Sleep Spent

I have been to several concerts lately:

Kings of Convenience played at the beginning of the month. This show was GREAT. The opener was Feist, and this was her first show in the States (she’s from Canada by way of Europe). She had interesting lyrics and was doing the vocals-and-electric-guitar-with-tape-loops-sometimes thing. While I much preferred Howie Day’s use of tape loops, I liked Feist’s singing quite a bit and her bare bones sound was really good. Then the Kings themselves came on and kicked some ass, in their sweetly melodic way. I stuck around after the show and got them to sign my poster. I asked Erlend for his pick but he said he needed it and gave me a puzzled look. shrugs Oh, well. :-)

We Are Scientists played on Tuesday. THAT was a cool set. They’re really nice guys. I only got the chance to hang out with them a little bit because the band they were renting a van with wanted to leave. They said they’d be back in town soon, though. Two interesting tidbits: they signed to Virgin on Monday and they’re licensing their entire back catalog (they have a new album coming out) to Sony music to use for an Avril Lavigne-type chick Sony wants to manufacture.

I don’t know how I feel about that, but I certainly wish them the best of luck.

And then on Wednesday I went to see The Decemberists. (Sidenote: I just discovered that their namesake is a group of Russian revolutionaries.) They played a bunch of songs from their new album, Picaresque, which I hadn’t heard before then. Needless to say, the songs were exceptional and one of them is the current Song of the Week. The opener here was Okkervil River, pronounced “AWK-er-ville.” They had more of a country twang than I normally like, but they had a couple really good songs. The singer could try a lot harder to stay on key. :-/ The upside: their merch guy was trés cute!

Stars on Saturday! Feist opens.

I knew it had to happen eventually, but it’s still sad. Death Cab has signed to Atlantic.

When their music started being used on “The O.C.”, it was pretty clear where this was going.

DAMMIT.

Man oh man, was that show ever awesome! I saw Death Cab tonight at the Fillmore in SF. [UPDATE: It was the Warfield.] They were touring with Pretty Girls Make Graves, who I didn’t know much about. Jason sent me a link to some MP3s before the show, which I enjoyed. But I still wasn’t sure what I was in for.

PGMG was quite good. I particularly liked their drummer. The drumming in any given song was not what I was be expecting, and it was really complex. The guitarist was awesome too. Sadly, I didn’t get a PGMG CD. :-(

By popular demand (read: enough with the guilt trips!), I’ve updated my Song of the Week page.

Sorry for the delay. I’ve been otherwise occupied. ;-)

Four new songs of the week, my backlog from this last month.

Go! Enjoy!

WOW.

I saw Glen tonight with Nickel Creek and John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame) and the drummer from Los Lobos.

What a fantastic show!

I even bought the album after Glen refused to take a $20 with the understanding that I’d burn a copy of the CD Jason bought. He said he couldn’t accept the money because there were songwriters credited on the album (like Randy Newman) that wouldn’t get paid otherwise. Understandable; so I bought the record. My first major label transgression since my boycott began. But at least I bought the CD at a show --- maybe they’ll get some more out of it from that. shrugs

Did I mention how great the show was?!? They covered “Tax Man” and “La Lune” and “Going to California” and “Gallows Pole.” And they played “All I Want” and “Dam Would Break,” the latter of which was one of my first Toad favorites. And of course they played “Let It Fall,” which is still, I think, my favorite Glen/Creek collaboration.

The best thing about these guys is you could tell just how much FUN they were having! Glen jumped off the drum platform and fell down; everyone laughed really hard. Chris Thile, Nickel Creek’s mandolin player went crazy on nearly every song---he’s a ton of fun to watch. He had a whole almost-rap set of alternate lyrics in the middle of “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night” that were impressive for their speed. And Sarah, the violinist, played a really funny song on what I think was a ukulele about this boy Anthony who was running away from her because she’d professed her undying love to him. The best part about that song was that it was just her, the ukulele, and John Paul Jones, Glen and Chris singing harmonies.

Brilliant!

So, yeah. Somehow I’m going to have to sleep now. g But I have this CD and a singles sampler they were handing out at the show to listen to tomorrow. PLUS the new Atticus Finch CD Everywhen came in the mail today, so I’m gonna be all over that tomorrow.

Times are good, and I’ll have a new song of the week or two up before Monday. :-)

So I called Hurricane and they helped me out to the tune of over a grand. (Great people over there.) The total I’ll be paying will come to something like $250---a much more manageable sum.

I haven’t been completely soured on the Song of the Week idea. In looking at the traffic patterns, I discovered that several things contributed to the explosion of traffic. One was the Internet Explorer factor, which I examined at length in a previous entry. But even more important was the fact that I was hosting two or three songs that many people wanted to hear, and hosting them for considerable periods of time. The fact that people downloaded them repetitively didn’t help matters, but the fact remains that if I hadn’t been hosting several highly popular songs, the overrun wouldn’t have happened, or would have been much more modest.

With that in mind, I’m bringing the Song of the Week back. The next song is now up, and it’s really, really good. :-)

I’m also taking everything I had been hosting down. I won’t be leaving things up for longer than four weeks. And I’m going to see if I can’t write some software to cut off repeated downloads from the same IP. (That won’t be happening too quickly, though. I’ll be keeping an eye on monthly bandwidth in the meantime.)

So there you have it. Enjoy... but not too much, m’kay?

This being one of my last days on the Cal Poly campus, I decided to stop by KCPR during my friend Eric’s show and rip a few CDs. I grabbed:

• Matt Pond PA --- Emblems
• Iron and Wine --- Our Endless Numbered Days
• Modest Mouse --- Good News For People Who Love Bad News
• Owen --- The EP
• Thermals --- Fuckin’ A
• Sunny Day Real Estate --- Diary

I am very pleased with the Iron and Wine and Matt Pond PA full-lengths. The former keeps the great vocals and quiet songs that I loved about I&W’s previous releases and yet manages to be more addictive, hook-wise. The production is certainly cleaner, and it works just great. The latter has a disproportionate number of songs about young people making out/sharing a summer fling, but that only serves to makes it the perfect summer record. (Said songs are top drawer, too.)

And as I was writing that, I took a listen to Good News, which I’m pleased to report has some real standout songs as well. “Float On” and “The World At Large” are particularly great --- so great, in fact, I haven’t gotten all that much further into the CD. Sadly, it was released on a major label, so I won’t be buying it. :-(

OK, so call me a follower, but after the recent Wired article about shuffle play in MP3 software and iPods, I started thinking. There were a bunch of great ideas on a linked page, so I’ve put some of them to use. Now, a lot of them will require more meta data than I currently have (ratings, for example, or ubiquitous date stamps). Even so, I’ve been having a grand time with nothing more than the play count meta data.

Since Friday, I’ve been working on an Unplayed playlist. It’s great; guaranteed new music! I have a lot of fantastic stuff I never hear, and what better way to find out about it? I’m down to 2805 songs right now, or 7.6 days of music.

At this rate it won’t last long. :-)

Oh, yeah, and this is post #100. Woohooo!

Two days ago on my way to work, I was really happy. I was rocking out to a song on the radio and drumming on my steering wheel. (Not drumsteering, mind you, as I was at a red light.) I realized I was being a little more obvious about it than I usually am, but I was still surprised when the people in the car in front of me exchanged some words and then the passenger brought down her visor mirror to take a look!

I smiled at her. :-) Share the love, I say!