NEWS

---

Cracking the musical wha?

So, I'm playing with this new music service, Pandora. It's back end is powered by the "Music Genome" project which has "cracked the code" of music. They claim that if you feed them some bands you like, they'll feed you new bands to discover.

So I fed them the Birthday Party.

They fed me Iggy Pop, the Minutemen, an early Cure song. Naked Raygun. Then it started going to Perl Jam and "Smells like Teen Spirit." Them's some deep cuts.

I tried the Cramps.

They returned Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, Jim Carroll. Which is funny, because the Pandora FAQ page says:

It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

And I'd say rather than a particular sound, really lanky strung-out frontmen who lived in NYC in the late 70s are what tie those acts together. Then Pandora played me Nirvana. A decent garage band called Hookers. Then some more solo Iggy. 8 Eyed Spy next- that version of "Run Through the Jungle". But I've already heard enough lo-fi Lydia Lunch outtakes for this lifetime. Dinosaur Jr., Pixies, Interpol.

The Cramps aren't too far off from the Birthday Party, so I tried Ladytron.

They fed me the Fall, Ryan Adams. Hunh? Then Ladytron's "Oops, Oh My" cover. That's pretty cool, but not really a stretch. Then...Interpol.

They need computers with vast statistical and audio analysis capabilities to do this? I'm pretty sure I could make a flow chart for them.

Now the player is telling me that their license doesn't allow me to skip more than a certain number of songs per hour.

posted by bendy @ 8/30/2005 12:21:00 PM [permanent link]

to top everything off, there's the 16 year old descriptions of the music. i tried flipper and was told that i'd be hearing music with "punk roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, vocal-centric style, and extensive vamping." and then it played, um, flipper. thanks, guys! i hope the "music genome project" came direct from DARPA. it's a great use of funds.

i think the absolute worst, after enduring g.g. allin (imaginative!) was that they *misidentified* the author of "don't stand in line," a song by that crappy ian mackaye wax trax band, pailhead. they said it was by ministry. what the fuck's the point?

said dick umbrage, at 8/31/2005  

I read that Pandora works better if you feed it individual songs. So I fed it "Some Velvet Morning." Pandora didn't know about the orginal version. So I went with Ladytron's cover.

This got really amusing.

There were a few more electro bands. Then it kept alternating Ladytron and Atom and His Package.

Well, come to think of it. Atom and Ladytron both have synths and guitars. I love 'em both. But they're about as closely related in feel and mood as Isabella Rosallini and Ricky Gervais are as actors.

Then they found me another band with tinny synths and crunchy guitars: Loverboy.

said bendy, at 8/31/2005  

I hate Interpol. You'd do just as well looking at "related artists" on Amazon or All Music. Of course, that's not the point.

said tanya, at 9/09/2005  

Post a Comment

---

Spaz is the new heavy

As synths have crept back into loud music the last few years, they've injected hard sounds with texture they are best at: spazzy. Devo were the forefathers this mood of course, and listening to them in retrospect, they're as much a guitar band as a keyboard band. Bands like the Polysics have brought the big uptight back. Here's some others that follow in that mode.

The Planet The - You Absorb My Vision
DraculaZombieUSA - Bear Island
Breaker Breaker - Do Right, Do Wrong
Pterodactyl - Chicken Bicuit
The Mai Shi - You Can't do that to an Axe

posted by bendy @ 8/27/2005 09:32:00 AM [permanent link]

Post a Comment

---

Next Show: Troika Music Festival, Aug. 24

Blackstrap will be playing the Troika Music Festival on Wednesday, August 24th at Kings in Raleigh. We're on at 9:25, and a bunch of other fine acts are on the bill:

• 7:45 Sold - track: Fool Karma


• 8:35 Lud - track: Super Mind Oil (ogg vorbis)


• 9:25 Blackstrap
  


• 10:15 Port Huron Statement - myspace page with sample songs
  


• 11:05 Spader - myspace page with sample songs
  


• 11:55 Art Lord and the Self Portraits - track: Skeleton
  

And we'll be hawking a new, seven song version of our Media Slut EP, which now include the track "Home Security."

posted by bendy @ 8/19/2005 06:29:00 AM [permanent link]

Hey, who is going to play bass for you losers at the Troika?

said Anonymous, at 8/19/2005  

Our gaping low-end hole will be filled this performance by Dan from Destroyed By Kittens.

said bendy, at 8/19/2005  

I'm looking forward to my royalty payments for the new version of the EP.

said PG, at 8/23/2005  

Royalties: so far Stan, the lable rep, says we haven't covered our advance. Damn! Why did we let him talk us into having Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk burn those cds for us?

said bendy, at 8/23/2005  

But, I'm pretty sure that all 12 people who bought the orginal issuing of "Media Slut" will want a copy of the extended mix! Or did they all sell them to Nice Price Books? Actual price of used copy of Media Slut as obsevered at Nice Price in Durham: $7.95. Actual price of new copy of Media Slut at 307 Knox: $6 (including shipping).

At the very least, I'll be looking forward to my monthly accounting statements.

said PG, at 8/23/2005  

Post a Comment

---

Animal Time - Chap-Stick for punks

The Chapman stick is, perhaps, the most nerdy of rock instruments. This gallery of notable players looks like a monument to mid-life male celibacy. It's a guitarish thing that has some bass strings, and works on the principle of string tapping- the technique brought to the masses by Eddie Van Halen and Stanley Clarke, and the reason most guitar solos in mainstream rock sounded like turkey gobbles during the Reagan/Bush years. During the mid-Eighties heyday of hardcore, string tapping was the most unpunk thing a guitarist could do. And even as underground rock got more metallic toward the end of the decade, the emerging guitar heroes of grunge didn't do much tapping- those gobbledy gobbledy sounds get lost if you lay on the fuzz, anyways.

So if the Chap-stick is so unpunk, what could be more punk than a mid-Eighties duo that was Chapman Stick and singing drummer. Animal Time was just that. The music is fast, thrash-fast in places, other times more textured like the Wipers. The lyrics are bitter and nerdy, but nerdy in a way that suggest that Atom and His Package might taken some influence from them. Not bad for a stick band, pioneering even.

I know very little about Animal Time. This stick site doesn't mention them. But they were real popular among the deejays at WRCT in 1986, when the record came out. One of those deejays went on to form the band Wimp Factor 14, who had oddball instrumentation and similarly witty lyrics. I played Animal Time on WXDU a few years ago, and an Internet listener wrote in who remembered them. I think the listener was from upstate New York. But Mr. Horribly-Charred-Infant from the Happy Flowers remembers Animal Time as being from Georgia.

Animal Time - I Was Only Trying to Help
Animal Time - Insecure Girl

posted by bendy @ 8/15/2005 12:05:00 AM [permanent link]

happy flowers played cat's cradle in 2000?!? did you go????

said dickumbrage, at 8/17/2005  

I never saw Happy Flowers live. I did do a radio station review a Happy Flowers album that was just a childlike drawing of smiling stickfigures with turntables. Got shit for that from some djs. But there's not a lot you can actually write about there music, anyways.

said bendy, at 8/17/2005  

Post a Comment

---

Does any song need to be longer than 10 seconds?

Now this is a clever mashup- just the opening riffs and hooks from dozens and dozens of songs, flowing from one to the other. It's like a tour of every earworm that's ever burrowed its way into your skull.

Osymyso.com - Intro Introspection

posted by bendy @ 8/08/2005 01:53:00 PM [permanent link]

Post a Comment