polyphonic spree

polyphonic spree, originally uploaded by flybutter.

still wishing i could see them again. have been listening to little else, besides tim's old band Tripping Daisy.

love this photo.

OMG. The Polyphonic Spree.

The Polyphonic Spree @ the Great American Music Hall
Tuesday July 17

i don't have the setlist yet, but they played for more than two hours and did a six- (or seven- ?) song encore. tim told the crowd -- after the best live Nirvana cover EVER (Lithium) -- he wasn't "ready to bring it home just yet," and asked the crowed if they should play Soldier Girl, Hold Me Now, or Light & Day. the crowd screamed loudly for each one and he pondered a moment and then said, "let's do all three!"

i didn't think anyone would top The Arcade Fire this summer, but The Spree did just that. an amazing night i will not forget. this is a band now firmly planted in my "see them anywhere, anytime" list. fun, fun, fun!

for anyone interested, their recent show at the 9:30 Club in D.C. was recorded by Bob Boilen for NPR's All Songs Considered. get a little taste of the live spree experience: @ NPR, @ iTunes

i just found a great recap of their recent show in Brooklyn -- sounds very much like last night's show. tim was very emotional and thankful to the sold out SF crowd, saying over and over, "Thank you so much. We needed this." as patrick says in his review, i can't wait to see them again.

more glowing reviews (with photos): minneapolis, seattle (two nights ago)

listening to bjork on wnyc.org

listening to bjork on wnyc.org

omfg, what a freak!

but, i love her.

Nightcrawler

Although I've had plenty of experience with fat, juicy nightcrawler worms, the title of the post actually refers to Pete Yorn's latest album of the same name.

This one has been on my download list for a few months, and I just got around to it today. It's delightful. That's the first word that came to mind, and though it may be cheesy, it's entirely accurate. Nothing groundbreaking or world-rocking, but it's an album that coasts along -- planting itself firmly in my current heavy rotation.

Pandora goes public

no, not really public like NASDAQ... but they did recently sign a deal with MSN to provide MSN Radio. looks like someone at microsoft actually has a brain in their head.

Pandora plays streaming music via a flash player in your browser and is powered by the Music Genome Project. honestly, the MGP is one of those ideas that you slap yourself in the head and think, "i've always thought about that, why couldn't i think of a way to do this?!?"

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Pandora and the MGP are an exciting piece of the social music revolution that's happening thanks to digital/online music. i can discover music based on criteria i already know i enjoy; share playlists, artists, etc.; track it all with last.fm (see the awesome pandora/last.fm mashup, PandoraFM); then head to eMusic and download my favorites. if you don't have an eMusic account, you're missing out on one of the best online music sites, IMHO. they don't have the catalog of iTunes or Rhapsody, but if you're a music fan with eclectic taste, you won't be disappointed.

read more about Pandora at TechCrunch. if it's good enough for mike arrington, it's good enough for me. ;)

Songbird Nest

I don't write often, but what's even more pathetic is that I've got drafts lying around from a year ago! I thought I'd finish up this one, since Songbird is about to hit another milestone. These guys have one of the coolest products (and one of the slowest dev cycles) I've seen crop up here in the "new bubble" in downtown SF.

To sum it up, and steal from their Web site:

Songbird^™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins feathers. Like Firefox^®, it is built from Mozilla^®, cross-platform and open source.

It's a compelling bit of software; one part iTunes and one part Firefox. The Web site is well designed, their mascot is cute and memorable, and they seem to have a very talented (albeit rather slow) team of web heads working diligently to craft their ultimate music player. The software itself has a very clean, simple, well-designed UI, and the feature list has all the bells and whistles you would expect from a modern player (including a "Super Slim Mini-Mode" to leave in the corner of your screen).

So what makes Songbird different? It's an all-in-one package -- media search, playback, and file management -- not to mention a full-fledged browser, to boot! While browsing the web, the bottom of the application shows all playable media files linked from or contained within the page. I can click the link to play the file right in Songbird, or drag and drop it into my library. Works well for video and podcasts, too.

It's definitely beta software (not the indefinite web2.0 kind, but the real kind, complete with crashes and all), so take your chances, but have fun and explore the web through the eyes of that cute li'l bird.

dmb warehouse membership package

dmb warehouse,
originally uploaded by quepol.

a light-up pen?? wtf? at least the live songs on "volume 5" are good. the msg show sounds like it was great... need to track down a torrent.

DirectTV and XM Radio finally get their act together

DirecTV is now streaming 72 XM radio stations!

As part of DIRECTV's dedication to offering the best in entertainment to its customers, beginning Nov. 15, 2005, 72 channels of XM's quality music, children's, and talk programming will be available via DIRECTV, nearly doubling its current audio programming lineup at no additional cost. In addition to music channels and children's programming, XM will provide XM's Major League Baseball "Home Plate" talk radio channel, and its High Voltage channel, featuring talk radio stars Opie and Anthony.

sure enough, channels 801-879 are now XM radio stations. Channel lineup (PDF)

it took them long enough -- Sirius has evidently been providing Dish with radio content since sometime last year. but better late than never... the stereo sound quality is good, and the "top" stations appear to be represented. my faves are all there -- deep tracks, top tracks, real jazz, beyond jazz, xm live, xm cafe, xmu, fred, ethel, music lab, lucy, the loft. perhaps they'll figure out a way to allow a local traffic & weather station based on subscriber zip code!

the only glitches i can see are that song synchronization is sometimes slow, and some stations provide minimal (or even no) song info -- which is weird since it seems like it would just be a port of exactly what is coming through normally. but hey, it's free!

between this and free internet streaming, i'll definitely be keeping my satellite radio unit in the car!