A friend of mine and I were discussing the awesome awesome lineup for Fun Fun Fun Fest this year, and recently, they announced their schedule for our viewing pleasure. My friend was excited, but admitted he knew only a few bands. Where, he wondered aloud, could he find a comprehensive rundown of each band, a sampling of their musical chops, so he could further educate himself before the finest weekend of his year? I assume the Fun Fun Fun website has such a playlist, and they do, and it’s cool, but I wanted to make my own. So every Friday, from now until the fest (that’s nine weeks), I will be posting a playlist for your educational purposes for each stage and day, excluding the Yellow stage, which is mostly comedy.
This week’s playlist covers the bands playing on the Blue (Hip-Hop/Dance) stage on Saturday – Cecil Otter, Purity Ring, T-Bird and the Breaks, Brandt Brauer Frick, Cold Cave, Childish Gambino, Rakim, Dan Deacon, Neon Indian, and Major Lazer.
After jamming to “Belispeak,” “Lofticries,” and “Ungirthed” this year, this group’s upcoming debut LP is one of my most anticipated albums currently. I am curious to see how this group’s ethereal synth-pop translates to the stage.
Just Tuesday the news was all about the lackluster Apple summit new CEO Tim Cook hosted, and the new iPhone 4S, which is receiving underwhelming press. The commentary constantly remarked this was the first launch without the company’s figurehead Steve Jobs, and that something felt….off. Without Jobs around, is this a turning point for Apple? Are its glory days over? And now, with the untimely death of Jobs Wednesday afternoon, all of that is trivial.
To deny the radical influence Steve Jobs had on the world, and the profound sadness of his death, is simply foolish. I grow tired of seeing #iDead hashtags, Mac haters naysaying, or people who ridicule others for acknowledging the man’s productive life because they “didn’t know him.” Unsurprisingly, the ignorant Internet misses the point. Jobs’ work impacted everyone you know in some form. If you’ve played with an iPod, owned a modern smartphone, messed around with a computer, or watched a computer-animated film, you’ve experienced the inspiration of this man. It could be argued he helped saved the music industry from sheer collapse with the iTunes model. There’s a reason why his death is front-page news, why it’s a trending topic, why public figures are comparing him to Thomas Edison, why the President found it prudent to release a statement honoring him.
There’s no doubt Jobs lived a full life; he created and innovated technologies which are now second-nature household items, and his left-field thinking is still present in Apple’s mindset. And yet, we can sense that he was just getting started. That he still had a lot to show us. Very rarely does a visionary come around as forward thinking and as revolutionary, and Jobs certainly filled a void and created a vision that will resonate for years to come. The scope of that vision should be honored, and the loss of that vision should be mourned.
And so, I invite you to spend what will undoubtedly be the fifteen most inspirational minutes of your day and watch a speech Jobs gave in 2005 to a group of Stanford graduates. He tells three stories about connecting the dots, love and loss, and death. Each are fitting for a commencement speech (ironically, Jobs never graduated college), but they also apply to life in general. And if you’re looking for motivation for a full life, look no further than Steve Jobs.
We’ve all seen the Ticker and the News Feed updates, and we either love them or hate them. I find it particularly amusing when people get so fed up with Facebook’s incremental changes they whine and moan about something they can simply opt out of. It’s like complaining about how bad smoking is for you when you continue to smoke a pack a day. That analogy works well, unfortunately; it could be argued social networking is just as addictive. Probably now more than ever.
Because where are you gonna go? Google+, huh? The only friends I have on Google+ are the early adopters, the techies who were going to join anyway, no matter what. The Reddit readers, the iPad buyers, etc. Everybody else? Still on Facebook. And it’s not like those early adopters deleted their Facebook accounts, either.
If anyone should bitch about anything Facebook does, it’s not the layout changes, but their stance on privacy, which started off awful and has only gotten worse. The new Open Graph, in particular, pretty much makes you as a Facebook user vulnerable to every third party that wants any sliver of info about you. And to customize it otherwise is already a hassle, but at least for now it’s optional. Take Spotify, for example. All of us who use the service have seen what we were listening to broadcasted to our friends whether we wanted it to or not. At least currently, there are ways to opt out (the new “private listening” function should have been included initially – seems a bit obvious), but it made a lot of regular joes mad, for the short term anyway.
Those of us who follow tech, who are keen on new apps and features and software, we knew something like the Open Graph and Timeline was on the way. We knew Facebook’s history of wanting to share and share and share. We had an idea of the hidden algorithms; how else can Facebook attract advertisers? Third party apps? Zynga? Spotify? Every person and company in the world? This was a long time coming. But just because you see the train doesn’t mean it’s good when it hits you. And it hurts even worse for the average joe, who wasn’t really aware, or intuitive, about how exactly Facebook operates. Who had never heard that old cliche about free sites – if you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
That old adage is now truer than ever. But at least Facebook is being more transparent and gradual with their rollouts and intentions this time around. It seems they may have learned a thing or two from the “Like” button scrutinies.
But users should be more aware of what’s getting out there, because it just might be something you don’t want. We all have an individual responsibility to control our digital spaces and perceptions, and we can’t expect, or trust, Facebook or any Big Web entity to necessarily incorporate acceptable defaults. This has ALWAYS been the case.
Facebook is taking a large leap with the Open Graph – an enhanced marketing tool that aggregates data enrichment and progressively precise analytics.  There are several things Facebook can do to adapt to our privacy concerns, and once they roll out the Open Graph for all, this will become more apparent.  The question is, will they do them?  In the meantime, users can adjust their Web social habits accordingly and still enjoy what I deem as necessary for the 21st century – personal, business, or otherwise: a social media presence.  Abandoning it altogether hurts you in the long run.  Facebook is rock and roll – it’s hear to stay. You can jump ship, but the world turns without you.
Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.
36. Vampire Weekend – S/T
If I remember correctly, these guys took quite a while to get pretty popular, at least they did by comparison to some of their blogosphere peers who had almost overnight success (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Black Kids). Â I recollect finding rough demos of “Oxford Comma” and “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” on Aquarium Drunkard up to a year before they released this gem, their debut album. Â I also remember the Paul Simon comparisons being made almost immediately, as most critics are wont to do when they hear anything remotely referential to Afro-pop.
VW were the first to really incorporate the sound into the ever-growing indie pop landscape, however, and they brought the influences to a much younger audience. Â They dubbed the sound “Upper West Side Soweto,” and indeed it had a small movement of its own, generating bands like Ra Ra Riot, the electronic experiment Discovery, and more traditional projects like The Very Best.
I’m not saying the Simon relation isn’t correct; it obviously is, but to deny the band’s growth from that blueprint is simply dismissive. Â One listen to the simple pop of the aforementioned two tracks, as well as the stomping “A-Punk” (my personal favorite) and the falsetto friendly “Blake’s Got a New Face,” and you’ll see these guys either were showing all their cards at once or they had healthy knowledge and a palette to grow from. Â We know now from their great sophomore effort two years later the latter was the case.
Once every three months I list the best of what I heard in albums/songs/remixes for the quarter. I do this to personally keep up with all the awesome music I hear, as it ultimately helps me at the end of the year when I do my overall listing for the previous twelve months. I also do it to introduce you cool cats to tunes you may have missed independently.
Every Saturday, I post a 15-20 minute podcast featuring some tracks I’ve been jamming the previous week, as well as some commentary and random musings from yours truly. Enjoy!
Tracklist:
Games – No Disguise
TV Girl – Girls Like Me
Trailer Trash Tracys – Wish You Were Red
TEETH – Flowers
Youth Lagoon – Bobby
A friend of mine and I were discussing the awesome awesome lineup for Fun Fun Fun Fest this year, and recently, they announced their schedule for our viewing pleasure. My friend was excited, but admitted he knew only a few bands. Where, he wondered aloud, could he find a comprehensive rundown of each band, a sampling of their musical chops, so he could further educate himself before the finest weekend of his year? I assume the Fun Fun Fun website has such a playlist, and they do, and it’s cool, but I wanted to make my own. So every Friday, from now until the fest (that’s nine weeks), I will be posting a playlist for your educational purposes for each stage and day, excluding the Yellow stage, which is mostly comedy.
This week’s playlist covers the bands playing on the Black (Punk/Metal) stage on Saturday – Touche Amore, Death Grips, The World Inferno/Friendship Society, Trash Talk, Youth Brigade, Paint It Black, Dead Horse, Negative Approach, Cave In, Hot Snakes, and The Damned.
I would watch this show just to hear “Awake” in a live setting – if the new song is any indication, these guys have not lost their ability to completely destroy eardrums and blow minds. Like most Black stage shows, I would of course be watching from a safe distance, as I’m sure this will be one of the wildest pits of the weekend. Wear a helmet!
As far as emerging artists go, Star Slinger has had the Culture Greyhound bump ever since he dropped Volume 1 last year. Of course, the UK producer’s sound has evolved in that time, and he’s gone from banging remixes to his own original material. Today we hear the first finished product he can call his very own, a track called “Dumbin'” available from Green Label Sounds. Listen and download below, and if you’re in ATX, be sure to check out Star Slinger at Beauty Bar on October 12.
