BijanBlog

Whisper to a Scream

Updating our ipods workout playlists this morning.

Added a fresh batch of classic rock, indie and some 80's new wave. Last week listening to 1st Wave on Sirius I heard Whisper To A Scream by Icicle Works

Brought back lots of memories. Enjoy.

Hyperballad

This is a really wonderful acoustic cover of Hyperballad by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The original is from the album Post by Bjork. Worthy addition to any collection.

Great cover by Death Cab

Last night a friend of mine sent me a link to a 2005 NPR interview with Death Cab for Cutie.

Ben and the guys play a few live songs from the album Plans. Towards the end of the interview they play an acoustic cover of Matthew Sweet's Sick of myself. I always loved that song.

NPR is still streaming the show but sadly no podcast. So, I had to use WireTap to create this (lossy) mp3 but its still awesome. Enjoy.

Sick of myself

Aztec Camera

Saturday morning happy 80's music.

Oblivious by Aztec Camera. Enjoy.

Friday tunes

After the NNN board mtg, Fred Seibert asked me what music we're listening to these days.

Some new and some old was my response. And a lot of "old new" stuff too.

Ben Gibbard seems to frequently be playing on our speakers at the Sabet household. We're not burnt out by any means.

Here's a great acoustic live performance of Ben playing  To Sing For You.mp3 (which is a Donovan cover)

This song then moves right into "brand new colony".

Enjoy.

Arcade Fire rocked Boston tonite

We just got back from seeing Arcade Fire at the Orpheum tonight.

Oh my god. The music was amazing and these guys just rocked boston. the fans were also fantastic.

They played old and new stuff from Neon Bible

I wish I had my camera but I forgot it. So I grabbed this version of the song "Rebellion" so you can get a feel for what this band is like live. Update: Previous video was taken down so here's another one of the band live.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Early MMJ

I recently picked up The Sandworm Cometh by My Morning Jacket

It's a collection of their early songs that were never previously released.

If you are a MMJ fan than you will want this album in your collection

Lots of great songs. I really love this cover of RocketMan from this cd. It's grown on me a lot.

Enjoy.

Streampad meets Apollo

I've blogged about Streampad in the past

The Streampad player has lived on my side bar on this blog for over a year or so. You can play the mp3s that I have on myblog with the player.

Streampad had built a Java desktop app that makes your home music collection available anywhere thru a web browser. And Streampad offers a bunch of other community features on top of this service (last.fm support, google maps, friends/profiles etc). But while the web service for Streampad has been so cool - the desktop/home server version was not simple.

Dan Kantour who is the founder of Streampad emailed me last week about the new version of the Streampad Desktop that is done in Adobe Apollo. It's the first time I've used an Apollo based app.

I finally got around last night to installing Apollo on my home mac server. it was a breeze to install and set up the new Streampad Desktop to scan my iTunes library. Now I can access my library anywhere through a standard web browser. Works great. This is what it looks like inside of a browser.

I can also configure Streampad Desktop to have up to 5 guests access/stream my home collection. Very helpful.

Nice job Dan!

I couldn't disagree more

Leander Kahey writes the Cult of Mac for Wired. His latest article "Why Steve Jobs will never offer music subscriptions" caught my eye.

Since Apple has been the single holdout in offering a subscription services I think this topic is quite interesting.

But I couldn't disagree more with Leander when he says (especially the last sentence).

A lot of people tell the same story. Even die-hard fans of subscription services don’t use them for music discovery. They use Pandora or Last.fm, they hear tunes on the radio or read about bands in magazines. Then they go to their subscription service to download it. I've yet to find anyone who uses a subscription service to find new music.

I use iTunes to buy music frequently. The DRM hassle is a problem for me. However, its the easiest way to buy tunes to load on our ipods. And I often buy tv shows from iTunes before I leave for a cross country flight.

But subscription services like Sirius, Rhapsody (using yottamusic of course) and last.fm is a big part of how I discover new music. I get recommendations from friends in my social network on those services and I also discover similar artists to those I already enjoy because my music history is autoscrobbled.

I somewhat agree with Leander's other point comparing music to drugs. We do tend to obsess on a single artist or tune or album for awhile before we need another hit. I've been in a Ben Kweller & Old 97s funk for awhile and I just can't shake my addiction. But at the same time I love mixing it up and listening to some oldies too. Thats the beauty of having an ipod -- gigabytes of tunes available wherever you are so you can mix it up whenever you want.

I guess I'm not too surprised that Apple hasn't launched a subscription service yet. I think they will when the business model makes sense (ie better licensing terms) and they can nail the user experience.

I think the bigger opportunity for Apple is to offer community features inside and outside of iTunes.

Morrison Hotel

I've been listening to a lot of new music by known and unknown artists lately. Discovering new tunes is a blast.

But this morning I woke up and wanted to hear some classic rock.

The first tune I picked was Peace Frog by The Doors. This song is from the album Morrison Hotel

Is this record really 37 years old? Anyway, great song and great album.

Enjoy.