The guitar pioneer Les Paul left us today. What’s most interesting is that not only did he invent the electric guitar, but he also experimented and created new recording techniques:

There he experimented with recording techniques, using them to create not realistic replicas of a performance but electronically enhanced fabrications. Toying with his mother’s old Victrola had shown him that changing the speed of a recording could alter both pitch and timbre. He could record at half-speed and replay the results at normal speed, creating the illusion of superhuman agility. He altered instrumental textures through microphone positioning and reverberation. Technology and studio effects, he realized, were instruments themselves.

A short, but great, interview with Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows on his favorite “summer song”, ‘Save It For Later’ by English Beat, and the experience he had when he saw what would eventually be English Beat’s last show. I would have to enthusiastically agree with him…its a favorite of mine and the way he describes the “absolute joy of the song” is spot on.

This evening on the commute home, I was exchanging comments with a friend of mine regarding a post he put up on Facebook (log in required), in which he alluded to the classic 1980′s song “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult. So of course, as I’m in my car driving home and listening to my new favorite car radio station, WRXP 101.9 (NYC), what comes on at 7:04PM but…wait for it….She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult. Its a sign. Not sure of what, but its a sign.

And while I’m on the subject of NYC radio stations, WRXP is a breath of fresh air in the vapid morass that is, and has been, the NYC region’s music radio stations (If I’m late to discovering RXP, shame on me). For years we’ve had to suffer with cookie cutter, top 100 pop crap stations. Finally, someone has put together a station that incorporates new, underground artists, along with classic songs and artists from the past 0-30 years. And the DJ’s know what they are talking about….Matt Pinfield is excellent. WXRT is a great change of pace on the NYC area’s radio dial and I wish it great success so long as it does not get swallowed by internet/satellite radio.

MTV has released an online video site that houses all the videos that have ever run on the network (we won’t talk about its name – MTV Music or Music Television Music – or the fact that these days MTV is anything but Music Television).

Check out the very first video ever played on MTV, The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star or this Internet classic or Devo’s Whip It or one of my favorites, the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl”.

The Most Popular area, which as of today looks like a retro 1980′s top video list with video “classics” like Dire Straits Money for Nothing, aHa’s Take on Me, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or – wait for it – Toto’s Africa.

Big hair is back, kids.

Its coming, really it is. Their site says they are releasing a new set of songs, the first in 23 years!!!

Good lord, what is going on in our world? One hit wonders from the 1980′s having reunion tours. Really bad bands having reunion tours. Fake bands having reunion tours. Its a trend and a buzz that will not subside!!

The other day I was coming home from work and I just happened to dial up the Fresh Air with Teri Gross podcast. Its not a podcast I listen to regularly, however whenever there is a good interivew on NPR, it always seems as though Teri Gross is the interviewer. In any case, the podcast I dialed up was from March 2 and it featured an interview with Grandmaster Flash, arguably the godfather and first true star of rap/hip hop music. Wether you are a fan of rap/hip hop or not, take a listen. Its an amazing interview in that Grandmaster Flash is able to transport you back to the early 1980′s when he was honing his craft and just investigating how far he could push the limits. What was also amazing was when Teri Gross asks him to do a voice over of what he was doing (artistically) while they listen to his seminal “The Message” mix.

Another big part of New York’s long music legacy was lost to the history books this past weekend when CBGB OMFUG (Country BlueGrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers is the long version of the name) unceremoniously closed its doors. And now, NYC is one big step closer to being a homogeneous plastic concrete Mall of America. I’m not going to claim to be anything close to a punk rocker, and I sadly never even set foot in the place. But I am aware of its place in music history, the legends it helped create, and the legend the venue itself became. In recent years, CBGB fell into some level of disrepair and the level of music innovation never did rival that time in the mid-to-late 1970′s when acts like the Talking Heads, The Ramones, Blondie, and others established themselves there. But you always knew that it was there as a living, breathing piece of NY and American music history. And now, its not there. Rumors are that they will try to take it apart and rebuild it in (gasp) Las Vegas, but obviously it will never be the same. What are they going to do next, close McSorley’s?

Fans of a Groundbreaking Club Mourn and Then Move On – NY Times (10/16/2006)

This past Friday, my iPod died.  I was sitting at work listening to some tunes and cranking out a project brief, when all of a sudden it just stopped playing.  When I picked it up, the back of it was smoking hot to the touch, and the software was freezing and sputtering.  If it was a car, it was the equivelant of lurching and choking and shaking violently.

As any normal person would do, I started to hit every button to see if it would start playing again but nothing happened.  Then, I went to the Internet.  How can I reboot this thing?  Maybe it just needs a little refresh as in my 1.5 years of owning it, I’d never rebooted it.  As we all know, we all need to reboot every once in a while.

A ha! I found it. A very informative iPod site detailing exact instructions on how to reboot my iPod.  "Your data will not be effected when you reboot your iPod." it said.  I hit the "Menu" and "Play" buttons at the same time for about 10 seconds (yes, I had the 3rd generation iPod which I’ve always been somewhat bitter about, being that I purchaed it all of two weeks ahead of the 4th generation release…but we won’t go there) and it rebooted.  Ok, this is good, I said.  It appears to be working fine now.  But to my horror, every song, podcast, and piece of information on my iPod was gone…Casper…no where to be found.  Yes, everything was in iTunes on my home computer, so it was not an unmitigated catastrophe (unless you consider the commute home that evening), but this was not expected based on what I read (Mistake #1:  Everything on the internet is not fact).  And the iPod was still smoking hot on the back too.  Now I knew something was seriously wrong.

I wake up on Saturday and try to sync it with iTunes, and again it fails.  I bitterly head downstairs to eat breakfast, and there it is…slapping me right in the face.  Its an article in the NY Times by Joe Nocera titled "Good Luck With That Broken iPod" (fyi…the online article is behind the NYTimes "Select" service, so I can’t link to it).  The timing was impeccable.  The article essentially said that if your iPod breaks, there is little that Apple will do to help other than saying "Go buy a new one" and offering an extended warranty.  Bitterness turned to frustration.

On Sunday, fearing the worst, I took my injured iPod to the local Apple store right when it opened.  One of the salespeople took it and tried to bring its software back to factory condition.  Alas, that did not work as he determined it was a component issue, which costs $250 minimum.  As the article said, "Go buy a new one."  So I did, reluctantly.  Some silver lining is that I was able to give my broken one back to Apple and they took 10% off the cost of my new one.  This time, I did buy the warranty.

So now I have the new iPod Video with an extended warranty.  My plans to replace my 5 year old behemouth of a digital camera will have to wait another year or so.  I use my iPod every day when I commute to work.  I’m not going to say "its more trouble than its worth" because there is no way I could survive my commute without it.  But still, its been a rocky relationship….

Wow, they never cease to amaze. Not a month after they released the amazing looking nano, they take the next step towards media convergance and release the often rumored Video iPod. The real challenge becomes how interested and engaging this will be with consumers. I think the popularity of the iPod is a direct function of the fact that with music/audio, you can be doing other things while you are listening. With video, you need to be fully attentive to the content.

But even if you don’t download a single video, the bigger screen, the larger amount of disc space, and the increased battery life are reasons alone to seriously consider an upgrade. My iPod is now closing in on 1.5 years old, and while its still serving me quite well, I am starting to get a little bit of iPod envy.

I have never, ever liked Country music. I still don’t like Country music.

When I purchased my iPod about a year ago, I diligently went ahead and imported my whole music collection, and my wife’s collection, to iTunes. Included in my wife’s collection were a couple of albums from Johnny Cash – Unchained, and American IV: The Man Comes Around.

Maybe I am getting old, or maybe I am just learning to appreciate different artists or music genres. No matter, my iPod has had a knack of regularly playing music from both of Johnny Cash’s albums, and I have to admit that I am starting to understand why Johnny Cash was so popular for so long. Maybe its the fact that listening to my iPod, I am paying more attention to the lyrics. I am not sure. But what I do know is that Johnny Cash was pretty cool and that his music, while “classified” as Country, really extends way beyond that label. I’m not going to go into the significance of American IV, being that it was his last album and was created as a metaphor for reflection on his amazing life. However, the song list on that album, which included covers of Nine Inch Nails (Hurt), The Beatles (In My Life), Depeche Mode (Personal Jesus) and others, really hits home and by the time you finish actually listening to the entire album, start to finish, you will feel humbled.

When I was living out in Chicago, I saw “The Man in Black” perform at the Chicago House of Blues around the time that Unchained was released. I enjoyed the show but I did not appreciate the show. I wish I had.

Out and about on the Internet, people are confessing about those skeletons buried in the back corners of their iPods. You know who you are. Britney, Burt Bachrach, Neil Diamond…they are there on your iPod. As for me, well…I will admit that I have a few Abba songs, I have a Tony Bennett CD cued up, ready to download, and I am seriously thinking of adding some Frank Sinatra and Elvis to the mix.

So I ordered an Apple iPod this weekend. Looking forward to loading it up and using it!! I ordered the 20GB size basically because I could not justify spending $500 for it. They were running a promotion where I could get it engraved for free, which I gladly took advantage of. I put this url and my email address on it figuring that if I ever lost it, maybe some kind soul would email me and return it. Also, I figure 20GB is more than enough space for most of my current CD collection plus other songs that I will eventually acquire from iTunes. My wife was even nice enough to purchase a $15 Gift Certificate for me to get started on iTunes. I would have preferred the BMW for my iPod but beggars can’t be choosers. Rock on.

Over on retroCRUSH is a great page that highlights the top song parts in music. This page so accurately points out that there are so many songs out there that are exceedling average, or the band that created them was exceedingly average, but there are elements of a specific song they created that are timeless. Snippets like the opening rift in One Step Beyond by Madness or the opening of Anarchy in the U.K. by the Sex Pistols are highlighted and appropriately so. However, the biggest issue I have with this fine compilation is the fact that they listed Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight as the #1 Cool Song Moment. Anyone who votes for Phil Collins at the top of any music related list (other than the list of top most annoying singers of the 1980′s) in any way has some serious musical issues. But even with that major jugmental flaw, its still a great list worth checking out.

Here is an interesting site that iPod owners use to post new concepts related to future versions and services related to the wonderful Apple iPod: iPodlounge – All Things iPod

I was driving around yesterday and the seminal 1980′s one-hit-wonder song “I Ran” by A Flock of Seagulls came on the radio, and in seconds it sent me hurtling back to the teen angst of high school. Listening to this song and being exposed to all the recent retro stories about the 1980′s makes me realize what a unique period that was in the history of music.