all things mau

update: you can download an mp3 of this mix here.

the remix

The instrumental

The story behind this post

If you don’t understand this post, it’s ok. I forgive you.

red team representing.

Muxtape has been making the rounds among the twitterati. Funny how such a simple concept can spread so fast. It’s got a tinge of nostalgia and a hint web 2.1… lack of functionality. Do one thing. Do it well. The girls of popSiren, the show I edit at revision3.com tipped me off on this wonderful alternative. You can make a neat mixtape with music you own, as long as you can upload to a reliable server, as well as with other peeps music.

Here’s an all instrumental mix for your right brain needs.

You’re there with friends… and 5700 other strangers. You people watch, ogle, point, and comment with your buddies, you drink your cheap, overpriced beer, and then… the lights go down. Hopefully, if the job is done right, you’re most common sense of reality is shifted, little by little, until the walls of the world close in, and it’s just you, and the band in the tiny room of your mind. The Cheers and sing alongs around you are reflections and feedback of your own whirlwind of emotions.

This is the definition of a successful live concert going experience. One had with Arcade Fire at the Greek Theatre last night. Thanks K. Roache.

ps, this is what it was really like.

This is one of my favorite records growing up. Who knew the count was preparing me to be labeled as a pirate.

update: ha! from Flickr user Malcom:

I’m working with a friend who does AACS work.. and
I want to use your image as a joke in a sample book chapter
about image processing…. it’s the cutest of the 09f9
images.

We’ll never publish the image, but I thought you might want
to contribute to a very sharp jab to the AACS folks

I have hereby granted permission to use an image I don’t fully own.  (I photoshopped the hex code into this existing album cover.)

I’m feeling this jazz pianist so much I swear he and my ears were seperated at birth

Chico Buarque’s haunting sambas and bossa novas make me want to move back to my homeland of Brazil.  Too bad I was born in the burbs of LA.

Listening to Julieta will actually have you so convinced that you’re a chilango hipster, you’ll wear T-shirts with ironic spanish slang you don’t understand.

I was afraid this was an April Fools Joke.  I’m glad it’s now April 2nd.

I tend to not repost material from BoingBoing.net since it’s distribution is already widespread amongst the blogosphere. Today is an exception since freedom fighters worldwide are giddy about Apple’s decision to drop DRM altogether beginning in May. Steve Jobs is starting off with the EMI catalog and plans to be DRM free by the end of 2007.

I’m particularly happy about this as a music editor.  I can now comfortably download tracks from itunes and import them directly into my audio editing software, rather than playing the “burn to CD shuffle”, which consists of breaking the DRM (and the law?) in order to produce something that will, in the end, be legal.

Cory Doctorow’s Post at Boing Boing is fascinating due to his link archive of DRM posts related to Copyright culture or Apple and EMI copyright maneuvers. For those not too familiar with what DRM is, his posts are a good place to start.

iTunes Store will sell ENTIRE EMI CATALOG DRM-free!!11!1ONE!: “Cory Doctorow:
Hallelujah! Apple and EMI just announced that they will be selling DRM-free Apple songs through the iTunes Music Store. The songs will cost 130 percent of the price of the existing crippled songs, and you’ll get to choose. Weirdly, Apple seems to have sold this move to EMI by saying that the DRM-free version will be a ‘premium’ offering for audiophiles who want higher-quality music. I think that audiophiles are probably the people who have the least trouble keeping up with the latest tips for efficiently ripping the DRM off of their music — the people who really need DRM-free music are the punters who can’t even spell DRM.

This is some of the best news I’ve heard all year. DefectiveByDesign is soliciting ideas for a thank-you gift to Steve Jobs. This may just be a sneaky way of hiking music prices, but hell, it’s a whole lot more than I thought we’d get. What’s more, Apple pricing DRM-free music at $1.29 means that the $0.79-0.99 DRM-free MP3s from competing indie music stores will get a huge price advantage.

I could not be happier right now. I really hope Apple decides to make a web-based version of the iTunes store so that I can buy iTunes tracks in future using Ubuntu Linux (I know, it’s been ages and I still haven’t written my ’switching to Linux’ article, it’s in the pipe, but here’s the story: I switched, it’s awesome, I love it).

Jobs, who stressed the need for higher-quality music with the rise of high-fidelity home speaker systems, called EMI’s move ‘the next big step forward in the digital-music revolution–the movement to completely interoperable DRM-free music.’ He added that ‘Apple will reach out to all the major and independent labels to give them the same opportunity’ and suggested that half of iTunes’ music tracks will be available in both DRM-loaded and DRM-free form by the end of 2007.

‘EMI is pioneering something that I think is going to become very popular,’ Jobs said when asked if other music labels would likely add DRM-free music to their iTunes catalog.

‘What we’re adding is a choice–a new choice–and people can choose whichever one they want,’ Jobs said regarding Apple’s decision to make available two levels of sound quality and DRM restriction. Nicoli cited internal EMI tests in which higher-quality, DRM-free songs outsold its lower-quality, copy-protected counterparts 10 to 1.

Link

(Image ganked from Engadget)

See also:
Steve Jobs blogs about DRM
Will Steve Jobs drop iTunes DRM in a heartbeat?
What Steve Jobs’s DRM announcement means
Open letter to Steve Jobs: put your DRM where your mouth is
Macrovision sends pretty lies to Steve Jobs
Apple drops Trusted Computing

EMI changes tune on DRM-free music
EMI releases Brazilian DRM CDs that totally hose their customers
EMI abandons CD DRM
EMI wants millions and your IP address in revenge for Beachles
EMI threatens cricket fans over parody songs

US Justice Dept to Europe: Apple’s DRM is off-limits
Norwegian ombudsman says Apple’s iTunes DRM is illegal
Euro-RIAA justifies breaking iTunes, endorses fairy-tale of ‘open DRM’
Why Apple is to blame for iTunes DRM
Apple’s hypocritical slam against French DRM-interop law
French DRM law gets ugly - protest May 7/2PM Place de la Bastille

Apple sued for iTunes/iPod monopoly tying
Apple and Sony sued for non-interoperable DRM
Germany and France challenge iTunes DRM
France will let MSFT play iTunes - but what about open source players?

Former Apple exec: No more DRM for me, ever
Hillary ‘RIAA’ Rosen: iPod DRM is cruel and unfriendly!
Ballmer: iPod users are thieves
Friday: call RIAA execs and tell them ‘No DRM!’
Right-wing think-tank hates DRM
Music labels: DRM makes you into iTunes’ love-slave
Sony: DRM cost us the Walkman
Apple’s new DRM reneges on your purchase conditions, picks your pocket
Freely copy iTunes Music Store files
Real ships guerrilla DRM for the iPod
New iPod firmware shuts out Real
Anti-iTunes DRM demonstrations across the USA tomorrow
Apple steals iTunes customers’ paid-for rights to stream
iPhone - the roach motel business model
DRM company vows to hack iTunes DRM
DVD Jon selling Apple DRM to Apple’s competitors
Jon Lech Johansen’s PyMusique re-opens iTunes Store access
How Apple’s DRM works
Details on cracking Apple’s iTunes DRM
Apple selling DRM’ed silence at $0.99 a pop
Silent iTunes song stripped of DRM and given away

Sony rootkit ripped off anti-DRM code to break into iTunes
Protect your investment: buy open

”

(Via Boing Boing.)

To sum things up:

I drove to Vegas,

Partied with the kids

Did some Hotel Bed Jumping to finally join the Flickr group

Dined with the MGM lions,

Had a Guitar Hero tourny with long lost friends,

Entered the world of Open Source Political computing and installed the Ubuntu operating system,

Made copies of some Emmy’s…

To find that nobody really owns their Emmy,

Bought some books that i’m going to read tomorrow,

Took a self guided tour of the Gower graffiti row,

Played around with Mel’s new camera,

Nerded out at the Brig with John and Nintendo Superhero references,

Fought off my neighbors rabid chihuahua,

And finally order my moo business cards. want one?

One of the fun parts of record digging is finding that obscure LP with a break you instantly recognize from the hip hop of yesterday. I say yesterday, rather than today, due to the increasing record label heavyweights flexing there copyright infringement arm, behind hordes of lawyers. Samples either won’t clear, or they’re just way to expensive to clear nowadays. Don’t get me wrong, I like credit “paid in full” when it’s due, but the difficulty in sample clearance is beginning to slowly kill off the distribution of a style of music I like to call “Sound Collages.”

Artists like DJ Shadow, RJD2, the Avalanches, and so on come to mind when I speak of “Sound Collages”. But before you blame hip hop altogether and thumb your nose at the concept, think of artists such as Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and The Beatles all of whom embraced the cut and paste music methodology.

Erik B and Rakim’s “Paid in Full”, is hip hop sound collage 101. Easy to deconstruct if you have the patience (and more importantly, desire). The famous drum break, which would be heard again in M.A.R.R.S. “Pump up the volume” is taken from the worlds most sampled artist, James Brown. Listen to his 1971 “Hot Pants”, you’ll find the break. However the sample that has interested me the most throughout the years is the Israeli singer. Who is she. What is she saying.

This burning question came up again in conversation today, and rather than remind myself to research the sample, I started digging on the spot. Luckily, in the age of Google, it didn’t take too long. The Woman I was looking for was named Ofra Haza, and the song was titled “Im Ninalu”.

From ElvisPelvis.com:

Haza was among the [Isreali] artists who distanced themselves from efforts to consolidate an “Israeli” sound and delved into their parents’ ethnic roots.

“Yemenite Songs,” released in 1985 with a photo of her in full Yemenite wedding gear on the cover, was an instant Israeli hit.

Its signature track, “Im Ninalu,” (“If the Gates of Heaven were Locked”) expanded a devotional poem by 17th century rabbi Shalom Shabazi into a modern love song. The melody was pure Persian Gulf, a climactic assemblage of rising quarter tones; the beat was pure 1980s drum machine.

But it was not until 1988, when American rap artists Eric B. and Rakim sampled “Im Ninalu” on their dance hit “Paid in Full,” that Haza became an international phenomenon.

A bit more digging had my ears wrapped around the surprisingly beautiful song, in all it’s 80’s glory. I love me this thing called the “internet”. Give it listen here.

After my whiny Emo kid post on being sick, and my geeked out, “OMFG I GOTTA PLAY WARCRAFT NOW” post, I find it time to Man things up a bit.

Let’s tear a phone book in half.