She’d love to drive you insane…

@ WBOS EarthFest (Boston MA) – May 26, 2007.
photo by Brian Silverstein / SilverShots.com [used w/o permission]

Oi she’s still around huh? Cooool!! I discovered her on download.com’s music section a couple of yrs back — she’s probably the featured artist that week. However, Stronger and such were available from download.com way back in 2004, so where’s the new music? And why they hell every other musician has to go to iTunes to sell their music? Pretty sucky, eh? Oh well, if u like acoustic folkish stuff, u might as well like her. Adios!!

UPDATE (2006-12-18): The above linked song, Stronger, is a different version than the one I initially downloaded from here a couple of years back. That one was an all-acoustic song. The new remixed version, available in her latest EP that you can also download from her Web site, is just another mainstream-sounding crap. It’s a pity how the producers make a mess in order to appeal to the mainstream culture. So, what was lost in the procedure is her passionate voice that made me a fan initially. Unfortunately, the acoustic demo version of Stronger — my Mieka Pauley favorite — has been taken offline from download.com too. I mean alright she has to make a living by selling her music in places like iTunes, but thats no excuse to compromise just so she’s more widely accepted by ditching the ones who loved her music initially.

Update (2007/07/29): The previously linked photo was removed from the Mieka’s Web site, so linked a new one here.   

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Wake Up…

Some of these female singer/songwriters from the 90s used to make good music. Guess it took just one song on the radio to get into them such as Alanis Morissette’s Hand In My Pocket, or Shawn Colvin’s Sunny Came Home, or even Jewel’s Hands.

Or you know the ones on the Hard Rock Cafe Live show (at 2300 hrs on TNT, every Saturday night) with Melissa Etheridge, whose albums I couldn’t ever find in stores. This specific show was rather good and many of the performers were those I’ve never heard of before — like Bush, and many others whose names I don’t even remember now. Whatever happened to the radio and TV shows? Now listening to albums like Jagged Little Pill reminds me of those shows.

The radio shows that I used to listen to was this one every morning at 8am and this female jockey was rather good as she would tell us about the albums and things related to the song or even her own personal recollections. Then the evenings were good too. And yes of course there was this Wicked Hour Show. What happened to those shows and those programs is what I wonder now after six years. First it was the TV that got corrupted with MTV Most Wanted hosted by that idiot VJ we had named Shehnaz. Yea, so I liked Maria and Mini Mathur, but they were at least fun and smart. Shehnaz was just plain dumb and irritating. Maybe Most Wanted should never had got rid of Rahul Khanna? OK, he hosted that show when I was like in 6th grade or somethin and I probably don’t even remember whatever he talked about and the songs he played. Then the show that followed at 6pm had this real cool and funny VJ. I’m not sure if it was on [V] or MTV. But I remember there was this one time, thats when the Val Kilmer movie Saint was released… and he kept raising his eyebrows to some background sound pretending to be the Saint.

Anyway, probably they were also just pretty faces, but at least they knew music. Then came Shehnaz, Peeya and the rest of the gang who were just plain DUMB. Meanwhile, the radio was still airing variety and it had intelligent people hosting the shows. Well, until 12th grade at least cuz after that I moved to Kolkata. And to be honest for a city that has so many musicians and stuff like that, the radio was total crap. But that wasn’t the worst part. To my surprise when I moved back here after three years, the radio that I remembered had transformed into something of a Hit Machine. So rather than play new or just variety stuff, it only played the same big hits throughout the day. Obviously, most of the old jockeys had left too by then to be filled in by the dumb-asses. And maybe that’s why we’re now surrounded by a generation of so-called music lovers who depend on the media to tell them what they should be listening to rather than make their own fuckin minds. And thus we have folks who are pretty pathetically Shehnaz*ified.

Anyway, so what do you say when you chance up on this co-worker, who just grabs your mp3 player and puts it on asking what the hell she is listening to? So, I reply…

Tool.

What?

It’s a band called Tool… the album is from the mid 90s…

Don’t you have any decent metal in it?

Like what?

umm… like Metallica, or Linken Park?

Don’t really listen to em much.

But you should. They are so popular. I love them. They are just so popular, you know?

OK

Yeah, like nobody listens to Tool. Who listens to Tool?

I need to care? What do u listen to?

You know good bands like Guns N’ Roses, Pink Floyd, and you know…. yes, like I said Metallica and Linken Park.

You like Floyd??

Yes, I love em. You know they are like so popular.

OK

So, maybe those aren’t the exact words. But she was so stuck on that “popular” word that she didn’t even think of needing to provide any other reason for liking those bands. Not that I believe Tool is like the ultimate band there is, but I was listening to them a lot last year around this time, and incidentally AEnima was in my player that day on me way back home.

Anyway, this girl, who was also a sub and had joined a couple of weeks before me, and I hardly ever conversed. But discovering someone I never thought of digs Floyd should have got me excited only to be put off by the word “popular” repeated to many times to justify what she listened to. I dunno how old she was — probably my age or a bit younger — and I have no clue since when is Floyd a popular band around here, apart from the university campuses probably. But there she was digging Floyd and probably only cuz they were supposed to be “popular”. Oh well, good to know that. See ya around. Adios!!

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Nowhere To Go!

A few days ago Amarok 1.4.4 was released. With the Last.fm radio integrated a while back what more could we’ve asked for? Ummm… how about an integrated music store? Hey yuh! Magnatune’s been integrated in this release.

In case you don’t know what Magnatune is, well, their tag line says “We Are Not Evil“. And they certainly aren’t and I’ll tell you why. Firstly, no other music store gives you so many choices once you buy an album — from letting you decide in what format you want the song to what price you wanna pay for the stuff (anything between USD 5 and 18). Secondly, they don’t put DRM and support the indie artists. Hey even Brad Sucks is in there. Please visit Magnatune.com for more info on their vision and mission.

Anway, here’s how Magnatune streams work from inside Amarok….

Click for full image!

The first time you run it, you need to click that update button on the bottom left-side pane and watch it download the Magnatune collection database. Afterwards, just like your local Amarok collection, it’ll also be arranged alphabetically. Of course to make your life easier, there’s a genre drop-down menu on top of the collection browser, so you can browse bands/artists by their genres. You’ll notice I’ve Punk Rock selected.

Anyway, so that’s how you can keep trying out new bands and stuff. And yes they stream the full songs and each and every song from an album. So, what if you stumble upon this one band you just can’t get enough of and wanna buy the music?

Click for full image!

As you can see you can simply click on that Purchase Album button on the left-side pane! You enter the basic CC details and choose the amount you wanna pay and that’s it. Oh and another cool thing is, once you buy the album they let you give away three copies to your friends (or enemies if u prefer). Check out the store shitheads! Adios!!

P.S. –> Oh and don’t forget to check out Sonny by The Napoleon Blown Aparts  from their album Thrill Hype. Great song!!

P.P.S. –> Following’s my mail to Magnatune.com sometime back requesting logos and Amarok integration and their prompt response. I posted it from somewhere within the Web site and xxx@gmail.com is of couse me.

From: Teresa Malango    
To: “xxx@gmail.com”
Date: 08-Jun-2006 00:36
Subject: Re: more logos

Hello-
Thank you for your message and support of Magnatune!  Your suggestion about the logos is a good one and I’ll see what we can do. You can link directly to Magnatune shoutcast radio streams off our website at www.magnatune.com/info/shoutcast  but the idea about including this info with the amaroK integration is a good one- I’ll forward it along too!
Best regards,
Teresa Malango
Magnatune
yyy@magnatune.com

On 6/6/06, xxx@gmail.com wrote:

    Hi! I came to know about this company from the amarokLive project. kudos to what all you guys are up to! I was wondering if you guys can make more logos available for us to put on blogs to refer to you guys… the logo has to contain your tag line “We are not evil” or maybe “They are not evil” cuz a thrid party is referring to this. Just an idea…

    All the best for your awesome venture. And thanks a ton for not being evil, also for embracing Free and Open-Source Software.

    just another fan

    P.S. –> Also, is there a streaming radio available? Then that’d be awesome way to tell people more about Magnatune. Maybe it can be based on genres… Genres-based radio is important cuz people should not be distracted by the type of music they aren’t fond of. And it’s gonna be a great way for us to know what kinda music is available in stores. Oh and if the radio is availble please bug the amaroK devs to integrate it in, cuz I dont see it there. Thanks again!

So, as you can see, both sides eventually came up with something a helluva lot better than what I’d initially requested for (and I’m sure a lot of others did too!).

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The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth

While Delhi was under attack last night — oh I dunno who it was. Mush, Bush or the Bajrangis? — it gave me a serious headache. Adding to that, with all those things exploding all over the place I’d become partly deaf. It’s times like these that I think why on earth did I not invest on an underground bunker ever.

So, after the warring sides called for truce, possibly in the really early morning hours, I thought of finally sitting back and chilling now. However, what I just heard was the following…

No kind words are coming out of your mouth
Plenty goes in but nothing good comes out
Badmouth, sad mouth, you were an unhappy child
That doesn’t make your lying tongue alright

Wash it out, wash it out, wash it out

Is that really funny or am I just silly? Who the hell is PJ Harvey anyway? OK I’ll leave ya with that. Adios!!

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I Can’t Quit You Baby…

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.

Ok axe that milk part from there. But isn’t it cool how I can put in two songs by two bands from different era and make some sense outta it? Hell yuh… I’m pretty neat at this stuff. And what’s up with Sufjan Stevens? What kinda name is that? Oh well, people can be really funny sometimes.

So, the other day I was like walking down the road and I see this kid with an axe trying to act like really smart. So I ask him if he has some change for 10 bucks and he raises his eyebrow like I’m a loonatic of some sort. So what I do is wack him real hard on the face and move on.

Anyway, the above was just A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But for Very Good Reasons. Adios!!

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And when your hand is on your heart…

So it begins! ‘Twas released on Tuesday and I had fired KTorrent to go grab it. The problem: too many leachers and too few seeders, thus resulting in an awfully slow d/l speed. Then over at Beranger’s I notice that FTP sites are already available for d/l. So today, located a Taiwan mirror to grab me my bite. Hopefully will install it in a couple of days to let you know of how it fairs. Meanwhile, you can read Beranger’s take here and here.

On related news, just noticed over at Umma’s that Gabriel Kelley of Gabriel Young fame has finally put up his Web site, and u can listen to some of his new stuff over there. In fact as soon as the home page loads it starts streaming stuff. Pretty good stuff indeed, tho a bit different than the Gabriel Young that I’m used to. You can also listen to the stuff over at Umma’s Radio Blog thingy here. Besides I’d recommend you go click that last linky cuz in the way u’ll end up noticing how I’m actually really famous and have me name showing up all over the Internet. OK, so on just this site. Damn! OK, just this weblog entry. Nonetheless I’m at least a bit more famous than u thought I actually am, eh? Adios!!

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Stuck here out of gas… out here on the Gaza Strip…

This is a song about a superhero named Tony. It’s called Tony’s theme…

BITE ME!

“You fucking die” I said, to her
I said “YOU FUCKING DIE”, to her
Huh? What?
No, no! I was talking to Kim
I said “you fucking die”
No, I was just- we were just goofing around
No, no. It didn’t have anything to do with anything
She said: “Don’t tou- anybody touch this is my stuff”
And I said “You fucking die” like that
I was finishing her part for her
You know what I mean?

Oh BTW, that’s Pixies bassist and Breeders guitarist Kim Deal. I read this interview when I had just got into the band and rememember liking the following part especially…

She’s the one who got me interested in music in the first place. She came home from a drive-in movie and she was on acid and she had seen this Led Zeppelin film, The Song Remains the Same.

So I was standing talking to her in the backyard smoking a cigarette when you’re not supposed to. And she told me about this movie, and it was really interesting. So we decided that we were going to be rock stars and sing, and be just like in the movie.

The ’she’ person here was Kim’s sister. Adios!!

The Cowboy from Hell.

Pantera Guitarist Dimebag Darrell was an insane guitarist. Wasim is a Pantera nut and I loved to hear him talk about Dimebag. (I use past tense cuz I haven’t seen Wasim for months.) He had a collection of videos and live concert footages, including one deadly (as Wasim prefers the term when relating to somethin kick ass) Russian metal concert that was a riot.

I’m not that much of a fan of American metal bands — like Metallica, Megadeth, et. all — but this Pantera thingy is seriously “deadly”, especially the guitar riffs and the drumming. Drummer Vinnie Paul was his brother.

I’m still more or less confused with what exactly is referred to as shredding. I thought this Dimebag guy mostly shredded, but the Wikipedia entry says otherwise. Anyway, as I was reading about him, I feel insanely stupid that I don’t get what most of the technical stuff mean. Here’s an excerpt…

However, Darrell is critisized for his technical abilities, usually undermining them or blowing them out of all logical proportion. To begin with, Darrell is considered a very technical picker, he’s considered one of ther more technical of the guitar pact, with his flawless guitar playing, the records of Dimebag playing sloppy in a song, even playing covers of other artists such as Michael Angelo Batio or Van Halen, are almost technical picking. Although Dimebag rarely tried to shred on Pantera records, his picking ability is comparable to the likes of Marty Friedman of Megadeth in a few of his solos, something Dave Mustaine claimed. Despite this, Dimebag shows little technical knowledge of other techniques such as finertapping, sweep picking (although he does occasionally use some of the more technical lines) and most of the others. Another point to emphasis critisicm on is the fact that many people considered the fact that Dime’s “tweener” solos were very experimental and creative, with wild effects and screaming wahs, a good quantity of solos were used as fillers, just for the inclusion of a guitar solo in the music. Dimebag Darrell Also had a strong legato technique and occiasonally made use of the harmonic minor scale in such songs as Primal concrete sledge, domination(solo) and a few others.

Maybe it’s a bit of a badly edited material, however, most of it seriously goes over my head. Adios!!

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The species have amused itself to death…

My cousin bro mentioned Orkut today… and I thought of saying hiya(s) and stuff in his profile. Then I thought of playing around with the thing and went community hunting. It’s pointless cuz I don’t even use it. And I better not be community hunting on music, especially when the search term’s Pink Floyd.

I came across a ‘Pink Floyd in India’ group and there’s a forum post on the subject of ‘Gilmour or Waters’. Good that I’ve to be approved by the admin before I can comment cuz I had got that itchy trigger finger to dive into another pointless, all-out war on the Gilmour fanboys. OK so I wont go back there perhaps, but these Gilmour fanboys are irritating or what? They know zilch and yet always seem to go blah blah blah… or more… blah blah blah blah. Lets quote some dumbass ‘madness’ dude here…

Gilmour no doubt… Waters was never a Floyd man… for me the band is far, far superior to the band members put together… Waters never respected this fact… his In The Flesh proves this point… on the other hand Gilmour put his life at stake & reformed Floyd with Pulse… he rocks for sure… and I strongly believe Floyd’s popularity multifolded only after Division Bell… Where was Waters then eh…?!

Hell yuh! Lets sell out in the name of popularity. Britney Spears was also so damn good, eh? I don’t even get what’s his point when he says “his In the Flesh proves this point” on how Waters never respected the group. Come again? I see Waters half the times in sidelines and the focus in on another band member in the DVD. Put in that PULSE thingy and all I see is Gilmour all over the screen (and even in the fuckin living room). And this one says “on the other hand Gilmour put his life at stake & reformed Floyd with Pulse”??? Really Gilmour put his life at stake to cut an album/tour or what? And this guy better gets his Gilmour facts right at least. A Momentary Lapse of Reasons and the following live album Delicate Sounds of Thunder came out 7-8 years prior to that, hello? I don’t see a point arguing with a dumbass like this madness guy.

Now lets have what another guy has to say…

Wanted to mention this but in recent times Waters has shown a marked interest in regrouping as Pink Floyd. Gilmour has had a “NO … period” for the idea.

If you’ve seen / heard the Live 8 concert, Waters is heard saying “It feels great to be playing with you, sharing the same stage … to be counted amongst you” (may be slightly rephrased) – duniya gol hai… life has come a full-circle for him.

I also heard that Waters was aiming to tour with Mason (and who knows, use the Pink Floyd name?). Seems his income is trickling.

Ah, yeah? How come I as a Waters fanboy could possibly have missed that? Shame on me! Seriously, where do they pick up these lame stuff? He did say somethin like it was great to be back with the band, playing and stuff before Wish You Were Here. However, when the press got too excited about a possible reunion, Waters was quoted as dismissing any intentions. (I guess even Rolling Stones published an article.) Oh and who used the name Pink Floyd to earn his bread again in the 80s? Last I read, Waters toured under the banner of ‘Roger Waters’ (multiple times). I bet some other crook was touring under the banner or ‘Pink Floyd’. Damn! Who was it?

Anyway… but, yes I give up. I finally see the light and agree with people who say stuff like “The Division Bell is deep man.” But, hey… Hit Me Baby One More Time was even more popular than Coming Back To Life. Doesn’t that make Britney’s stuff so much more “deeper”?

Perhaps, this is the worst side-effect of selling out your band: you drag a whole lotta new fanboys who understand shit about what the band stood for and go all blah blah blah… and more… blah blah blah blah. Adios!!

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and all you had to be was willing…

    "they told you your music, could reach millions."
  e ------------------------------------------------------
  b ------------------------------------------------------
  g ------------------------------------------------------
  d --3------7------10--------5------3-------3------------
  a --3------7------10--------5------3-------3------------
  e --1------5------8---------3------1----0--1------------
     (repeat)

  "I hope that you are happy, I hope at least youre having fun."
  -----------3-------------1--------------
  -----------3-------------1--------------
  -----------4-------------2--------------
  -----5-----5---------3---3--------------
  ----------------------------------------
  ----------------------------------------

  "everyone one is a fucking Napoleon"
  ------1------------1----------------3--------3------------
  ------1------------1----------------1--------1------------
  ------0------------0----------------2--------2------------
  ------------------------------------3--------3------------
  --0-------------------------------------------------------
  ---------------3----------------1---------1---------------

This looks so pretty simple. Then why the heck does my left hand wrist ache so bad? And I have only learned the first rhythm, that too half-baked, proof-of-concept types. This sucks! Why the fuck does the rhythm have to be such a rocker? Adios!!

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