Elite club membership /  / Comments (5)

I was contacted by several friends about an article I wrote being linked on nerdblog powerhouse BoingBoing this morning.

This was interesting to me, because not only did they link to the article when I first wrote it back in 2004, but the same person (Cory) wrote it up!

Therefore, I hereby break my extensive internet silence to declare membership in the elite 'Wrote an article nerdy enough to be posted to BoingBoing twice by the same person' club.

December 14

Christmastime is here... /  / Comments (7)

     For the fifth year in a row, I've helped assemble the Suburban Sprawl Music Holiday Sampler. We got more submissions this year than ever before (34!), and while they're all available on the website, they wouldn't all fit on the limited run of CD's we put together. My fellow 'organizers' and I had to gather on the night of the deadline and struggle over what to keep and what to cut, which was pretty excruciating.

     The final product is available here, along with all submissions dating back to 2002. That works out to exactly 125 tracks of pure holiday spirit -- all for free. If you place an order or make it out to any SSM shows in December, you can pick up a free copy of the actual CD, with a screenprinted cover by Lansing's favorite poster-maker Craig Horky.

After all was said and done, some of my favorite tracks this year include:

Frontier Ruckus - "Driving Home, Christmas Eve" (MP3)
I know nothing about Frontier Ruckus aside from the fact that they're from Lansing. They know someone else associated with the label and came to submit a song through them, as so often happens. I think the well-written lyrics, the delivery, and the production aesthetic all compliment each other perfectly. Yay.

Lickety Splits - "You Set My Christmas Tree on Fire" (MP3)
Ex-Michigander Tim Schreiber howls his way through an original R&B Christmas song that legitimately sounds like it was recorded in 1958. I heard via Dave that this is Tim's 'Favorite thing he's ever recorded.'

The Next Door Neighbors - "How to Make Egg Nog" (MP3)
The Next Door Neighbors have been fine-tuning their holiday-specific songwriting for a few years now, and I think this song is among their most fully realized. A classic Christmas recipe is set to verse, and as the instructions are followed the environmental sounds evolve into the music. I'm all about how they took the recipe as the basis for the song, but built a narrative story around it as well. LAYERS.

     Sadly, I didn't find the time to record a 'Surf' version of a christmas classic this year, as I have for the past four years (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005). Unwilling, however, to let a year go by without making some contribution to the ever-growing Christmas music pool, I offer the following mix of Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy the Silence' (iTunes) and Dinah Washington's Version of 'Silent Night' (iTunes), complete with cover art (mouseover to see the original I based it on). I figure the whole 'Mash-up' concept is sufficiently played out for me to begin taking part.

Happy Holidays!

 

October  2

"Adam? ...is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge?" /  / Comments (14)

     I'd read a few times that bringing the temperature of a failing drive down will increase its reliability long enough to salvage important files. When the drive in my trusty Powerbook decided one day last week to stop booting and make horrible clicking sounds, I decided to test the theory.

     Not feeling particularly motivated to dissect the powerbook, since that would void the warranty I planned to invoke to get the drive replaced, I set it on a relatively uncluttered shelf of the fridge when I got home from work. Ten minutes later, I took it out, and the drive booted like new. I copied my iphoto libraries to an external drive and once that was successful, begun the copying of the only other important file on the drive: a giant iMovie project (~ 30 GB). About halfway through, the drive had warmed up, the copy progress bar had stalled and the clicking was back.

     Fair enough. Back in the fridge, for 20 minutes this time. I took it out, booted up (painlessly), hooked it up to the external drive and started the copy again. This time it made it to 75% before the clicking took hold. At this point I considered going after the video clips that made up the iMovie project in small batches, but decided I didn't feel like doing that if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I also didn't want to play guess and check to discover the ideal length of time to chill a powerbook, so I devised a devious plot.

     This plot consisted of cooling the powerbook down again, carting my external drive to the kitchen, booting the laptop in the fridge, beginning the copy, and closing the door. Success! I share this experience with you, the internet, in the hopes that it is useful.

July 20

It's 2006, and I'm still posting IM conversations on websites /  / Comments (6)

Z: i just scoffed about a band being called CSS yesterday
A: yep
A: same band
Z: but not a design reference
A: you'd think they were portland webdesigners commenting on how the structure of indie rock is the same and is only shaped by applying style attributes.
A: But no
Z: hahaha
A: the cascading style sheets
A: would be a good band name though
Z: that would be amazing
Z: agreed
A: dude
A: concept alert!
Z: hahaha ok
A: start a band
A: called the cascading style sheets.
A: write and arrange verse chorus bridge etc
A: and do the same song in like ten different styles
A: Literal!
Z: hahaha
Z: normal people would just think they were remixes
A: ah true
Z: and would not understand its nerdy gravitas

June 22

Instant Albums /  / Comments (3)

     Yet another website for a nerdy musical project I was involved in: instantalbum.org. The gist was to throw a party where random 'bands' would be drawn from a hat and tasked with writing and recording a song in an hour. Below is the latest version of the 'rules:'

1. Invite a bunch of 'music people.'
2. Write names of all participants on slips of paper, which are then folded and placed in a bowl.
3. Draw 'Bands' of a predetermined number from the bowl
4. No more than 2 bandmates on any team, only 1 if they're regularly a trio.
5. Once the first band is drawn, they will descend into the basement, where they will have exactly one hour to write and record basic tracks.
6. No further names will be drawn until their hour ends, so no one gets a head start.
7. Each band will be granted an additional half-hour for vocals following the subsequent band's initial hour.
8. Strict clock enforcement!

     We did this on three seperate occaisions. Our findings are available on the website, which exists in order to encourage others to duplicate the experiment / event.

     I meant to link to this awhile ago, but I somehow managed to completely forget about it. Only upon seeing this Pitchfork news story, detailing a forthcoming live composition gameshow pitting members of the Shins against SNL's Fred Armisen was I reminded that it existed. Now seems like a good enough time to link to it. The article mentions that this event may eventually be developed into a TV show, which would be very, very great.