blonde Redhead - This Is Not (mp3)
Even though my internetconnection today is, as they say in Dutch, 'slow as thick shit', I took the time to download this track off the new Blonde Redhead album (Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, out may 22nd on Touch & Go) at Southern. It makes me very curious about the rest of the album because even though it's still typical Blonde Redhead in the way the song is constructed and of course because of that rather peculiar voice and way of singing for some reason they've exchanged their screechy guitars for a couple of synthesizers. And I must say, it takes some getting used to.
Sunday, April 30, 2000 --- 08:32 p.m.
Pop Iz Love
Couple of interesting new things at the rather excellent Pop Is Love website. John Robb from the Membranes and Goldblade etc is a new columnist, and you can read a chapter from Tommy Udo's Vatican Bloodbath novel. That last one looks very scary, but then again it *is* published by Steven Wells' Attack! Books.
Thursday, April 27, 2000 --- 09:07 p.m.
Hefner Loves The City
Next week Hefner go into the studio to record their third album proper; 'We Love The City' and you can be there too, virtually. Each night (or maybe
sometimes the morning after) Darren will submit a diary entry to the website at the new page called 'We Love the City'. This will go on for 14 days ( the length of the album sessions). Find out what a piece of piss the studio truly is.
Thursday, April 27, 2000 --- 09:05 p.m.
Rolling Stone columnists visit London
I don't want to come across all politically correct, but I get rather angry at comments like this, from a column called Well Hung At Dawn in Rolling Stone:
Top Five Annoying Music Things
1. Asian Dub Foundation. Quit your moaning and bring us our goddam curry.
Is that supposed to be funny??
Thursday, April 27, 2000 --- 07:11 p.m.
Donaldism
Turns out that journalists of the arts supplement of the Frankfurter Allgemeine have been filling their pages with quotes from Donald Duck for years. (from alt0169)
Thursday, April 27, 2000 --- 05:51 p.m.
Archive
This page was getting kinda long so I activated the archive. If everything went well old stuff is now here.
Thursday, April 27, 2000 --- 05:50 p.m.
Ray Cokes
I had completely forgotten about Ray Cokes until somebody started a thread about him on the nl.muziek newsgroup. I spend many nights watching his show Most Wanted on MTV when I was supposed to do homework back in high school. Latest news is that 'there is no chance that I will return to those bastards MTV, one day I will tell what happened in the last days and it will be obvious why I had to leave...' - his exact words in an e-mail to someone who forwarded it to the newsgroup - but 'I do hope to be completing an internet project soon though, I am working on a web streaming thing, more news on the home page soon.....'
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PLAYLIST
Aaliyah - Try Again
Calexico - Ballad Of Cable Hogue
Destiny's Child - The Writing's On The Wall
Echoboy - Volume One
Eminem - The Real Slim Shady
Heinz - Ich Geh Jetzt Schlafen Ohne Dich mp3
The Jesus And Mary Chain - The Complete John Peel Sessions
Little Darla Has A Treat For You v14
Paul Van Dyk + St Etienne - Tell Me Why
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