A few weeks ago, David Pogue mentioned ways to transfer analog media to digital. (Registration required, or not.) Oddly enough, that article was published right around the time I did my own salvage operation on the Waitresses’ debut album, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?
Pogue’s methods are all very consumer-friendly and relatively inexpensive. They also require some work. Being lazy and anal, I opted to use some fancy software and equipment to make the process easier.
I think a happy medium can be found between the two. I could have done it without using a USB audio interface and a limiter plug-in with Sony Sound Forge, but Sony CD Architect makes burning to CD so much easier.
CD Architect may be a bit overkill for day-to-day use, but you can create tracks even if your master recording is one big WAV file. No messing with splitting files and multiple exports-imports. Customizing gaps between tracks is also really helpful when they segue into one another.
If you’re going to record to a hard drive cheaply, my recommendation is not to skim on the burn process.
I’m confused. Martin Kettle says, "The only dispute about classical recording is whether it is dying or dead." But Brendan I. Koerner reports classical is the only genre to have made gains when every other genre is down. Thankfully, Alex Ross examines the numbers in greater detail.
We’ve had ABBA, John Lennon, the Who, Billy Joel and the Four Tops made into musicals. So now too are the Flaming Lips.
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is turning into a musical, with Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and the flailing Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, writing the book.
I love Wayne Coyne’s description of the tentative plot, but dude, c’mon — when are you going to finish Christmas on Mars?
A few things interfered with my enjoyment of SXSW this year, and they were all boneheaded, clumsy things absolutely not related to the festival at all.
First, I lost an unopened pack of cigarettes right before the Pistol Valve showcase on Friday, which didn’t put me in the right frame of mind to see the band. Then tonight I discovered I made a banking error that left me overdrawn by $900. Yes, you read that right. I also lost my lighter at the very last venue I attended. I guess the universe is telling me to quit smoking.
The weather this week has been absolutely gorgeous, and every evening was beautifully cool and breezy. I noticed, however, every night I returned from shows, I was not a sticky, sweaty mess. I can account for Wednesday — the Hideout is a theater, not a club, so there was no crush of sweaty bodies. For the remaining nights, I ended up at places with patios, the only places where you can legally smoke in Austin, so I spent quite a bit of time outdoors. I also didn’t stay for the entire Japan Nite on Friday.
A friend of mine questioned whether I was maximizing the cost of my SXSW wristband. This year, I strove for quality, not quantity. Yes, $130 is a lot to pay for admission to clubs for four night, but I would like to enjoy the shows I go to with that wristband. And that means feeling comfortable. If there’s no incentive for me to stay till last call, why should I? If I’m not feeling wowed by a performance, why shouldn’t I find someplace to park my ass? I’d rather give my feet a rest than suffer through a showcase for which I feel ambivalent.
At the same time, I knew beforehand — judging by sound samples and name recognition — the pull to the showcases I normally like wouldn’t be as strong. SXSW 2007 marks the ninth festival I’ve attended. I’ve developed a feel for what might win me over.
Instead of posting a schedule of Japanese bands playing at SXSW here, I posted it to Keikaku.net instead.
The film and interactive festival starts tonight, and the music festival takes over next Wednesday. I usually write a whole bunch of stuff beforehand, but this year, real life is interfering quite a lot.
I also don’t have my usual channels for a cheap wristband or a comped badge this year. Only one year did I spring for my own badge — back when Web 1.0 was in full swing — but every other year, I’ve gone on someone else’s dime.
Oh, I have a wristband, thanks to the heroic efforts of a friend of mine. (She stood in line for a two hours.) But I don’t feel much anticipation for this year’s festival. I’m not sure why.
I can tell you the Japan Nite line-up this year doesn’t really grab me. And no, I never got into GO!GO!7188. Metalchicks is about the only Japanese band I want to see. Zoobombs were announced previously, but it looks like they’re sticking with a tour of Canada instead.
I was hoping some of the queer musicians I’ve run across in the last year — Dylan Rice, Ari Gold, Ex-Boyfriends (who were in town last year) — would perform. The Gossip, Bob Mould and a hip-hop act called V.I.P. are about the only queer artists on the schedule.
Nonetheless, I have taken time off from work to go to shows, and I’ll be filing reports if I’m not too tired from all the nightly excursions.
Muso magazine took a poll on the sex lives of classical musicians and discovered violists are most likely to get their freak on. Julian Lloyd Webber, cellist and brother of theater composer Andrew, mentions a few of the poll’s results but spends most of his time addressing issues of elitism and ageism that resulted from the magazine running the piece. I like how he throws some of that ageism back by calling Muso editor Femke Colborne a "young lady".
I’m interested to see how pianists rank in the sexy perception. I’m betting most of the male pianists are seen as gay.
A few weeks ago, I downloaded an EP from eMusic by a gay folk musician named Dudley Saunders. It was titled The Billy White Acre Sessions, and it struck me as unusually rocking, compared to the mellowness of his other album, Restore. I ended up liking what I heard anyway, so much so, I ordered it from CD Baby.
Imagine my surprise when I put the CD in my car player and heard not a single note of what I downloaded a few weeks previous.
When I got to my office, I previewed the MP3 excerpts on CD Baby. Sure enough, it was the same as the CD. So what exactly what was I listening to, thinking it was Dudley Saunders?
It turns out eMusic swapped Saunders’ The Billy White Acre Sessions for one titled Penturbia by a group called Troubled Hubble.
You can imagine my dismay for having dropped money on a disc I did not originally want. Now I feel like I ought to give the CD a fair shake. Troubled Hubble themselves broke up last year, and CD Baby is out of stock of their albums.
Guitarist Omura Tasshin has left Quruli, so says Bounce.com. Omura’s final performance with the band was at Countdown 06/07. He was brought on as a full-time member in 2002, bringing what was once a trio to a quartet. Since then, Quruli has gone through two drummers. With Omura’s departure, that leaves only singer/guitarist Kishida Shigeru and bassist Sato Masashi. Support drummer Kikuchi Yuuya currently rounds out the band’s membership.