The news story gets into the details of this particularly filing, which follows another filing back in 2004. The usual reasons are mentioned — competition from downloading and low-balling by big-box retailers.
Perhaps even more disheartening is the fact Tower is selling its three Honolulu stores. In the same way kids in small towns depended on Wal-Mart for their music retail, Tower was the only place I could get my hands on the (relatively) weird stuff I listened to in my youth. I pretty much grew up in the Honolulu stores.
Steve Reich turns 70 in October. A long time ago, I heard a radio broadcast that said Reich and Philip Glass were born on the same day. In reality, Reich was born on Oct. 3, 1936, and Glass followed about three months later on Jan. 31, 1937.
Reich and Glass are the two biggest names in classical composition. Both are credited with refining the minimalism pioneered by Terry Riley and La Monte Young.
When I was first seeking out classical music, I gravitated toward Glass’ more harmonically familiar work. But as my listening abilities matured, I found myself preferring Reich over Glass.
Reich has a nice sense of rhythm and his harmonies, while not atonal, aren’t strictly triadic either. The pulse is an important component to his work, and it’s that pulse — not unlike the muted chug of an electric guitar — that brings listeners in.
This album won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Composition. I listened to it in high school and didn’t get it. I fell asleep. Seven years and a college degree in music later, I listened to the piece on the drive home, and I was moved.
Young people in Russia are practically giving away pianos, many of which became the norm in Russian flats. The Soviet government encouraged piano production as way to boost culture among its citizenry.
The idea of a piano in every flat sounds terrific to me, but I’m biased because I know how to play the instrument. (And my 88-weighted key synth just doesn’t cut it sometimes.) I don’t get the impression the pianos in question were maintained very well, and while the depreciation of a piano is not like a car or computer, it’s still a big item to handle in a move.
The fact I could recognize the kanji for "indefinite hiatus" (活動休止)
The news is suck. I think the last time Sleater-Kinney stopped by Austin was for the Austin City Limits festival, and my loathing of that festival precluded me from seeing that show.
I was hemming and hawing today about whether to blow my monthly eMusic allowance on some Sleater-Kinney albums. I guess I know what I’m doing with that allowance next month. (Booster pack!)
In Japan, commercials for products are also used to launch music careers. Touting that a song was featured in a particular commercial is not anathema.
That said, I am a total sap for liking a recent highly-exploitative, tugging-at-heart-strings kind of clip from Liberty Mutual, all because "Half Acre" by Hem is the soundtrack for the commercial.
I don’t know if the Liberty Mutual ad will have people running for Hem’s albums, but I hope it gets people curious.
Hearing Hem on an ad made me feel the same way when Applied Material featured Onitsuka Chihiro’s "Innocense" in an ad many years back — it was like I’m an insider or something.
To put it less charitably, it made me feel cooler than the rest of you.
It’s official — ICE magazine has shuttered its door after 19 years.
I subscribed to the magazine in the early 1990s, after a year or so of buying it from the newsstand every month. ICE was pretty essential when I was working at Waterloo Records. I didn’t commit every release date to memory, but it was handy to know when big titles were approaching. If a customer asked when something was coming, I could usually tell them off the top of my head, thanks to ICE.
I used ICE to plan my shopping excursions. I even have a script that runs when I log into my shell account to remind me of specific release dates, culled from ICE. (Yeah, I’m a nerd that way.) To say the end of ICE leaves a big hole in my music consumerism is to understate the matter.
ICE subscribers have been handed over to Billboard for the remainder of their balance. I received my first issue of Billboard over the weekend. It made the passing that much more palpatable.
Billboard subscriptions are pricey, so I imagine I’ll receive less than a month’s worth of issues before I have to renew. I just might — I already visit the Billboard web site religiously. When noodle magazine went under, the subscriber list went to the Advocate, and I’ve renewed ever since.
After three months of no new issues of ICE, I need some variety with my bathroom reading.
I’m sure the blog will be pretty self-congratulatory — given it’s obvious PepsiBlue aim — but I’m willing to play along. Nonesuch was an important part of my development as a music fan when I was a teenager, and even today, I visit the label’s web site regularly to see what’s coming up.