Acoustic Metric EP Unplugged

5 new acoustic tracks from Metric:

stream the songs (and videos) for free.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

The widget wasn’t working out for me, so here’s a direct link to the site:

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Starring: Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, Felicia Day as Penny
Screenplay By: Joss Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, and Zack Whedon
Directed By: Joss Whedon
Produced By: David Burns, Michael Boretz, and Joss Whedon
Plot Outline: The story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to.

Music by: Joss Whedon and Jed Whedon
Lyrics by: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen
Score and Orchestration by: Jed Whedon

the freedom to choose Devo

 

It seems that some of you have discovered my set of “Top 80s” posts by searching for Devo. Maybe the recent interest has something to do with these new bits of information:

Devo recorded a new song titled “Watch Us Work It,” which was featured in a commercial for Dell. The band has announced in a July 23, 2007, MySpace bulletin that a full length music video for the song is forthcoming. Casale said that this song was chosen from a batch of songs that the band was working on, and that also this is the closest the band has been to a new album.

In an article called Are You Not Devo? You Are Mutato, LA Weekly says that “After touring sporadically over the past decade but not releasing any new material, Devo are spending December at Mutato trying to create an album’s worth of new material and contemplating a method of dispersal in the post-record-company world.”

OiNK is dead, R.I.P. OiNK

I have no words to describe how the death of OiNK makes me feel, so I will share what some others have said:

Paraphrased Wikipedia: Copyright agencies described Oink as an online pirate pre-release music club; former users described it as one of the world’s largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. There were around 180,000 members at the time of closure and all of their avatars had to be cute.

“If you’re not familiar with Oink, here’s a quick summary: Oink was was a free members-only site – to join it you had to be invited by a member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one click away.”

[Read the rest on: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.]

…and it wasn’t just me:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent Reznor: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

[the rest of the interview is on: Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK]

Disney cartoons, pretty girls, fair use and free culture?

How one Walt Disney Cartoon was made:

(Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs behind-the-scenes)

Here are a couple quotes from the documentary:
“…the thousands of pencil drawings go to the inking department. Here, hundreds of pretty girls…”
“The inked celluloids next go to the painting department where more pretty girls apply the final colors.”

Damn…Walt Disney was a bigger genius than I ever realized. Unfortunately, to some degree, we also have the Disney Company to thank for possibly being detrimental to cultural diversity. One can argue that a rich, continually replenished, public domain is necessary for continued artistic creation. Disney as we know it wouldn’t exist if the current copyright laws were in place years ago because many of Disney’s animated films are based on Nineteenth Century public domain works, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book.

There has never been a time in history when more of our ‘culture’ was as ‘owned’ as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now. (pg. 28 of Free Culture)

Free Culture is a book about the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies.

get a digital copy of the book for free

 

And here’s a humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms:

A Fair(y) Use Tale

the work that must have gone into this…woah.

13 most “important” 80s LPs of all time (according to mistersplice)

Because Jimi’s top 80s LPs of all time post has been getting so many hits lately I decided to share some of my eighties opinions. These are definitely not my favorite albums from the 80s though…I’m saving that for later.

These are the 13 albums from the 80s (listed in chronological order) that I think are the most “important”: the ones that were the most influential and had the biggest impact on pop culture. Feel free to point out anything that I may have missed…because I’m sure I missed something. And share your thoughts if you don’t agree.

AC/DC – Back in Black (1980)

Journey – Escape (1981)

Rush – Moving Pictures (1981)

Pink Floyd – The Final Cut (1983)

The Police – Synchronicity (1983)

Madonna – Like a Virgin (1984)

Metallica – Master of Puppets (1986)

Run-DMC – Raising Hell (1986)

Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction (1987)

U2 – The Joshua Tree (1987)

N.W.A – Straight Outta Compton (1988)

R.E.M. – Green (1988)

Pixies – Doolittle (1989)

(a response to Jimi and Christin. Also…I might have cheated with a few of these, but they didn’t seem to fit into my real “best of” list.)

now Bruce Campbell is hungry

…Hungry like the Wolf, to be exact. The last time he was everything.

Old Spice continues their efforts to make their product cool.

It’s Raining 300 Men

I still haven’t seen 300…

but here’s another parody video

 

Top 80s LPs of all time (according to Christin)

The first response generated from Jimi’s list: Top 80s Lps of all time. There’s one album here that would almost definitely be on my list…were I ever to make one. I think it would be difficult to distill down to 10 albums though. I might even have trouble with 25.

10. Pet Shop Boys – Disco

 

9. Men at Work – Business as Usual / Cargo
(tie)

 

8. Sinead O’Connor – The Lion and the Cobra

 

7. Vangelis – Blade Runner Soundtrack
(recorded in 1982)

 

6. Sting – Dream of Blue Turtles

 

5. Tears for Fears – Songs From the Big Chair

 

4. Thomson Twins – Into the Gap

 

3. Gary Numan – Telekon

 

2. DEVO – Freedom of Choice

 

1. Styx – Kilroy Was Here

 

I called those the “Albums that I play, start to finish” and that’s a rarity these days.

-Christin

(a response to Jimi’s Top 80s.)

Top 80s LPs of all time (according to Jimi)

This list is from a good friend of mine. I’m borrowing it because of the lack of music on this blog. I’m not into the music of the 80s so much (or at least not the stuff most people think of…maybe one day I’ll make my 80s list), but since I really like 3 of the albums here I decided to re-share:

because none of you asked for it

here are my top 80s lps of all time

10. thompson twins – into the gap

 

9. innocence mission – innocence mission

 

8. the english beat – pick one, they all rule

 

7. the sundays – reading writing and arithmetic
(technically 1990, but the first single was released in 1989. besides…one might argue that the nineties didn’t start until 1991.)

 

6. the alarm – eye of the hurricane

 

5. sting – nothing like the sun

 

4. tears for fears – songs from the big chair

 

3. howard jones – humans lib

 

2. u2 – unforgettable fire

 

1. talk talk – spirit of eden

 

please enlighten me with your ten faves…but when you are done talking michael jackson and culture club…check out the albums i have listed.

-jimi

(continued here: Christin’s Top 80s. My “important” 80s.)