Where is the artistic passion? Thoughts on passion in society

On my blog post yesterday, my friend Righini had commented in part:

[...] i notice how much love you put in everything you do from writings to music, and i'm amazed and my heart feels warmed! What's your secret root? Where do you take all this strength?

I started to write a really, really long reply in the comments, and then realized... hmm, perhaps I should just make this into a post, so here I am! :-)

*  *  *

I truly believe that everyone has enormous passion inside, but this too often gets stifled due to fear, ignorance, lack of inspiration and role models, and lastly, distraction ("SQUIRREL!" :p). Some examples:


Fear of being different
Drawing from Hollywood (eeep!)... on "Glee" there's an athlete who had tons of music in his soul, but was afraid to let it out for fears of being ostracized by peers.

There's a reason in the U.S. that kids playing instruments in band are (usually derisively) called "Band Geeks" or "Choir Fags."  Maybe now it's more cool to be in choir or band, but back when I was in high school, it generally wasn't.  I think kids often repress the expressive depths of their passion (in all forms) because they're afraid of being different, and -- in the case of guys -- quite possibly afraid of being perceived as feminine or even gay.

Some new AdamMusic (and some highlights from music past)

I've been quite-rightly bugged by some of my friends to play more piano. So yesterday, I stayed at work late (actually 'til nearly 2am!) and banged out some stuff on the now slightly-out-of-tune-but-still-serviceable grand piano in one of the lobbies, filmed with my slightly-old-and-suboptimal-video-recording camera, and documented in this run-on-but-still-comprehensible sentence.

The first bit is from a mini-medley I improv'd based upon songs from the musical "In The Heights," which I had the great pleasure of seeing in San Francisco a few weeks ago. 

[ If you're curious and/or bored you are welcome to check out my slightly-alternate take ]

Note that -- as with all my medleys -- this doesn't contain an exact replica of the melodies, which I could make... but it's more fun to stretch them a bit :).  And you'll probably catch that I was particularly taken with the song Alabanza from the musical, so -- unlike in one of my typical medleys -- my riffing on this one tune takes up about 80% of the medley.

Cirque du Soleil's "O" show in Las Vegas - my review

So what did I think of Cirque du Soleil’s show “O”?

Absolutely beautiful.  I think my mouth was open most of the time, and I’m glad there weren’t flies about (just people flying, and they’re bigger.  And sexier.  And waterproof, apparently!)

One of my friends that attended with me joked (okay, somewhat lamely) that the show is called O because everyone keeps breathlessly sighing or marveling “Ooooooh!”  But maybe she’s right.

Some quick specific thoughts:

• I sat in row M.  If I had my choice, I’d sit in maybe row D or E.  I’d rather see expressions and subtle movements, even at the slight expense of getting “the overall picture.”  Row M wasn’t bad at all, though.
• The expensive seats are $165 after tax.  That hurts.  Shockingly, I still think it was worth it, and I may attend again when I’m in Vegas next year.
• My three friends and I got last minute tickets (and, as noted, fine seats) by arriving just over two hours prior to a Thursday early show.  I’m guessing this’d be much less successful Fri-Sun.  And we got the *last* remaining tickets.  So I’d indeed recommend booking ahead or—if you’re available to see a show on a weekday, get there 2.5 hours early and bring a snack to eat in line.
• I didn’t quite click with the clown scenes.  Cute, but not particularly funny or entertaining.
• Sure, the feats of the performers were insanely amazing, but I was more taken by the artistic creativity and beauty of the show.  There were a few sections in which I thought, hmm, maybe this is a bit repetitive, but overall, the show captured and held my attention strongly.
• Gotta pee?  Go well *before* the show starts, or you’ll be pretty frustrated with, well, all the water around ;-).  And there’s no intermission!
• O is in the Bellagio hotel, and the buffet there is outstanding!  My friends and I were amazed at the quality and diversity of food that was available for our 9:30pm dinner!  And, unlike most buffets, (non-alcoholic) drinks are included at no extra price… including fresh-squeezed OJ.  Yum!

Anyway, go see the show.  Quite an experience! :-)

Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

Do you know Pandora?  If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years.  If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones!  More good news:  It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones.  Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora.  I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora.  For an on-demand mobile music service?  Perhaps.  But for streaming radio?  You’ve got to be kidding.

One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings:  Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported.  Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now.  Go figure.  I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day :-D ).

*  *  *

Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go!  If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

[Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

*  *  *

Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit :-)

Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
- Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
- Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
- Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
- Song-to-song time isn’t bad
- Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
- Access to all my stations :-)
- Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
- Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

Some stuff I don’t like:
- Takes a while to start up the app
- No way to see detailed info on artist or song

*  *  *

All in all, pretty damn cool! :-D

A music solution that's so brilliant, no wonder why the music industry has shunned it

The other day I got a (yet another) piece of inbox spam on the otherwise cool service last.fm.  And no good can come from spam, right?

Not sure what got into me, but I actually went to the site (which I’ll not name, so as to not potentially give them any customers).  And you know what?  They were doing something brilliant:  they were selling high-fi music tracks for 20 cents a piece.  No, that’s not in itself brilliant; Russian sites doing the same thing are and have been a dime a dozen.  What struck me as brilliant was their way of allowing music lovers to explore the *full length* of songs while still enticing them to buy the track.

How did they do this?  It’s ridiculously simple yet, IMHO, likely to be remarkably effective:  they overwrote parts of each track several times with a moderately annoying audio blip (sort of a “chirp”).  Only the truly desperate would possibly stream and copy and store such a track as an mp3, and, as we know, the truly desperate are not one’s potential customers.  Had this firm been even more enterprising, they would have instead added once after each minute of song: “Sample brought to you by [companyname]; uninterrupted tracks just 20 cents!”  If they wanted to be both enterprising AND deliciously devious, they’d have seeded a ton of torrent sites with those tracks :D).  Or, at minimum, made it crazy-easy for bloggers to embed any track or album AND receive a cut of all proceeds from people clicking through to the site.

Maybe I’m naive or missing something glaringly obvious, but it seems like everyone would stand to win with such a situation:
- Music lovers would get to sample full-length (albeit slightly interrupted) songs, instead of dealing with the 30 second samples found on iTunes and similar sites.
- Musicians would be happy to see samples of their work passed around in a way that wouldn’t damage their potential for earning revenue on the same tracks.
- Bloggers and others distributing the tracks (especially if done so out of real passion for specific artists or songs) would be delighted to get commissions (though it’d be hard to grant commissions on just the bare passed-around MP3s).
- The legit music sites hosting MP3s in this way would probably enjoy greater sales and profits.

Your thoughts?

A cappella birthday silliness -- much of it composed by me

Back in high school, I was not only a band geek, but a choir geek as well!  But I did far more than just sing your standard choral music :-D.  I loved composing, arranging and teaching, and often performing short songs in vocal quartets, and I founded my very own singing telegram business (“The Birthday Brigade”) to support this habit.

For $3, students could hire us to sing a special birthday song to one of the friends—in class, no less!  We even had teachers and administrators hiring us to sing for other non-students.  And by the end of our two year run, we earned enough money to purchase a sizable first-ever music CD collection for our school library (and back in the 80s, this was a big deal!).  Oh, and we also sang the national anthem at various school sporting events; one of the trios even got to sing at Dodger Stadium!

Anyway, in the middle of our second year, we decided to sit down at my place and record a bunch of our songs.  We didn’t do many takes, we didn’t use a fancy studio (just my dad’s old tape recorder!), and the results were certainly not perfect, but I think we did manage to capture a lot of the fun and also show off our love-of-singing :-D.

And alas, the “album” below (from 1989!) is missing some of my favorites, including “Mr. Roger’s [Neighborhood] Birthday” and “A Muppet Birthday” and no doubt others I’ve forgotten about.  But I hope you enjoy the songs nonetheless. [and feel free to see more detailed notes below the player widget]



(I’m singing on all of these except “Love Me Tender”; I think tenor on all tracks)

1) “And Why Not!” - music and lyrics composed by me.
2) “Ole!” - lyrics (as they are) composed by me, and music arranged by me (original melody from “Mexican Hat Dance”)
3) “Love Me Tender” - not sure who composed/arranged this one; the girls might have arranged this one themselves
4) “Star Spangled Banner” - composed by Francis Scott Key, not sure who did this arrangement
5) “Beethoven Birthday” - all composed by me, with deep apologies to Mr. Beethoven
6) “Celebrate!” - music by me, and I think (but am not sure) that I wrote the lyrics, too
7) “Merry Christmas” - sung to the tune of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with a tiny bit of lyrical substitution. I think I did the arrangement for this one.
8) “See ya!” - composed, um, on the spot ;-)

*  *  *

Edited on December 20, 2008 to add:
I’ve gotten in touch with most of the people in this recording, which I previously didn’t list because I wanted to make sure my memory wasn’t failing me!  My fine co-singers were Robin (bass), Jen aka “Moose” (alto), Stacey (soprano) and Cathy (soprano).  Oh, and Robin insists that it was *his* tape recorder.  I’m still not convinced of that :-D [and, yeah, I should ask ‘em if they’re comfortable having their last names here, and if so, I’ll add ‘em so they really get their fair notoriety :-P)

Help me raise money for music-in-schools!

Hey there,

I’m passionate about music, and I bet you are, too.  I’m even more excited about giving kids the opportunity to have their lives enriched through music… especially disadvantaged kids who so desperately need beauty, discipline, and ART in their lives!

I just learned today that one of my all-time favorite music sites, Pandora, is teaming up with the fine philanthropic organization, GlobalGiving, to support non-profits in the area of music-for-kids.  Pandora’s even giving free posters to anyone who donates $10 or more (while supplies last).

Here’s how you can get your donation TRIPLED or even QUADRUPLED!:
1) Visit this information page from Pandora.
2) Donate some money to any of the three organizations listed.
3) Let me know about your donation (organization and amount), either via a comment on this entry, on this Friendfeed thread, or via e-mail (to adam at the domain lasnik.net).
4) Check with your employer to see if they offer donation matching!

I will personally donate a minimum of $50, and up to $250 of my own cash, depending on how much you BLADAM readers donate :-D
In other words, if those of you posting a reply here (or in my e-mail) donate $250, I’ll then donate $250.  And my employer, Google, will match that.  And perhaps your employer will match your contribution, too… making our collective donation in this case between $750 and $1000!


I’ll be making my donation this coming Monday evening, so get your donations in now!
  I’ve extended the deadline until Tuesday, Oct 13, 10pm PST

Let’s shoot for $1,000 together… or even more!

P.S.—If any other folks want to also contribute matching funds as part of this, post a comment here and I’ll add your name and offer below.  Let’s see this effort snowball!

*  *  *

Contributions so far:
- Wysz: $50 (+ his employer matching)—$100
- Jen: $10
- Char: $50 (+ her employer matching)—$100
- Jason: $50 (Jason’s employer may also match)
- Katie: $10
- Valerie: $50
- Greg: $50 (+ his employer matching)—$100
- Edythe: $? (amount of donation unknown)
- Adam: $250 (+ my employer matching)—$500
- Tiffany: $50 (+ her employer matching)—$100

SUBTOTAL: $1,020

BUT WAIT… Greg offered to throw in more money if the pool reached $1,000!

- Greg: another $50 (+ his employer matching)—$100

TOTAL:  $1,120.  WE ROCK! :-D

Katamari Damacy - Why is the music so hard to find?!

This morning at work I was chatting with a colleague about my morning commute, and I don’t know what got into me… but for some odd reason I confided that I wished to be a big katamari ball, rolling my way to work and grabbing everything in my path.

Then, adding to the strangeness and freaking out my poor katamari-less colleague, I started singing “Na NAAAAAAAAA na na na NA na na na, na Na na na-na naaaaaaaaaaa!”

*  *  *

What… you aren’t familiar with Katamari Damacy, the psychedelically funky and happy video game in which you, Little Prince, must help out your hungover King of the Cosmos dad by rolling up everything on Earth to make stars that your daddy accidentally splatted during his previous nights’ bender?  If you have a PS2, *go out and get this game now!*  You won’t be sorry, except perhaps for the temporary loss of productivity and your embarrassment from singing jazzy goofy charming jazz/j-pop tunes to all your friends.

And, indeed, the musical score is that great.  Listening to it is just bound to cheer anyone up.

Unfortunately, trying to actually buy the soundtrack is not nearly so pleasant.  Amazon?  Nope (they’ve only got a misleadingly-labeled CD that’s inspired by the Katamari tunes… it doesn’t actually contain the songs!).  iTunes?  Nope.  Yahoo Music? Sorry.  Rhapsody?  Sadly, no.

So far, I’ve only seen it via Play Asia... >$30 for the CD + shipping :-(.  I’m actually willing to pay that much, but not very pleased about the idea.

Anyone know:
1) Other places to get this CD for less money?
2) WHY such a charming, beloved score is not available via an American label?
3) Why Amazon.com and other American retailers would carry the game, but not the soundtrack?

UPDATE on May 24, 2008

I ended up buying the CD from PlayAsia (for, indeed, $30… ouch!)... but now you can all enjoy the music, too! :-D

[Music] Instrumental Jazz Soloists - If you can't sing it, don't play it

I’m guessing most of you probably just think of me as an Internet geek, but I used to be a classical pianist geek, choir geek, and jazz pianist geek.  I have performed over 200 times, won a bunch of Bach festivals, and studied under jazz greats Ashley Alexander, Frank Mantooth, and others.  This does not inherently make me a wonderful person, but it does (IMNSHO) give me a right to talk smack about some fellow musicians and a nasty trend which I’ll detail below.

Sadly, though, there’s little proof of my musical history, or at least little proof that I can share; for instance, I recently called the music department of my alma mater (Northwestern University) to get copies of my jazz performances in ‘90-92, and alas, they no longer have the recordings.  Ack! :-(  So you’ll just have to trust ol’ Grumpy Gramps today.

So what’s my cranky rant for today?  Well, I’m sick and tired of jazz musicians ignoring their audience… more than that, downright ignoring the beauty of musicality.  More and more often, I hear jazz performers—young students and adults alike—musically belching through way-overlong solos that—despite oft-impressive technical wizardry (wow, he can play 743 notes a minute!)—bore everyone to tears… perhaps even the solo’ist himself.  And I think back to one of my fabulous jazz teachers at Northwestern who gave me a delightfully straightforward and valuable piece of advice:

“Play less.  Say more.”

And so I did… slowly but surely learning to integrate recognizable and fun bits of TV show themes, adding short and sweet call-and-response phrases, and so on.  My solos began to sing—not just shout “look at me!”—and as part of this, I connected more with my fellow musicians (who could hook on and really play with me) and audience members who’d come up to me afterwards and chuckle, “Hey, I caught that bit of the Muppets in your solo!” or even the more basic, “Your solos are FUN!”

Furthermore, I began to understand why so many of the world’s greatest jazz musicians (particularly in the swing/big-band era) were and for many remain so loved.  Their solos were a conversation, a song in and of themselves with the audience.  Not too much talking, nothing too fancy except for maybe a tiny flash here and there.  When you hear these solos today, you inevitably smile… often because you can sing with them, you know where they’re going, it’s not just a bunch of notes, it’s part of a melody, part of a melody you understand and can relate to and know it was made for you, not for the solo’ist.

*  *  *

A few weeks ago, I was at a benefit concert which featured an award-winning youth jazz band.  It was, even according to my friends who invited me, a cringe-inducing evening.  I looked around while these young men—obviously talented but horribly misdirected—were solo’ing and solo’ing and saying nothing worth listening to.  “Artubation,” I ruefully called it, and one of my friends chuckled and sighed.  I looked around at the large audience:  few were actually looking at the musicians.  People were reading their programs, looking around, looking generally bored and uncomfortable.  For crying out loud, I thought, I can understand that these 16-year-old musicians might not know better, but where the $&#$! is their adult director, and why is he so horrendously clueless?!

Yes, I blame their director 100%.  In his quest to mold musicianship, he’s failed to impress upon his students the necessity and beauty of musicality.  Of connecting with your audience, not to mention your fellow musicians.  Yes, even those kids looked bored up there.  Okay, it’s time for the trumpeter’s solo.  blah blah blah blah… okay, soon it will be my turn.  Quick, think, what am I gonna play this time?...

Unconscionable.  True, I’m not-so-subtlely betraying my contempt for much of modern jazz and indeed, even many famous “jazz musicians” today, but so be it.  But I’m hoping the pendulum swings back (no pun intended)... so musicians are no longer making music for just themselves, showing off, squeezing in as many notes as they can… but rather delighting dancers, listeners, fellow musicians as well as tone-deaf music-appreciators.

So, in closing, I simply wish and urge this…

Soloists:  If you can’t sing it, don’t play it.

Fair use, mashups, and profits - why hasn't anyone figured this out yet?

Lots of us love music and we love to share it; I think that’s even more powerful than simply “grab lots of music for free”—it’s the sharing that excites us, motivates us.  Music is a shared experience!

Why, then, hasn’t anyone made it easy to share music snippets legally from a simple iframe, a simple widget that someone can cut and paste or even drag and drop into their blog?

Let me give an example of how painful it is to share (within, IMHO, fair use) a music snippet:
1) Identify song you want to share with others.  Determine that it’s DRM’d.  Ack!
2) Remove DRM (yes, I know this may technically be illegal, but frankly I don’t give a damn.  Call it civil disobedience)
3) Use software to grab a relevant thirty second snippet and save it as an mp3.  Make sure tags are still embedded.
4) Upload to server.
5) Before all of this, download and install a good flash player so others can listen to your snippet whether on a Mac or PC.
6) Embed the appropriate code into your blog entry.

Check out this entry on the emotional wallop of strings for an example of the result. 

I think it took me at least 20 minutes just to prepare, upload, and post this one clip.  Does that sound very conducive to sharing to you?!

So you know what massively puzzles me?  Why on earth hasn’t any major player (Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Apple, etc.) made this process easier… not only facilitating the discovery and sharing of music by the increasingly powerful blogosphere, but increasing subscriptions and download sales?!  Let me explain how I envision this working…

What the blogger / music lover does:
1) Blogger goes to associates.amazon.com or embed.rhapsody.com or whatever and looks up an album or specific track.
2) They then selects an embed method (php include, javascript, iframe, etc.) and optionally set other customizable widget options.
3) If not already logged in, they enter in their subscription ID or affiliate ID so they can get credit from referred subscriptions and purchases.
4) They copy the specified HTML and paste it into their blog, along with (hopefully) personal comments.

What the person visiting the blog sees:
A simple mini-player widget that contains a play button and a short description of the clip (title, artist, album), along with links to:
- "Learn more about this artist, album, or song"
- "Purchase this song" (on iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.)
- "Subscribe to service for unlimited listening to 3 million songs" (again, on Rhapsody, Napster, etc.)

* * *

Of course, even cooler would be all the online music folks coming together to make a common standard of some sort, so this widget could actually have a small pulldown menu enabling listeners to buy the tune on or subscribe to their preferred online music service.

So why hasn't any of this happened? Some guesses:
- Music services are shortsighted and want to more tightly (and obnoxiously) control the listening experiences.
- Music services are scared crapless of lawsuits; despite the fact that any sane person would envision 30 seconds being pretty much fair use, the RIAA would probably sue anyway.
- Fears over brand tarnishing (putting the names of artists and music services on splog sites featuring child porn, for instance)

I'm skeptical about the third issue, though. After all, Amazon seemingly lets pretty much anyone embed jpegs of book covers or album covers on raunchy or spammy sites.

* * *

So, what to do in the meantime?
If I wanted to be lazy AND give the finger to non-Windows-users, I could just link to Amazon.com clips, for instance, like this clip of "Where Does the Wayward Footwear Go?" from The Bobs. But that's pretty inelegant, and it also depends upon Amazon:
- having the song I want to show off
- including a decent snippet
- not changing the URL or blocking folks from accessing it off the Amazon.com domain

And, to be fair, it's not a very attractive option for Amazon.com. I mean, what do they get out of it? No potential sales, no branding (except from my arbitrary mention), etc. And unless I manually create a link to the album ("Songs For Tomorrow Morning" ), it's not even easy for the listener to learn more about the album or group, much less purchase the CD. In other words, it's a lousy experience for everyone.

Surely there's got to be a better way?!

-- -

Update at 12:58am the next day:
Hmm... well, there's Napsterlinks.

But...
- They require people to register with Napster before hearing any music (even a 30 second snippet)
- Each registered user can hear a track only three times total (which is reasonable, IMHO)
- The embedded widget doesn't allow one to fast-forward in a song, nor can it contain multiple tracks (much less an album). Just one track per widget :(.
- There seems to be a bug whereby any page with the widget on it never finishes loading. Weird.

So, unsurprisingly, napsterlinks are seemingly quite unpopular (I had never actually seen them in the wild, and doing a blogsearch yielded just a tiny handful in existence). Such a lost opportunity!

And Rhapsody? Sure, you can listen to free tracks with them, but...
- You're limited to 25 total plays per month (kinda stingy).
- You have to download and install their plugin (not too time consuming, though)
- The player window can't be embedded :-(.
- Any click to play a song opens BOTH the player window and a full-sized Rhapsody page. Boo!

Obviously NOT a decent experience for bloggers :(.

So, hey, music services... we're still waiting. Yahoo? Apple?...

Blippet: [Video] Avenue Q + Fiddler on the Roof -- oy vey, so gay!

Love Avenue Q?  Appreciate Jewish humor?
Watch what happens when the cast of Avenue Q mashes up with the cast of Fiddler on the Roof!

P.S.—I’d like to hat-tip a fellow blogger, but I can’t remember exactly where I first saw this (I just re-found it via a YouTube search).  Much apologies.  Next time, I’ll be more careful about blogtribution.

Don't Download This Song! (listen to another gem by Weird Al Yankovic)

Unless you’re a fan of the RIAA or a bitter, clueless artist… I urge you to run, er, click, not walk to go hear Weird Al’s new ditty: “Don’t Download This Song.” [warning: music autoplays].

I’m looking forward to the music video promised for this evening, but in the meantime, you can hear the song in its entirety (and, of course, download it!).

Brave Combo rocks in countless ways. Here's why you will love them, too

Brave Combo is 26-year-old (!) “hot jazz quintet, a rollicking rock’n'roll bar band, a Tex-Mex conjunto, a sizzling blues band, a saucy cocktail combo, a deadly serious novelty act, a Latin orchestra, and one of America’s dance bands par excellence.”  [see their bio page] But they kick ass for many other reasons, too.

For those of you with short attention spans, fine… you can skip the rest of my brilliant commentary and go directly to Brave Combo’s music. 
A variety “dozen sampler”(tm) I recommend:  Breslau, Canto a la salsa, Down at the Friendly Tavern, High Bounce Polka, Hokey Pokey, My Tears are Nothing, No Work Today, Spaghetti Twist and Twirl, Swing it Baby Swing, The Hustle, Three Ducks Ondo, Waltz in C Minor,

Aside from the fact that this band is made up of great musicians that play a huge variety of contagiously fun music, it’s damn cool that they’ve made decent-quality one-minute segments of a ton of their songs available on the Web, no?  In fact, their Web site is informative, entertaining, and pretty comprehensive—a sad rarity for band sites, IMHO.

Here are other things that highlight why Brave Combo is an amazingly kick-ass band:

• They were featured on The Simpsons and have also won a Grammy.
• They have made their full songs available online… from Yahoo Music Unlimited (172 songs!) to iTunes to emusic (live performance: 25 downloads free*!).
• Their live performances are a hell of a lot of fun (and affordable: under $15!), but surprisingly their CDs manage to capture much of the energy and enthusiasm.
• At the risk of being poo-poo’d by cynics, they honestly believe that spreading good music around can contribute to world peace.
• They love dancers and they do a fine job encouraging people of all ages to get up and shake their booties.
• They’re nice, unpretentious folks who clearly appreciate and respect their fans.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to tour that extensively outside of Texas [see their itinerary]... but if you can possibly catch them live, do!

Edited to add (a few minutes after posting this entry):
emusic… great idea, noble quest (catering to independent bands and the smart folks who love ‘em)... but dudes, what’s with the “We won’t show you our catalog until you sign up.”  I understand your motivations, but that’s still just rude.—-
One of my favorite Brave Combo songs is “The Mystery Spot Polka”... but alas, it’s not on their music clips page :-(.—-
* Credit card / trial required.  Yours truly, a sincere but selfish bastard, get free downloads if you sign up :-P

Why Snakes on a Plane makes me sad

I grew up with snakes.  A Burmese Python named, appropriately enough, “Julius Squeezer.”  Lots of harmless king snakes and gopher snakes and more.

You see, my dad (a biology teacher) was friends with a herpetologist, and the two of them would often conduct hands-on educational seminars around the area to help people understand that snakes are our friends, not something to be feared nor chopped up with a garden shovel.  My dad and his friend also helped out the local sheriff by being part of what I called “The Snake Patrol”—comprised of environmentalist folks who’d go out to a house where some person—who had moments ago called 911 or whatever screaming incoherenantly about a deadly snake—was about ready to take drastic, lethal action against a harmless baby king snake or whatnot.  My dad would go out there, put the snake in a pillowcase, and release it into the wild. 

One time, alas, it was too late.  The frantic woman, who had spotted what she KNEW was a deadly snake outside by her trash cans, could hold off no longer.  About ten minutes before my dad arrived, she had repeatedly bisected the critter.  The purely rubber critter I might add.  Methinks that snake wasn’t posing all that much of a threat, eh?

As part of all these efforts, my dad would sometimes temporarily bring snakes to our home, where I got to hold them and learn that they weren’t slimy or (generally) deadly or even venemous.

Plus snakes eat things like wild rats, which are generally NOT our friends when they’re carrying diseases into our homes.

Anyway, this brings us to why movies like Snakes on a Plane and those films about deadly spiders or any other fearful-animal-de-jour make me sad.  They undoubtedly result in not only a rise of fear but also an increased level of senseless animal killings.  In a broader sense, they contribute to a dystopian view of nature as something to be feared, coralled, and conquered.

You might think I’m overreacting, or you might argue that people are smart enough to know the difference between Hollywood and real life.  I, regrettably, beg to differ.  As a human race, we haven’t shown a very good ability to either assess comparative risks (say, the likelihood of a plane incident vs. the chances of dying in an auto accident) or live in harmony with nature.

True, at the core, it’s pretty much just one of a zillion stupid movies that people flock to see.  And I suppose there’s something to be said for lame escapist entertainment.  I just wish it didn’t use nature as a scapegoat.

Trying out online database services (see my movie list!)

Microsoft Access is for masochists.  It’s expensive, a pain to learn, and—frankly—quite overkill for nearly any home application.

So, for too long, folks like myself have kept lists in Excel.  This works… sort of.  But it’s a pain to share, and it lacks a lot of the usefully-database’y features that make working with data multidimensionally both useful and fun.

For instance, I’m trying to keep track of where I’ve traveled around the world, what sets of pictures I’ve taken, where those pictures reside (online, in photo albums, etc.), who I have yet to share them with, and so on.  I *could* do lots of messy filtering and sorting on Excel as I try to handle related action items, but a database (featuring multiple persistent views) would be so much easier!

Well… dabbledb and Zoho Creator to the rescue!  Below I’ll talk about my initial experiences using both services, some advantages I perceive in each, and I’ll also demo my first “app”—a filterable/sortable list of movies I’ve seen and want to see (all 217 of them so far!)

Clearly, there are lots of professional uses for databases.  But here are a few hobbyist uses I’ve thought of off the top of my head:
- Managing and showing off stamp / comic book / music / other collections
- Dealing with rosters (Little League, Church members, volunteer list, etc.)
- Working with a personal or team todo list.

*  *  *

Zoho Creator (“ZC”) is, at least for now, free.  Dabbledb (“ddb”) offers a 30 day free trial, and various plans after that starting at $10/month.

Getting started on either service is a snap.  You can easily import your existing data just by copying the cells from Excel and pasting one big block into a text box in either service.  Both of them handled this data quite smartly!

Some other things both services have in common:
- Very passionate developers who regularly participate in discussions online about their services.
- The ability for users to put views and even forms on other Web sites.
- Active user forums.
- Helpful getting-started / overview videos

Some advantages specific to ZC:
- A unique and seemingly powerful scripting language
- Custom error messages and validation
- Multi-select-list fields.
- The ability to put an “active” view into another Web page

Some advantages specific to ddb:
- It’s fast!
- Handy grouping function
- Superior ease of data entry
- More choices of field types
- Multidimensionality (a bit hard to explain… but you can define relationships between tables)

I’ve included my movie database (in ZC) as a sample below.  Have fun searching, filtering, sorting… and don’t worry, it’s read-only, so you can’t hurt anything! :-D

[embed removed since it was no longer working]

Yet more awesome a cappella & an affordable music studio

First, a quick note to those SEOs who are still reading my blog hoping for detailed Google search-related tidbits.  It’s still unlikely.  If I ever do post nuggets of search wisdom here, I’m sure you’ll hear about it :-D.  With that said, Google is moving ahead to improve communications, both internally and externally; I recently enjoyed visiting and discussing Search Quality issues with Googlers in Berlin and Dublin and also had a great time meeting with folks at the London Search Engine Strategies Conference.  Photos online soon, I hope!  And yes, we’re further extending the coolness of Sitemaps and related Webmaster tools, improving documentation, and much more.

Okay, enough about that, though.

I wanted to bring back the musicness of my blog and so today I’m featuring a catchy tune by my friend Tat Tong… a lousy Webmaster (sorry, Tat) but a fine musician and award-winning sound recording engineer.

The short song below, Revocation, was composed, arranged, and sung entirely by Tat.
NOTE: Broadband connection required.  Sorry, I’m not dealing with bandwidth detection and uploading multiple / inferior clips anymore.

At Tat’s recording studio Web site, you can hear more of his recording work and learn about the awards he’s garnered.

I’m highlighting Tat and his music for a few reasons:

• He’s a friend.
• I like his music and admire his recording skills.
• I think the power and magnitude of what musicians can do today on modest budgets is amazing and worth showing off (so no, Tat does not have a multi-million dollar studio)
• I’m happy to demonstrate (in case it wasn’t obvious already) that there’s yet another thing that Big Labels are unnecessary for.  Not to mention that artists can now gain exposure on MySpace or Google Video, sell CDs effectively (and without getting ripped off) via great sites like CD Baby, even sell electronic downloads (full quality, if they choose!) via kick-ass sites like Magnatune (and get a hell of a better cut than via iTunes!).  Admittedly, the day may not have come where artists can become megahit wonders without labels (due to the sheepiness of vast swaths of consumers, IMHO), but that day WILL come in my lifetime, I’m sure :-D.

Well, enough pontificating.  Enjoy Tat’s music and hire him if you’d like some quality music work done!

*  *  *

UPDATE - July 2, 2006
Tat updated his Web site and the music no longer autoplays.

Brief Da Vinci code review

I got a free ticket to go see the movie Da Vinci Code and while it won’t say it was worth what I paid for it… well, it wasn’t worth a lot more than that, either.

The movie in a word:  Joyless.

I can count the number of times the characters smiled on one hand.
I can count the number of times I smiled on probably one or two fingers.

I haven’t read the book, but judging from my reactions to this movie and the 7th-grade-level writing abilities I slogged through in one of Dan Brown’s other books, I can’t say I’ll be clamoring to read the Da Vinci Code anytime soon.

Things I *did* like about the movie:

- Some of the beautiful scenery and cinematography.
- Ian McKellen.  Not all the movies he’s in are good, but HE is always a pleasure to watch, IMHO.
- Learning some interesting historical facts.

Things I definitely *did not* like about the movie:
- The ending.  What a fizzle!
- The graphic depictions of the monk’s self-flaggelation.  Seeing the scars and (on the side) the whip would have conveyed the point just fine.
- The overbearing seriousness of the entire film.  No, it didn’t need an Eddie Murphy sidekick donkey, but… hmm… on the other hand, that might have improved things.
- The movie length.  Rarely does including every detail from the book make sense.

Have you seen the movie yet?  What did you think?

Pondering the emotional wallop of strings and music in general

I’m a member of some of those all-you-can-eat, er, all-you-can-listen-to online music services and I’m constantly amazed at the fun and beautiful music I stumble across.  Once, on a goofy whim, I did a search for the string “Chicken” and found a shockingly cool selection of funk, pop, and jazz songs.  More recently, I did a search on “waltz” since I’ve grown increasingly enamored with this music and dance form.

One of the beautiful songs that cropped up was First Impressions, featured on the album “Appalachia Waltz” with cellist virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma.  You can hear a sample by clicking on the player below and can enjoy other serene and joyful songs and learn more about the album on this Amazon.com page.

This simply-structured and sensitively-performed song packed an emotional punch for me, just as so many other songs have done in the past.  And this got me to thinking:  What is it about the instrumentation and orchestration of songs that moves me… and moves so many millions of others?  I’m not even taking into account lyrics here, which involve a whole different (albeit related) issue.  Just the sounds.



In particular, there’s something about strings, in my humble opinion.  From soap operas to scary slasher movies, they set a tone… causing us to relax, to reminisce, to regret, or—in the case of Halloween Part 13 and such—to feel uneasy, on edge.

What causes this?  Is it purely associative? (e.g., that we’ve grown to mentally link the sound of strings with certain corresponding actions and emotions)  Or is it specifically acoustic… something in the timbre of stringed instruments that heightens and shapes our emotional involvement?

*  *  *

Sometimes I feel guilty for responding the way that I do.  Particularly, if you’ll forgive my bluntness, when I’m forced to watch chick flicks and hear the crescendoing strings, I want to reach for my metaphorical barf bag.  I am annoyed by the cliched themes, musically and otherwise, and know that I’m being subjected to a rather transparent effort to manipulate my emotions.

But in many other circumstances—even when I suspect that the music is designed specifically and bluntly to shape my feelings—I cannot help but be moved.  Sarah McLachlan’s When She Loved Me from the “Toy Story 2” movie is a classic example.


I don’t know how much of an effect the story setting and lyrics had (probably not insubstantial), but I literally teared up.  And yes, there are those strings again!

*  *  *

I wonder if any studies have been done about the emotional effects of specific musical instruments and arrangements… perhaps even by culture or other demographic. 

Your thoughts?

UPDATE on January 14, 2006:
The power of BLADAM is simply astounding.  Clearly in response to this entry featuring a music clip from Yo Yo Ma, the musician has now been named a U.N. Peace Ambassador!

UPDATE on April 5, 2009:
Embedded additional song (“When She Loved Me”) via Lala.  Updated other embedded song due to technical glitches; now serving “First Impressions” via Grooveshark.

Well-reviewed movie "Waterborne" now available free on Google Video

I haven’t had a chance to watch more than the first few minutes of this film, but Waterborne has been generally well-reviewed… and you can watch it for free either below or directly on Google’s site through January 15, 2006.



Rather than spoil even part of the plot, I’ll instead invite you to begin watching it now without preconceptions, with a note that it’s a serious film focusing on characters rather than explosive action.

Beyond this particular film, what fascinates and excites me about Google’s video offering—despite generally wide critical raspberries—is that it can serve as a fabulous equalizer.  The key problems with getting great independent and foreign films seen by larger audiences aren’t just associated with marketing and word of mouth, but rather distribution.  Just as Google AdWords (and, before it, GoTo.com) presented a revolutionary way for Mom’n'Pop outfits to reasonably compete with BigCos, Google Video will provide market access to low(er) budget films… in this case, literally FREE distribution.  And then when some random Joe in Manhattan gets genuinely excited about a particular quality (or just frickin’ hilarious :D) production, he can indirectly cause that film to gain enormous market awareness by simply posting about it on his LiveJournal and linking to the Google Video, causing a chain reaction (remember the numa numa video?:-) And hey, can anyone even find the original anymore?!  But I digress!)

*  *  *

But how will this actually make money for the film producers?

- Pay-per-download
For instance, while Waterborne is free to stream and watch online for a week, it’s then $4 to download.  With this film, thanks to the openness of its producers, purchasers will actually OWN their copy and have the practical and legal options of burning it to DVD, watching it on their iPod, etc.  This can be a win-win situation; whereas early adopters and those with more time than money can make sure to watch it for free, others will help fund the film by purchasing unfettered downloads.  Alas, not all content producers are so wise and thoughtful towards consumers; the bulk of groups charging for video on Google Video now are placing some DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions on their files, so they’ll self-destruct after 24 hours or be uncopyable to a portable video player, etc.  Hopefully they’ll eventually see the light, however.

- Related sales
T-shirts.  Actual DVDs in jewelboxes.  Sequels.  Toys or other similar merchandise.  Soundtracks via Napster or Magnatune or Amazon.com.

- Long-term career growth
Unknown artists can perhaps become bigger household names, garnering big studio money later on.

Other ideas?  Your thoughts…?

*  *  *

Hat tip to Inside Google for reporting this and other interesting Google video tidbits.

Bay Area Theatre Review: "Into the Woods"

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the final dress rehearsal for Palo Alto's Theatre Works' performance of Into the Woods. It was a thoroughly professional, impressive, and magical performance and if you're in (or can get to) the Bay Area, I urge you to get tickets for it right now.

Let it be known up front that I'm a huge fan of Into the Woods. I own the CD and DVD, I've accompanied many a singer with ITW pieces for auditions, and I've previously attended a live production of the show (albeit not on Broadway).

Therefore, as you might imagine, I attended this performance at Theatre Works with an eager but cautious mindset. Not only was it a dress rehearsal (not even a preview, much less an actual paid-for performance), but this was also "regional theatre." As someone who has done regional theatre in the past, not to mention attended a ton of regional theatre performances, I've come to temper my expectations to prepare myself for oft-lackluster albeit sincere and enthusiastic orchestras, costuming, choreography, singing, and so on.

Boy, was I in for a surprise with this show, which was pretty much professional caliber! I should have gotten a hint early on when, in perusing my program, I noticed that the bulk of the actors are members of the Actors' Equity Association... folks *serious* about theatre.

* * *

I barely noticed the orchestra except when concentrating on them -- which, for a musical, is how it should be IMHO (and mind you, I was an orchestra conductor for a regional theatre once upon a time :-D). The balance within the orchestra and between the orchestra and cast was admirable, as was its connection with the singers in tempo and feel.

The lighting, costuming, and -- wow! -- the sets... all fantastic. In fact, after seeing the Broadway production on DVD, I was particularly floored at how much was done here with the sets... engaging but not obtrusive or distracting. Plus, a live "cow" -- very different than the original production, but a clever (and oft-hilarious) touch!

Okay, Adam, but how about the ACTING AND SINGING, eh?

Well, I was quite impressed there, too. In particular, I found that the princes -- while certainly assisted by the humorous book -- were especially adept at their comedic roles. The Baker's Wife was another standout, IMHO... with a fabulous ability to provoke sympathy, laughter, indignation... the whole spectrum. In general, the entire cast showcased strong acting and singing talents, though I was a bit less impressed with the singing abilities of Jack's mom.

Additionally, I did feel that the witch was slightly less proficient at enunciating than other leads, and -- when comparing her to the distinctive (original witch) Bernadette Peters -- her acting and singing dynamics seem a tiny bit dwarfed.

And speaking of enunciation issues: while my friends (who weren't familiar with the musical) and I found the lyrics to be sung generally cleanly and clearly overall, I did feel that some of the ensemble numbers (actually few and far between in this musical) were a bit muddled... likely due to mic/balance issues (quite possibly to be cured by actual performance time), but also possibly due in part to a lack of exactness/sharpness/togetherness in enunciation. More critically, I was unable to understand almost anything boomed by the giant.

Aside from the above issues concerning spoken/sung clarity, I do have a few of other nitpicks:
- Jack's Mother's ear-pulling grew annoying in its repetitiveness.
- Ditto for the witches 'pain boom' or whatever it's officially called. Additionally, this was the only special effect I can recall that felt hokey in the production, and is one of those things that likely would have been more powerful without any visible effects at all.
- I'd like to see a bit more expressiveness and depth from the narrator. The narrator of this production is certainly fine, but seems to lack some of the gravity and punch of the one I had grown used to in the professional recordings.

* * *

A warning to prospective attendees: This show is long (around 3 hours, including a brief intermission). It's also *NOT* for young children. Yes, it involves fairy tales. No, there's no blood or foul language or explicit sexuality. But it tackles very adult themes... love, death, fidelity, morality, loneliness, parenting, and so on, and in a way that often requires concerted listening and patience.

This show, however, is a wonderful affair for the rest of us. While not providing a Disney'esque happy ending, it should deftly entertain, amuse, and charm anyone with heart. No live helicopters, no Elton John ballads... just an intricate, thoughtful, and engaging book and score -- and thankfully a cast and crew that does the work justice.

Bring tissues, and bring a friend. This is a show you'll feel good about loving :-).