Horses are terrible people

I’ve been on last.fm for a few years, since it was called audioscrobbler. I’ve enjoyed seeing what musical listening trends I have and like the whole concept. I was pointed to LastGraph today, a service that goes and gets your last.fm data for a given range and makes a very cool graph of it. Here’s an example for December 2006-March 2007 for me:

Click for a larger view

Here’s a link to my entire Last.fm history, which I found interesting to check out. Do you have as last.fm account that you actively use? If so, drop your graph in the comments!

&Ok, so like Rockstar: INXS, Michelle and I were glued to Rockstar: Supernova.  When it came down to the final four I was excited.  I would have instantly went out and bought the new album if they picked any of the final 4 but one.  The one they picked.  I'm so disappointed.  The music is good, I like the attitude of Jason and Gilby, but I can't listen to Lucas.  His voice just grates on me.  He doesn't sing well and he wears too much makeup.;nbsp; Here's a band of stripped down, cool rockers with a lead singer who is personally trying to make up for the lack up makeup in hard rock during the 90's.  Give me a break.  Oh well, at least the Panic Channel is decent.  I could go into detail about how each of the other 3 would have been better for the band and their sound and a bit about their shortcomings but what's the point?

Last night I had the pleasure of going to the Tool concert at Staples Center here in Los Angeles.  The show was amazing and the sound was much better than I expected.  They started off with Lost Keys and Rosetta Stoned. I was impressed and happy that they didn't try and play a recording of the talking track from Lost Keys.  I think it would have distracted and been too obvious as a recording.  

As expected a majority of the set list was comprised of songs off of 10,000 Days which was fine by me.  Other songs on the set included Stinkfist, Fourty-Six & 2, AEnima, Schism, and they closed with Lateralus.  While I was hoping for a track off of Opiate or Undertow, it wasn't to be.  The highlight of the show for me was AEnima which was incredible live.  

The way they handled the lights and visuals was great; they slowly progressed with visual complexity through out the set, starting with none and ending with everything going full bore.  The all white stage and low backing (6, 7 feet tops?) progressed from light show to video display and at one point the display that runs around the entire staples center was flashing the Tool logo.

Maynard was humorous with his referring to the VIP's in Los Angeles repeatedly.  After they finished Rosetta Stoned he said something along the lines of "Oh good the VIP's are here now, we can start the show" and when they took a five to ten minute break before going into the last quarter of the show he explained that they had to stop because the VIP's had to go out and buy more beer.

Overall I don't know how to place the concert against David Gilmour earlier this year, but I have to say it was one of the best concerts I've been to.

I can't seem to get enough of the new Tool album 10,000 Days.  While I wasn't a huge fan of Lateralus, but this album comes across so strong musically, it's hard to put down.  I've tried to not play it too much because I don't want to burn myself out on it, but I've not been to successful.  I've listened to it generally to and from work daily and most of the day at work.

I love how they take their time on the various songs, two of which weigh in at over 11 minutes in length.  Both Wings for Marie and 10,000 Days provide a very personal glimpse of lead singer Maynards struggle in dealing with the handicap and eventual loss of his mother.  So much so it gives me chills when in 10,000 Days as a testament as to the understanding extent of her faith, he describes the loss the world has suffered by her death and at the same time how her death was the end of her 27 years (10,000 days) of suffering.

While both Vacarious and Jambi come across as a bit of a disconnect from the album, songs written to be singles while the rest of the album is clearly not written that way, they do not distract and are very strong songs unto themselves. 

Many people may not be happy with the departure of the sound of Ænima to the more progressive sound of Lateralus and 10,000 Days, to me it's clear that they are growing musically as a band and offering a more compelling album.  From the complex rhythms and driving bass lines to the airy guitar riffs, 10,000 Days is for me, their best album to date.  Even Lipan Conjuring adds to the overall mood of the album for me and has grown on me since the first time I heard it and questioned its placement (and even inclusion on the album).  

BTW the whole overlay of track 4 on track 11+track 3 is pretty neat, though not something I find worth listening to repeatedly.  The synchronization at 9 minutes in is amazing and rightfully could be considered Part 3 of Wings.

In browsing iTunes Music Store a bit ago I stumbled across Les Claypool\'s new album, of Whales and Woe.  I was looking for Dynamite Hack\'s Boyz-N-Tha-Hood cover, which I found as well.  After buying that and playing it for the office I treked over to AllOfMp3 and bought the new Claypool album.  While it starts off fairly experimentally and it\'s not exactly the Primus sound some people may be looking for, it does have moments that hearken back to Primus, such as Lust Stings.

 A common theme throughout the album is the addition of xylophone and saxophone to most tracks.  This adds an interesting texture and contrast to the bass heavy sound with filler guitar.  Les is clearly trying to progress his musical sound while not throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Parts of the album, such as Off-White Guilt, sound more like progressive rock than anything else, and I don\'t think that\'s a bad thing. 

David Gilmour’s new album, On an Island, is nothing less than fantastic. I've had about a week and a half to digest it and it's truly pleasing. It reminds me of early Floyd, circa Meddle, which is one of my favorite albums. I’m really looking forward to seeing him in concert in April.

I'm generally a news and talk radio guy in the morning. Sometimes I listen to KLOS if I want a good laugh or something. I stopped listening to KROQ some years back because I really, really couldn't stand the Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, etc, etc type thing and KROQ was really heavy into it. In flipping channels this morning I stumbled across KROQ in my presets and amazingly they were playing a good song (Anything, Anything by Dramarama). So I stopped to listen, through about 10 songs, all good or tolerable. Did they ditch the lame rap-metal hybrid stuff?

In other news I dropped the Last.fm and Netflix feed from my sidebar because it was slowing down page loads, considerably. I've been thinking of maybe making them AJAX powered so then the page would load and subsequently go out and get that info. I guess I'll put that on the “When I need a diversion from everything else I need to do” list.

Michelle and I watched Rockstar: INXS pretty religiously and while she was disappointed with JD's selection, I thought it was a pretty obvious choice, from the available guys. Actually I think it should have come down to Mig and JD but that's a different story. When the new album came out I was on ITMS picking it up. It's a mixed bag and like most albums, it's got strong points and weak ones. One of the weaker ones is "Never Let You Go," a song destine for a musac rendition soon to be heard in elevators nationwide. I say destine because it's not going to take much alteration to make the musac version. I can't really put my thumb on why this song doesn't work other than they forgot to add the rock to the song, and the roll could be seen as the gentle lapping of waves. Not to mention the repetative (and shallow) lyrics. Now, if you are an INXS fan, or just like the band, one thing you'll probably notice is JD isn't too far from MH in his singing style. I guess that's what happens when you listen to INXS a whole bunch growing up, and then become their lead singer.

Highlights of the album include God's Top Ten which features Suzie McNeil doing more than backup vocals. The album is pretty good, I don't regret buying it, but it doesn't stand up against some of the other albums I've gotten recently, such as Spoon's Gimme Fiction. If you watched Rockstar: INXS like I did, you'll remember the song "Us" and enjoy hearing some of the contestants doing backing vocals. If you ask me, the TV show was a brilliant marketing move for this band, who if they just chose a new lead singer and released this album, it would be religated to go straight into the 9.99 bin. Instead there's enough hype to insure radio airplay and people like me will go out and buy the new album.

I had no idea that INXS was considered a "megaband." I really didn't.

I picked up this little gadget at Fry's for about $30 this past week and finally put it to use today. After running 20 feet of RCA cable from my record player in the living room to the iMic, and plugging the iMic into my mac mini, I kicked off "Final Vinyl" the app that comes with the iMic. It was very intuitive and after a few minutes I had started building digital copies of Maggot Sandwich - Gett Off the Stage. Maggot Sandwich was a punk band from Pensacola, FL. The album was recorded in 1987 and I've enjoyed giving it a spin every now and then, but playing punk of my stereo at home doesn't happen too often and I mostly listen to music on my computer and iPod. Thus enters the iMic and Final Vinyl. After recording and cuing up the songs, I copied them into iTunes, converted them to MP3 and added all the ID3 tags and even the album artwork. Thumbs up for this gadget and software. This processes would have been more difficult without it and I'm happy with the final result. Now to rip The Abdabs (Pink Floyd) "A Great Set" 2 record bootleg :D.

That's right, Michelle and I went to see the White Stripes last night at the Greek in Los Angeles. Our friends Jan and Mike joined us for the concert which I've been looking forward to since Michelle bought the tickets. We had decent seats in the middle about half way back, except for the wonderful couple behind us who wanted to make sure that I was able to participate in their conversation during every song they didn't know. Unfortunately, they weren't too well versed in White Stripes songs, well other than those they heard on KROQ. But if you were to hear the way the mr wonderful whistled as loud as he could after each song he didn't pay attention to, you'd be fooled. Annoying couple aside, they played a great set with a diverse mix of songs off all their albums, and even played Black Jack Davey. Jack wasn't much of a performer, but he did play very well. Excellent musician but he didn't engage the audience much. The music was great (what I was able to hear of it over the couple behind me).

Michelle and I were concerned about leaving in time to get home by 11pm for our baby sitter. Of course murphey's law was such that we got stuck parking at the very back of the lot. We left right at the end of the last encore song, only to find a tree had fallen across 6 cars blocking the exit from the parking lot. Michelle ended up getting a ride home from Mike and Jan and I waited for the parking lot to clear.

I was invited to be the featured poety at "Poets at the Hill," a monthly poetry reading at the Hill Ave Library in Pasadena. I had a good time meeting members from pathetic.org and listening to the various readings. We went for some pie and socializing at Coco's afterward. Thank you to Michelle A for inviting me and for all those that went out of their way to come out for it.

I confess... I'm a music junkie. That is I love music. I also collect albums and such. So much that between my CD collection and my now growing purchase list from ITMS, I've filled my 40 gig ipod and have had to delete some albums off iTunes that I have sitting in my cd collection and I don't find the time to listen to. Out of curiosity today I went to the ITMS purchase history page to see exactly how much I've bought off of there. As it turns out I've spent more money there than I did on my 3rd gen iPod. :x

Speaking of music, I'm going to see the White Stripes on Thursday :-) Oh and have you checked out Kings of Leon yet? No? Go check out their first album. It's good stuff! Also worth checking out is the now integrated Last.fm and Audioscrobbler. I really like the new design theme and progress they have made.

Work as been busy but good. I've been working on a project writing the SOAP based backend for a handheld application that will integrate into one of our customers existing web based applications. It's been pretty cool implementing them and I have all sorts of good ideas (I think) for upcoming Framewerk technologies using Soap.

sIFRFonts.com isn't doing too well. I've not had time to really spend a lot of time populating the font database. Maybe I'll take a day or two once Framewerk goes beta to add a couple hundred fonts to it.

I've been looking forward to this album far too much. I had high expectations after the reviews and Blue Orchid.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a "bad" album. Heck, I probably would like it better if I wasnt looking forward to it as much as I have been. But it's ok. There I said it... It's ok. I was hoping for, expecting, wanting... an incredible album. But it's just ok.

In contrast on Friday I went to see the Pixies with Mike. It was a great show, with the Bell Rays as the open act. Let me just say the energy the Bell Rays had was amazing, and I have to say it was probably the best opening act I've seen. The Pixies were amazing. Definately worth the ticket price and 11pm show. Kim Deal was looking a bit masculine, but her voice was just as sweet as it's always been, between her cigerette and beer brakes while Frank was doing his thing.

Dave Matthews Band's new CD "Stand Up" is pretty "blah." It's ok as background music for a party, but it has a few songs that stand out, but it really was disappointing. I've been a huge DMB fan in the past, but I just haven't been overly impressed with their music since becoming overly popular, it seems to be getting more and more bland.

Likewise NIN's new album "With Teeth" would have been more aptly named "With Dentures." It's painfully uninsinpring and hard to listen to. Trent lost his edge on this album, but not for the sake of better music. I bought it for the 5.1 DVD version of the album and even that's a joke. There's very little of the back channels in the mix.

One thing each album had going for it was the single disc CD/DVD dual sided bit. I did like that.

My copy of Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii arived from Amazon.com yesterday and like a child with a new toy, I ripped off the packaging and popped it in the DVD player. I had read mixed reviews about the DVD, as it's the Director's Edition, which is a bit funky and has both good points and bad points.

I really enjoyed actual concert footage of the movie and I also enjoyed the added interviews and footage from the recording of Dark Side of the Moon. I, however, was a bit put off with the stock footage and computer animated space scenery. Note that there is the uncut and un-altered 4:3 original movie on the DVD. I watched both until Michelle had enough and made me turn it off ;).

That being said, it was really my first introduction to the band as individuals. That is I've never really watched any interviews or footage of them as people. I've enjoyed the music, and seen music videos and such... but now I have faces to the sounds and words, and it has made listening to certain things a bit of a different experience. I don't know what to make of it yet.

Wow does time fly! Not a lot new on this end, Michelle and Eden are visiting her family in Idaho for a week so I've been hanging around the house by myself. Wow it feels big and empty! Last night I watched Eternal Sunrise of the Spotless Mind with Jim Carrey. It was a great movie, one of the better movies I've seen. It's told very well, the directing and cinematography was great, and the story was cleverly told. Thus far I've been fairly lazy with my alone time. I think I may end up working on the house this weekend, I'd like to have the house fixed up in unexpected areas for when Michelle returns. Framewerk is coming along nicely, have had new outside interest, and several sites are being setup using it. It's been exciting to see how it's received.

I've been really stuck in a music rut lately listening to only Modest Mouse and Pink Floyd. I did buy the new Queen Latifah - The Dana Owens Album release, and Les Claypools Big Eye in the Sky. Both are pretty good, they just haven't grabbed me, that is they make good background music. Now before you go "Gavin, you bought a Queen Latifah album?" let me preface that it's not a rap album but rather an album of various Blues and other covers. She's got a great voice.

I've been enjoying my photography and camera, but I sure wish money wasn't an object so I could get this bad boy. I got a request on DeviantArt for a large version of one of my prints which is pretty exciting. It will be my third print that I've sold.