/dev/null/kevin

I caught some heat for making fun of Led Zeppelin's recent tour.  Thus, it's only fair that I point out when older rockers do something noteworthy.

Checkout Shooting Star's singer crowd-surfing so he can play a timpani solo.  Take that, kids!  It's about 3:15 into the song.

Since I am the source of all things Led Zeppelin, and because all Zeppelin fans love me, I feel it's my duty to inform you all that Led Zeppelin has finally taken the stage.

[photo from Getty Images]

The took the stage at 9pm London time at the O2 Arena.  Here is the song list as reported by the Billboard blog:

Ironically, this list isn't too different my my joke list.  They were supposed to perform in November but Jimmy Page broke his hip finger.

Perhaps you've heard of the upcoming Led Zeppelin Reunion Tour.  Never mind that a true reunion would require a shovel, these guys are almost older than the Rolling Stones.  And they've been dead for years, right?

The new tour is going to require them to change a few of their songs:

New Led Zeppelin Song Titles:

UPDATE [09/13/2007]: Hey, I'm not the only one who thinks this thing could go south.  Who is the Robert Plant guy anyway?  Oh, right.  Look at this youthful face of rock n' roll.

For the record, I own every Led Zeppelin album released.  I even own a Dread Zeppelin reggae album.  However, I've also heard many of their later live performances and they're not very good.  Even Page's and Plant's solo live covers aren't good.  For whatever reason, they jumped the shark long ago.

Final Update [02/15/2008]: Does anyone remember laughter?

In one of the worst abuses of the DMCA, Universal Music had YouTube take down a 29 second video of a child dancing to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy.  Fortunately, the EFF, and the mom, are suing Universal for it.  YouTube also reinstated the video.

The EFF is claiming that 29 seconds falls within "fair use."  I hope they win, but what is completely ridiculous is that the music is just playing in the background.  It's not dubbed over.  No artist in the world could show that this video hurt their IP or affected their sales in any way.

Is it me or are 80s fashions coming back?  It's about the right time for it as retro 80s stuff is just starting to be cool now.

Retro usually only goes back about 25 years, mainly because retro stuff is only cool to those who weren't alive the first time around.  In the early 1980s, retro was the 50s (cf. Preppy).  We rejected the slovenly and sloppy 70s styles and music.  Disco was declared dead, clothes were neat and colorful, and music was techno and precise (no ad libbing allowed!).  Women's pants covered their belly buttons.

In the early 1990s the 60s retro came calling.  Bell bottoms and tie-dye were back, and grunge music took off.  Hair bands and over-produced music were banished to second billing behind "Puppet Show."    We even tried to recreate the magic with Woodstock '94 (aka Mudstock).

The late 1990s and early 2000s begot 70s retro.  Disco was back!  The song Y.M.C.A. became a staple at every wedding and karaoke bar in the nation.  Wayne's World made head banging to Queen cool.  Low, hip-hugger pants were required by law for everyone under the age of 25.

Fast forward to 2007.  Gone are the syncopated and funky rhythms in pop music.  They have been replaced with boring 80s repetitive 8th note bass lines (same same note).  Avril Lavigne's latest song sounds like the return of The Go Gos.  The kids in High School Musical dress like when I was in high school (class of '84).  Today I saw, not one, but two pictures of young, trend-setting, celebrities wearing pants that, I swear, are identical to ones my girlfriends wore while dancing to Duran Duran.  Goodbye low-rise jeans.  Goodbye belly buttons.  Hello suck-in-your-gut-high-waisted pants!

The 80s, for better or worse, are back.  Be prepared.  I'm pulling out all my thin ties now.

Tags: 80s | fashion | retro | music

Linda tagged me with with the new meme on music:  Name five songs (or artists) that you love but annoy your significant other.

Since my wife is into pop music and light jazz and I am into heavy/progressive metal, I could list anything on my iPod.  In the car we listen to the news, or play our kid's music.

1. Dream Theater
2. Primus
3. Evanescence
4. Linkin Park
5. Enchant
   

Tagged: Mocker, Tong, Rama, Steve, Trevor (if only to get him to blog this year).

BTW, use of the word "meme" is itself meme, since in the old days we used the word "fad."

Tags: meme | music

A while back I blogged about incompatibilities between iTunes and Yahoo's Musicmatch Jukebox.  That issue is still unresolved, but there were some comments about which interface is better.  In the spirit of fair play, I decided to give iTunes a try.  Note that I an not comparing the online music stores, just the players.

Summary: iTunes has more player options, but Musicmatch is a better ripper and organizer.  Musicmatch still wins, in my opinion.

Many features are available with both players and comparing those features is not really valuable, so I'll try to just focus on the differences.  I'm not claiming to be an expert with either program so if you know how to do something that I don't, let me know.

iTunes Pros:

• Lots of statistics.  iTunes keeps track of how often songs are played and can use that information to generate a playlist.  It's also easier to add your own personal ratings with iTunes since you can also do so via your iPod.


• Better "between song" features.  iTunes realizes that some songs need to be played right after other songs with no gaps.  It also has the cross fader feature that blends songs together like a DJ.
  


• "Endless" random play.  iTunes' "Party Shuffle" is slightly better the MM's "auto DJ" since it's open ended.  MM requires that you enter a total time and then generates a fixed playlist.
  


• iTunes' search is better and faster.  MM is a little clunky.

iTunes Cons:

• Doesn't play all mp3 files well!  This surprised me.  I have some older mp3s, ripped in the old days, and when iTunes plays them there is digital static for the first few seconds.  It's very annoying.
  

Musicmatch Pros:

• Tagging and super tagging.  Musicmatch absolutely blows away iTunes in this area.  iTunes only allows you to edit one song at a time.  iTunes can edit more than file at a time, but in a very limited fashion [see comments].  Musicmatch can edit multiple songs at one time, use one song to tag other songs, tag files based on the filename, and even rename the files based on the tags.  But the best feature is access to the online database of tags, and album art, that allow you to tag an entire album based on some search criteria.
  


• Mini player is better.  It's more mini.


• Fast ripping.  Very fast.

Musicmatch Cons:

• Can't update my iPod.  'nuff said.

It seems to me that iTunes is really geared towards Apple's iTunes store and playing music that has already been tagged and downloaded.  Musicmatch, while it also has a large online music store (Yahoo Music now), was written for the old school crowd (like me), who rip their own CDs and like to manage the meta data themselves.

For me, may of iTunes' "pros" aren't as important to me, so I'd like to stick with Musicmatch.  Now only if someone would fix this incompatibility problem.

Tags: itunes, music, musicmatch, apple, yahoo

OK, I'm getting old. And as such, I've earned the right to talk about the past.

As a child of the 80s, I've seen all sort of things go out of style, come back, and go out of style again (yes you, bell-bottom jeans and Donny Osmond). However, there are a few things that went away and I don't think are ever coming back.

Today's Edition: Music

• The Fade Out.
  Songs used to not end, they just faded out and got quieter and quieter. What was with that? How lazy are you to not write an ending for your song? I'm sure it played better on the radio or something, but with the iGeneration out there I don't think that's ever going to fly again.

• The Never-Ending Song
  While some songs faded out on the radio, the live version of a song might never end. Endless "solos" and schtick could prolong a song well past its expiration date. I'm listening to a live version of Y&T's song "Forever" and it's taking forever for this song to end. I checked and it took one minute and 20 seconds from the "last" note to when they actually stopped playing.

  
  

• The Gong.
  There was a time that every drummer had a huge gong behind him. We're talking 6 to 8 feet across here. It must have weighed 100 pounds, not including the huge stand required to hold it. And for what? How many songs needed that gong? One. Just one. And I don't mean "one song per band" - I mean one song in the history of songs. That song was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. So unless you are Roger Taylor, it's back to Gong World for you.

  
  

• The Drum Solo.
  I'm picking on drummers since I am one, but the era of the self-indulgent drummer is over. Sorry guys. In the old days drummers like John Bohnam and Neil Peart would go off for hours while their band mates got high and scored with groupies (true!) but no more. The truth is, no one wants to hear it except the other drummers in the audience. The chicks all want the lead singer anyway.

• Kung Fu.
  OK, this might be limited to David Lee Roth and Van Halen, but you just don't see lead singers doing martial arts on stage any more. Is the world a better place? You decide.

  
  

• The Bridge.
  Don't know what a musical bridge is? It's neither the chorus nor the verse, but it ties the two together. It also takes some musical talent to write. Some bands think a bridge is a guitar solo or a rap break. Please. Some of these bands set the bar so low that I'm impressed if I get a key change out of them.

• Keyboards.
  Now of course bands have keyboards, but when was the last time you actually heard one played as a keyboard? Unless it's being a piano you don't. The keyboard has become an effects and sequencing system. You'll hear sustained chords and sampled sounds but you never hear that synth sound anymore. It must tough to be Jean Michel Jarre now.

Next up: Things you just don't see on TV anymore.

This slashdotted site (here is a new mirror site) talks about a robotic drum machine.  It brought back memories of building my own electronic drum set using piezoelectic sensors.  Even back then in the 1990s, the sensors were quite cheap and we got a bunch from Radio Shack.  At first, we just taped them to pizza boxes and plugged the into a cheap drum machine for sounds.  It was fun for an afternoon's worth of jamming, but not really practical.

So, the next week, I started building a more useful set. Instead of pizza boxes, I used actual Remo practice pads, since they had a realistic feel.  Additionally, they open up easily so you can place the sensor inside. The pads can also be mounted upside down so you're hitting the neoprene side and not the normal head.  This cuts down on the noise of the stick hitting the pad (which you normally want).  I wired up a snare, three toms and a kick drum.  The pads all mount to a practice pad frame that positions the pads like a drum set.

I built some "cymbals" using the front and back of a binder (cut out the middle spine).  It was funny to have rectangular cymbals. I also built a hi-hat out of a small pad and used a foot pedal as the open/close switch.  While it did work, it really wasn't as good as a real hi-hat.

I plugged all of the triggers into an Alesis D4 "brain" that was all the rage back then.  Viola! "Instant" drum set.  We had another jam session that weekend where I showed off the new and improved model.

But the story doesn't end there.  I few weeks later, I was playing in the pit for a performance of Little Shop of Horrors with Stanford's Ram's Head theater group.  The performace "hall" was quite small, and the pit was tiny.  In addition to the space limitation, the room was so small that the band was likely to overpower the singers.  The solution was an all electric band, now possible with my new electric set.  Fortunately, we had a couple more rehearsals to get the kinks worked out.

In the end, the performance was quite successful.  Drums have their best sounds when hit hard because you get all of the overtones, which creates a fuller sound.  I wouldn't have been able to get that same sound quality just playing very softly.  I've played in scores of musical theater shows, and this show remains one of my favorites.  The band was awesome and the cast was terrific.  I was very happy that my little hobby project had such a great payoff.

Since that show, I've used that set, or parts of it, several more times.  I added a DrumKat trigger pad (wow, prices have gone up!) and and keyboard so I can have things like tympani and mallet instruments (glock, chimes, xylophone) where I couldn't before.  I haven't played it in a while (new baby) was even thinking about selling it, but now I think I'll dust it off and set it up again.