Author: h

WORST IS FEARED FOR CHRIS MARTIN & COMPANY

Omaha, NE – Furious Press

The plains are ringing with Scott Morris’ response to the challenge issued recently by Coldplay on their record X&Y. Calling for “rhythmic and harmonic warfare,” Morris is accusing the sensitive Brits of biting sounds he forged two years ago on howie&scott’s album signs.

Morris’ composition “Choose To” was explicitly altered to avoid repeating the 3-3-2 eighth-note pattern on Coldplay’s hit “Clocks”; Scott developed a distinctive 3-2-3 alternative for his work. Imagine his reaction when X&Y‘s first single, “Speed of Sound,” rips its harmonic framework from Coldplay’s own “Clocks” and its rhythmic drive from “Choose To.” “What is it with Coldplay creeping on me?” asked Morris.

The alleged “creeping” doesn’t stop there. On signs, Morris made extensive use of a vintage drum set, removing all the bottom heads of the set’s toms for a unique, deadened sound. It reminded this reporter of old Chicago records. This development was also assimilated by Coldplay for their new album, which features similar-sounding dead toms prominently in several tracks, such as “X&Y”. “I appreciate the recognition,” says Morris, “but this calls for harmonic and rhythmic warfare.”

Sources close to Morris suggest that he fully intends to back up his declaration. Rumors from the Scomo camp in recent days include the possibility of new GILMO tracks, and inclusion on the upcoming holiday compilation from Mr. Furious Records. “This man is nearing the edge,” said a friend of Scott’s who wishes to remain anonymous. “None of us can know what he’ll do next.”

Suffice it to say that the next salvo will be fired at a time and place of Scomo’s choosing, and the chaps in his sights had better watch their backs. Good men and women the world over shiver at the thought of GILMO armed with wave after wave of synth-strings and a boyish falsetto.

The venerable KC Irish Fest first drew me into its orbit 5 or 6 years ago, on a road trip down from Doane College to see Celtic rockers Black 47. A good time then, and though much last weekend was different it still moved us.

Friends picked me up for the trip down to Crown Center, which is a cool outdoor venue in the middle of the south end of downtown Kansas City; a multileveled plaza with fountains and a semi-permanent white tented contraption, surrounded by high-rises. Sunday night was the final night of the festival, and we rolled in time to catch full sets from both The Elders and Eileen Ivers with her band Immigrant Soul.

Kent loaned me an Elders disc a couple weeks back; it was tasteful, pleasant, and generally uninspired. Competent Irish AAA-rock. He’d been telling me what an amazing drummer Ian, the true Irish frontman, was; when the Elders took the stage, I finally understood. This band needed a DVD crew out Sunday night; they took us up and down, putting on a firey, passionate show. Ian worked us like a pro, like Bono: his voice, his banter, his sing-alongs, his drumming with child-like energy any time he wasn’t singing. Consummate musicianship with exciting, unrehearsed showmanship, the Elders earned every ounce of love they got and gave it right back to the crowd.

I’d heard Ivers at the Lied Center in Lincoln several years ago, and forgotten how jazz-influenced she is. Her music pushes the boundaries of Celtic canon, helped out by an all-star band. I was most impressed with guitarist James Riley; armed with a simple six-string acoustic, his style was all his own, rhythmic and driving with a very advanced sense of harmony. Ivers’ stage presence is a hoot, pogo-jumping like a punk-rocker with her violin in tow. I would see her again in a heartbeat.

All told, Sunday was a perfect exercise in musical pleasure relative to energy output; we were in and out of downtown in about four hours, heard two great sets from two very different bands, enjoyed the near-autumn out-of-doors on Labor Day weekend, and had enough time for chatting.

D-Rockets and his EP, Matt Wisecarver’s Secret Fantasy, have pushed Mr. Furious Records to set a new record for music downloaded in one month – August 2005, with 1210 mb of data transferred from our servers, is the new # 1. 1210 mb = 1.2 GB!!!111 This is our first time over one gig on the site. Congratulations to Derek, the new MFR listeners who found us through The Return / Sexual Jedi / The Ashtray Life, and the hardcore MFR fans – looking at the site statistics we know it took both first-timers and regular listeners to make August happen.

The breakdown; 1210 mb is the total amount of data downloaded from the mrfuriousrecords.com server during August. 942 mb of that was “traffic viewed” (i.e. not robots/spiders), and 93.4% of that was .m4a (audio) data. Average song size is about 3.8 mb, so (assuming aborted downloads transferred 0 mb, which is not quite accurate) something like 231 SONGS were downloaded directly from the website in August. Of course many of you burn, file-trade via P2P, and otherwise share our music in ways that go far beyond direct downloads from mrfuriousrecords.com – keep it up.

And what record-setting timing; our 1-year anniversary (birthday?) is September 21!!!111 To celebrate, there will be BIG BIG NEWS at www.mrfuriousrecords.com . Something killer is being planned, and you will be happy if you check out the site that day. So mark your calendars, warm up your broadband, and get set. MFR v2.0 is headed your direction in 3 weeks.

Wednesday morning I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the evening releasing D-Rockets on mrfuriousrecords.com, or playing the 3rd Street Pub’s open-mic night. Ended up going for the both/and; ran home in the afternoon and made the upload for Matt Wisecarver’s Secret Fantasy, wrote a short email to the list, and called up Nick to ride shotgun into Lee’s Summit.

We cruised in just after nine to a small local pub, half-filled with co-eds still home from school in the last days of summer. And Jody with Jimmie, a couple friendly faces who didn’t know what they were in for. One guy was trying to bartend and set up sound, so it was slow going.

Around 9:30 it seemed like the speakers were coming to life. But up on stage, plugged in, all we had was nasty, amp-fried distortion; after twiddling for a few minutes, I cut the cords and stepped off the stage onto the bar floor. From that point, straining to strum and sing louder than the background noise of the club, I played for a solid 45 minutes: “America Votes 2032,” “I Don’t Even Know How Right This Sounds,” “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “Corrupting The Youth,” and a terrible cut of Goldfinger’s “Superman” – I plain forgot the second verse, crashed, and burned. Only the friendlies heard, though.

Eventually somebody with the 3rd Street brought in a new amp and re-wired the sound. I played a short plugged-in set of “SOS,” “Market Stress,” and the “J. Cougar Mellensong.” A cat named Micah followed up, playing some killer originals and a cover of Chris Cornell’s “Sunshower” – the only other person I’ve known who plays that song.

Last week was my first-ever open mic. I’ll be heading back to the 3rd Street Pub eventually, and maybe others around town; I like the idea of calling out a “guerilla gig” and descending on a place for the night. More time to chat, no sound gear to move, no pressure to be entertaining for two consecutive hours; everybody wins.

Archive.org is a massive digital library project that collects and preserves digital resources: web pages, images, audio files, video, etc. I stumbled on the link (and not for the first time, though I’d forgotten about it) the other day, and was drawn to a news announcement stating that the group had reached a milestone. Along with eTree.org 20,000 concerts and netlabel-albums have been compiled and are freely available to download and share. Read the announcement here.

“Self,” I thought, “aren’t you looking for more server space for Mr. Furious Records’ music? That many archived shows implies significant stroage abilities. Plus exposure to an entire network of people who love free, tradable music.” After learning about the technological side of preparing a “seed” (eTree’s word for a digital audio project/show/recording) I wonder if MFR should move the nuts and bolts of our operation to Archive.org/eTree.org. mrfuriousrecords.com would of course stay, looking and working the same as now; the changes would be in the music files. From eTree, the songs would be availalble in lossless FLAC format, as well as VBR-mp3 and lo-fi mp3. I imagine the direct links on the MFR page would link to the VBR-mp3s (about the same audio quality as the 128-bit m4as we use now, maybe better) and each album would have a link to its page at eTree for users who want the FLACS or lo-fi files. For example, look at this Matisyahu show page; every MFR album would have a similar one.

SO I PUT IT TO YOU, MFR LISTENERS AND ARTISTS; WHAT DO YOU THINK??? WEIGH IN. HELP US PROCESS THIS: Post a comment.

While I’m looking for a new favorite record shop in Kansas City, here’s the skinny on my last trip to Cheapo in Uptown, Minneapolis. A place I hate to love, because I can never leave for less than 40 bucks…

Some good finds in the “Recent Arrivals” made this trip A) solid from an economic standpoint (only paid full price for Vicious Vicious) and B) a good example of my listening habits, which are quirkier than you may imagine.

Vicious Vicious / Don’t Look So Surprised – You must see Erik Appelwick to fully appreciate his solo act plus guests, Vicious Vicious; 6’6″ or more of pale WASP small-town South Dakotan, with gangly hands that I imagine could palm medicine balls, or reach about two octaves on piano. This man makes weirdly soulful pop-funk music that you won’t believe until you see him do it.

Gatsby’s American Dream / Volcano – Their first record, Why We Fight, arrived at KDNE for radio play and I got hooked. Volcano sounds more like Ribbons & Sugar, but with less self-conscious effort and more color.

311 / Evolver – Was the only studio album I had missed; problem solved. Then, just this morning, 311 was the featured album on the iTunes new music email. Guess I didn’t know how big they still were; it was a happy surprise.

Presidents of the United States of America / II – I like everything Presidents’ frontman Chris Ballew has ever done.

Kanye West / The College Dropout – Cory listens to this record constantly. Of course, he listens to Faith Hill too…

Ozma / Rock and Roll Part Three – Ozma is as over-wrought as Pinkerton, sounds like Blue Album b-sides, and writes songs about things like “Apple Trees,” “Natalie Portman,” and being “In Search of 1988.”

Ozma / The Doubble Donkey Disc – A combination of the band’s Russian Coldfusion and Bootytraps EPs.

Q Rocks Sampler – Tracks from Foo Fighters, Hot Hot Heat, System of a Down, The Donnas, My Morning Jacket, and Muse are certainly worth a buck.

US3 / “Cantaloop” single – $1 (instead of 99 cents at iTunes) bought 2 remixes, an instrumental version (I’ll probably freestyle over it later tonight to impress girls) and the radio edit (!!!111) for this mid-90s pop oddity. I have a vivid memory of eating lunch with Muff at Runza on Main St., the “What’s up?” sample perking my ears for reasons unknown.

Monsters of Rap – I have a thing about not buying records that have been advertised on TV (not that I’m often tempted) but for Wreckz-N-Effect, A Tribe Called Quest, Sir Mix-A-Lot, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, and Tone Loc, I was pleased to make an exception.

I’m surprised nobody has anything to say about Paul Anka / Nirvana – I called the most hallowed album of the alt-rock era unlistenable! I also can’t believe we’re still in that era (stuck in the doldrums, it seems… Save us, M.I.A.!)

Playing first was all for the best last night; Lincoln’s only world-famous nightspot, the Zoo Bar, was full for Axeface’s set. Playing with Axeface was so good, I was on stage for all but the first two songs. We were halfway through practice earlier that evening when I realized that the four of us (Cory, Annie, Tucci, Howie) were Shacker-redux.

I told James something that only crystallized in my mind in the telling; the longer I make music, the more important it is to me to be at least a little entertaining for the gathered audience. When h&s started writing, our songs were intended as art/expression, without much thought to the listener’s experience. Now, I actively work with that experience (live and through recordings) and try to frame art/expression as something a person might like to listen to. Novel!

Credit goes to the second band, with an incredibly long name (includes “Vs.”), for making this clear to me. They were not entertaining, or expressive in a meaningful way, or even listenable. Props – you taught me something!

-howie

The golden drum kit (Shacker, echoes) is functional again, after a trip to the instrument-consignment shop in Uptown a couple weeks ago. The old hi-hats were shredded (they were old and corroded when I got the set) and it’s never had a ride cymbal, just my thin crash.

I found a new (to me) vintage Zildjian cymbal, exactly like Scottie’s that I had on loan for Knowing Her Best…, …Blackbeard’s Birthday, nickel, and all the gigs surrounding those albums. Beautiful, and an incredible find, both in terms of the deal I got and that I already know how it plays and responds. The hats are Sabian AAs, 14″ – I spent a long time testing different sounds, but these were definitely the best bang-for-your-buck. I’m really picky about hi-hat sounds, but I love these to death.

It wasn’t easy to cough up the change for decent cymbals, but the mission for these couple weeks in Nebraska has been to track drums for upciming signs in winter, Be A Ska Rat, and the XMAS tunes I’m working on. If I’m going to be playing drums again, I need a full kit (even if not quite full-sized!).

Doing 2 1/2 records at once is a logistics thing; I can probably play guitars in a Kansas City apartment, but not kit, yeah?