As many of you probably noticed, YouTube’s music page has been overhauled, and a key feature has been added: a recommendation engine for music videos based both on your settings, preferences and these clips that your friends are sharing.
In practice, this turns YouTube into a tool for discovery that makes me think a lot of the days in which MTV actually played music.
Such a move was long due in the face of competing services such as The Hype Machine and Pandora, and it was somehow announced just a couple of weeks ago with the release of LeanBack (a service for discovering videos based on what your friends are watching). Continue reading →
Well, this is quite surprising and also immensely fulfilling. “Once” has been put on display at the Uruguayan National Library, and prominently put on display at that. I have no words to thank the person who put it there. I am deeply indebted.
These are some of the pictures that I took. I specially love the ones in which you can read the inventory code that has been added to the book now.
Education is the true cornerstone of any society, but that doesn’t mean that educators have all the advantages they should have for doing their jobs as thoroughly as they need to. There are many parts of the world in which the remuneration they receive is out of proportion with the task they have to undertake. They can’t really afford to create materials for their students that go beyond a certain point of refinement.
SoundzAbound is a resource that solves that problem to some extent. It’s a library of music, audio themes and sound samples that can be used at no cost – provided the uses these are put to are always educational ones.
In this way, educators can create powerpoint presentations, podcasts and audio guides in a more confident (and certainly richer) way. Continue reading →
"Baby", The First Single From Justin Bieber's "My World 2.0" Has Become The Most Viewed Music Video Ever On The Internet
Just when you thought that nobody could displace Lady Gaga from her high throne and top the successes of the internet artist par excellence, along comes Justin Bieber and grabs the distinction of having the most watched online music video ever. I guess the app for keeping Bieber out of the Internet wasn’t that effective after all.
The song that has achieved that marvelous feat is no other than “Baby” (where Justin is accompanied by rapper Ludacris). Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” now lags slightly behind. I have embedded the video below. Proceed at your own discretion.
This is the second half of the review; make sure to read the introduction before going on.
As good as “One Horse Town” is, the song is a lone exponent of loud music within the two records that make up “Blue Moves”. “Tonight” gives you an exact idea of the kind of compositions that define the disc, and it markedly highlights the somberness I mentioned in the first part of the review. It is not that Elton did never cut something somber before – “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” dealt with its fair share of touchy issues. But the instrumentation steered everything into a more joyous destination. The opposite can be said about “Blue Moves”.
And maybe one of the clearest examples of the contrast between the two double albums (they have to be contrasted – they were the only Elton ever issued) is found in the eulogies that are featured. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” had “Candle In The Wind”, and “Blue Moves” had “Cage The Songbird”. “Candle In The Wind” was for Marilyn Monroe. “Cage The Songbird” was for Edith Piaf. The first was lush and elegant instrumentally, the second was contrite and subdued, and were it not for Graham Cosby and Steve Nash’s harmonies it would even have been drab. Of course, “Candle In The Wind” was a lyric Elton had not a lot to refer to, not especially when placed against something like“Cage The Songbird”. The song dealt with Marilyn Monroe, and it focused on the price paid by those enslaved by showbiz. The perspective was 100 % Bernie, and if it had something to do with Elton, it had to do with the outward image he projected, and how the media used that persona to fabricate what it wished. “Cage The Songbird”, on the other hand, dealt with the passing of a master songstress. It wasn’t that difficult for Elton to get introspective at all.
Crosby and Nash also sing backup on “The Wide-Eyed And Laughing”, the one true curveball of the whole album, and a clear standout track both for Caleb and Davey. They play 12-string guitar and sitar respectively, laying the foundation for a Eastern-derived song which reminds us of the willingness to experiment that was at the core of everything that Elton did during his classic years. That was sadly being displaced further and further until it was too late to put in back into position.
And two tracks are graced by the Beach Boys singing backup, too, and much like “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” on “Caribou” these songs were to be refined and defined by their contributions. They are “Chameleon” (a song that was actually offered to them by Elton; they turned it down but agreed to sing on his own version of the song), and “Someone’s Final Song” , a valedictory tune where Bernie sounds jaded like never before – he was actually going to take a few years off after “Blue Moves”. The harmonized coda puts a fine (if utterly eerie) point to it all. Continue reading →
"Blue Moves" (1976) Was One Of The Moodiest Albums Of Elton John's Career, And Something Entirely Removed From "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (The Only Other Double Album He Ever Issued)
When being interviewed in 1991, Elton John remarked that he had not released a good album ever since 1976’s “Blue Moves”. He also termed it an album where he did absolutely what he wanted to do. He went to say that he wasn’t really thinking about pleasing anybody but himself, to come up with a record that he would like to listen afterwards. That might go some way into explaining why the double album yielded virtually no hit singles (“Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” was the lone exception, peaking at #6) and why it would take time for “Blue Moves” to grew into stature until it became one of his most respected works among critics and fans alike.
Certainly, if we were to compare “Blue Moves” with the only other double album Elton issued in his career (1973’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”) the difference is entirely apparent. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was an album for everybody, or (rather) an album where Elton performed in ways everybody was sure to appreciate. It was to become his most representative work to the public at large, and a true embodiment of every facet that defined his classic years. It was pop music at his best, and the way in which he approached issues like mortality and transience (“Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”, “Candle In The Wind”…) did attenuate the gravity at play. If anything, the music was so full of life that he could sing about just anything (“Social Disease”) and get away with it. A truly negative connotation could only surface if you looked for it, and if you looked for it in an extensive way at that.
On the contrary, “Blue Moves” was an album in which you could read negativity at every turn. Because it was an album where Elton clearly spoke to himself. There are fewer examples of John’s music sounding this introspective. And when it did, Elton was singing about a character (“Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy”). Here, you listen to him in the most direct and unstripped setting. No wonder “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was critically acclaimed from the beginning, and “Blue Moves” could only be appreciated in retrospective. Continue reading →
The Way You Should Hold An iPhone 4 In Order To Avoid Antenna Problems. Either That, Or Get A Case.
Many touted the release of the iPhone 4 as one of the events of the year. It turned out they were right – the amount of press we have seen over the last month was unprecedented, but for all the wrong reasons. The iPhone 4 proved not to work if held in a certain position, and that made things tricky for right-handed people, and downright impossible for left-handed ones.
Reports began springing up incessantly until Dave Letterman himself did a parody of the whole situation, and a consumer report advised people to buy an iPhone 3GS instead. At that point, Apple swung into action fast. Earlier today they held a conference in which Steve Jobs acknowledged that the problems existed, and that customers were to receive a free case that prevents the problem of blocking the antenna from happening.
But before the announcement was made, Internet performer Jonathan Mann (known for recording and releasing one song a day) had time to write a song about the whole antenna fiasco and post the video for all to see on his site. It is named “The iPhone Antenna Song”. Will it go down in history as the official soundtrack to antennagate? Judge it for yourself:
The First Album That Anthologized Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' Work, "Greatest Hits" (1993) Will Always Remain An Excellent Introduction To Their Music On The Whole. One Of The "New" Tracks ("Mary Jane's Last Dance") Was To Became A True Staple In Its Own Right.
Tom Petty’s very first retrospective, “Greatest Hits” (1993) would become one of his best-selling albums ever. It included all the seminal tracks he recorded both with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. These include “American Girl” and “Breakdown” from the debut, the four best tracks from the breakthrough album “Damn The Torpedoes” (Refugee”, “Here Comes My Girl”, “Even The Losers” and the ultra-successful “Don’t Do Me Like That” – is it me, or it has been slightly remixed?) and the sole hit from “Southern Accents”, “Don’t Come Around Here No More”. It also has two of his best ‘80s tracks in the shape of “The Waiting” and the synth-soaked “You Got Lucky”.
Finally, “Learning To Fly” and “Into The Great Wide Open” come from “Into The Great Wide Open” (1991) and the three best cuts from Petty’s only solo album up to that point (“Full Moon Fever”, 1989) are featured (“I Won’t Back Down”, “Running Down A Dream” and the dizzying “Free Falling”). Continue reading →
As most of you probably know, Lena Meyer-Landrut is the winner of the latest Eurovision contest. The German singer clearly outperformed the competition during the 55th incarnation of the popular song contest in Oslo.
For those of you who are new to her, and for the ones who just want to relive Lena’s crowning moment here you have the video of her performing “Satellite” at the contest.
By now, you probably have your favorite sites for finding independent talent. Maybe you resort to this one, or maybe you have bookmarked some other website that serves that purpose. There are enough of these spread all over the WWW to keep everybody happy. And you can argue whether or not the one I am reviewing now is indeed “the best way to discover indie bands” as I say in the title. But I frankly don’t think there is one which is as easy to get to grips with as Mixest. When you land on its homepage a clip will start playing automatically for you to enjoy. When that song finishes, another will begin playing. And so on. You aren’t required to input anything or hit a single key if you don’t want to. You can head straight to the site and leave it open as you go your merry way. When (and if) something that has you tapping your feet and/or banging your head starts playing it is a mere matter of clicking on the window again to see who it is, and make a mental note.
But the best parts of the whole service are unearthed only when you are willing to interact a little with the service, of course. You can favorite each single track that you like, and you can even use a “Block” button in order to prevent someone who is as tuneful as The Vibrators ever coming through again.
In order to favorite anything you must first create your own account. That costs nothing – just pick a username and a password and you will become a Mixest user as quickly and sure as night follows day. From then on, you will be ready to start building a library of indie artists of its very own.
