Weekly Summary

I haven’t been posting on this blog too much. I have a lot of other things going on but I’m hoping to start a little something new here. I spend a lot of time online throughout the week, I read a lot on line, and watch a bit of online video as well. Every week on our radio show, This Small Town Life, Kinsee and I have a little segment called This Week on the Internet. I always tend to scramble at the last minute to remember what happened and come up with things to talk about. My plan is to start posting weekly summaries here, on either Friday or Saturday, both to comment a bit on what’s going on, as well as to help me with the segment for the show.

CollegeHumor Back to the Future Sex Scenes Parody — I’m a big fan of Back to the Future. And I think Collegehumor makes some of the best quality online videos (they can be juvenile at times, but the production quality is always great).

Facebook Denis All Wrongdoing in Beacon Data Breach — I remember when Beacon came out, I consider myself pretty tech and privacy savvy, so I read about Beacon, and how to disable it. I (thought) I disabled Beacon with Facebook’s instructions and then bought something from an online store that was part of the program. Sure enough it showed up on my Facebook wall. I never figured out what I did wrong, but after that I think I took a more technical approach and used a browser extension or script to disable it.

NPR on Richard Brautigan — I only heard of Richard Brautigan a couple of years ago, while at a wedding near Redwoods National Park. Someone told me I looked just like him on the cover of Trout Fishing in America the way I was dressed. I picked up a copy of the book not long after. I can’t remember the last time before this that a book has had such an impact on me. Reading The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, while backpacking in the Sierra Nevada with friends was an amazing experience.

Net at Night Episode 139 — I listen to a handful to TWiT shows each week. I can’t stand Leo Laporte, he glosses over so many details and doesn’t research things before talking about them on the shows, it’s really annoying. But typically the guests and co-hosts are more informed. Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani on TWiG and Amber MacArthur on net@night all impress me. I liked this episode for the guests though, two people involved with streaming music online with differing views in regards to curation vs discovery.

Google Is Being Evil, Music Bloggers Say — Under the DMCA (or other laws), is there any recourse if a company (in this case a record label) files a false DMCA complaint and your hosting provider (in this case Google/Blogger) deletes all your content?

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New Music: Ezra Furman & The Harpoons

Well, they’re not too new, only new to me, they’ve been around for a couple years now. But I just heard them.

Their song Take Off Your Sunglasses was the song of the day KEXP’s Podcast yesterday.

Something about the song just stood out to me, a good combination of lyrics, vocals and interesting sounds all blended together.

They’ve got some music on their myspace page you can stream. They did a Daytrotter Session not too long ago. And they’ve been on NPR’s World Cafe show not once, but twice.

Here’s their official website.

Nortec Collective: Brown Bike video

Nortec Collective just posted the video for Brown Bike by Bostich+Fussible, one of my favorite Nortec songs. The video is awesomely hip.

Sadly I still haven’t gone on a Tijuana bike ride. Maybe I’ll hook up with these folks soon.

New Music: Joel P West

I finally saw Joel P West live last week. After months of listening to his new album, his live show didn’t disappoint.

He played the final show in the Adapta Project vs Sezio art shows at Cream Coffeehouse in University Heights.

Kinsee first introduced me to his album Dust Jacket which can be downloaded by trading something with him. Most people send pictures, poems or songs, I sent a poem and he sent me a link to download the album. A few weeks later I saw the poem posted on the Dust Jacket Project blog. I downloaded the album and was immediately hooked, its catchy and fun, one of the best new albums I’ve heard in a long time. So I was a little afraid the live show wouldn’t live up to the greatness of the album, thankfully it did.

Just a guitar and a cello, the music was soft and quiet and beautiful in the corner of the cafe. The PA wasn’t up to task though and the music couldn’t be heard over the chatter of the crowd. After a few songs the show moved outside onto the sidewalk. A smaller, quieter crowd followed and we were treated to a few more songs. It’s not often you see a musician decide to move their show outside so the people that really want to hear the music can, but thats what we got that night.

There are some pictures and commentary from the whole night at Sezio.

Sensations lead to Memories

Yesterday, dripping wet from running to my car in the pouring rain, I turned the heater to full blast and put on Okkervil River’s Down the River of Golden Dreams. As the music started to get going the sounds, the wet hair and clothes and the smell of the heater all sort of combined nostalgically reminding me of the rain, space heaters and most importantly, listening to a lot of Okkervil River when I lived in Santa Cruz.

As I listened to the whole album, and then some other songs of theirs, most of the songs reminded me of a specific event, person, time or feeling.

It Ends With a Fall reminds me of walking down a brightly lit and decorated Pacific Avenue after work, on cold but dry December evenings, working my way through the Christmas shoppers and then down to a dark Laurel street and a lonely walk home alone.

Blanket and Crib – a housemate who didn’t like me much and never really gave me a chance.

The War Criminal Rises and Speaks– The smell of fresh baked bread coming from the Subway on Pacific Avenue.

The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion– This memory is much more recent. Standing on the deck at a friend’s apartment, winded from running, drunk from drinking, tired from not sleeping, a phone call and a conversation, Ryan playing this song for me as the night quietly winded down.

Song About a Star- New Years Eve with a German anarchist, staring up at the stars in the cold night just before midnight.

Red – drunkenly slow dancing, waltzing even at times when my feet would remember thats what they were supposed to do, in the common room.

Kansas City – Sunday afternoons and cooking with Elena, making and drinking vin brulé. Pretending like we knew what we were doing in the kitchen while talking about freedom and autonomy.

Westfall – Megan playing it on the guitar and the unexpected looks on people’s faces as she sang the lyrics.

Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas – A cold December night spent drinking room temperature Guinness at the Poet  with a new friend. Talking about the past and the future.

No Key, No Plan – Scrawling the lyrics out on the shower wall with special shower crayons.

A Favor – Lying in bed in silence with a friend, this song blaring from speakers, but neither of us with the energy to get up and turn the volume down. Finding out the next day that she was sure we were dying and our lifeless bodies would be found the next morning.

Billy Midnight

Billy Midnight has been one of my favorite bands for a number of years. My sister introduced me to their music around the time I turned 21. Newly 21 and excited to go to bars I usually ended up at all their shows around town. My favorite concerts have been Billy Midnight shows, from hour long sets at the Casbah or the Belly Up Tavern to, all night, 5 hour sets at dive’s like Kelly’s Pub or the Ould Sod, where the song lengths get longer as the night goes on. My friend Mark and I used to always look forward to the 20+ minute “Sasquatch” jams at 1AM during their divier shows.

They stopped playing nearly as much a few years ago, but it looks like they’ve been playing more and more recently. I was really excited to see that they’re playing tonight at the Casbah — although we probably won’t get a 20 minute version of Sasquatch.

They go from rockin’ alt-country to slow and sweet and back again at least a handful of times throughout the night.

They recently won the San Diego Music Award for Best Alt-Country. And in addition to being outstanding musicians they’re really wonderful people.

Billy Shaddox (the lead singer and guitar player) was interviewed in the Union Tribune today.

They’re by far one of the most fun bands in San Diego, you really should go check them out.

New Music: The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra

A few weeks ago I came across a band from LA called Miniature Soap on Myspace. Nice soft acoustic music. Last week I saw that other band, The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra, that the singer plays with was going to be playing at the Ken Club. A couple other bands (Swim Party and Writer) I had been wanted to check out were playing that night also.

I hadn’t even heard the band yet, but decided to go check them out. I got there late, I guess about halfway into their set, but absolutely loved the music. Sometimes I find it hard to listen to a band live without ever hearing their songs before, but this wasn’t the case with the Flying Tourbillon Orchestra, they sounded good. A little bit of pop and a little bit of rock, but not too much of either, I was really enjoying the music. Since I got there late their set ended far too quickly.

I talked to Kelli (the singer in both The Flying Tourbillon Orchestra and Minature Soap) and she said that even though they were from LA it was their first time playing in San Diego. But they loved it and had such a great time they were hoping to come back soon.

Since I only got to hear a few songs at the show I listened to the songs on their myspace page. I liked it so much I decided to buy their EP Escapements and have had the catchy tunes stuck in my head ever since.

So go listen to them on myspace, and if you do decide to buy their album, don’t buy it from the iTunes music store, where you’ll get a restricted copy of the files, for the same price you can get mp3s from Nimbit.