I’ve been listening to lots of new stuff lately.  New albums by Kylesa, and Tombs; rock.  The new Gomez record is a lot better than Pitchfork led me to anticipate.  Mastodon’s “Crack the Skye” was a bit disappointing the first time through.  I finally heard Juvelen’s whole 2008 album, and cherry-picking three or four songs from iTunes is going to be sufficient there.
Studio work resumes today from a couple weeks’ break, with stitching together Fifty Bears’ rhythm tracks and tracking my guitar where necessary. -h

I discovered podcasts this week.

I needed a soundtrack (well, news, actually) for my new exercise gig, and went searching.  The BBC is up and running now, but in the course of finding that I also found some gems in the music section.

Many of NPR’s “All Songs Considered” live concerts are available, including a stellar Radiohead show and sets from Spoon, Ted Leo + Pharmacists, The Hold Steady, and a bundle of other indie-ish heroes.  Also, several “song-of-the-day” options are available from sources like KCRW in California, KEXP in Seattle, and The Current in Minneapolis.  (I’m counting on one of these to feed my appetite for new jams after my Paste subscription runs out; their monthly sampler is kind of tame for me.)

THE PROBLEM IS that this stuff shows up in iTunes’ “Podcasts” directory, not the main music library.  !!!  So I figured out how to fix it:
IF YOU WANT CONCERTS/SONG-OF-THE-DAY DOWNLOADS TO DISPLAY IN YOUR MUSIC LIBRARY, RATHER THAN YOUR PODCAST LIBRARY…

1. First download some stuff or subscribe – in iTunes, go to the iTunes store / podcasts / music / NPR / NPR: Live concerts from All Songs Considered podcast

2. Click “Get episode” for a show you want
3. When download is complete, go to “Library / Podcasts” in left bar of iTunes – change the view to “View as list” – and expand “NPR: Live Concerts…”

4. Right-click (control- or command-click for some Mac users) the concert and click “Convert ID3 tags…” Select v1.0 and click OK.  (This is the critical step; iTunes puts podcasts in the podcasts directory based on tags in the higher versions that don’t exist in v1.0.  So, when we are deleting that part of the tag, and will then be able to re-import to iTunes.)

5. Right-click the concert again and click “delete” – click “remove” from the iTunes library – click “keep file.”

6. File / add to library – navigate to the file (unless you’ve changed how your iTunes keeps your library, it’s under YourLoginName / Music / iTunes / iTunes Music / Podcasts / NPR… – click OK
7. Now it’s in your music library! You’ll probably want to edit the tags so it shows up as an album with the artist’s other stuff. It’s one long track, so you might also think about checking the “Skip while shuffling” option.

I haven’t assembled my thoughts on “No Line On The Horizon” yet, but I did record the audio from U2’s week-long stint on The Late Show with David Letterman these past five days.  They played:

Monday – “Breathe”

Tuesday – “Magnificent”

Wednesday – “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”

Thursday – “Beautiful Day”

Friday – “Get On Your Boots”

Anyone who would like a link to all five mp3s can leave their email address in the comments (Example: howie (at) theinternet (dot) come – this format will help prevent robots from picking up and spamming your addy); I’ll email out a .ZIP via YouSendIt a week from today.  They are 192 kb; I recorded the audio (sadly) not from cable TV but from the digital broadcast signal, so they’re not the cleanest ever, but if you’re either 1) a U2 fan or 2) interested enough to request the files, you won’t care.  They sound alright.

Mostly, I’m always interested to hear how the band performs the songs live, without all the studio overdubbing and mixing tricks they have increasingly relied on.  I tend to like the live arrangements better. -h

The AV Club’s Nathan Rabin praising mediocrity:

… As I get older I increasingly realize why people watch movies they know will not be any damned good. Great art generally challenges audiences. It makes demands. It upsets and provokes and confronts injustices we often would rather not contemplate after a long day at work. That is why I sometimes find myself thinking, “You know I’m in the mood for? A mediocre movie. Something’s not too good, not too bad but safely and comfortably somewhere smack dab in the middle.

-“In Praise of Mediocrity“

Does this generalize to music?

Nathan doesn’t apply it to television in his experience, but does to books.  “There’s something lulling and soothing about genre mediocrities, movies that immerse us in the comforting, familiar realm of clichés and conventions,” he writes.

It seems to me that some – more than half? – people listen intentionally to mediocre music, either by seeking it out (avoiding challenging music) or by accepting standards that tend reward mediocrity (FM radio play, top sales chart positions, etc.) as their arbiters of music-judgment.

My iPod has taught me that I prefer a higher ratio of weird/awesome to mediocre music than I would have expected.  I’m downgrading artists I thought I really loved when they come up on shuffle (John Vanderslice except “Cellar Door,” nondescript punk music, virtually every singer-songwriter in my catalog) and assigning higher rankings to stuff that has a touch of the avant-garde or quirky about it (Squarepusher, The Mars Volta, Amandala! (soundtrack)).

I’ll cop to enjoying mediocre novels on a regular basis, along with a consistent-but-lower-than-expected amound of mediocre music in my library.  Movies and TV, I’d much rather see something good.  -h

A tiny post by Robin Hanson from Overcoming Bias, quoted in its entirety:

In the art world something is “edgy” if it might well shock ordinary folks, but of course not in-the-know folks. The idea seems to be that ordinary folks are shocked too easily by things that should not really be shocking.

The opposite concept, which I’ll call “anti-edgy”, is of something that does not shock ordinary folks, but should. In the know folks are shocked, but most others are not. Why does the world of art and fashion emphasize the edgy so much more than the anti-edgy?

Robin crystallizes an idea I’ve pondered in fuzzy-form for as long as I’ve been writing songs; how is it that I can find my stuff pretty weird (h&s’ “near and far”) and others find it pleasant background music?  How did we manage throw classic rock guitars and cheesy keyboard drums together (Sally M/S Ride’s “It’s A Trap”) to nary a “meh…”?Maybe we’re anti-edgy?  Shocking only to those (musicians, mostly) who have the ears to parse out what’s going on?

Even if we’re not, anti-edgy is something I aim for.  Music that functions well enough on the surface to get a person into it (whether that’s through rocking out, or catchiness, etc.) but will warp your mind a bit if you start taking it apart.

You know, like Chicago.  Or Mastodon :-)

-h

Matt and Drew came up yesterday to set up drums for Fifty Bears in a Fight recordings.  We’re not sure if we’re making a rough demo in order to get some local shows, or our first record.  Or anything in-between.

The drums sound great, though.  We’re going with a minimal mic setup – kick, snare, overhead – augmented by Matt’s MIDI triggers.  Not sure what it will sound like when it’s all done, but we want to have options.

Matt and I are going to record rhythm tracks live, then I will record my guitar/bass synth direct and re-amp later.  For the most part vocals will come next, and Drew last, covering everything in a layer of weird shredding and noise.

No timeline, of course! -h

New music for the next two weeks; Arturo Got The Shaft’s acoustic b-side “Blame It On The Beer” on Furious Instance next week, and the re-release of The Golden Age’s “Calla Lily” EP following! -h

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Cory and I had an email conversation about our writing processes this week, excerpts below.  It started when I told him I’d written a couple new tunes in past weeks.

To: corykibler@trivialpursuitfan.com
From: howie@laundry.org
… I was pretty on edge a couple months ago.  I’m a lot better now; only looking back can I see how edgy I probably was.  Starting to write new music again is the final sign of being healthy.  I’ve never been able to write out of suffering/angst/etc.  I write out of an abundance of energy…  sometimes writing about painful/angsty things, but only after the fact, you know?  In real time, I’m too tired to write anything worthwhile.

When do you write your breakup songs and stuff?  Right then, or later?

I put our old coffeehouse show on the ipod.  I had forgotten the hilarious cover, with the literal coffee-house and our balloon heads with our initials for noses and tucci winking.

-h
To: howie@laundry.org
From: corykibler@trivialpursuitfan.com

… I never pick up the guitar unless I’m feeling pretty content.  If I were stressed/pissed/etc., playing guitar wouldn’t be fun for me.  Usually I’m doing pretty well when I go through a chord/melody-writing burst.

Lyrics, on the other hand, are usually written when someone or something in my life is just bugging the shit out of me; it’s a really good way for me to complain without complaining to any one person, because it wears people down, but it’s necessary sometimes.  And when I write a song regarding something or someone that’s bothering me, I can take my time and write in such a way that it’s kind of hard to tell, so it’s never like, “Oh, Howie: you came and you pissed in my gravy, then you kicked it away!” or whatever. I can make it a vague, poetic thing, so it’s not straight-up explicit bitching : )

Once in a while, I’ll write a song about something totally awesome, but it’s hard for me to make that interesting.  Darker/sadder stuff is just easier for me.  Not that I’m a dark/sad guy, but it’s the stuff that’s obvious to write about.  And it does make me feel a lot better when I write lyrics to a song like “Nature vs. Nurture,” because I’m saying it exactly how it needs to be said, and I feel better for being honest.

You need to get me a jpeg of that coffee-house album cover!  -Uncle Corky

To: corykibler@trivialpursuitfan.com
From: howie@laundry.org
… thanks for sharing about your process!  can i blog parts of this conversation?

i need to scan the Golden Age covers, so i’ll do coffeehouse while i’m at it!  (snap, if i can find the original disc!  all my CDs are in milk crates now!)

-h

I’ve had the pleasure of mastering the last two discs for Lincoln, NE’s own Killigans: “One Step Ahead of Hell” and their new “Live at the Zoo Bar.”  They play melodic, beer-soaked, story-telling Irish-immigrant punk rock and there’s no one quite like ’em.
The Journal-Star’s Ground Zero entertainment section had this to say about “Live;” hat tip to Chris for sending it along.