Me: “Danger Doom.”
You: “Danger Doom?”
Me: “Danger Doom.”
You: “Danger Doom… Danger Doom!”
Both of us: “Danger Doom!”
(Danger Doom is: MF Doom, of underground hip-hop renown, DJ Dangermouse, of the Gray Album Jay-Z/Beatles remix, and the characters from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It is also very good.)
I meant to post more this week. I meant to read more this week. I meant to start work on an outline this week. But I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time (re)discovering eMusic instead of doing a lot of the things I should be doing.
eMusic is a digital music service, like the iTunes store, but without the big downsides of iTunes–the price and the restrictions they put on the song files. You have to pay month-to-month, but you get 40 songs for $10, which works out to a quarter each (or 90 songs for $20, if you go deluxe). Also, you get the songs in mp3 format, so there are no restrictions on how many times you can burn them onto CDs or transfer them to other computers.
eMusic focuses on independent labels, so you won’t be able to find everything you’re looking for, but if you can settle for stuff like The New Pornographers, Spoon, The Decemberists, The Arcade Fire, Hieroglyphics, MF Doom, Blackalicious, Dizzee Rascal, The Mountain Goats, Interpol, Super Furry Animals, classical, jazz, punk, electronic stuff, blues, or anything else that’s not on a major label, this might be your thing. There’s a free trial, so you can get 50 free downloads (you have to give them a credit card number, though).
Seriously, check it out. Especially if you suddenly have moral qualms about copyright infringement now that you’re a law student, like, um… some people… I’ve talked to recently.
Also (here’s where my motivations start to look a little shady), if any of you decide to try it out and really want to be nice, you’ll let me refer you. I’ll get 50 free songs, so will you, and I’ll be in your debt forever. If you want to do this, just shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send a referral back. Awesome.
(By the way, if you’re looking for some new music, I recommend the new Spoon album, Gimme Fiction. If you like happiness, you’ll enjoy it.)
This is really cool. Trent Reznor is releasing a mix of a new Nine Inch Nails song in Apple GarageBand format for fans to remix. According to Professor Lessig (certainly not the first person I’d expect to write about “NIN’s brilliance”), the remixes will be freely distributable for non-commercial purposes.
Very, very cool. Too bad I don’t have Garageband. Or a Mac. (I fully expect ambimb to come mock me when he gets around to reading this.)
I’ve been listening to A Grand Don’t Come for Free, the new(ish) album by The Streets. If you know The Streets, you know Mike Skinner has a distinctive style. If you don’t know The Streets, read “distinctive style” as “absolutely no flow”. None at all. I actually think it’s worse than on his first album. It seriously hurts to listen to. Now, don’t get me wrong; I like the record. It’s a well-done concept album that tracks a relationship birth-to-death. I just wish Mike would be less “distinctive” and more “good”. I don’t need Jay-Z-quality flow. Just more like, say, early Fresh Prince.
It’s not just the English accent, either. The accent is strange to listen to at first, but it doesn’t preclude flow. Dizzee Rascal is proof of that. Speaking of Dizzee Rascal, I just ordered his new(ish) album, Showtime, and it’s on its way here as we speak. Maybe I’ll write about that in a couple weeks.
Update! - I’ve been told this post “sucks,” for “some reason. I don’t know why.” So in an effort to please my loyal reader, I’ll try to explain a little better.
Mike Skinner is a terrible emcee, but that doesn’t mean The Streets is bad music. A Grand Don’t Come for Free is good because of the music and the lyrics. The lyrics, mostly introspective, but perceptive when focused on others’ actions or body language, are sharply written; he seems to always use the right word or phrase. If that means his flow is awkward and jerky, so be it. The beats are fairly minimal and seem to fall into one of two camps: the beats that I didn’t really care for that work quite well with the lyrical content, and the beats I loved that work quite well with the lyrical content.
So that’s why I liked the album, despite the lurpy flow.
When I first posted this, I didn’t want to write a review of the album. Other people do that kind of thing much better than I can. I just wanted to comment on something I was listening to and a thought I had about it. I’m kinda random like that.