Category Archives: Music - Page 2

Swing the night away

Posted by on June 30, 2007 1 comment

This weekend is the final half of the Twin Cities Hot Summer Jazz Festival, which has quite a few local and national jazz acts performing on mostly free stages in and around Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. I have been to at least some portion of each of the last four festivals and have been looking forward to this year’s event. I was a little disappointed to note that the festival is a fair bit smaller than it has been in the past, with only a single free stage on Friday night in Peavey Plaza, and two free stages Saturday and Sunday. In comparison, two years ago I remember there being five stages running all day on Saturday and Sunday.

For the most part I have been going to the parts of the festival that I have been able to get to by myself but this year I was fortunate enough to remember to invite my dad early enough that he might not have fully booked his schedule yet, and so he and I had a grand evening last night enjoying the festival and each other’s company.

The day started out somewhat mixed when I ended up having significant car trouble from what has turned out to be a bad tank of fuel. I had stopped at a new Biodiesel pump on the southeast corner of 66th St and Portland Ave in Richfield on Thursday afternoon and not driven much after filling most of the tank. Friday morning on the way into work I noticed that the car was performing very sluggishly and the exhaust was both extremely thick and smelled quite intensely of burning something and the nice people at West Side VW where quite surprised that the engine was able to do much with whatever had been sold to me as fuel. Still, emptying the entire system, clearing the lines, a new fuel filter, and at least some cleaning of the fuel pump will hopefully get things running fine sometime today.

In any case, this did change plans somewhat as I would not be able to meet my dad at my house as had been planned, but it was not a huge deal for him to pick me up at work, and from there were went to my place and took the LRT into downtown for the festival, only an hour later than we had hoped and unfortunately having missed Ginger Commodore. Neither of us had managed to have dinner yet so when we arrived were quite hungry and while it might have been interesting to stay for Dan Kusz‘s set on the main stage, the song they were performing wasn’t nearly as interesting as the possibility of food so we popped into Brit’s for a good meal.

Well sated, and having had a chance to talk, we were lucky enough to came out just in time to see the third act for the night, Grace Kelly. Being 15 she definitely lacked some of the polish and long experience that I often see on the main stage, but she made up for all of that and more with raw talent and vivacious dedication to her sax playing, as well as her singing, and even managed to surprise with a couple of tunes she had composed herself.

The last main stage set was the one that I had been looking forward to and Barbara Morrison was even more fun this year than last. Getting to hear her is such a treat with her fabulous stage presence and wicked humor between songs it makes for a great way to end the night. The dancers tend to come out of the woodwork during her set as well and getting to watch some great swing dancers bopping along to the music just made it even more fun.

While somewhat tempted to stay out for the jam session at the Dakota, we decided we had better start heading home since there was still an hour before the jam would even start and it had been a pretty full day. On the way home we did decide to take a slight detour and stopped for adult malts at the Town Talk Diner. Dad had the Mint Condition, my usual favorite, while I tried the Silly Rabbit. I don’t know that I would have it twice, but I can say that it was the living embodiment of an alcohol infused version of the bottom of a bowl of Trix cereal on a Saturday morning watching cartoons. That particularly sweet, sticky, creamy, but slightly grainy flavor and texture are iconic enough to bring back memories though I’m pretty sure it was Kix in my family instead of the extra-sugared Trix.

Looking forward to today’s line-up and I going to stay up for the jam session tonight. I’m always looking for friendly faces so give me a ring if you’re in the area.

Update: Thoughts from day 2 here.

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Brass Mario, a funky Mario

Posted by on March 21, 2007 Comments Off

The Super Mario Theme performed by three trombonists!

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Sole Inhabitant, but not lonely

Posted by on December 5, 2006 Comments Off

My autographed copy (#219!) of Thomas Dolby‘s “The Sole Inhabitant” concert DVD arrived in the mail today from CD Baby and I spent a really great evening getting through the contents despite a couple of little flaws in the package.

The main content is the concert from September 28th 2006 at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston. Being a big fan of Thomas Dolby’s music means that it was worth it just to hear some great live arrangements of several of his classic songs, but the video presentation by Johnny DeKam really made it fun to keep my eyes open instead of just blissing out to the music. Using several cameras, video effects, and sometimes the video footage that accompanied the live music, the imagery is very suitable and comes off as very professional even though there is obviously very few people behind the production. The concert itself is presented in two formats: with the introductions between songs, and without the introductions between songs. I tend to like to hear what a performer has to say as much as what they play so I stuck with the version with introductions and was not displeased. The concert is fairly well constructed and moves well between numbers. The monologue’s between tracks are to the point and show an old hand to the stage successfully getting his sea legs back after being ashore for an awfully long time.

Also on the disc are several extras: “Rig Voyage” is a portion of a presentation given to students at the venue, “Building a Song” is a narrated clip from the TED 2006 conference, and “Studio Interview” is exactly as billed. “Rig Voyage” was a pretty interesting look at the content of his current hardware setup and some notes about the equipment he started his career with. “Building a song” was a nice, if quite short, version of something he also does in the show but with a simple narration that helps follow along with the technique. It is also the only video on the disc that is shot in widescreen but unfortunately is inexplicably fairly grainy. There are also a couple of small audio glitches that almost ruin the clip. I’m not sure if those are from the source material or the disc mastering but I actually went to the trouble of verifying it on several players and machines and they were present every single time. “Studio Interview” is a pretty good interview with Thomas Dolby talking about his careers in music, business, and family and manages to not quite say anything concrete about where he plans to go in the future except that there will be more music which is probably all that we really need to know at this point.

Besides the audio glitches in “Building a song” there are a couple of flaws in the mastering of the disc that make for some slight irritation with the packaging. When all of the extras are played, instead of returning to the menu the disc stops. On two of the players that I tried the disc on hitting Play after an extra finishing stopped the disc starts the “Concert (with intros)” track instead of bringing up the main menu which means an extra button press to get to that menu so you can see something else. I also found the low end of the sound to be a bit spotty sometimes making my subwoofers do their jobs and other times sounding decidedly empty in that range. Still, I’ve certainly seen worse and the disc as a whole is functional if more rough than I had expected.

There’s plenty here for a fan, and it’s probably worth watching for someone into electronic music and/or 80′s pop, but if you don’t count yourself in any of those groups I can’t see it keeping your interest.

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But only a little guilty…

Posted by on November 20, 2006 Comments Off

As a birthday present for my sister this year I got tickets for her and I to go see the Barenaked Ladies play at the Xcel Center in St Paul last night. The show was pretty good, though I have to admit that I was a bit more excited about (and happy at the performance of) the opening act than I was was of the headliner. Mike Doughty was in fine form and did a great job warming up the crowd with some of his solo work as well as a couple of Soul Coughing tunes, though no one sitting near us really seemed to know who the heck he was. I really need to make more of an effort to see him do his own show the next time he’s in town.

Anyway, Barenaked Ladies also had a very good show and I did enjoy it very much. My sister and I have had an on-going strong discussion (because it’s not serious enough to be an argument) about whether BNL was as fun on stage as their fellow Torontans, er, Toronto-ans, um, band from Toronto Moxy Fruvous. Well BNL does a good show, but they’re nothing close to Moxy Fruvous on stage. Definitely fun, don’t get me wrong, but not nearly the quantity of digressions, ad-libs, and other wacky types of stuff that happens at a Moxy Fruvous show.

They also didn’t sing any songs in French. What kind of Canadian band is that, eh? ;-P

The really cool part of the show for me though was that while perusing the merchandise table prior to the show they had a sign up the “Barenaked on a Stick LIVE!” USB key for $25. The details are this: They record the entire show off of the boards and dump it to an MP3 file. They they copy that MP3 file and a PDF with the set list off to fifty USB keys and hand them out as soon as duplication is complete after the show. The two very, very tiny little issues that I have with this:

  1. There is exactly one MP3 file that has the entire show so it can be a bit unwieldly to listen to. So I’ve spent a bit of time today listening to the file in Audacity and spliting out tracks as I come to them. (Thus the post title…)
  2. It doesn’t include the opening act. Completely understandable but it would have been nice.

Overall it’s a really cool idea and it’s been fun to listen to. I’m trying to decide if it’s a good idea to get the albums they have available in this form or not though.

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Mea Culpa

Posted by on November 16, 2006 Comments Off

It turns out that the Zune software does have Dynamic Playlists, they’re just hidden very well.

Still not enough to get it back on my system and certainly not enough to use it regularly.

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One last irritation

Posted by on November 14, 2006 Comments Off

While I was uninstalling the Zune software from my system a thought occurred to me: I did not remember ever seeing an option of where to install the software during installation. Since the uninstallation was nice and painless I decided to restart the installation to verify my memory just to be sure and I could not find a way for an average user to change the installation location of the software.
So there’s one more reason to stay away for now.

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Strike 3! …4! …5! …

Posted by on November 14, 2006 Comments Off

Further issues with the Zune software:

  • No dynamic play lists. While I occasionally will listen to a particular album or artist, my primary method of listening to music is a modified shuffle of the entire library, slightly culled by dropping any tracks that I’ve played in the last 1-3 weeks (My full library at home gets 3 weeks, my smaller library at work gets 1 week). This means that I really do often hear stuff that I haven’t heard lately which usually makes up for the other quirks in the default shuffle play systems of both iTunes and any version of Windows Media Player I’ve toyed around with.
  • Media updates will stop playback of that media. So after figuring I would at least try and listen to something in the interface, despite the aforementioned lack of dynamic playlists, so I queued up a recently acquired album (You Are Here by Banco de Gaia, which is really quite good world beat electronica) and started listening. Six minutes into the first track (which clocks at nine minutes and 15 seconds) the music suddenly stops. Somewhat mystified I pull up the player and notice a little banner at the bottom saying “Updating You Are Here…” or something similar. While that banner was displayed I could queue up other music, but not the one that was being updated. Again, iTunes and Windows Media Player don’t have this issue.
  • Does not minimize to system tray. I tend to keep a lot of windows open while I am working during the day and so being able to remove one item from the taskbar to reduce clutter actually makes quite a difference to me. Unlike iTunes and Windows Media Player, I cannot find a single option that allows me to minimize to the system tray.

I think the strangest thing about all of those points is that otherwise the interface looks and behaves almost identical to Windows Media Player 11, which I spent a fair bit of time playing around with over the past couple of weeks. Playback works okay and audio quality isn’t an issue that I can tell, but I see absolutely no compelling reasons to keep this installed on my computer.
I had also honestly been considering the possibility of getting a Zune, but until at least the minimize and dynamic playlist issues are fixed it’s just not an option for me.

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The pain! The pain!

Posted by on November 14, 2006 Comments Off
SappyZune

SappyZune,
originally uploaded by nstohlma.

Strike 2! This is the first image I saw while the Zune software installation was running. How much more sappy can you get?

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It can be the little things

Posted by on November 14, 2006 Comments Off

I decided to give the new Zune software package a try today just to see what it’s like. Why try the software when I don’t have the Zune hardware? iTunes is pretty good software and I’ve never owned an iPod.

However I’ve already run into the first item that makes me wonder about the whole Zune ethos: I can’t download the software using FireFox.

Just try and use the “Download Zune” button from this page in any non-IE browser and see how far you get.

Still going to try it anyway and see how it goes, but that sort of little idiocy starts to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.

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Live in Switzerland

Posted by on October 24, 2006 Comments Off

I just finished my third listen through of the new live album from Mama Digdown’s Brass Band, titled “Ascona”.

I think my only complaint with the album is that it is kind of front loaded. I usually don’t have quite this much trouble remembering what I just heard after the middle of the album when I listen to it straight through. The early tracks on the album are really, really incredibly good and the last half of the album is only really good but for some reason slightly less memorable.

Still, excellent listening for anyone who enjoys Second-Line Brass Bands or New Orleans style Brass Bands, whichever we are calling them this week, and actually a decent introduction to this style of music if you have any interest in finding out more. Mama Digdown’s has consistently been more easily progressive than some of the more adventurous bands like Rebirth Brass Band or Youngblood Brass Band. I think part of that is, as a friend put it after listening to Youngblood’s “Center. Level. Roar.”, that Mama Digdown’s is consistently more “tight” than many of the other bands doing relatively similar music. (Though, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve asked him to give Mama Digdown’s a listen so I don’t know that he’d agree with this assessment.)

The “tight” component of this style of music I find to almost be related to how much hip-hop influence is present. The more hip-hop influence the less “tight”, or really loose I suppose, and when it really works the song sounds like an utterly beautiful accident. A sort of musical embodiment of serendipity. The problem is that when it doesn’t work the song can sound just plain sloppy. As much as I really enjoy hearing them and think they are a pretty decent local party band, Jack Brass Band can kind of epitomize the sometimes heard habit of letting the lack of talent be heard as that lack of being “tight” and really what keeps them from being really good. A hard line to walk some times and I think going for “tight” first and then working for the “loose” sound is a generally better plan.

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