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Doug, Jerry, and Ty’s newest CD is a fun listen. If you liked Ogre Tones, you’ll like this one. Doug and Ty split vocal duties, with Jerry singing the ballad “Julie”. I had to hunt this one down in stores: Best Buy, Target, and our local CD Warehouse didn’t have it. I found the one copy that was at our local Borders. I’d recommend checking out song samples and purchasing it from one of these online retailers:
Amazon ($11.99)
CD Universe ($13.90)
Update: Wrote this last week (5/29) and never published it! Don was asking me my opinion and I wondered if he had seen this post. 
nin-theslip-24-96-wav-replaygain, originally uploaded by aharden.
Which of these tracks is not like the others? Brian Gardner at Bernie Grundman Mastering in LA was the mastering engineer for these 24-bit-depth tracks, some having over -10dB of Replaygain. That’s kind of like saying you have a 24-foot-deep pool when in reality you dug a 24-foot-deep hole and filled it with 10 feet of concrete before putting water in it.
Just got done listening to Cindy and John DJ a fun mix of classic and modern rock with a focus on indies. Great stuff. Go check out RadioUgly.com. They’re on Saturday evenings at 8-11pm. There are several other shows there as well. I’ll be back!
I’d been intrigued by the Linksys NSLU2 (and the associated NSLU2-Linux project) a while back. [see linkblog] When some $30 refurb units came up on Slickdeals yesterday I couldn’t say no. I should have one in a couple of days. Any advise as to which firmware to run on it would be helpful. I plan on trying out the different MP3 server packages on it, as well as doing general CIFS serving and some Python hacking. I’m leaning towards SlugOS/BE.
Update (3/31): I spoke too soon. CompUSA (I mean TigerDirect) first put a hold on my order to confirm my PayPal credit, then they put it on backorder, now they’ve cancelled it. And I had to keep going to their website to find out the status; they didn’t have the balls to email me to let me know. Guess I didn’t get in on the Slickdeal or run in the hamster wheel quickly enough. After this disappointment I can’t recommend doing business with CompUSA.com or TigerDirect when there are awesome mail-order places like NewEgg.
I received plenty of heads-up notices from the Rush.com mailing list about ticket pre-sales for the upcoming leg of Rush’s 2008 US tour, so I was plenty ready to purchase tickets for Scott, Mark, and me to go see them at Hersheypark Stadium on 7/17. What I didn’t expect was to get 3rd row center section seats! MusicToday might be finally getting the best tickets in the hands of fans and not scalpers! I think they added a CAPTCHA prior to ticket assignment since the last time I used them — I think that helped.
We are psyched for the show, that’s for sure! Now the wait begins.
I’ve been deemed Rush fan #1451; I received my numbered collectors’ edition copy of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s remaster of Rush’s 1980 disc, Permanent Waves, yesterday. This completes MoFi’s treatment of what I (and many) consider Rush’s golden era: PeW, Moving Pictures, and Signals. I own the MP and Signals Ultradiscs that were released over a decade ago. I wish I had the 2112 Ultradisc; I should have bought it when it was originally at retail.
I listened to it last night on headphones. I didn’t do a blind listening test against my copy of the original Mercury issue of the CD, but it did seem to sound a little clearer. Of the three albums in the aforementioned trilogy, Signals needed the most help, but the others already sounded pretty great. I was surprised to see an Ultradisc produce Replaygain values in the -5 dB’s, but I supposed that’s to be expected nowadays. The Mercury issue of the album has RG values in the -0.9 dB area, and the MP Ultradisc actually has a slightly positive RG value. Both of these indicate plenty of headroom.
The packaging has changed considerably from the other two Ultradiscs. The new one comes in a cardboard gatefold package with a minimal (but faithful) booklet and the gold CD in a soft sleeve. I’ll put pictures out on Flickr soon.
Am I glad I dropped almost $1/music-minute on this? Not yet, but I think I’ll get there…
Haven’t blogged much about my bass playing or gear lately, so here’s a brain dump.
eBay is a great place to get used gear. I’ve bought the majority of my effects (most used) from eBay auctions. Of my current effects setup, I bought all but one pedal from eBay. The used ones came in excellent shape. I can usually tell from the item photos if the condition of the item is what I’ll like, but the seller’s description and reputation count a lot.
My current setup:
“Righteous” config (the one I play with at church):
- BOSS Chromatic Tuner TU-2 (purchased new from eBay)
- BOSS Bass Limiter LMB-3 (purchased used (like new) from eBay)
- BOSS Bass Chorus CE-2B (purchased back when I was in Buffalo)
- Tech 21 Sansamp Bass Driver DI (purchased used (like new) from eBay)
“Raucous” config (playing rock):
- BOSS Chromatic Tuner TU-2
- BOSS Bass Limiter LMB-3
- BOSS Octave OC-2 (borrowed John’s last Friday night, bought a used one from eBay the day after; can’t wait for it to arrive)
- BOSS Bass Chorus CE-2B
- BOSS Flanger BF-3 (traded for used (like new) from another TalkBass member)
- Tech 21 Sansamp Bass Driver DI
My GLJB is great after almost a year of regular use. Last week I decided to get adventurous; I wanted to adjust the neck relief down a bit by tightening the truss rod. I knew the truss rod adjustment was at the body end of the neck, but what I didn’t know what that there wasn’t full access to the truss rod nut without loosening the neck joint. I did just that and tightened the rod by a quarter turn. The results were slight, but noticeable. I may give it another quarter turn the next time I change the strings (which should be in about six months).
I’ve been playing with John, Joreen, and others outside of church more regularly, doing some of John’s material as well as covers from the Dead and other bands. We are hoping to play out somewhere in the next few months. Details will be revealed when relevant!
Since I received my iPod Nano 4GB (1st gen), the included earbuds stayed packed in the box. For years I’ve preferred Sony’s in-ear-sideways-based headphones. The cord on my favorite white Sonys started to fray, so I decided to give the Apple earbuds a shot. After slipping on the foam and snugging them in, I have to say they’re not too bad. I’ve listened to a little bit of music on them and might have stronger opinions if that’s all I listened to on them. However, I still use the Nano for podcast listening 95% of the time, so the earbuds will be fine.
I haven’t been this pleased with Foobar 2000 in a long time. The default user interface (UI) in 0.9.5 has been significantly upgraded, with integrated support for things like album art, autoplaylists, and themes. I’m already tweaking out a new config that uses the default UI combined with the Facets plugin I linked to before, changing away from Columns UI after using it a few years and dabbling in the Panels UI a little.
FB2K is my favorite app for encoding, tagging, organizing, and, oh yeah, playing my digital music. If only it would stream to my Airport Express…
Update: Added a screenshot of my current config.
I was alerted a few weeks back to the impending MFSL pressing of Rush’s 1980 album Permanent Waves via one of my Google News filters, and Power Windows just confirmed that Amazon has the product available for pre-order: Permanent Waves MFSL CD. I have the MFSL versions of Moving Pictures and Signals, so this would complete the re-treated set of what I consider the pinnacle of Rush’s output. Not that their other stuff is bad; these three albums are just so good.
MFSL (Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs) CDs are noted for their ample headroom and pristine quality. I’ve kicked myself several times for not picking up the 2112 MFSL CD when it was at retail. Once these pressings leave retail, they fetch a pretty penny on the open market. My pre-order for the PeW MFSL is in. How about yours?
StarTribune.com | Dollar+Sense: Theater exits:
Sometimes, a customer just makes a mistake. A performance called “Dream Theater” sounds as if it might be a soothing evening. Last month, an elderly couple at the State Theatre thought so, too. They expected a ballet performance, said Karen Nelson, public relations manager for Hennepin Theatre Trust. Instead they saw (and heard) the beginning, and only the beginning, of a heavy metal show. Nelson gave them a refund.
Power Windows just reminded me that Rush’s Hold Your Fire (Amazon link) recently turned 20. That was my first new Rush release after becoming a fan in high school. It’s not one of my favorite Rush albums ever, but it has some songs I love, like “Mission”, “Turn the Page”, “Time Stand Still”, and “Lock and Key”. I’m still a huge Rush fan now and am looking forward to further expanding my Rush catalog; keep it going, guys!
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RotoGuru’s Football Pickoff Game
This is a fun NFL pick-em game that I played a few years back. Joining up again in ‘07. Recommended.
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Rick Rubin - Recording Industry - Rock Music - New York Times
“Though [new Columbia Records co-head Rick] Rubin maintains that his intention is simply to hear music with the fresh ears of a true fan, he has built his reputation on the simultaneously mystical and entirely decisive way he listens to a song.”
Extra emphasis: If you read one article about the music industry this year, read the Rick Rubin article. It’s great to read that Columbia Records is going to have a leader that’s an artist rather than a businessman. It’s just a shame it took this long for one of the majors to make such a bold move. It’s also a shame that Rubin’s been the producer of some of the worst-mastered CDs ever. Got to take the bad with the good, I guess.
On the Hydrogenaudio Forums I saw a reference to a command-line utility called “Declip” that purported to repair the truncated waveforms that are the hallmark of badly-mastered music. Knowing that plenty of these exist on Rush’s Vapor Trails (mastered by Howie Weinberg), I ran Declip against it. It didn’t get rid of all the crackling, but I think it improved the overall listening experience. I should try to A/B the old and new to see if I can pick out the repaired version.
New York Times, August 8, 2007: Slip in CD Sales Adds to Warner Losses:
Warner Music’s share price has fallen more than 50 percent this year as sales of recorded music struggle against digital music and piracy.
Electronic Musician, September 1, 2003: Masters on Mastering:
“It’s a losing battle for musicality,” [award-winning mastering engineer Bob] Ludwig laments. “To me, it’s a fact that highly compressed music is tiring to the ear and doesn’t make you want to listen to something over and over again. Could this be one of the reasons for the record industry’s demise?
“The problem is that many artists, producers, and A&R people are very short-sighted,” he continues. “If you take a new recording and compare eight bars of a piece that’s been mastered by four different engineers, often the loudest one sounds immediately the most impressive to the listener. Hardly anyone listens to 40 or 50 minutes of the whole recording and decides how the total musical experience was for them. Radio play used to be an excuse, but levels now are radically high, and it can be proven that the high levels make them more difficult to broadcast. Just ask Bob Orban, who makes many of the compressors used in FM stations around the world.”
The industry needs to own up to the sonic quality of its product and quit blaming new technologies and its customers for its losses.
Ars Technica: Net radio “compromise” hinged on DRM adoption
The source also tells me that DRM is the only plausible “tool” at the disposal of webcasters to accomplish SoundExchange’s goal of working to stop music “streamripping.” It would appear that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The music industry is very worried about users recording Internet radio for the purposes of “disaggregating” music, and the message seems to be that if webcasters will scratch the industry’s back, then a better deal is possible. Too bad it’s a deal that could kill another potential avenue of fair use (recording radio), and limit users’ ability to enjoy radio by limiting playback to clients that support DRM.
Repeat after me, RIAA: “Streamripping librarians are not your customers.” DRM is way too high a barrier to prevent stream ripping. I disagree with the notion that stream ripping is commonly used to create libraries of music. More likely, it’s used to timeshift; that’s a fair use. The first hurdle to make it harder to stream rip would be to require HTTP authentication to connect to a stream.
The RIAA’s fight against internet radio will most likely succeed in driving the industry underground into the long tail, where it would be impossible to get station logs and collect royalties. Of course, at that point, they probably won’t care; they’ll refocus on traditional broadcasters.
OK, first off: Montage Mountain is becoming a terrible place to see a show. Well, not a terrible place to see it, just a terrible place to get to and fro. On the way up to Scranton, we got bottlenecked for an hour due to I-81 construction (which I should have looked for before we made the trip - we could have gotten around it faster) and stopped at a Wilkes-Barre Outback to meet up with Kevin and have dinner before the show. After our steaks, we did the familiar crawl up Montage Mountain, and similar to 2004, we were placed in inconvenient bulk parking. More on that later.
The show? The show was great. Spoilers follow…
The show opened up with a funny short starring our beloved heroes. First Alex wakes up from a nightmare about snakes & arrows and realizes he’s in bed with… Neil! Then we find that what we just saw was Geddy’s dream, and he gets a visit from a Scot played by himself. Funny stuff. These guys can do comedy.
They played lots of old (and some rare) stuff before they even touched the new material. I got just a bare whiff of what would be played when I saw someone talk about Geddy playing his Jaco signature bass on “Malignant Narcissism” and his old Rickenbacker on “A Passage to Bangkok”, which showed up in the encore. Apparently they have a fixed setlist so far this tour (reflected also in the fact that the tour book lists background video credits by song). From the Power Windows site (my ticket’s image is the one on file for the Scranton show), with my comments:
- Limelight
- Digital Man (I was blown away by this. They rearranged it to make it shorter, but it worked great.)
- Entre Nous (Couldn’t believe this. I think it’s the first time they’ve played it live.)
- Mission (My favorite HYF track)
- Freewill
- The Main Monkey Business
- The Larger Bowl (with excellent McKenzie Brothers intro)
- Secret Touch
- Circumstances (Look around the web for bass tablature for this song. )
- Between The Wheels
- Dreamline
-Intermission- (w/ video intro)
- Far Cry
- Workin’ Them Angels
- Armor And Sword (Probably my current non-instrumental S&A favorite.)
- Spindrift
- The Way The Wind Blows
- Subdivisions
- Natural Science
- Witch Hunt (This was great to see again.)
- Malignant Narcissism
- Drum Solo
- Hope
- Summertime Blues
- The Spirit of Radio
- Tom Sawyer (with South Park intro; Cartman comes up with new lyrics)
Encore:
- One Little Victory
- A Passage to Bangkok (excellent!)
- YYZ
I really need to invest in a pair or two of musician-grade earplugs. My ears are fine today, but I think I would have heard the music a bit better if I had plugs in. I heard Geddy’s bass and vocals fine, but the guitars were a bit harsh and distorted. Next time I’m in Guitar Center, I’ll pick some up.
I really liked the S&A stuff live. I enjoyed “Secret Touch” from Vapor Trails as well. These guys rock. I was constantly watching Geddy, made easier by the fact that we were sitting on the stage-left side of the venue.
Short story is: these guys are still one of the best concert deals around. Two hours, 45 minutes of music and all the video, lights, and lasers continue to make Rush a first-class production. If you like the music, you owe it to yourself to see them at least once every tour!
Back to the venue (the Pavilion at Montage Mountain): we had to wait over an hour and a half to get out of parking and back onto the highway. Simply unacceptable. Seeing Rush at Montage Mountain is no longer a slam-dunk for me; I’m going to look into other venues next tour.
Update: MSM coverage: CitizensVoice Wilkes-Barre Times Leader
After multiple delays and a price reduction to $16, Amazon sent me one of the first MVI DVD-Albums, Rush’s Snakes & Arrows. They’ve provided 5.1 DD (16/48kHz) and 2.0 LPCM (24/96kHz) versions of the music, 192kbps MP3s (-9.35dB RG), 11 entertaining 1024×768-pixel wallpaper BMPs, and other extra content like a 40-minute making-of-S&A documentary by Andrew MacNaughton. It’s in a very attractive laminated cardboard box with a 28-page booklet that’s similar to the CD’s with a few more pages. Does Hugh Syme kick ass or what?
My main technical interest in this release is the quality of the high-resolution and surround versions of the album. A test listen will come soon, but my initial rip and ReplayGain of the 24/96 stereo mix reveals a fatal flaw: less dynamic range in the 24-bit audio than the MP3s sourced from the 16-bit CD audio! The MP3s on the DVD show a RG Album value of -9.35dB, and the high-res version shows -10.14dB. Very disappointing. There’s no point in mastering a high-res version of the music if you’re going to further squash the dynamic range!
There is speculation that this is a DVD-Audio release. It’s not. All the content is either in the DVD-Video portion of the disc or elsewhere in its UDF filesystem.
Update: Looking at the hi-res WAVs playing back in REAPER, they’re maxing out at +0.8dB, which accounts for the difference in RG values between them and the MP3s. However, a question remains: why didn’t the producer & engineer take advantage of the extra bit depth of the hi-res version by leaving more dynamic range?
My lone concert indulgence of this year is coming fast. On Friday I’ll be making my third pilgrimage to Scranton with Mark to see Rush. This time around, I’m avoiding setlist discussion and going cold turkey; I want to be surprised! I’m really enjoying Snakes & Arrows and can’t wait to see what they play from it. I’m hoping they play all three instrumentals; they’re all great. They’ve been pulling out forgotten gems the last few tours. My guess is that they’ll play either “Jacob’s Ladder” or “The Camera Eye”. I would be ecstatic if they played “Cinderella Man”. If I’m right, don’t tell me until Saturday!
The iTunes Plus files I bought sound great in Foobar2000 and gapless playback between connected tracks (Rocket/Disarm, for example) works splendidly. I transcoded the tracks into LAME -v2 –vbr-new and used them in FB2K as well. Gapless playback continued to work fine and I couldn’t A/B them against the original AAC files. I figured a single-generational transcode of a 256kbps AAC file would be transparent, and at this point I believe it is.
I’ve seen a lot of people online bringing up the fact that Apple includes information about the purchaser in the iTunes Plus AAC files and implying it’s a bad thing. Unless you plan on giving your files to someone you don’t know, why would you care if the files are personalized? I don’t have a problem with it at all.
I’ve purchased the iTunes Plus version of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream (an album I dig but never got around to purchasing) to show my support for the initiative launched today. I’ve never purchased anything from iTunes before. It was a pretty painless experience.
Of course, the first thing I did with the music files was to copy them off into my Foobar2000 library, calculate ReplayGain (ahh… the good old early ’90s: -4.94dB), and listen to them there. They worked!
At $7.99 for the album, I think the purchase was a great compromise versus buying the CD new. I don’t think I’d buy anything but iTunes Plus albums, though. They’re a much better deal than individual tracks. And I’m a lover of albums vs. singles, although I love to shuffle tracks around.
I’ll comment on audio quality (both native and transcoded) later.
Rush is back. The big hair, fake falsetto heavy metal group that made the 1980s so irrelevant musically sold 84,000 copies for Atlantic Records last week with a new album called “Snakes & Arrows.” Never underestimate the low standards of the buying public, I guess. Journey, Poison, shoulder pads and perms shouldn’t be too far behind at this rate.
What the hell is this guy on? I was out at this page reading one of PsychoPhil’s links. Normally I don’t touch Fox News on the web or on TV. Mr. Friedman is reminding me why. Someone send him a Geddy nose and ponytail, please!
Now that I’ve listened to Rush’s new Snakes & Arrows several times since writing my pre-review, I can safely stand behind it. On first two trips through, I didn’t hear massive riffage and many of the songs seemed bland. However, once my ears dug a bit deeper and I began digesting the hooks and looking forward to them, it really opened up to me.
“Far Cry” is the heaviest track to my ears, and “Spindrift” is heavy as well. I guess that’s why they’ve been tapped as singles. The tastiest riff on the album has the be the heavy lead line that’s played several times in the first of three instrumentals, “The Main Monkey Business”. When I start playing this album on bass, that’ll probably be one of the first songs I try to cop. Saying “when I start playing this album on bass” is significant for me; I was so turned off by the engineering on Vapor Trails that I was never inspired to learn how to play the album as I had done with previous Rush records.
Speaking of the engineering, this album is definitely mastered loud, but not as egregiously as the contemporary competition. To my ears it sounds vastly superior to VT, although I don’t think the comparisons I’ve seen to the Permanent Waves sound is warranted. Perhaps it compares to the remastered version of PeW, but I wouldn’t know. I still have all my orignal-pressing Rush CDs (plus the MFSL Moving Pictures and Signals discs) and love their dynamic range.
Back to S&A’s songs: if you’ve ready any of Neil Peart’s books, you shouldn’t be surprised by the lyrical content of this album. My favorite lyrics are probably “Far Cry”, “The Larger Bowl” and “Bravest Face”. The overall theme of the album is somewhat forlorn, but I think the last track “We Hold On” is slightly optimistic.
Two things that stick out musically to me on this album are the plentiful acoustic guitars and vocal overdubs. It’ll be interesting to see how those are replicated live, especially on a song like “Bravest Face”. Will we see the return of the Omega Concern acoustic guitar stand, or will Alex use piezo pickups and processing on his electric guitars? In many places I think the vocals are layered too much. Geddy’s lead vocals are strong enough, especially in the register he’s singing in, to stand on their own. It would be nice to hear some Rush tunes that don’t mandate recorded backing tracks to perform live.
Overall, the album goes a long way towards making up for the miscues I perceived with Vapor Trails, and it’ll be a welcome addition to my Rush collection. I’ve preorded the DVD Album Limited Edition, which may require a review of its own since it’s a new format. The album is a great deal; you get more than 60 minutes of new Rush tunes. Highly recommended.
A great new interview with Steven Wilson is up at Caerllysi Music. It’s one of the best FoaBP-related ones I’ve read so far. In it, he shares his reasons for mastering the new Porcupine Tree album:
Do you master your CD’s and what do you feel about the problem today that most CD’s sound the same because of the similar technique used in mastering? Do you miss the demo sound?
I have gradually taken over all the mastering of my projects and this is the first PT album that I have mastered because I was not happy with the way that professional mastering houses were mastering it. There is a tendency to make everything very loud, to try and get volume at the sacrifice of dynamics and too much treble and too much bass and not enough of that warmth in the middle. You know the pressure has been there from record companies to make CD’s sound louder because they notionally sound more exciting that way. But over a period of 50-60 mins it really does start to tire your ears out, and that has been a problem with this CD generation, basically your ears get tired quicker.
It’s refreshing for me to hear that at least some artists “get it” with regards to dynamic range and are taking positive steps to improve the sonic quality of their recordings. Thanks, Steven, it’s much appreciated!
I think on the whole it’s better than both Test for Echo and Vapor Trails. My first listen had pegged the album as a little flat after having listened to the dynamic “Far Cry” for a while, but I’ve warmed up to just about the whole album now. It’s nice to have a new Rush album that’s loud & proud without being scratchy. Make no mistake, the boys are back!
The new Porcupine Tree album Fear of a Blank Planet is based on a more focused concept than 2005’s Deadwing, but is no less adventurous a musical journey. Steven Wilson continues to wear many hats on this album–guitars, vocals, piano, writing, and engineering–and along with the rest of the band has managed to produce what I think is among the top 10 best-sounding albums of the decade (so far). The songs are still growing on me after about six full listens, but I’m confident that if you like one of PT’s last two albums or are a fan of rock concept albums you’ll find this one interesting.
The album proves that dynamic range isn’t dead; it was saved from the mastering butchery that plagues most mainstream rock releases I’ve heard in the last 10-15 years. As a result, the quieter parts of the album are actually quiet in contrast to the loud parts, which do get loud! A particularly noticable example of this to me is Gavin Harrison’s drumming at the beginning of track 3, “Anesthetize”; it sounds lively and great. The music goes from melodic to metallic and back with ease.
The engineering on this album is the best I’ve heard from PT to date. SW already had a decent track record in this area, especially considering the quality of the two Blackfield albums and the DVD-A versions of In Absentia and Deadwing. His reputation is cemented with this release.
Although meant to be listened to as a whole in sequence, I currently favor tracks 2 and 4, “My Ashes” and “Sentimental”, as well as first third of “Anesthetize”, which features the Alex Lifeson solo that I blogged about before. I’m definitely more interested in the music than the lyrics at this point. I miss the “layered lyric” moments such as the ones in “Gravity Eyelids”, “Drown With Me”, and “Mellotron Scratch”, some of my favorite PT tunes. However, that doesn’t detract from this album’s quality.
Fear of a Blank Planet hits store shelves in the US tomorrow. Highly recommended!
I was listening to Porcupine Tree’s new Fear of a Blank Planet for the first time as an album in the car this morning. I realized in my first listen of track 3, ”Anesthetize”, ”hey, that’s Alex Lifeson soloing”. It gave me goose bumps; it was that good.
IMG_0492, originally uploaded by aharden.
OK, this is turning out to be a really fun combo of effects that can plug into virtually any amp. The SansAmp Bass Driver DI is the ticket, as it provides a very tunable overdrive and a variety of output options. The Limiter and Chorus are definitely marginalized now that the SansAmp is a part of my arsenal.
I couldn’t let this one go with just a link. Today’s annoucement that EMI’s catalog on the iTunes Music Store will be available in a “premium”, DRM-less, higher-fidelity version is pretty big. iTMS customers that have previously purchased singles shouldn’t balk at the 30-cent tax. The fact that albums will continue to cost the same is a great endorsement of the artistic work’s form. Unencumbered 256kbps AAC definitely has the potential to be a great compromise between DRM’d 128kbps AAC and an open, lossless format, assuming that online digital album pricing vs. the price of a physical CD reflects the efficiencies of each distribution model.
So I got all pumped up for the “fans only” Internet ticket pre-sale for Rush’s June 29th show in Scranton this morning. I was on the website at 10am ready to purchase three of the closest tickets I could. Once the virtual gates were open and I got past the initial prompts, it took the musictoday.com site over 10 minutes after I told it what tickets I wanted to show me a page that gave me seats in the 31st row (EE) of the 100-level section in front of stage left. 31st row?
I know Rush is a huge concert draw, but I doubt that the majority of people that were purchasing tickets at that time intend to go to the show. I predict there will be a lot of these tickets available from professional ticket brokers for much higher than face value. There was nothing in the pre-sales process to tie a ticket purchase to attendance, such as mandatory will-call or an ID check at the gate. When will artists start to care about this issue?
I’m glad I don’t go to a lot of stadium/arena shows, or this would bug me a lot more.
On the bright side, this will be my 15th Rush show!
- Miss U
- Christenings
- This Killer
- Epidemic
I’m really digging this album right now.
I was flipping through the excellent Studio M pics of Blackfield’s Philly show of last Tuesday and almost immediately noticed something weird in this pic of bassist Seffy Efrat. Can you spot it?
After a handful of full listens to the full-res version of the new Rush single “Far Cry” I can definitely say I’m pleased. I’m also relieved; the sound is loud & proud and doesn’t clip like Vapor Trails did. I think I’m really going to like Snakes and Arrows.
Anyone else notice how much like the Grace Under Pressure lettering the newest incarnation of the RUSH logo is? Check it out at rush.com.
I’m going to have some good stuff to listen around the time our new baby arrives. New Porcupine Tree (April 24th) and Rush (May 1st) albums are due in the few weeks before the baby is due (May 9th-ish).
I’m hoping neither album suffers from “louder is better” syndrome…
Update: Can’t hurt to throw a few links out there if you don’t know what I’m referring to.
From Porcupine Tree - Recent News:
01-31-2007
Following two album playback events in New York and at Abbey Road in London, the track listing of the new Porcupine Tree album “Fear of a Blank Planet” has been revealed:
1. Fear of a Blank Planet (7.2
2. My Ashes (5.07)
3. Anesthetize (17.42)
4. Sentimental (5.26)
5. Way Out of Here (7.37)
6. Sleep Together (7.2
The album is set for April release through Roadrunner in Europe, Atlantic in the US, and WHD Entertainment in Japan. It’s likely that both the stereo CD and 5.1 surround sound DVDA will be packaged together as standard.
Can’t wait to get this album. I like what I’m reading in the last paragraph: that I can get both the CD and DVD-A together. I decided to get their last album, Deadwing, in a special edition with CD and DTS DVD (not high-res DVD-A) and missed out on some bonus tracks. (Technically.) If these sessions were anything like DW and In Absentia, the boys have some great non-album tracks ready for release as well. Two of my favorite PT tracks, “Drown With Me” and “So Called Friend” didn’t make their respective sessions’ albums.
I called in to Guitar Center last Thursday and “Cowboy” let me know that the Geddy Lee Jazz Bass they had transferred on my request was in. I brought my unsold Hamer Slammer 5-string in to trade-in towards the GLJB over my early lunch hour on Friday. After 30 minutes of off-and-on research, manager Dan offered me $175 ($125 plus a $50 discount) towards the new bass. I took it. That 30 minutes was well-spent; I inspected the bass and played it through a Behringer 2×10 amp. It sounded nice!
I got the bass and its gig bag for a little more than $550 after tax as a result. I took it with me on our short excursion to Buffalo this weekend and tuned it up and played it some more (sans effects pedals) on Saturday. After we got back yesterday, I brought it in with me to play at church. Playing it through my pedals and the 15″ Peavey amp at church sounded nice, and the difference in tone from my Ibanez SR1205 drew complements from my bandmates. It was a dream to play with its smooth, thin neck (like my old Ibanez SR800 bass) and comfortable setup. I was planning to get a new strap and possibly strap locks for this, but my old backup leather strap seemed OK. We’ll see.
HUGE Rush reference on “The Knights of Prosperity” tonight; they sang “Tom Sawyer”! OK, this show just became ultra-cool…
Update: They used “Tom Sawyer” in a training sequence and again in a barfight as well!
Prompted by Melissa to clean out our office to make room for the “guest room” stuff that needs to come out of our unborn little one’s room, I’m thanking the utility of lala.com in helping me manage my CD inventory. Not only can I easily search through it, but it helps me get rid of the stuff I no longer want (easily a third of what I have). I’ve had music CD’s in a number of locations throughout the house, but now I’ve removed just about everything from upstairs to create caches in the family room (a mixed bag of the family’s CDs) and the basement (just my stuff, and the cruft).
Tastes change, but I certainly did a lot of frivolous CD buying in the ’90s. Aside from friends whose musical tastes I trust, Lala has become my “music hub” and helps me to discover and aquire more stuff I might not have known about or sought otherwise. And it’s served as an OK means to getting rid of stuff I no longer want.
No local takers for my Hamer bass (yet), so I’m considering a trade-in at Guitar Center towards a new Geddy Lee Jazz Bass. Stopped by there on Tuesday and they didn’t have one in stock, so I’m going to call back today to see if they’ve located one for me. There are two apparently barely-used ones with hard cases on eBay right now, but if I got one of those I’d still have my Hamer, which I want to part with before getting the GLJB. The perils of itchy bass fingers!
Small, trivial, only-for-me blog note: My Ibanez SR1205 that I’ve had for close to 10 years (or more? Chris?) has had strap-lock-compatible cleats on it for all this time, which have contributed to the time where my non-locked strap has easily come off. I got some Schaller strap locks on Tuesday and they were compatible with the cleats already on the bass. Five tool-less minutes later, my strap was mated securely with the bass. Nice.
Update: Don at GC says they have a bass in transit and it should be there next week! I’ll try to ignore the eBay stuff (priced very nicely given that they include a hardshell case) as I wait for that one to arrive.
I linkblogged the Wired article that purports that the majors are going to consider selling unprotected MP3s with watermarking technology. I support this. I’ve long felt that users should be trusted with unencumbered content. This move would go a ways towards making mainstream music consumption friendlier, but there are still the Catch-22’s of the cases of broken media (did I buy that plastic disc, or did I buy the right to listen to that content?) and copy-protected CDs versus music CD-R/Minidisc tax (I paid your stinking tax, now why can’t I legally transfer the music to taxed media?).
Ryan has one of these guitars. After a few months of flat-out strumming, he’s started to do some rough fretting, harmonics, and is experimenting with feedback. With the built-in amp behind the strings, that’ll happen.
I recorded VH1 Classic’s condensed broadcast of Dream Theater’s upcoming Score DVD (it hits retail this coming Tuesday) and what I saw looked and sounded great. It’s a recording of the show that Don and I both attended last April, and it’ll be a while before the uniqueness and power of that show leaves my memory. What a fun experience. I pre-ordered Score a while ago and will be watching the mail closely this week for its arrival!
OK, tonight was the premiere of Rock Star: Supernova (”The Tommy Lee Project?”) and I think most of the 15 contestants were entertaining. The bottom three that they flashed on the screen near the end (Phil, Chris, and Magni) were definitely our picks as well, although we also thought that Dilana wasn’t that appealing either.
The guys in the band, as well as their producer, seemed genuine but were more complementary than I think they should have been. It’ll be interesting to see how elimination works tomorrow, and if we’ll get to see Jason, Gilby, and Tommy take the stage.
Our early favorite is Toby.
The Boss’s official site (© 2005 Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Inc.):
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
What my ears (and others) hear:
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man
Ironically, right around the time I mention CDex is being updated, the main CD metadata service I use with it, freedb, is going away. freedb became popular after CDDB went commercial and required applications to display a visual indication when they used the Gracenote service. The guys behind freedb engineered a parallel service using the legacy CDDB data and protocol (both of which were open) and have done a great job. (More on Wikipedia.) Options for me going forward are probably going to be limited to what’s supported in either CDex or Foobar2000, which looks like foosic and/or MusicBrainz. We’ll see.
If you’re reading this, you might already know the usefulness of services like freedb, but for those that don’t: when you put an audio CD into your computer and interact with it in a way that automatically shows artist/title/track information, you’re very likely using some sort of CD metadata service that has used certain aspects of the disc data (mainly the table of contents) to guess the correct info. freedb was among the most used, with a huge catalog of data. It may take other similar open services a little time to catch up. I think if more publishers used CD-Text, the need for net-based services would be a lot less.
Albert Faber, the developer behind CDex (my favorite CD ripper) is active again; he’s started releasing beta builds of version 1.70. Thanks to my friends at Hydrogenaudio for the heads-up.
I decided not to wait for Amazon to ship me the copy of Rush’s new Replay x3 box set since Best Buy had it for $3 cheaper than my pre-order price and I was heading by there anyways. Get this: it was $27.99 when I ordered it, now it’s $25.99. Guess it may not pay to pre-order. I picked it up yesterday and quickly put the Exit… Stage Left and Grace Under Pressure Tour DVDs in and thumbed through them. It was only on my 20″ TV setup, but the transfers look fine. The sound was good. I haven’t seen these videos in years. I’ll be checking out the new surround mixes sometime next week.
Also included in the package are the A Show Of Hands DVD (sans “Lock And Key” from the original laserdisc version), a CD of the GUP Tour show, and three booklets, one for each show, each with a reproduction of the tourbook for that show’s tour. These concerts were all before my Rush-going days. I got into Rush around the time of Hold Your Fire and have seen them on every tour since the release of Presto. At $26 bucks, this is one heck of a deal for even the casual Rush fan.
OK, I usually don’t do these things, but when I saw Geoff’s list (and his request of me) I was intrigued by what might show up.
Here’s what you do:
- Turn on your favourite media player and turn your shuffle feature on.
- Hit “play” and keep track of the next 10 songs that come up. (If you have iTunes, you can make a smart playlist that will automatically list your most recently played selections.)
- Post your 10 shuffled songs, along with these instructions. You are not allowed to lie, omit tracks or otherwise try to make your musical taste seem hipper than it actually is.
- Tag five people on your friends list to do the same.
My random ten:
- Wall Of Voodoo | “Mexican Radio” | Call Of The West
- Beastie Boys | “Brass Monkey” | Licensed To Ill (appropriate, given that Geoff and I listened to this in high school)
- Joe Satriani | “Hill Of The Skull” | Surfing With The Alien
- I Mother Earth | “Levitate” | Dig
- Yes | “Everydays” | YesYears (out of print; originally on Time And A Word)
- John Wesley | “Star” | Shiver
- Extreme | “Who Cares” | III Sides To Every Story
- Porcupine Tree | “The Moon Touches Your Shoulder” | The Sky Moves Sideways
- Platypus | “I Need You” | Ice Cycles
- Led Zeppelin | “Tea For One” | Presence
I’m sympathetic to Doug Pinnick’s complaints about the failure of King’s X to get enough exposure to draw in the fans that would make the 25-year-old band a profitable enterprise. Doug, Jerry, and Ty have put out lots of great music over the years, and I still listen to their stuff regularly. I also try to listen to and purchase a lot of their respective side projects’ material. I don’t get to see them all that often since they haven’t been booked closer to Harrisburg than Philly (to my knowledge) since I’ve been here. One of Doug’s complaints is that KX can’t profitably (or otherwise) book earlier/all-ages shows, which limits the availability of venues and of appeal. If I was going to travel an hour or two to a KX show, I’d much rather be driving back at 11:30PM vs 2:00AM. If you haven’t heard their stuff, definitely go over to Amazon and check out some samples of their songs. If you like what you hear, buy a CD or two. I think the guys still have a lot of music to make.
Blackfield (the collaboration between Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson and Aviv Geffen) now has a Myspace page and they’re sharing some music from the forthcoming second album. The full track “Once” is definitely the heaviest they’ve done to date, and the 30-second preview track reveals lush arrangements of the songs “Miss U” and “Epidemic” that they’ve played live. They’ve also re-done the previously non-album track “Where Is My Love?”. Everything sounds great and I can’t wait to get a copy. Check out their stuff.
Rush is well on their way to releasing another studio album near the beginning of 2007 and hope to tour next spring. They also have a DVD-repackaging of the “Exit… Stage Left”, “Grace Under Pressure Tour”, and “A Show Of Hands” videos coming out next month called Replay. It also includes a CD of the GUP Tour. Out of these works, I only own a VHS copy of ASOH, so I will definitely be picking this up. I can remember watching the GUP tour laserdisc in the media room at the UB Student Union. Cool!
The EFF has a great portal that helps one to determine if they have one of the Sony/BMG CDs that contain the invasive DRM enforcement software (XCP or MediaMax) and where to go to make a claim for relief. In addition to receiving a clean version of the CD (heck, maybe it’ll even sport the CDDA logo!), the claimant may receive a free download of the music on the CD (apparently from a DRM-laden store), and software to help clean up your computer. In addition, you may have the opportunity to receive some cash back and/or some amount of free downloads of DRMed music. I recommend taking the relief offer that involves the least amount of downloads; I don’t prefer DRMed downloadable media.
If you own any of the listed CDs, I highly encourage you to make a claim; it’ll deter the music publishers from trying things like this in the future. CDDA shouldn’t be futzed around with.
I only own one of the CDs on the list, Our Lady Peace’s “Healthy In Paranoid Times”, but since I have the DualDisc version I wasn’t subject to the XCP software.
Ross turned me on to Rogue Amoeba’s beta release of Airfoil for Windows yesterday and I tried the software on three different machines: a WinXP laptop, a WinXP tower, and a Win2003 Server. I haven’t gotten it to work yet. I need to try a few more things before I fire off a message to RA.
Update: I’ve gotten it to work on the laptop by redirecting the audio device’s WaveOut to the Airport, as opposed to focusing on redirecting individual apps. It seems good. I will probably purchase it, even though it won’t help with my primary goal, which is redirecting the audio stream from my ICYG source: a Foobar2000 instance running in a RDP session, set to null output. That’s a bit outside of the scope of Airfoil, which is why I’d love a FB2K DSP or output plugin that supports AirTunes.
From what I’ve seen, Airfoil will probably have problems working with my WinXP tower, which has its onboard soundcard, an M-Audio Audiophile 2496, and an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 installed. Need I remind you I’m an audio nerd?
OK, I’m definitely interested in Sony’s news that they will begin supporting AAC in their SonicStage application, which is the software I use to transfer audio from my computer to my Hi-MD Walkman. They already support MP3, WAV, and WMA in addition to their own ATRAC; if they would support Vorbis, they would please me even more.
However, this news combined with Ahead’s (makers of Nero) release of a free, feature-filled, command-line AAC encoder for Windows (which mates nicely with FB2K) probably spells the end of Vorbis in my music library. I’d already made the decision to do new encodes with MP3 instead of Vorbis. I will continue to prefer to stream using Vorbis, but the format just isn’t supported in enough of the tools I use currently to do otherwise with it. The main tools I use to enjoy my music are FB2K, iTunes, and to a more limited extent, SonicStage and WinAMP. Discussion about the new AAC encoder is going on at Hydrogenaudio.
I’ve started a slow cull through my digital music morass to try to reorganize (especially through superior tagging), trash, and also delete & re-encode the inferior-sounding stuff that I want to keep online. Some of my Vorbis Q3 & Q4 encodes really sound like crap, but so did 128kbps MP3 at the time I made those decisions. The stuff I re-encode will not be Vorbis, but now I want to decide if Nero’s AAC encoder is superior in quality, flexibility, and compatibility as they pertain to my tastes and use versus LAME MP3.
As I’m approaching this I’m realizing that it’s nicer to have a smaller amount of nicer-sounding music that I actually listen to versus a bunch of badly-encoded stuff that I don’t like or never listen to. My collection will be higher-quality as a result, and will be more fun to jack into and play with in the various ways I do.
by O.S.I.
OK, I’ve been listening to OSI’s Free a few weeks now and just received the special edition from Burning Shed today, so it’s time to review. The album is great. Is it better than the debut release? No, it’s different. There’s not a song on here that strikes me the way “Head” does, but that’s OK. My favorite tracks right now are “Free”, “Go”, “All Gone Now”, and “Kicking”. The weakest track for me so far is “Bigger Wave”. Gotta love the banjo on the acoustic closing track “Our Town”.
Jim Matheos and Kevin Moore have put together another solid album. It’s got enough riffs, groove, and vocal effects to keep your ears busy. The songs are so layered that there’s lots of sound to discover with each listen. Highly recommended.
I’m officially hooked on the new OSI album Free that’ll be released in a few weeks. I like it so much that I ordered the European special edition from Burning Shed in the UK. A full review will follow in a few days.
Last night after the show (Dream Theater @ Radio City Music Hall, NYC) I was thinking I had witnessed the best DT show ever. It was a powerful performance, augmented by a full orchestra for about 2/3 of the material. They chose some rare tracks to play. Details and an excellent review of the evening by “hefdaddy42″ can be found here.
I hadn’t read about setlists or possible surprises before the show, so I was completely stunned when after an hour of performance and a 15-minute intermission, the curtain opened to reveal an orchestra assembled in what was previously empty space. That took some serious work to complete in that time and I was blown away. The person who pre-announced the band said something about “you won’t believe the stage setup” and I was underwhelmed by the setup in the first set. Little did I know….
Some of the song choices were rare. After opening with “The Root Of All Evil” and “I Walk Beside You” from Octavarium, the band started a chronological journey, playing a song from each of their albums. I wasn’t familiar with the selections from the Majesty demos or When Dream And Day Unite, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy them. The selections of “Under A Glass Moon” and “Innocence Faded” were fine with me. I don’t recall ever having seen them perform “IF” live, since I missed the tours between Images And Words and Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence. The non-album track “Raise The Knife” was cool; I don’t think I’d heard it before. “The Spirit Carries On” was a quick step on the Metropolis 2000: Scenes From A Memory “stone”; the band throughly captured that album live on DVD previously.
The performance of the 6DOIT suite, the first with the orchestra on stage, was amazing. 6DOIT is a DT album I’ve never really given a full chance to win me over; that might have made the performance a little more poignant for me. Next up was “Vacant”, another short number that gave most of the band a breather. After that, they played “Sacrificed Sons” and the long “Octavarium”, which was very fun to watch. Jordan Rudess was killer on this song, playing lap steel guitar, a touch-sensitive instrument I’m not familiar with, and a big analog synthesizer that, until he used it, seemed to me to be a prop. I guess I should know that Jordan’s too economical about his onstage equipment to have excessive props. The band’s encore was a full rendition of “Metropolis Part 1″.
I had fun watching DT bassist John Myung. He smiled during the show more than I remember seeing in the past, and he had a number of solo fills that he pulled off brilliantly. He was definitely under-represented in the live video monitors; I hope he’s not forgotten when they direct the DVD release of this show. I enjoyed the performances by all the DT band members, but seemed to watch JM, JR, and John Petrucci the most.
Don had told me that the new DVD/CD release of the “official” DT bootleg of their performance of Dark Side Of The Moon was going to be on sale at the show. When we couldn’t get that at the merch stand before the show, we each settled for the CD. As we were leaving, I saw the DVD at the stand we were passing, so Don traded the unopened CD back and we each got a DVD.
Obscure setlist, orchestra, Radio City Music Hall, great playing, future DVD release… how could this concert be any better for the longtime DT fan? I was glad to see it live. Thanks to Don for getting the tickets and hosting me for my yearly concert trip!
Don’s recap of the show is here.
I received the TU-2 pedal yesterday, new as promised, and it works great. It fits right into my pedalboard case. I’ll post a pick to Flickr later.
Update (3/30): Here’s a pic of this round of GAS:
After watching a number of used TU-2’s go for over $90 with shipping on eBay, I made the decision to get a new one at a “Buy It Now” price of $90 with shipping (no tax). From other reputable online retailers, I would have paid $100 plus shipping and maybe tax, too. This round of gear acquisition syndrome is almost complete. The triumvirate will be together soon. And I’ll post photos on Flickr.
This kind of makes up for the awesome deal I got on the LMB-3.
I got Guitar Center to pricematch zZounds on the BOSS carrying case I mentioned; that knocked $20 off. I picked that up along with some instrument cables and an AC adaptor after work today. They keep that place staffed pretty well; the guy that helped me (Christian) steered me to exactly to what I was looking for and made things quick.
I hope to have purchased a TU-2 within the next week so that the two pedals now in the case will have company!
I hooked everything up and got a pretty nice, smooth sound with both the LMB-3 and CE-2B active (in that order). The TU-2 will end up being the first pedal in the chain.
…as in, “Gear Acquisition Syndrome”.
In my quest to sound a bit better when I’m not plugged into my ADA MB-1 preamp, I’m purchasing a few effects pedals to port around with my bass. I already have a venerable BOSS CE-2B Bass Chorus. It’s now being joined by a BOSS LMB-3 Bass Limiter/Enhancer that I got for a great price from an eBay seller. I’m now looking to purchase a (you guessed it?) BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner to provide easy tuning/re-tuning capability (like being able to go down to dropped-D tuning in a snap) and to act as a muter. There are a lot of them on eBay right now and I’m hoping to get a slightly used one at about 60-70% of list.
Once I get all three pedals, I’ll probably get one of the BOSS three-pedal cases to organize it all. The only drawback is that my old CE-2B isn’t rated to use the power adapter that the two newer pedals will share, so I’ll have to use its own adapter or its battery. Other than that, I’m looking to have a tighter, richer sound when I’m trying to keep up with my bandmates at church.
by Lake & Palmer Emerson
I was introduced to ELP in high school and have always liked their stuff. However, a