Category: music
-
The rising threat to music of the home taping phenomenon
This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3jkUhG68wY&feature=player_embedded) is a hilarious take-down of the music publishing industry’s allegation that personal filesharing is “killing” music. Part of the fun is figuring out the early 1980s references. Also, I would totally buy a flag that had that cassette-and-crossbones logo… Also, remember that according to former MPAA chief Jack Valenti, [T]he VCR is…
-
Strip Polka — another silly Facebook meme
OK, this is another silly Facebook object trouve meme. Let’s see how this turns out. INSTRUCTIONS:: 1. Put your iPod or other music player on shuffle. 2. For each question, press the “next” button to get your answer. 3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS! (or stupid) 4.…
-
America the Beautiful
A stirring rendition, courtesy of Beyoncé at HBO’s “We Are One” Inauguration Concert.
-
Memory in Song (II)
More oddly-prescient musings of Jackson Browne. “Lives in the Balance” Jackson Browne Lives in the Balance I’ve been waiting for something to happen For a week or a month or a year With the blood in the ink of the headlines And the sound of the crowd in my ear You might ask what it…
-
Memory in Song (I)
It’s still surprisingly hard to write about 9/11. It galls me to see, again, our national “leaders” exploit this tragedy for political ends. And it saddens me that we don’t seem to have learned any lessons. So it’s really not in me to pen something deep and insightful. Instead, I’ll fall back on the melodic…
-
Review: Marc Cohn at the Westhampton Beach Peforming Arts Center
Marc Cohn & band Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center Sunday 2008 August 24 8:30 PM It’s my habit to see Marc Cohn every chance I get during the New York leg of his tours. This explains why, three days after my last Cohn concert, I schlepped all the way out along Long Island’s southern shore…
-
Review: Marc Cohn at the St. George Theater
Marc Cohn with Toby Lightman St. George Theater, Staten Island, NY Thursday 2008 August 21 This is another in my ongoing series of reviews of Marc Cohn shows. See this earlier one and this one as well for comparison. The St. George is a beautiful venue, an old vaudeville theater (I assume) which has been…
-
Review: Counting Crows with Maroon 5
Counting Crows with Maroon 5 Also with Sara Bareilles Thursday 2008 Aug 7 PNC Bank Arts Center Holmdel, NJ My usual way to review a show would be to give the playlist and say what I did or didn’t like about each. That’s not going to work this time for a host of reasons. First…
-
Contata (2)
So, on to Contata proper. (See this earlier article for context.) A filk con is different from a regular con (assuming that my limited experience at Lunacon allows me to generalize about a “regular” con) in that the filk con is explicitly organized around the music. In a lot of ways, it was really just…
-
Contata (1)
I spent this weekend at the hotel Hilton Parsippany, attending a sci fi con called “Contata 5“. In a somewhat strange co-branding fashion this was also NEFilk 18 — apparently, NEFilk is sort of an umbrella designation. Filk is an odd branch of music deriving from (originally, literally via typo) folk music — it’s folk…