Is In Rainbows the Future of Music?

I know plenty of people who don't like Radiohead, but however you like them, you have to admit their decision to release their newest recording on a "pay-how-you-feel" basis was a gutsy one. For any band less established, the move could have meant certain financial suicide. But it seems that many people have at least paid the price they would have had they gone through iTunes. Radiohead is a band that has achieved that brand of success lots of bands want: the one where they have fans who will buy whatever it is they record. I'm sure Thom Yorke, if he released his grocery lists in book form, would become a cult status, if not rabidly successful, author.

The bigger question is what's going to happen to the music industry if people can pay iTunes prices and not have to visit iTunes to get the music they want? I bought the recording for 5 pounds. Combined with the processing surcharge, my purchase came out to be about $11. I think that is more than a fair price for a recording. It's what I pay at the used CD shops I frequent, and this time I know the money is directly going to Radiohead, and not the record store. (It's probably still a very small percentage, but it's probably more than it would be if I went through Borders Music or what have you.)

Still, I wish the download had come with liner notes and album cover art. What keeps me buying CDs still is the booklet that comes with the disc. I love to hold it in my hand, to look at the random art and to read about who the band thanks and the song lyrics. It's a big disappointment to open up the CD and find the booklet isn't even a booklet, but just a cover picture.

Someone came up with this for a cover art design. It's my favorite out of all I have seen.



Though, if you think of Radiohead as a doom-and-gloom style sort of band, these are sure to make you smile:

(Yes that is a My Little Pony on the cover of the first one, and Thom Yorke himself dressed up as a leprechaun on the second fan-made cover.)

I think there are a lot of people who feel the same as I do, and I'm not sure if name-your-price downloading will take off if it doesn't come with the liner notes. That's such an easy thing to add, though, and if it is added soon, I'm sure that this may be the next step in buying music.

The recording itself is quite impressive. I'm just getting into Radiohead, embarrassingly enough, and am more familiar with their The Bends, Pablo Honey and OK Computer phase. I heard after OK Computer they took a serious left turn in composing their music, but what I'm hearing on In Rainbows isn't too radical. It's more dancey (though would anyone really dance at a Radiohead show?) and reminds me of a drum-and-bass show I saw when I was in Hong Kong. Their music is still beautiful and yet catchy, and so far my favorite song on there has to be "Bodysnatchers" closely followed by "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."

No. No. No. No.

Seriously?

From msn.com:

Did Mischa Barton beguile or bore James Blunt during a
recent tête-à-tête in the Hamptons? According to the New York Daily News, the statuesque starlet, 21, made a beeline for the "You're Beautiful" warbler, 33, at a James Taylor concert, leaning down to wrap her arms around him and exclaiming, "There he is!" The two gabbed and noshed, but as Barton yammered away, "Blunt became less and less enthused," according to the paper. The inexplicably seductive singer, who was once briefly linked to Lindsay Lohan, eventually moseyed over to chat with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen before returning to Mischa, whom he later accompanied to local club. But the actress ended up making an early exit, leaving Blunt to get his flirt on into the wee hours with "with blondes and brunettes alike."

Us Weekly, however, has a slightly different take on the evening. A source tells the mag that Blunt was "constantly hovering" around Barton, with another piping in, "He's obsessed with her and has been trying to get with her for a while." But he apparently doesn't measure up to the actress' oh-so-high boyfriend standards (her previous beaus include Cisco "Dangly Drawered" Adler and oily oil heir Brandon Davis). An insider tells the mag she "just wants to be friends."

Yes, I know. What's it to me? What it is to me is I can't stand the idea of James Blunt dating cause you know that's going to one day end up as little James Blunts toddling around all over the place, and I don't think we need any more of that do we?

No. And I told myself, almost as an unwritten rule for this blog that I'd ignore James Blunt and his...work cause it'd be too easy to make fun of him. But I can't help it, especially if he's hanging out with Lindsay Lohan or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. I really hope it was a slow news day in the newsroom and stuff had to be made up to fill inches cause it's just really sad when you're a sad songwriter sadly hanging out with girls 10 years younger than you.

Ryan Adams

Though I’ve never been one to like thrash metal, or even something as relatively tame in that genre like Metallica, I think my current taste in music is skewing, well, old.

Case in point, my latest musical love, Ryan Adams. Upon my first listen to his latest CD, Easy Tiger, I am instantly taken with his voice, but a nagging voice inside my head says “Doesn’t he sound a lot like Jackson Browne too?” That can’t be right. Jackson Browne is music fit for my father. To add insult to injury, my iTunes software gently mocks me, revealing that it has decided to categorize Easy Tiger as….country.

Though, yes he produced an album for Willie Nelson, George Jones he isn’t. He once sang in his old band, Whiskeytown that he decided to sing country cause it was easier on him than singing punk. One of his more famous songs is a cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” Please don’t confuse him with that Canadian light-rocker either. I’ve only listened to this album twice now (I just bought it this weekend) but Ryan Adams seems more like had he been born 20 years earlier, he would have been right at home on stage for The Last Waltz with The Band, not quite kicking it up at the Grand Ol’ Opry. But his sound is definitely more rootsy than twangy and his singing voice is quite lovely, too, a tenor voice that easily stretches into falsetto when he wants.

I remember rumblings about Ryan Adams from when I was in university. He was, at one point, named The Person Who Will Save Rock and Roll. Only 32, he has put out a whole mess of albums since he was 16 -- some people in fact deliberately using the word mess to describe some of his past efforts.

True to form with those rockers marked for greatness, or at least cult status, Adams is not without his problems. Reportedly he is as mercurial in nature as his music – one never knows if they paid good money to watch him walk off the stage three songs in because he is unhappy with something about his performance, or the venue, or the fans. But in recent interviews, he claims all of that is behind him now. He is ready to play to his fans and work for his record label.

Only time is going to tell whether that is really the case. People who have been rock music fans for years can certainly say they’ve heard that one before from some other voice of a generation that imploded too soon. In any case, I’m looking forward to looking into his back catalog to see what other treasures I can find.

Henry Rollins

If I took Henry Rollins out for dinner, I think everyone passing by our table would stop and stare. Rollins is heavily tattooed, short, built like a square and looks like he could hoist at least two wheels of a Volkswagen Beetle off the ground. He's like the Chuck Norris of the music world, if you ask me.

I remember seeing him in concert when I was in university and though my friend and I made sure we were a good 100 feet away from the flowing mosh pit, the one thing that couldn't be diffused was the ferocious intensity he exuded when he bellowed into his microphone.

Though Beavis and Butthead swear that chicks dig Henry Rollins because of the size of his neck, he is someone I admire because he seems to have carved out his life by being pragmatic. A devoted fan of the punk band, Bad Brains, he went to a number of their shows, and then one day asked someone in the band if he could come on stage and sing one of his favorite songs. They allowed him onstage, and Henry's singing career was picking up steam.

Later on, he heavily followed the band Black Flag around the East Coast and let them stay at his place when they came through the Washington, D.C. area. They became friends and again, Rollins was invited to sing a song at one of their shows. Unbeknownst to Rollins, the singer and guitar player of the band was looking to step down and focus only on guitar; hey presto, Rollins became the singer of a band he really liked. It gives me hope that all I have to do is just keep asking random people if I could write for their music magazine and one day I'll meet someone who actually runs one.

He also is a very prolific writer and I really admire him for starting his own publishing company, 2.13.61 Publications, so his writings could reach a larger audience. (Looking back on my last comment, maybe I need to take a lesson from the Henry Rollins School of Business Management.) Henry has gone on many spoken word tours, and published many books, filled with poems, short stories and observations about life on the road.

One of the biggest things I admire Henry for is that he has been involved in the cause of the West Memphis Three for the past 14 years. While he rails against people like Bono for being pretentious and unoriginal, Rollins himself has realized what his star power can do for a cause. As this is a music blog and neither a true-crime nor political blog, I won't go into too many details, but the West Memphis Three have been held in prison for the past 14 years for a horrific crime some say they did not commit, convicted on evidence that was marginal at best and by a community that may have been tainted with bias. He is also a champion of gay rights and an outspoken critic of the Iraq War.

Rollins has come a long way from his military-school and Haagen-Dazs management days, and has done everything in his life in the true punk-rock DIY spirit. While I don't own much of his music yet, I definitely admire him as an artist and person.

Don't You Hate It When This Happens?

I woke up early this morning, as in 430 this morning and I worried if I would manage to get back to sleep before my 830 alarm. I did, and I had this really strange dream involving space travel, a living ship, something that manifested symbols and designs on its deck whenever it wanted, Mulder and Scully were there, as was Avril Lavigne. Which makes me wonder just what the hell was going on in my brain at the time?

The thing that really struck me is I heard this song and woke up with it in my head. And I had it with me until I got into the shower and then it faded away, replaced with some Faith Hill and Nina Gordon songs. What I had was really original, but now I wonder if it might have been "inspired by" the Faith Hill song (though to call Faith Hill inspiring for me..egh, meh.)

Ages ago, I dreamed I was at some amusement park where I heard this "new" Bryan Adams song, and then months later when I heard the ubiquitous Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" I freaked out as the lyrics and tune were so similar.

When this happens, it ticks me off I don't have a working knowledge of music. I'd kill to be able to wake from a dream, sit in front of a piano or strap on a guitar and take it from there, see what develops. This is how Paul McCartney came up with Yesterday, after all. I'm a bit worried that it seems my subconscious wants me to get into songwriting for really AOR, Adult Rock style songs, though.

A Journey Through My Musical Touchstones

(Work was slow today. Obviously.)

I've always grown up around music. I remember stealing peeks through my dad's records from the 1960s when I was a kid, liking Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills album because it was filled with cartoon pictures, giggling a little over the panel that said "Janis Joplin on vocals" with an off-panel speech balloon interjecting "And how!" and later chuckling over my dad's red ink peace sign scrawl on the upper right hand corner of some of them. (The idea of my dad being a hippie just didn't jibe with me then, and it still doesn't now.)

True, I grew up on MTV and there were those bands that I loved in the 1980s, like Duran Duran, but when you're 7 years old it takes an age and a day to save up for an album. Plus I was under the belief then that when a band put out an album, it would only be available up until they put out their next one. The idea of a back catalogue that could stretch 10 years into the past never occurred to me.

Whenever we drove somewhere together, the radio would be cranked up to some classic rock station and my dad would have one hand on the steering wheel and drum the other one against my leg against the music. He never was really much for showing signs of affection when I was growing up, so maybe this was his version of the manly-man's hug.

It was through these drives during my almost 11th year on the planet that I was introduced to my first musical love of my life, The Beatles. Not exactly the most ground-breaking, cutting edge introduction to music in retrospect, I mean had it been something like Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, that's be really something for an 11 year old to attach herself to! But I know I could do a lot worse, and I know I did when I wrote in my junior high school journal and saved for maybe not posterity, but memory that my two favorite bands ever were U2 and New Kids on the Block. (That lasted about 3 months.)

Strangely enough, I got into the Beatles about 2 years before it seemed everyone else in my school did, and maybe what started to send me off in another direction was a) They weren't around any more and I wanted to experience what it was like to love a band that was still evolving and creating and b) the most shallow, superficial people were starting to like the Beatles in school and the fact they supposedly appreciated their messages of peace and love while searching out and destroying the lower people on the totem pole (read: me) just smacked of hypocrisy.

So in 1988, I moved on to U2. Christ, Bono was one of those people who could sell ice to Eskimos. He was completely charming and charismatic. I remember having their cassettes of War and The Joshua Tree (copied off my Dad) and playing them over and over. Then I went to see Rattle and Hum with a friend of mine (where I asked her "What's apartheid?" in the middle of the movie, and she said "I'll tell you later.") I hadn't realized this powerful band was also quite political and I have to credit them with being the first band that allowed me to open my eyes to the idea that music could influence change in the world, as well as clue me into the fact that music could also be my church, my bridge to God, whatever that is.

While I still appreciated the Beatles, U2 was the first band where I started buying anything I could that related to them somehow. I joined their fan club and made pen friends from all over the world. I bought books that an Irish magazine published that documented their early days and their rise to the top. I joined Amnesty International. Strangely enough, I think this was the way I decided to rebel against my family. No hard-core drinking, just hard-core letter writing.

U2 are a hugely popular band. I don't know if there is anywhere in the world you could go anymore, say "Bono," and have no one know who you are talking about. But maybe back then, it wasn't enough for me. They were popular but they were still being overshadowed by MC Hammer and Paula Abdul and Color Me Badd. So I believed that MTV was "it" at the time, like it was a complete insult not to have your videos overplayed on MTV. Throw me a bone, I was like 14 at the time!

I was staying up late on Sundays, still trying to hold onto my faith in MTV and watching their 120 Minutes show, a collection of "alternative music" (as in NOT Mariah!) videos. I was searching for a band that I could love from the very beginning and watch them rise and grow and change, and I could say I was there from the start. I guess I was looking for my own Beatles, not really knowing at the time that they, through their many left turns later in their career, had alienated a lot of the fans that swooned and fainted when they were watching them on the *television* playing on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964.

So while I was wallowing in this sludgy wasteland known as the first year of high school, trying to forget the waste of time that was junior high school, another band threw open the windows for me, or as I like to see it, each band that I have fallen for, it's like a lens placed upon a filter placed upon another filter placed upon another lens, something that only adds to the way I saw my life before, and yet changes it in some radical way as well.

The band I'm talking about was Nirvana, and oh my God, they were so exciting to me then, after I lost my suspicions about them as I didn't want to like a band that everyone else did right off the bat (snob, I know!) They turned the musical world on its ear. Kurt Cobain (god bless him) was full of vomit and vinegar, and perfect for me as I was someone who hated the fakery that was going on within my high school career. I loved how he wanted to be respected as a musician but not be popular. How he tried to work the system on his own terms, which meant flipping it the bird more often times than not.

The funny thing was at this time, "grunge" became not just a music style but a fashion statement. It was cool to be a bit ugly. It was cool to express yourself, in any way possible, so long as you just did. And I was exposed to these women, these strong, cool women, that I really wanted to be like. Kim Gordon was the epitome of the perfect woman for me, the one I wanted to grow up to be. She didn't seem to be too concerned about fashion, but still looked good. She had a tough edge about her, fiercely intelligent, just drop-dead cool. And she played bass guitar in a non-fluffy way. She rocked! I think this is the point where I stubbornly took up the idea that I could be whomever I wanted and damn if I didn't find someone to be with. After all, Kim just exuded a confidence in her skin that was what it was all about for me. It didn't matter having the perfect hair or clothes or makeup. Kim still looked pretty glamorous, but she gave off this vibe and I felt that you could get somewhere by being honest and original by being yourself, and that was a pure gold revelation for me in high school.

But when I saw a video around this time of Boyz II Men wearing matching flannel shirts, maybe this was the signal the beast had grown too big for its cage and was starting to bite back. And when Kurt killed himself, the crown was passed to Pearl Jam. Then on the radio everyone supposedly sounded like Pearl Jam. When Pearl Jam itself decided to drop out and stop making videos, it was hard to keep up with their new material and I started to lose interest.

Though I never stopped liking Pearl Jam, listening to Nirvana today sounds almost really dated to me, like they came at the perfect time where I was feeling the vitriolic self-hate that only comes during high school. But that was my moment of realizing what it meant to like popular music, music so popular it becomes part of a fashion trend.

In college, I latched onto Sebadoh, and discovered how it felt to be looked at as not "indie" enough to appreciate their music. At around this time, I was living in a musical bubble, and probably playing a mix of everything I had loved up to that point: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Sonic Youth interspersed with U2, R.E.M. and The Beatles. This where I saw my own high-school smugness bite me in my own ass, and I started to understand that music shouldn't come with a uniform and a code to live by. I started to appreciate music for whatever reason I appreciated it. That would include the industrial metal sounds of Nine Inch Nails, the wispy vocals of Juliana Hatfield and the bombastic fluff known as ABBA.

That's pretty much how I was living my life before I moved to South Korea and during that time too. Let's call this period My Time in the Desert, seeing as it was a bit of a cultural waste land. It was amusing, however, to see Korean hip-hop bands and girl groups trying to emulate The Spice Girls. (Korean pop culture exists in a vacuum I think.) When I arrived in Hong Kong, I was happy to see that there was an HMV near by me, I later discovered (though a bit too late) used CD shops there as well, and by watching the local TV at around 10 p.m. I could see what EMI Asia and Warner Brothers Asia were trying to promote over here to the expats. In a word, Brit-rock. Without my time spent in Asia I would not have discovered for myself Muse or Keane or The Kooks.

It was also at this time I had joined a music tracking site that through my plays of Radiohead and Muse that I would probably really like Jeff Buckley. Now, I know I have already gone on about him well enough in here and I will err on the side of caution here so as to not have my Music blog be confused with a Jeff Buckley blog, but I just found his life to be very inspiring, his voice absolutely beautiful, and the best thing about him was reading about how in his tumultuous childhood, it seemed his guitar and his tapes and records were also a connection to what was real and true in a world that probably made not much sense to him.

For me, for how I now approach appreciating music, it only makes sense to me that he is my fourth and most current touchstone point in my musical journey. He was someone whose album was unable to be categorized because he cast a wide net and recorded whatever sort of music moved him. Like I felt for the first time being a U2 fan, his voice to me is like attending a church service, and I recognize in him what I loved about Nirvana -- he did not want to sacrifice himself and his art for commercial gain. He had this amazing life through which he absorbed so much music, and I totally understand it now, not just through him but through all the artists that somehow came into my life before, that the purpose of music is to be an integral part of life itself. Expression, of yourself and your feelings, is everything. The connections you make, through people or music or through spirituality, are key.

Musicians I'd Like To Take Out To Dinner (Part 4)

It's a total crime, a total show of me dropping the ball that I have had this blog for almost a year and not once -- NOT ONCE!! -- have I ever mentioned one of my favorite bands on here, The White Stripes.


The White Stripes have been around since 1999, but I hadn't really heard of them until my brother picked me up for whatever reason when I came home for my mom's funeral in 2003. Seriously, I have no idea why he picked me up but I knew he was playing "Elephant" in the car. Their sound instantly made me feel nostalgic for the time I would visit my aunt's and uncle's house and listen to my cousin Chuck bash it out on his drum set.

I guess that is the main thing that I just love about their music. It manages to retain this organic quality about it, just because it's simply the guitar and drums (for the most part. Get Behind Me Satan also featured marimbas and mandolins and all that). It reminds me of being a kid and getting my hands in the dirt, searching for earthworms. It's cool and gritty. Playful but satisfying.

Another thing I love about this CD is how it seems that Meg is coming into her own as a singer. "St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air)" is a really freaky-cool song, made especially so by the use of her high pitched voice that interweaves with the bagpipes. On the last songs she sang, "Cold Cold Night" and Passive Manipulation," she sounds a little hesitant to be in the forefront but on St. Andrew, she seems to becoming more comfortable with her voice and being up front and I hope eventually she will sing more songs on future White Stripes releases.

I think a lot of that comes from their being disciples of the DeStijl art movement, a school of painting where artists used a limited amount of colors and horizontal and vertical lines.Another thing I really appreciate about them is that you can tell so much that Jack and Meg White view what they're doing as an art form. They seem to directly control their stage image, their personal image and their fashion sense. Their videos look low budget but they are brilliant. I just recently came across this one after watching an episode of The Simpsons.

A friend I know recently compared their new album Icky Thump to something that sounded like something Led Zeppelin would have came up with: really blues-based rock and roll with face melting guitars and crashing drums. And I think he has it exactly right and I find it absolutely amazing that something this retro sounding could resonate with me so well. This is a CD I bought Thursday after mulling over a better part of a few days whether I needed to buy this CD or cereal and bread (I wound up eating out a lot) and then played it fully through three times, picking up my air guitar every now and again. This is an album that is really riff heavy, and it's one thing to say "Yeah I like this music," but totally and completely another to say "Man, I wish I could play this music!"

If I took Jack and Meg out for dinner I'd want to talk to them about music as an art form, about their sound and their influences. I'd ask them if they thought Get Behind Me Satan would go down in the history books as a total departure for them, or should we expect a whole mess of left turns during what I hope will be a long career. I'd also ask them if there'd ever be a time soon where I could afford to see them. They're playing in L.A. this September...the only thing is where they are playing is charging almost the same amount of money for PARKING as they are for a full priced ticket! If I get lucky and score a date for The White Stripes' show, you can be sure I'll report on that.

I feel right now that if I were to make a Top 5 White Stripes Songs list, it'd run heavily biased to their new album, which my iPod told me I played about 3 times last week, starting on Thursday. So while I'm still throwing confetti into the air for buying this CD in the first place, I'm not going to make an official list, but will say that "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" and "Conquest" are the absolutely awesome songs on the new CD, and for what I own of the White Stripes (hello, White Blood Cells in the near future!) the awesome songs are Blue Orchid, Seven Nation Army, Take Take Take, My Doorbell, and The Hardest Button to Button. And a whole boatload of others, but in the interest of making sure my reader doesn't fall asleep, I'll stop with these.