Thursday, April 7, 2005

Arizona Reporter Newswire Daily Guide to Arizona Concerts & Music Events. April 8, 2005 - Gypsy Soul - (Future Studios, 7:30pm) - Sedona, Arizona Sedona, AZ -- Future Studios in Sedona presents Gypsy Soul, the dynam.. (2530 words) [Arizona Reporter Newswire] 8:17:41 PM

Gordon Gould Review - U2 at Staples Center U2 at the Staples Center. Last night, my wife, Kira, and I saw U2 in concert at the Staples Center here in LA.  It was the 3rd time I had seen them over 3 different tours.  The show was uneven and the crowd seemed only partially engaged though there were some really great parts.  Overall, let me start by saying that Bono is clearly an incredibly charismatic guy. In the past, he has been able to electrify the entire stadium fairly consistently over the course of the show.  Last night, however, he and the crowd just did not seem to connect all that much, at least not until they started playing some of their older stuff.   Maybe it is me, but I am not a huge fan of their newer stuff.  (Personally, I think The Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree are, by far, their best albums and they are truly great works.  I have found How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb to be fairly forgettable.  I have not listened to it that much, so maybe it will grow on me if I do.  But I am just not that motivated to make the effort w/that album.) The crowd seemed to largely agree w/me as people just sort of stood there when they play their most recent work.  Vertigo, which ought to have been a big crowd pleaser, fell fairly flat.  However, the second half of the concert began w/really great versions of “New Year’s Day” and “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” which everybody got into.  Interspersed there and throughout the next few songs was Bono’s current political message of universal human rights for everyone in all countries.  While performing, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights was displayed on the hanging screens and there was some additional video of a woman/girl reading the Declaration.  Bono also focused on peace in the Middle East, declared “Jesus was a Jew” to remind everyone to get along, and flashed Daniel Pearl’s name up on the screens.  He extended his human rights message w/an enigmatic bit of praise for “the film that Brad Pitt just made” (presumably not Mr & Mrs Smith) and lauded the doctors and nurses around the world who are trying to alleviate suffering.  All in all, his message was a good one, was delivered eloquently and powerfully, and hopefully it will have some resonance around the country. (Many people criticize Bono for being so outspoken.  Personally, I think it is great that he uses his celebrity/power in such a constructive way.  Third World debt relief and human rights are certainly major problems and worthy of attention.  Much more constructive than making personal porn videos or lame reality shows….) Later, Bono and the band paid their obligatory tribute to the crowd by declaring LA one of their favorite places because it was the city in the world where more people make their living off of their imagination than anywhere else.  The crowd went nuts for this and it was, I think, a fitting way to describe LA.  Everyone waved up their light up cell-phone screens instead of holding up lighters (it is LA, after all.) WARNING- SPOILER BELOW: The first encore was really the highlight of the show for me.  It began w/a great version of “Pride in the Name of Love” and segued into “Where the Streets Have No Name” which are 2 of my all-time U2 favorites.  [The Gordon Gould Weblog] 6:26:08 PM

Sony NW-HD5 and iPod Sony NW-HD5 vs. iPod. Engadget has pictures of the two devices side-by-side, from various angles. The new Sony unit is significantly smaller than the iPod, and houses 20BG of storage. Sony is still dissembling about battery life, claiming 40 hours—which, as usual, applies only to playback of ATRAC3 files, which only 17 people on the planet actually use. Most of the comments on the Engadget pictures are calling the Sony unit far more stylish than the iPod. [The Digital Music Weblog] 8:26:20 AM

Voices A voice to sweep you off your feet: Sarah Fimm. Post-dawn edit dub: Sarah Fimm saved the day. Sarah was the easy, wordless tuned-in smile with a stranger while discovering a voice (the other was flying on hers), dreaming spaces and hand-in-hand trips to the inner places you go to find hope when the news is dominated by the dead. She's about opening cages, freedom to move on. Ouf! Turns out it was high time too, I've felt hemmed in by the headlines without realising how much this week's ways and rites of the world have been getting me down. To wake to a new day in the same mood means that voice has a hold on me! From background clutter... I left the people in Johannesburg in peace to do what they did; sorry that I let a big story sit longer than it should have done while a technician fixed glitches on my incoming news computer -- then gave me what I've wanted for months on my main one. Maybe later I'll pester Jo'burg, as asked of me, about Mandela. Yes, you've got it: while somewhere in the mega-splurge the BBC's asking "Are we overdoing the pope?" and being told "Yes" (but that's so buried I can't find it tonight), Rainier III (Wikipedia) died. Who else saw Saul Bellow (Guardian Unlimited) do likewise? So people say: "Nick, could you check whether the Mandela bios and stuff are up to date." Then there's Fidel Castro. How old's the Dalai Lama while we're at it? I can't blame cautious bosses caught up in the funereal media maelstrom for the "what if?" feeling, but call it paranoia, and I'm superstitious about having "deathwatch files" updated. This gives me claustrophobia. Death's not a deadline. I know many people are celebrating their pontiff's life, I respect that, but each day it's more of an institutional nightmare I find morbid and unhealthy. That's probably a further reason I wrote up a Cynthia last night, since passages of her album fit that earlier mindset; then came a small dose of nearly Cyndy "sychronicity" to consider in the comments box of the previous entry. ...and an encouraging victory in small things... My success as technological "pioneer" was to get them to give me Firefox for Windows, now we no longer all have admin status, after repeated "no ways". For the very first time, I saw what several people's weblogs (including this one) and other sites look how they should at work, instead of being mangled sometimes by Internet Explorer. What won me a decent browser was my insistence I need to read RSS newsfeeds, scarcely an outrageous demand in the 21st century. They may not like it but I suggest, if faced with similar resistance, to urge your bosses to do the same if they've a costly computer park made of Microsoft. It's not as if I'll throw away IE6. I suspect those who said "yes" now anticipate further such demands from people who need the Net to work ... if you promise to be a good and computer-savvy "guinea pig". At the Factory, there is a real technical objection if you're stupid, because one part of our system is incompatible with Firefox. But then you use IE. It took me just 10 minutes before the end of day flurry to set everything up as I wanted it, including an initial bunch of RSS newsfeeds via Sage, plus a non-distracting but useful Africa news ticker at the bottom of the browser. Firefox's multiple tabs, of course, make IE a stone-age research tool. It took little to "make a man happy with a new toy", after so much fuss, that I may shut up more and work harder yet. I can with everyday indispensable bookmarks already tabbed open and needed — I hope — long before any deathwatch files. And I'm also home knowing which e-mails need a reply soon since I could check fast. This is trivial, scarcely a small blow for the revolution; it's symptomatic of the System, an absurdity and lethargy which are often nobody's "fault" in particular, just a failure to hand out harmless small freedoms of choice without putting up a fight. ...to freer horizons for flight. Sarah Fimm knows how to harness new technology instead of letting it lock you up and decide "Oh, that's too complicated!" Sarah Fimm's Nexus (Oct 2004; Amazon US, unavailable at the usual sidebar stores) opened my horizons so much wider within moments I knew the still tough LP scene I'm working on will sort itself out and can take a bit more "Sorry, but you'll be on your own again tomorrow, Nick... and on Friday." Anyway, everyone's up against it. "Sarah Fimm is a dark, chaotic mixture of rock and pop with alternative influences. Her sound is colored with smooth, melodic rock fused with thick electronic grooves. A fucked up attitude with a strawberry smile account for Sarah being slightly outside, but still able to touch a mainstream audience." So said Collected Sounds. I'd leave out the "fucked up", just say she's got strong attitudes, honest lyrics and plenty of range. She can handle a piano with flair and there's jazz in there as well as sparingly used electronica, her own gifts to the fore. Comparison lovers say she's a "modern" Tori Amos, blah! I say she's worth a log entry I hadn't planned tonight. Sarah Fimm has a website straddled by angelic wings and a coy show of earthly paradise breasts -- no escape these days! -- that tell me to stop blogging and reply to at least one of those mails, once I dare read it. Not wary of what somebody might say, but of the risks in an honest reply... Sarah Fimm's done the soundtrack (to be released March 22) to a movie about "crime fighting hotties with killer bodies" (sic; Lakeshore Records). Thet sound like a couple of my LP characters, only younger. Mine are probably fighting misdeeds of a more insidious and widespread kind. Those 'D.E.B.S.' of the film title sit oddly (at a glance of a run-of-the-mill poster) with the far from routine songs I've been enjoying, but Sarah's unpredictable. From one album to the next, the iTMS can't figure out what "genre" to tell us she is and that's how it should be. Sarah Fimm really cheered me up, check her out. I'm back-tracking myself to 'A Perfect Dream', 2002, and her first, 'Cocooned', 2001, where going by the iTMS excerpts, the "fucked up" maybe fitted better, because there's plenty of optimism, toughened by experience, in some of the 'Nexus' songs. Sarah Fimm's a great find who's led me to two more. 'Collected Sounds' is "a guide to women in music", QRs included, where Amy -- hello, Amy -- runs a forum and a now blogrolled occasional corner. The other, 'Always on the Run' is a fine way to go if you're also into good sounds, from sometimes rare names, and are looking for the lyrics to match your downloads. Sarah's site obliges anyway, not that you need them to hear clear: "I've walked along the edge I've seen my death It came before my eyes and blinded by the light I realized Too long I've been without The feeling of alive Lost inside the fog I've been Lost inside my mind and I forgot that I am free. I can be what I want to be." That fit me right. I'll try to avoid a new VoW too soon. They've a habit of turning out to look as good as they sound; it's unhelpful in a week when lone wolves with hormones and hard drive to spare are wrenched between "spiritual" requirements and the insistence of the "flesh", nearer at hand! In truth, if maybe not in conventional religion, the two can be easily reconciled. Just as Zach Littleman wisely suggests reconciling restricting budgets with the iTMS and kids with parents: "Now if there was a $15 a month subscription service, my parents and most others might go ahead and subscribe when you get the iPod. They wouldn't think much of $15 a month for ALL the music we EVER wanted. After all we would be on a budget and couldn't run over. So simple, parents would think it is perfect" l(iPod Garage). I think he's right and would happily do that for mine. The best things are often so simple, but for people. A nice VoW helps to set me straight even about them. OK. Now those mails... [taliesin's log] 8:23:19 AM

Prodigem Open for Business. Gary Lerhaupt and the folks ar Prodigem are gonna give Jeremy Allaire and Brightcove a run for the money - with the opening up of Prodigem Torrents marketplace. Here's Gary's post.. Blog Downloads Torrents Screenshots Documentation Links Suggest A Torrent April 05, 2005 A Call For Long Tailors Interested in helping to weave together a new marketplace for the independent media producer? Prodigem has just launched a new part of its service that allows you to sell your content. Check out more info for all the details, but the gist is that you will shortly be able to upload your content into Prodigem, name your selling price and then have Prodigem collect your revenue while controlling access to the torrent. We take out 10% + transaction costs (PayPal) and then once a month you get a check in the mail. You're happy, we're happy and your customers are happy because they get stuff they can own with no DRM. If you want to try your hand at the new market, this torrent shows what everything looks like. The content is a 10 minute documentary I put together and as an example is available for $0.99. As it so happens, we are currently looking for a handful of people excited by this opportunity with content that they'd like to sell. Please get in contact with our request address if you are interested. By Gary Lerhaupt [unmediated] 7:23:55 AM