Awesome interactive video for for Arcade Fire’s new single, “We used to wait”. Uses some pretty awesome HTML5 along with Google Maps to integrate location into the video that works nicely on Chrome and Safari. You can follow the link on the site to the Chrome experiments page to find out more about how the site was made.
Sep 4, 2010RollingStone.com published The 100 Best Songs of 2007 and The Top 50 Albums of 2007. Billboard published the 25 Best Rock Posters of All Time.
Dec 18, 2007Music I’ve been listening to (Oct ’07) – Interpol, Daft Punk, Modest Mouse, Peter Bjorn & John, Jimmy Eat World, Fiction Plane, Ferry Corsten, Eskimo Joe, Ella Fitzgerald, Sigur Rós, Daft Punk, Radiohead, Thursday, The Mars Volta, Royksopp.
You’ve probably heard about Ashlee Simpson’s Lip syncing fiasco on SNL a couple of weeks ago, where Ashlee Simpson was caught on stage, during her performance, lip-synching the wrong tune. She was holding her microphone at her waist at the time. Simpson looked momentarily confused as the band plowed ahead with the song and the vocal was quickly silenced. A confused Simpson made some weird hopping dance moves, and then walked off the stage.
After this incident, everyone was talking about how Ashlee Simpson’s career is now down the gutters, how she will never be able to get up on stage again without being booed off stage. How she will be forever known as Jessica Simpson’s younger sister, who tries to look punk and can’t sing.
Don’t you think that’s harsh?
Before you start typing up those hate emails, hear me out. I am not a fan of Ashlee Simpson (nor Britney Spears or Christina, Aguilera). Believe me. I don’t like pop music at all. In fact, if you know me well enough, you’ll learn that pop is something that I listen to so that I can write blogs like this. But believe it or not, I actually watch “Newlyweds with Nick and Jessica”. There, I said it. Why you ask? Coz it’s funny. I mean Nick and Jessica are the stereotypically average Rich and famous American. Jessica is hysterical with her slow thinking and her constant confusion to figure out whether tuna is fish. And poor Nick has to go through all the stuff that Jessica puts him up with. And Ashlee is Jessica’s sister, so I take a random gander now and then at the show, to see the normal one in the family.
So when this incident happened, I was actually looking forward to Ashlee’s show, called “The Ashlee Simpson Show”, to see what she had to say. Now, this is when I found out that Ashlee had a “raspy” throat on the night of the performance, and could not perform that night, and so under the instruction of her doctor, had to resort to lip syncing. Now I ask you, do you think that’s unfair? What would you do? You are a music artist, your catching up to the music industry. And you finally get your biggest break, to perform at SNL, where anybody who’s anybody has performed. You are going to do anything to be seen on the show. Even if that means, in this case, lip syncing. Plus, SNL already advertised Ashlee’s performance ahead of time, so it would be hard for them to back out.
To make things worse, on January 6th, when Ashlee Simpson performed at the Orange Bowl halftime show, she was booed at . That’s being booed at a place where there are over 72,000 people. Not too good for her ego or her career eh?
I know to some people that everything i said here might all sound like the words of the devil, and that most of my friends are going to think that I’m the devil itself, but think about it. Yes Ashlee sucks. She should have stuck to acting her little role of the brat on Seventh Heaven, but maybe the SNL thing was a little too harsh? Maybe I am missing something here.
What do you think?
I dislike:
Update: With the help of the fine people over at NewsToday, I have some more people to add to the list:
I love Jazz. Before I moved to the U.S, I was never exposed to Jazz. So when I did move here and heard people like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and even Ron Carter, I was like woah! this is nice.
So last week, I got to see the legendary Herbie Hancock. Now, if you dont know Herbie Hancock, you should atleast know who Miles Davis is. Well, Herbie Hancock played with Miles Davis back in the 60’s. So, that kinda gives you an idea of how good Hancock should be. And he is. He came up on stage, and the crowd went wild! Literally. People were hooting and clapping. I started tapping my feet when the show started, and stopped tapping them 110 minutes later.
Along with Hancock, the legendary Micheal Brecker (tenor saxophone) also played. He used this cool new instrument called the EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument). With this instrument, he would play small beats, record them, loop them, and then create another beat and then loop that, creating an awesome track at the end. He composed an R&B track as a sample, and it was just amazing. To think he did that live. After the whole concert, Herbie went around and introduced the memebers of the band, and even took time to introduce the 2 G5 Macs that they use.
I even got to meet the members of the band (Herbie Hancock, Micheal Brecker, Roy Hargrove,Scott Colley and Terri Carrington), and to top it all off, got Herbie Hancock to autograph an LP cover of his album called “Monsters” that he made 25 years ago. I love Jazz.
Why is country music becoming a genre of music to hate? I mean almost everyone I talk to seems to just hate country music. In fact, hate it even more than they hate pop music. First of all, I realize that I am talking about a small population here, but again, this is a population of college students from Central Illinois, where there is a very diverse population.
I personally have nothing against Country music. I love Willie Nelson, and when I am driving around on long trips, I admit that I switch on the country radio station. I think the reason why there is such a dislike towards country music, is because a lot of people dont know a lot about it. The first thing they think about when someone mentions country music is a singer in tall boots with shiny spurs and a big hat with a background of an old man, sitting on his porch, chewing on a straw, while swaying back and forth on a rocking chair with an old, lazy dog beside him. I mean if you step out of the United States, names like Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw and Dolly Parton are strange. In fact, last year, when I was at the London airport, waiting for another flight, I found only 4-5 country music albums at the music store. And two of them were from the 60s.
Now, as some of the visitors to this site might know, I grew up in another country, and moved to the U.S around 3-4 years ago. Now before then, the only country singer I knew of was Celine Dion, and that was because she was on the Titanic soundtrack (ok, this is a joke, Celine Dion is not a country singer). So when I moved here, I met this one friend, who was just crazy about country music, and to help me with my disability towards country music, she, along with some friends, decided to play some country music for me.
So there we were, lunch time in high school, six of us crammed into a friends car, she popped in a mix cd of country music, and the first song that played was “She thinks my tractors sexy” by Kenny Chesney. Now, I dont know about you, but when the first real country song you hear has the words “sexy” and “tractor” in the same sentence, that surprises you. But eventually I did learn to listen to others like Tim McGraw, Dolly Parton, Reba McIntyre, Alan Jackson and so on.
Also, just browsing through the names of country music singles, brings a smile to my face. For example, “I Play Chicken With The Train” by Cowboy Troy. Makes you curious doenst it? Or how about “My Give A Damn’‘s Busted” by Jo Dee Messina?
Both of those songs are pretty good by the way. And “I Play Chicken With The Train” actually has a rapper on it. That’‘s another topic. Nelly recently made a single called “Over and Over” with Tim McGraw thats a sensational hit. So there is this movement where country singers and rappers are collaborating. Country Rap, interesting.
I think country music is highly entertaining. Nothing else can make you jump up and clap your feet to the floor, as much as country music can. Anyway, if you are running out of music to listen to, pop in a country album. Its not that bad, I promise.
Franceys post on SoMinty
Although, music is more indicative of “what type of person” a person is than any other thing (taste in movies, food, etc…)
The “hating” if you will, is just a perpetuation of bias against various stereotypes.
What is the stereotype of someone who listens to country music? redneck
What is the stereotype of someone who listens to rap? black man
What is the stereotype of someone who listens to indie rock? Hipster
What is the stereotype of someone who listens to “pop” ? Well, popular people.
Who hates pop? People who listen to indie rock. Who hates popular people? Hipsters. Hipsters hate popular music, not because of the music itself, but because of the people who listen to it. Why else do you think people accuse bands of “selling out” when they become popular? Because all of a sudden, the music is being listened to by people the original audience would rather not associate with.
And you see how everything aligns.
So last night, I got to see Interpol play live in concert and its probably one of the best concerts Ive gone to this year. They played almost all of my favorite Interpol songs, and excited the crowd with their amazing light show (The name of their first album is, “Turn on the bright lights”. See a pattern here?). When they played “Public Pervert”, the crowd just went insane, because they did a special light effect at very section of that song. They would use very soft colors when the song just started out, and boom! bright white lights when they hit the chorus. Amazing.
Also, the band that opened for Interpol was this electronic band called, Boom Bip (Check out the website to listen to their stuff). Now obviously a lot of people at the concert didnt get them, since they didnt do any singing, so I dont think they got the support that they needed. Boom Bip, reminded me a lot of Radiohead, but more grungier and with a whole lot more bass (When they played their first track, I could feel my heart bump every time the drummer hit his drums).
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