Angel without the twist, please

I was in love with LeAnn Rimes even before the recent makeover that shows off her physical maturity and taste in lingerie. Unfortunately, while I appreciate the eye candy, what I love is her talent, and her new album Twisted Angel doesn’t make much use of it. The songs aren’t wretched, exactly, they’re just blah. It’s like an hour spent listening to the previews for next week’s WB shows.

In fact, I expect to hear several of these tunes on Smallville soon. Perhaps Life goes on the next time Chloe is pining for Clark, or The safest place when Lana has to be rescued from a blizzard, Suddenly for the big graduation day. The title track can turn up when Lex goes cruising for brunettes in Metropolis in his latest sports car.

Of course, the woman he finds will turn out to be the Disposable Kryptonite Mutant of the Week, but he’s getting better at dealing with that.

Fun with iTunes Music Store

The LXG soundtrack sounded promising enough that I decided to support the iMS exclusive release of it. There was some other stuff sitting in my shopping cart, so I bought it all, synced the iPod, and drove to work.

You wouldn’t think that LXG, Dean Martin, Liz Phair, John Philip Sousa, and Ray Brown would make a good driving mix, but it worked.

Annoying habits

/dev/audio: Breathless, The Corrs

Next to my casually-held belief that Bush actually won the election — something that I’ve thought of as a dead issue for quite a while now (and hooboy, how wrong I was!) — I think my worst habit is a certain selective deafness when it comes to music.

No, not the part about listening to utter crap, although I do that, too. See the song mentioned above? It’s been playing on repeat for more than six hours today. Just the one song.

I didn’t notice. It’s a nice song, but is it that good? No, it just falls into that category of music that fills the background pleasantly without ever attracting my attention.

I have a large collection of such songs, although obviously I could get by with one or two. This repetition isn’t usually a problem, since I live alone, but I’ve heard some grumbling when it happens at the office, and it was once taken as a planned insult by my college roommate’s live-in girlfriend. She simply couldn’t believe that someone could play Debbie Gibson’s Out of the Blue album for seven hours straight without noticing, and she was sure I knew that she hated it.

The funny thing was that I hadn’t realized she was in the apartment in the first place.

Online music done right

Just for amusement, a list of the albums and songs I’ve purchased from the iTunes Music Store since it went online.

Complete albums:

1. A Wonderful World, Tony Bennett & k.d. lang
2. Jazz Cello, Ray Brown
3. The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years, Ray Charles
4. In Blue, The Corrs
5. Count Basie’s Finest Hour, Count Basie
6. Getz for Lovers, Stan Getz
7. Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio, Stan Getz
8. Best of Al Jarreau, Al Jarreau
9. B.B. King: Anthology, B.B. King
10. Late at Night with Dean Martin, Dean Martin
11. The Best of the Moody Blues, The Moody Blues
12. Confirmation: The Best of the Verve Years, Charlie Parker
13. Blues Etude, Oscar Peterson
14. Tracks, Oscar Peterson
15. We Get Requests, Oscar Peterson Trio
16. With Respect to Nat, Oscar Peterson Trio
17. Oscar Peterson: Stéphane Grappelli Quartet, Vol. 1, Oscar Peterson & Stéphane Grappelli
18. Liz Phair, Liz Phair
19. The Dynamic Duo, Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery
20. Great American Marches I, John Philip Sousa
21. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Trevor Jones & The London Symphony Orchestra

Individual Songs:

1. You’ve Made Me so Very Happy, Blood, Sweat & Tears
2. Do You Wanna Hold Me?, Bow Wow Wow
3. Takin’ It to the Streets, The Doobie Brothers
4. What a Fool Believes, The Doobie Brothers
5. Radar Love, Golden Earring
6. The Day Basketball Was Saved, Jackson 5
7. I Think It’s Love, Jermaine Jackson
8. Laura, Billy Joel
9. Beth, Kiss
10. Detroit Rock City, Kiss
11. King of the Night Time World, Kiss
12. Shout It Out Loud, Kiss
13. Head to Toe, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam
14. Insanity, Liz Phair
15. Don’t Stand so Close to Me, The Police
16. Every Morning, Sugar Ray
17. Macho Man, Village People

Who thought this was a good idea?

I like Dean Martin. I picked up one of his albums on the iTunes Music Store recently, and I’m glad to see that Capitol Records is actively promoting him once again. But what eagle-eyed halfwit thought that “light gray on white” was an appropriate color scheme for body text, especially at a size as small as 9px?

I apologize in advance to anyone who follows that link. Especially anyone old enough to remember Dino.

More from the iTunes Music Store

The only thing that keeps me from spending even more money than I already have at iTMS is the limited selection. Broad but not deep, that is. Some recent artists that I like aren’t listed at all, while some old favorites have just a fraction of their catalog online. And then there are the ones who were never on a major label, or who have renounced their sinful past (warning: the Flash in this site ground my browser into the dust).

Anyway, here’s what I’ve bought recently.

iTMS takes me back

Okay, my iTunes Music Store purchases are getting a bit silly now:

Keep the day job, Hilary

Just in case anyone was wondering, her debut album provides no evidence that Hilary Duff can sing, or even that she has a voice to sing with. Generically slick production combines with blandly stupid lyrics and the most obvious electronic voice modification since Cher’s last hit, resulting in an album so forgettable that you’ll wonder what you’ve just thrown into the trash.

Fortunately she’s one of the most beautiful young women I’ve ever seen, because I think she’s the least convincing pop-tart in the business. And I like pop-tart music.

Curiously, the album photos, like many recent pictures of her, play down the fresh-faced beauty and open charm that made her a Disney Princess. I suppose they’re trying to separate Hilary-the-singer from Hilary-the-actress.

Makes sense, since only one of them has a future.

iTMS weekly reports

No, I didn’t buy another big batch of music from the iTunes Music Store yet, although I probably will soon, to stock up the iPod for my next road trip to Las Vegas. I have been keeping an eye on the store, though, and after corresponding with Brian Tiemann, I decided to investigate an oddity we’d both noticed: the week-by-week “Just Added” report ain’t no such thing.

Apple Jazz

Herbie Hancock, on Apple.

Herbie Hancock, in the iTunes Music Store.

The interview is interesting reading (“I was using it [OS X] before other musicians were using it.” and “I hate OS 9 (laughter). I hate going back to that.”), but what I really like is the commentary on the “celebrity playlist.” Sheryl Crow has a bland paragraph that was probably written by her publicist, but Hancock explains in detail why each of the tracks is interesting and significant (sometimes to him, sometimes to the world). Note to Apple: Hancock’s commentary sells, Crow’s doesn’t.

[and if you’re a Windows user who hasn’t installed iTunes yet, Great Googlimoogli, what are you waiting for? It’s not as fast as it is on a Mac, but all of the features are there, including Rendezvous music sharing.]

Update: After purchasing Hancock’s picks, I’d say that I like everything except Missy Elliot’s Slide. Miles Davis’ 27-minute Bitches Brew starts off rather … “non-musical” … for my tastes, but picks up several minutes in. Elliot I just don’t get; Hancock sees something in her music that separates it from typical posturing {c,}rap, but all I hear is the surface, and it’s so grating that I can’t get past it to look for what he found. Obviously I won’t be buying her recommended playlist.

Audiobook, meet mix cd

I think this may be the most entertaining change in the iTunes Music Store: the full integration of audiobooks gives you Music To Listen To Ann Coulter By.

Altec Lansing inMotion

I’d love to supply a link to this extremely cool iPod accessory, except that the manufacturer doesn’t list it on their web site, and Apple’s online store generates nonsensical URLs that don’t share well.

Instead, imagine a white plastic brick, about the size of an O’Reilly book, that opens up into a surprisingly good mini-speaker system that doubles as a fully-functional iPod docking station. It’s quite loud for a system with only 2 watts/channel, and distortion is well-controlled at reasonable volumes. It’s compatible with older iPods and other devices through the Aux port (short cable supplied), which I’m connecting to my PowerBook for a significant sound boost.

They claim up to 24 hours of life on four AA batteries, or you can use the supplied wall-wart to run it on AC.

One question answered…

Latest Apple press release: “With Apple Loops support, future versions of Logic Pro will easily import projects from GarageBand.”

That wipes out about half a dozen common complaints about GarageBand.

GarageBand: adventures in UI design

GarageBand only allows you to have one project open at a time. This is not an obvious or necessary feature of a music program, but at first glance, it’s defensible in the context of Apple’s iLife package. For a bunch of more-or-less free tools designed for light use by non-professionals, allowing multiple documents adds the risk of clutter and confusion (not to mention memory management and engineering effort). iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD all work the same way, right?

Well, no, they don’t. iTunes and iPhoto simply don’t have the concept of multiple projects. Something is either in your library or it isn’t. iMovie and iDVD are single-project-based, but the projects generally have a much larger scope. I’m sure a lot of iMovie users wish they had an iPhoto-like clip library to store their favorite video elements in, but for the most part, few people are going to want to edit more than one movie at a time.

This is not the case for music, especially in an application that encourages experimentation. One of the very first questions I saw on the various GB forums was “how do I make my own reusable loops”. Tied with it was “how do I import MIDI tracks”.

The answer right now is “through painful workarounds.” To make your own loops, you export your performance to iTunes, find the AIFF file on disk, load it into the SoundTrack Loop Editor that’s part of Apple’s free AppleLoops SDK, manually mark it up, drag the tagged file into GB’s loop browser window, and then wait while the complete index of available loops is rebuilt. To import MIDI files, you download two third-party freeware packages and string them together to fool GB into thinking that you’re playing the music on a keyboard.

Even the simple act of cutting and pasting between songs is made difficult by the single-project design. You can do it, but only within the same session, because GB clears its private clipboard on exit. And it exits whenever you close a project. So, if your goal is “copy my cool bass track from RockDude into BluesDude,” the order of operations must be Cut, Open, Paste. Anything else will wipe the clipboard and force you to start over.

Sure, after you’ve done it a few times, you’ll adjust your behavior to match GB’s expectations, but isn’t that precisely the problem that consumer-friendly creative applications are supposed to avoid?

getting MIDI into GarageBand

First pass at a third-party MIDI importer for GB, courtesy of Bery Rinaldo. Much nicer than the previous workaround.

More GarageBand resource usage

I finally got around to testing my piano overload song on my other Mac, a dual 1GHz G4 tower with 768MB of RAM, booted off of a 4200 RPM external FireWire drive. The second CPU more than made up for the slower hard drive and lower memory, allowing me to add four more software pianos than I could use on the PowerBook.

Final total: nine software pianos, five software percussion instruments, a software acoustic bass, and seven sampled loops. I’ll try again when I finish rebuilding the fast internal hard drive, to see if that will let me squeeze in another piano.

Update: Nope, the faster hard drive didn’t make a difference. It looks like CPU and RAM dominate, and dual CPUs make a big difference (as they should).

Update: Past a certain point, more RAM doesn’t make a big difference, either (says the guy who just bumped his PowerBook to 2GB). It looks like 512MB is a good working minimum, and 768MB or so will handle just about anything a G4 or two can keep up with. Above that, you’re basically adding buffer cache to compensate for the speed of your hard drive.

Minor GarageBand update

It’s not on Software Update yet, and it’s not prominently linked on the support site, but GarageBand 1.0.1 was released today.

It looks like they’re just clearing up the performance warning dialog boxes (many of which were either confusing or just plain wrong).

Update: Some folks are reporting other improvements, such as performance of some keyboards. I noticed that the online Help includes some new FAQs (and a working link to the keyboard shortcuts), but nothing else yet. The error dialogs are definitely clearer, though:

Morons with Flash

Happened to stumble across Siobhan Donaghy’s web site. It opened a new window that used Flash to pretend to be a music magazine. I cannot imagine a less useful metaphor for navigating a web site, especially since it is completely unreadable without extensive use of the supplied zoom button and jump-scroll arrows.

It is the stupidest site design I’ve ever seen. Slow to load, hard to read, hard to navigate, effectively impossible to link to or quote from, and actively hostile to large and/or high-resolution displays. It is a remarkable exercise in “polishing a turd.”

It will probably win an award, which the designer will cherish forever and leverage to justify even greater sins.

Moving songs from GarageBand to Logic

Another potentially useful hack for GB: BandToLogic.

iPod mini

I found myself near an Apple Store on Friday afternoon, and saw the line forming for the new iPod mini. I’d been thinking of buying one, using the failure of the wired remote on my existing iPod (poor strain relief) as an excuse. “Hey, it’s like a $40 discount.”

Sadly, the mini doesn’t come with a wired remote, so I had to invent a new excuse. “Now I can leave the 30GB model in the car all the time, and not have to fiddle with cables when I want to go for a walk or get on the cross-trainer.”

Not as compelling a reason, but it does at least include the practical advantages of the mini. Smaller, lighter, much better controls, full compatibility with my existing iTunes library (including playlists and iTMS purchases), and compatibility with most 3G iPod accessories.

Sadly, the accessory I’d most like to use it with, the Belkin Voice Recorder, is not currently supported by the mini’s firmware. Hopefully Apple will fix that soon, since I’d love to take notes while I’m out walking. Dodging traffic seems to stimulate my creativity. :-)

New accessory I’d most like to see: a horizontal version of the clip-on holster it comes with. I’ve got one of these for my cellphone (which is about the same size…), and it’s very nice.

Oh, and by my rough count, there were 150 people waiting in line at the Valley Fair Apple Store at 6pm to buy a mini. There were eight people in line at 4:30pm, which I know because I was number nine. Fortunately I had my other iPod and a large stack of magazines to read.

GarageBand Jam Pack update

A pleasant surprise in Software Update today, a small patch to the GarageBand Jam Pack that adds additional effect presets. It’ll be interesting to see exactly what they’ve done.

There’s also a reliability patch for iDVD, a product I haven’t had a chance to really use yet. Maybe if I get some decent footage of the TI Sirens show on my next trip to Vegas…

GarageBand Is (Not Is)

David Was takes GB out for a spin. Being NPR, the commentary also comes with a different sort of spin, but what can you do?

iEatBrainz: not ready for prime time

The idea is sound: identify music by acoustic fingerprints instead of relying on the clumsy CD-hashing approach used by CDDB, which not only produces a lot of collisions, but relies on the presence of the CD in a compatible drive. The poor quality of the CDDB database is a separate issue, one that MusicBrainz doesn’t obviously solve.

iEatBrainz is a beta Mac client for the MusicBrainz database, and if the results it produces are representative of the fingerprinting technology and current database, it’s not worth my time right now.

For a simple test, I fed it a 97-song playlist out of my iTunes library, consisting of tracks ripped to MP3 and AAC from my CD collection over the past few years.

Move over, Stallman!

I think we’ve just found the perfect singer to cover The Free Software Song in the manner it deserves.

I can’t really say “thank you” to Chuq Von Rospach for linking to this, but I’ll try to get even someday.

iPod mini a victim of its own success

Apparently the worldwide rollout of the iPod mini has been delayed, basically because Hitachi can’t make 4GB MicroDrives fast enough to keep up with demand.

As the pleased owner of one (silver, by the way, and I’d have gone for a nice dark gray if they’d made one), I’m not surprised. People who viewed it as a barely-cheaper iPod with much lower capacity were missing the point; it’s not cannibalizing sales of full-sized iPods, it’s capturing the demographic that wasn’t willing to buy an iPod at all, for various reasons.

And gadget freaks like me, of course. The mini is my third iPod, and I still have the second one, which now lives full-time in the car and makes long drives more pleasant. And I spend a lot of time driving, mostly by choice. When the next round of full-sized iPods comes out, there’s a good chance I’ll buy one of those, too, mostly because Apple supposedly has adopted the mini’s excellent controls to replace the unreliable non-buttons on the 3G iPods.

Note that the success of the mini also means that as soon as the demand is met, Hitachi will be able to flood the market with 4GB MicroDrives, and that’s pretty cool, too.

iTunes Music Recommendation service

This is a new “if you like X, try Y” service set up as a student project at University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana). Does it work better than Goombah? Dunno yet; so far I haven’t been able to get it to work. I can upload my iTunes database, but it fails trying to download recommendations (probably due to being Farked, Slashdotted, BoingBoinged, Lileksed, Instapunted, or some other combination of high-profile links).

I can think of two reasons why it’s a better bet, though: first, it looks like they’re doing the work on the server side, rather than chewing up hours of CPU time on your computer, and second, Goombah hasn’t updated their client or database in months.

Ah, just got through, and discovered one disadvantage to server-side processing:

Your music database is being processed. This window will show your recommendations once they’ve been computed.
Notice: The server is a little backed up, hence the long wait. Once the server gets caught up the wait will be ALOT shorter, until then I would recommend that you don’t hit the resend button.
Your estimated wait for results is 8 hours, 44 minutes, 40 seconds. You may quit and log back in at anytime to check on the status of your recommendations.

And the winners are…

4 days, 19 hours, and 45 minutes after submitting my music database to the in-development iTunes Music Recommendation service, here’s what it came back with:

Gaming the system

Finally downloaded a new set of results from the beta iTunes Music Recommendation system. My previous run was more amusing than useful, but it had potential.

This time? Utter nonsense. Some clowns decided to corrupt the database by uploading garbage. There’s no other reasonable explanation for the results I got, in which the first 32 of 50 tracks recommended all come from albums named “Unreleased” by such famous bands as Syph Clap and the Orgasmic Meatrats, Marc Coulter, z..Marco, and Vital Cry.

If they allow this to continue, in a few months their data might be as unreliable as CDDB.

Update: things have improved, either through database maintenance or, as the creator would have it, the natural consequences of increasing the size of the database. I’m betting on the former, myself. Suddenly all the garbage went away, restoring the results to the quality of my initial run. Much faster now, too, enough to justify spending a little time tinkering with the data to see what happens.

GarageBand 1.1

Mostly bugfixes and minor tweaks. Still need third-party freeware for many import/export tasks.

Update: It’s being reported that 1.1 silently fixed a bug that prevented use of free third-party instruments.

Music quiz

In the service of Sheila A-Stray’s Redheaded Ramblings, I once again assert my Internet Lemminghood.

1. Your favorite song with the name of a city in the title or text.

New York, New York, Sinatra. In my college days, I’d occasionally mock my fellow students by strutting across campus with my Big-Eighties Boombox mounted on my shoulder, blasting out this tune with the volume set to “stun”. These days I do much the same with Mel Tormé’s Too close for comfort when I find myself at a stop light or in a gas station with someone who feels the need to share his gangsta rap with everyone in a two-block radius.

2. A song you’ve listened to repeatedly when you were depressed at some point in your life.

At seventeen. It felt so good to not be Janis Ian. Also The other end of the telescope, ’Til Tuesday with Elvis Costello. Hmm, and Sheena Easton’s cover of In the winter, a real wrist-slasher.

3. Ever bought an entire album just for one song and wound up disliking everything but that song? Gimme that song.

Jerry Jeff Walker’s Flowers in the snow, from Navajo Rug. Actually, I already had the song on a sampler, and made the mistake of thinking it was representative of the album. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

4. A great song in a language other than English.

Coisich, a rùin, Capercaillie, from Delirium.

5. Your least favorite song on one of your favorite albums of all time.

Lover’s day, ’Til Tuesday, from Welcome Home

6. A song you like by someone you find physically unattractive or otherwise repellent.

Soldier of love, Donny Osmond. I suppose he’s a good-looking guy if you’re into that sort of thing, but I just can’t get past that whole “little bit country, little bit rock and roll” thing that scarred my youth.

7. Your favorite song that has expletives in it that’s not by Liz Phair.

The Queer Song, Two Nice Girls.

8. A song that sounds as if it’s by someone British but isn’t.

Coming up blank on this one.

9. A song you like (possibly from your past) that took you forever to finally locate a copy of.

I got it from Agnes, Tom Lehrer. I had the sheet music for nearly twenty years before he released a CD that included it.

10. A song that reminds you of spring but doesn’t mention spring at all.

Full moon full of love, k.d. lang.

11. A song that sounds to you like being happy feels.

Waterloo, ABBA, in Swedish.

12. Your favorite song from a non-soundtrack compilation album.

Hotel California, Gipsy Kings, from Rubaiyat.

13. A song that reminds you of high school.

Heh. Centerfold, J. Geils Band.

14. A song that reminds you of college.

Laura, Billy Joel.

15. A song you actually like by an artist you otherwise dislike.

You oughta know, by, y’know, her.

16. A song by a band that features three or more female members.

I spent my last $10 on birth control and beer, Two Nice Girls.

17. One of the earliest songs that you can remember listening to.

My sweet Lord, George Harrison.

18. A song you’ve been mocked by friends for liking.

I want your love, Transvision Vamp. Also my complete collection of Debbie/Deborah Gibson albums.

19. A really good cover version you think no one else has heard.

Cruella deVille, The Replacements.

20. A song that has helped cheer you up (or empowered you somehow) after a breakup or otherwise difficult situation.

Tranent Muir, The Tannahill Weavers. There are days I just need to play this song REALLY REALLY LOUD.

Elton John: censorship in the US is soooo much worse now than in the Sixties

Dear Elton, with reference to your recent statement that, unlike in the Sixties where people like Pete Seeger were out there speaking truth to power, entertainers today are “frightened by the administration’s bullying tactics,” I call to your attention the documentary Smothered — The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Note that unlike current entertainers such as Michael Moore, the producers of this enlightening film actually made an honest documentary.

By the way, where do you buy your drugs, or is this the result of giving them up?

“There was a moment about a year ago when you couldn’t say a word about anything in this country for fear of your career being shot down by people saying you are un-American.”

One for the road

Under the influence of powerful pain-killers (going in for a root canal on Monday), I spent some time this morning preparing a new music mix for an upcoming trip. It consists entirely of songs from the opening and ending credits of anime series, mostly ripped directly from the DVDs with Audio Hijack Pro (with some minor touch-ups done in the free multi-platform audio editor Audacity).

It’s only 52 minutes so far, since I’m deliberately selecting the tv-edited versions that average around 90 seconds. There are a few songs I can’t include because those discs are out on loan, but otherwise it’s a fun mix. Fortunately the person who’ll be locked in the car with me for six hours likes anime. :-)

• Agent Aika, Silent City (OP)
• Agent Aika Special Missions Promo
• All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA, Happy Birthday To Me (OP)
• Angelic Layer, Be My Angel (OP)
• Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, Asu No Blue Wing (OP)
• Dirty Pair OVA, By Yourself (OP), Summertime From Autumn (ED)
• Dirty Pair TV, Ru-Ru-Ru-Russian Roulette (OP)
• Excel Saga, Love (Loyalty) (OP)
• Galaxy Angel, Galaxy Bang! Bang! (OP)
• Green Green, Guri Guri (OP)
• Hand Maid Mai, Hand Maid De Ne! (ED)
• Hand Maid May, Jump—Hug Me As Tight As You Can (OP)
• Happy Lesson, Telescope (OP), Yume no Miyako Tokyo Life (ED)
• Happy Lesson OVA, C° (OP)
• Hyper Police, That’s Hypertension!! (OP), Hey Hold Up! (ED)
• Jubei-Chan, Forever (ED)
• Kaleido Star, Take It, Shake It (OP)
• Kiki’s Delivery Service, Lipstick Message (OP)
• Magical Project S, Yume mireba yume mo yume ja nai (OP)
• Mahoromatic Summer Special, Hiryu Musume Ha! Date Ondo (ED)
• New Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey (OP)
• Ninin ga Shinobuden OP & ED
• Puni Puni Poemy, Puni Puni Densetsu Ppoi (OP)
• Ranma 1/2 Season 1, Don’t Make Me Wild Like You (OP)
• R.O.D OP
• Rune Soldier, Twinkle Trick (OP)
• Steel Angel Kurumi, KissからはじまるMiracle (OP)
• Super GALS!, A-I-Tsu (OP)
• Tenjou Tenge, Aishitene Motto (ED)

This is actually a secondary use for Audio Hijack Pro; I bought it primarily so I could record streaming audio from Japanese internet radio stations (such as Radio Japan, Morning Freeway, and MBS Broadband). Having a variety of native speakers discuss different subjects is very handy for language practice, especially since my primary source, anime, isn’t known for its realistic dialogue and proper grammar.

Update: Mostly successful, but I have to redo many of the audio captures, because of a little feature in Apple’s DVD Player that’s on by default: Dolby dynamic range compression. It’s hard to notice with laptop speakers, but with headphones or in the car, it’s quite annoying. Good thing I picked the short versions of the songs…

Update: Ah, that’s better. No more fluctuating volume. While I was at it, I added a few more:

• Chobits, Let Me Be With You (OP)
• Cosplay Complex OP
• Galaxy Fraulein Yuna OP
• New Cutey Honey, Circle Game (ED)
• Those Who Hunt Elves, Angel Blue (OP)

Update: A few more.

• Cosplay Complex, Cosplay Ondo (ED)
• Re: Cutie Honey OP

House of Blues, Pile of Shit

Back from another quick road trip to Vegas, and I regret to report that the Las Vegas House of Blues is a terrible concert venue. Ten minutes into Liz Phair’s set, we walked out, and vainly attempted to find someone in a position of authority to complain to.

We weren’t the only ones. From my position on the side of the room (where I was trying to escape the sonic assault), I’d say that at least 10% of the crowd walked out before we did, after struggling through the relentlessly terrible sound of the previous acts (Charlotte Martin, Katy Rose, and The Cardigans). There was nothing wrong with any of the performances; it was all the result of the morons in charge of the sound, whose work would have been a disgrace in a high-school gymnasium.

Charlotte Martin was accompanying herself on the piano, with no one else on stage. Her music was, in theory, softer and quieter than the other acts, which explains why she occasionally had to ask the drunks at the bar to shut up. I say “in theory” because there were at least four distinct echoes on her vocals (along with an occasional vicious feedback squeal), the piano was amped so loud that you couldn’t tell what chords she was playing with her left hand, and the many out-of-tune high notes were loud enough to draw blood. I have no idea what the lyrics to most of her songs were; she sang clearly, but never had a chance.

Someone apparently persuaded them to turn the bass down from 11 to 10.5 for Katy Rose’s set, which was actually tolerable (if not by any stretch of the imagination good) if you left your seat and hid behind a column, watching her on the monitor. I’d like to hear her in a decent club, to find out what she really sounds like.

The Cardigans did their own sound check before coming on stage, but while this ensured that the inputs were working, the clown running the board apparently thought they weren’t loud enough, so he cranked it back up to 11.

There was a long delay before Liz Phair took the stage, with much rearranging of equipment and another sound check, but nobody tested Liz’s mike, so her voice was completely buried by the bass (now set to 11.5, if not higher). I gave up after the third song. I knew the words, and I couldn’t understand a thing she said. I risked a quick trip back to my seat to retrieve my friend (who was looking longingly at his bottle of ibuprofen), and we left.

Nobody was around who had even the vaguest hint of authority. They don’t have any form of comment card, either, so we were reduced to a quickly-scrawled letter of complaint and a promise to never return. I wouldn’t go back to that pit if Jesus were playing.

And that’s without even discussing the smell and the awful, cramped seating.

Zen koan nowhere

Creative Labs has announced their new iPod Mini killerclone, the Zen Micro. It comes in ten different colors (face-plate only, and they all have a blue border), is slightly shorter and thicker, adds an extra gigabyte of storage, and includes FM radio, voice recording, and a removable rechargeable battery, all for the same price as the Mini.

Oh, yeah, and it’s hideous:

More iPod Roadkill

Pretty much every new portable music device that comes out is evaluated for its potential as an “iPod-killer”. I’m sorry, but as long as they keep building things that look like this, they’re not the killers, they’re just a flat patch of fur on the side of the road.

Infectious song of the day

This one has been following me around since junior high school Health class, and for some unknown reason it once again popped into my brain. Google seems to have no record of it, so I might be the only one in the world who remembers this little ditty:

I got those V, VD blues,
careless love, what ya got to lose?
I got high, on two-bit booze,
careless love, loser’s blues, VD blues.

(note that for full effect, one must picture a bad country-western singer, backed up by a banjo (if I recall correctly), serving as the title song for a Sex-Ed video made in the 1970s. And I can still sing it. These are the brain cells I wouldn’t mind losing as I get older.)

Dear Katy Rose,

What in Audubon’s name is a “humming dove”?

iPod Shuffle to the rescue!

So, yesterday afternoon I went in for some quick outpatient surgery. Nothing major (or ahem life-altering), just some quick drainage work, and then I’d be able to drive myself home. I figured I’d stop at Costco on the way back and pick up some steaks to grill.

That was 1:30PM. At 2PM, the surgeon finished looking at my “right axillary abscess” and said he wanted to take me across the street to the O.R. and do the (still simple, still minor) procedure under general anaesthesia. Not having spent much time under the knife, I didn’t immediately translate this to “you ain’t driving home, son”.

After getting me into one of those silly gowns and inserting an IV, the nurse asked who was going to pick me up. I explained that everyone on my list of possibles was at least 70 miles away and stuck at work for several hours, and found myself being admitted for the night.

Then they told me it’d be at least 5:30PM before they started. Then 6:30PM. At 8:15PM, I was finally knocked out with a clever assortment of chemicals, and woke up at 8:45PM with a well-packed bandage under my right arm. I got about an hour’s sleep last night, and finally got out of there around 10:30AM this morning.

The point of this story? When I left the house to start this little adventure, I stuffed my iPod Shuffle into a jacket pocket, figuring I might need some entertainment for half an hour or so while I waited for the surgeon. It saved my sanity. Except for the relatively short time that I was otherwise occupied, I was able to stay entertained with an assortment of music and Japanese talk radio.

Being partially color-blind, I couldn’t decipher the red/orange/green LED that signals remaining battery life, but it never ran dry. It warded me from the chatter in the hospital hallways, the burbling of my roommate’s oxygen supply, the dreadful basic-cable offerings on TV, and the small stack of relentlessly defeatist newsweeklies that passed for reading material.

And since the Shuffle correctly syncs play count with iTunes, I knew which talk-radio shows to delete when I got home this morning, making room for more.

Oh, and everyone I ran into wanted one. Most of them found the price as attractive as the product.

GarageBand is officially a success

M-Audio has announced this custom controller for it, with matching faux-wood paneling.

I’d love to see the market numbers that drove this decision. Macs have always been big in the creative market, but making custom hardware for an application that comes free with the OS? Hmm…

Update: I’m not exactly a fan of Nine Inch Nails, but any band that releases a track from their upcoming album in GarageBand format for their fans to play with is officially cool.

And this Kills Shuffles how, exactly?

Gizmodo links to a review of the new Sony NW-E507 that they think is an honest-to-gosh iPod Shuffle killer. Features: “easy, one-handed controls”, “estimated 50 hour battery life”, and “integrated FM tuner” (still waiting for an explanation of why you want radio on a device that can hold anything you ever want to listen to). For only $50 more than a Shuffle, what a deal!

Choice quotes from the actual review:

The mirror-like Champaign gold fascia looks plain, but there is an OLED display hiding behind it.

The bundled ear buds that come in the box sound muted and muffled, while the cable is also a bit too short.

Sony claims 50 hours continuous playback, although that’s when playing ATRAC3 at 105kbps.

At the base of the NW-E507 is a plastic cover that hides the mini-USB port.

I found the clip to be less than confidence inspiring – twice I tried to attach it to my belt, and twice the player fell off while I was walking.

Software wise, you get SonicStage version 3.0, which is a definite improvement over previous versions, but still nowhere near as good as MusicMatch or iTunes.

So, it might have significantly better battery life, although the difference between 12 hours and 50 hours doesn’t impress me, since both units have to be plugged into a computer to charge or update, and the difference between charging it overnight and charging it every few days isn’t that significant in ordinary use. With the Sony, though, you have to carry around a mini-USB to USB cable; the Shuffle just plugs into any standard USB port.

The bundled accessories sound pretty weak, too; bad earbuds, bad belt clip, lame software. Sure, the Shuffle’s quick-detach neck strap screams “snatch-and-grab”, but at least it never just falls off. And I defy anyone to read the detailed description of the “easy, one-handed controls” without giggling. Press, press and hold, twist back and forth, and pull out one click or two, with buttons on front, back, top, and sides.

Conspicuously missing from the review is any mention of using it as a standard USB flash drive. The Sony site hints that you can store data on it, but doesn’t say how.

And, of course, the software is Windows-only.

上を向いて歩こう

Don’t ask me why…

上を向いて歩こう
涙がこぼれないように
思い出す　春の日
一人ぼっちの夜

上を向いて歩こう
にじんだ星をかぞえて
思い出す　夏の日
一人ぼっちの夜

　　幸せは　雲の上に
　　幸せは　空の上に

上を向いて歩こう
涙がこぼれないように
泣きながら　歩く
一人ぼっちの夜

思い出す　秋の日
一人ぼっちの夜

　　悲しみは　星のかげに
　　悲しみは　月のかげに

上を向いて歩こう
涙がこぼれないように
泣きながら　歩く
一人ぼっちの夜
一人ぼっちの夜

…but if you must know. [update: changed the link to a site with better romanization and translation]

Idol worship in Japan

I always knew that American music agencies were rank amateurs at creating pop idols compared to the Japanese (c.f. Tiffany vs Hello! Project), but I hadn’t realized how much the fanbase contributes to this.

Case in point: last month, some paparazzi pictures were published of 18-year-old Kago Ai, an extremely popular idol singer, and they may have ended her career.

Now, if you’re used to Hollywood scandals and the all-too-common meltdown of former child stars, you’re probably thinking in terms of cocaine, public sex, car wrecks, shoplifting, armed robbery, drunken partying, and incredibly poor taste in boyfriends.

Okay, now my brain hurts

It would be polite understatement to say that most of my friends do not understand my affection for such things as anime and Morning Musume. Yea, though I walk through the hallway in the shadow of Chacarron, I shall fear no evil, for kawaii art with me; Mini Strawberry Pie and fan-service comedies, they comfort me.

That said, I think this goes too far. Click on the streaming audio of track number 3.

Must… Stop… Can’t… Stop…

Lots of people upload videos to Youtube. Lots of people upload music videos to Youtube. Lots of people upload music videos from the 80s to Youtube. This guy cataloged a whole bunch of them. And for every one he’s got listed, there’s a half-dozen more linked to them. Days could pass before I escape this trap.

Reasons to learn Japanese #12: 後藤真希

Remember when Britney Spears was a really cute teenage girl? And then a few weeks later she was the sex kitten, a position from which she ruled the world until she was old enough to make her own career decisions and revealed that she’s about as bright and sophisticated as Tom Cruise is sane? I actually saw this magazine cover three times at stores without recognizing her.

It makes me (mostly) appreciate the Japanese idol system, where both the industry and the fans will cheerfully ostracize a star for even slightly tarnishing her image.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I expect Maki’s sex-kitten phase to last much longer than Britney’s, with no trailer-trash serial weddings to disrupt the fun.

Here’s her latest video. J like.

iTunes in Japanese, you say?

But Brian, isn’t it always?

Oh, you meant the online store. Apparently it’s sending people all over the world today, and not just those who took the 7.0.2 update. I’d guess that their region-guessing heuristic goes by netblocks, and the database got corrupted somehow.

[I was tempted to title this entry 「また会う日まで」, in response to Brian’s Mr. Roboto quote, but it doesn’t really work, even though it’s the refrain in one of the songs pictured]

I admire their review system

Pete linked to this Aya Matsuura fansite in my comments. It’s nicely laid out, and seems to cover her career quite comprehensively. My favorite part is the DVD review section, which includes a 評価グラフ that rates each release by:

• あやや度 - how much Aya?
• ウキウキ度 - how cheerful is it?
• ニヤニヤ度 - are there lots of smiles?
• 泣ける度 - how sad is it?
• 芸術度 - how artistic is it?

Being a purely subjective scale, many of them go beyond 100%. This one’s Ayaya-do is off the charts. I can’t imagine why…

Study materials…

With Winter quarter coming to a close, and only one Japanese class scheduled for Spring (well, two, but one will almost certainly be cancelled), I suddenly felt the need to acquire some fresh study materials to improve my spoken and written comprehension. Off to Amazon.co.jp…

• プッチベスト7 DVD
• モーニング娘。コンサートツアー 2006 秋 踊れ!モーニングカレー
• アロハロ！モーニング娘。DVD
• アロハロ！モーニング娘。さくら組 & おとめ組 DVD
• ラブハロ!矢口真里DVD
• 矢口真里写真集「OFF」
• 小川麻琴写真集『夏ノ詩（なつのうた）』 [DVD付]
• 小川麻琴写真集
• AYAKA—アヤカ写真集
• 藤本美貴ソロ写真集「COEUR」[DVD付き]
• 道重さゆみソロ写真集 憧憬 [DVD付き]
• BEST SHOT Vol.16 (16)
• BSフジ『グラドル女学院』未公開お宝映像集(1)~木口亜矢SP~

66%の誘惑

Tonight’s amusing Japanese phrase is “66% no yuuwaku”, brought to my attention rather indirectly by my friend Dave’s recent wedding in Las Vegas. Translated literally, it comes out as “two-thirds of temptation”, which isn’t quite what the original songwriter had in mind.

One of the things Dave was working on before the wedding was assembling a collection of music for the reception, and my extensive Eighties collection filled in some gaps. I also had a few items from earlier decades that fit in as well. Along the way, though, I discovered that at least thirty CDs that I’ve owned for many years weren’t in my MP3 collection at all. This song comes from one of them, although it’s not the song that we actually used in the mix.

Once I had the album safely ripped, I found myself nostalgic for my college days, when I’d spend my nights delivering pizza with a well-worn cassette tape of it playing continuously. There have always been a few lines in one song (not this one) that I couldn’t make out clearly, so I went a-googling for lyrics. And after a little while, I found this:

Buttons are jealous, kittens are terrified…

…dogs are howling in pain from the sound of her voice.

Kusumi Koharu can’t sing. Here’s proof. There’s plenty more where that came from, but it should be watched with the sound off, because while she’s a really, really cute teenage girl who can bounce around cheerfully with the other girls in Morning Musume, she’s painful to listen to.

It’s not that all of the other girls in the Hello!Project empire were chosen for their vocal talent; the majority will never “graduate” to a solo career, and you’ll only hear them solo individual lines in a group performance (sorry, Tsuji, but with Kago’s permanent departure from the organization, your career is screwed). It’s just that Koharu stands out for pushing the cute/voiceless trend to a new extreme.

Although from the audition video, at least one of the two Chinese girls who were just added to the group might actually be a worse singer…

[oh, and the ED from her anime is sung by another H!P group, °C-ute, some of whose members will eventually become teenagers…]

Sometimes I miss the Eighties…

My latest Amazon order included the Duran Duran Greatest Hits DVD, which includes uncensored versions of several of their classic videos, including the not-safe-for-work Girls On Film. The menu system is a mess, which makes it all the more satisfying to rip the individual titles with Handbrake.

As one of the four different copies of Girls On Film ends, the camera pans up from the topless mud-wrestling scene to reveal this:

Not a good day to shop at the iTunes store…

Whether I try to upgrade some of my music to the new iTunes Plus format, or buy something new, I just get this:

It can wait.

[update: I can’t buy anything at all; my account is now thoroughly confused in their database.]

[update: okay, it took a week, but they figured out which Dean Martin album shouldn’t have been trying to upgrade to iTunes Plus, and with that out of the way, I could determine that the season pass for The Dresden Files (not as good as the books, but not bad) was also broken]

Hey, wait, she’s actually good

Kei Yasuda, former member of Morning Musume:

[Update: Her talents are not suited to certain other genres. Oof.]

[Update: replaced the defunct youtube link]

The only girl group destroyed by Ultraman

At first glance, it sounds like a recipe for failure: take one of your idol singers whose career has been languishing since her partner was kicked out for being a bad girl, team her up with a bikini model and a professional eater, dress them all up in Gal styles, and have them do para-para moves as they sing their dance tunes.

Okay, maybe it was a recipe for failure, because in the middle of the hype leading up to their first single, lead singer Nozomi Tsuji abruptly dropped out. Why? She’d been knocked up by Ultraman (more precisely, the latest actor to take on the role).

The powers that be quickly replaced her with one of their best-known idol’s little sister, who’s certainly appealing, but lacks the desperately hungry fanbase that Tsuji provided. Result: the one-hit wonder Gyaruru.

Mildly amusing, but the real draw for me is that bikini idol Ami Tokito is a curvy meganekko…

Forgive me, David, for I must sin…

As we were discussing preparations for our upcoming trip to Japan, friend Dave remarked, “of course, you’ll have to teach me a few things to say in Japanese”. He is a long-time anime fan, so he’s got some basics, but just in case, I’ve prepared a refresher course. Evil laugh.

[downsampled quite a bit and converted to mono, to compensate slightly for the fact that it’s copyrighted music. Artist: Minimoni]

Kyoto Muzak

There are some nice restaurants in the Kintetsu mall near Kyoto Station. While perusing the menu outside of one of them, the muzak system turned up a familiar-sounding tune. I just couldn’t place it. Dave didn’t recognize it at all, and then it hit the refrain, and was revealed to be this.

The next time we went by that place, they’d cranked the silliness higher, with a muzak version of this.

There’s a perfectly good reason why the Japanese cowboy is para-para dancing. If you were hanging out with these Shibuya gals, wouldn’t you?

State of the Musume

One of the songs on my workout mix is Morning Musume’s I Wish. I hate Tsunku’s background vocals, but otherwise it’s a fun song, and a cute video (albeit a bit confusing to anyone who hasn’t seen their weekly television show…). The lyrics made it a popular concert-closer, especially for “graduation” concerts.

Last night, though, I suddenly realized that not only has the group turned over completely since this video was made, only two of them are still actively producing new singles and videos.

In order of appearance:

1. Ai Kago: career suicide. Her smoking scandal benched her for a year, and just as they started the publicity campaign to bring her back into the family, she got caught returning from a hot springs resort with a notorious womanizer. Latest twist: her mom is now promising to pose nude for a photobook.
   
2. Maki Gotou: abruptly retired at the peak of her solo career, allegedly due to burnout.
   
3. Natsumi Abe: successful solo artist.
   
4. Mari Yaguchi: kicked out of the group, still in the family. Popular television host and actress.
   
5. Hitomi Yoshizawa: Retired for family reasons, then resumed a light performance schedule when Tsuji’s sudden ilness turned out to be…
   
6. Nozomi Tsuji: retired, married, new mother.
   
7. Rika Ishikawa: leader of spinoff group Biyuuden.
   
8. Yuuko Nakazawa: actress and occasional solo artist.
   
9. Kei Yasuda: recently resurfaced as an actress, still in the family.
   
10. Kaori Iida: solo career on hiatus due to pregnancy and sub