meandthestereo

I will freely admit it: I love satellite radio. I could be the poster child for satellite radio. I turn on my car and flip on the radio. It takes a second or two and then snap! A good song is banging through my speakers. When the first song is over, another one follows; then another and another! There is no string of commercials to endure until I can again hear some kick-ass music! All the music I could possibly ask for right at my finger tips. You like rock? It’s there. You like the hair bands…got ‘em. Are the blues your thing? Not a problem. How about something from your favorite musical era? Fifties, sixties, seventies all the way up to today’s stuff from folks like Kings of Leon and Taylor Swift. I’m telling you, it is a butt-load of music just waiting to be listened to! And if having great satellite radio in your car isn’t enough, bring it with you. There are phone apps, boom boxes and iPods so you can bring non-stop, commercial-free tunage with you anywhere you go. By the way, have I mentioned I love satellite radio? But, if you stop and think about all the behind-the-scenes machinery, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it? There are these chunks of metal floating around in space over the planet, flooding the Earth with music. You got guys like Bodhi and Lou Brutus loading up the tunes and cranking them worldwide for all of us audiophiles to devour and enjoy. Isn’t technology wonderful?

As I sit here and think about the technology of distributing music, I can’t help but to hark back to my younger days. I loved music as much then as I do now, but the medium was a little different. I remember getting my first LP. For those of you who are too young to remember LPs, I’m speaking of vinyl records…twelve inch circular discs of varying dark-colored rings, plus a label and a little, tiny hole in the middle so it would fit snugly on your record player. I think the technical term was phonograph, but I could never quite figure out how this piece of equipment ever got a goofy name like that. No matter what it was called, it was magic to me. I would drop the needle into the groove and a couple of crackles and pops later, my favorite tune was cranking out of bad speakers. Awesome! How could this get any better? Even having to tape a penny or two to the record player arm never bothered me. Musical bliss! Read the rest of this entry →

Rock band! That single phrase has such a different meaning nowadays, doesn’t it? When I was growing up, listening to Rock and Roll LPs on my cheap record player, and someone mentioned a rock show or a rock band, it immediately made me think of a live concert. A real, honest-to-goodness, balls-to-the-wall type of rock show. You know what I’m talking about here, right? I’m talking about a buzz, an unbearable anticipation in the air…until the lights finally go down. The arena goes dark and the lighters go straight up in the air. The band takes the stage and just rocks your socks off! The lights pulsating to the beat of the music, some killer pyrotechnics, plenty of fake fog rolling off the stage…and the music was loud. Really loud! And if you were lucky, you would see some lasers! Oh man, how I loved a good laser show! I’m pretty sure the amps went to 11 at the old Capital Center shows. I think my heart beat was altered forever at the AC/DC ‘Back In Black’ concert! And when you left the show, after at least two encores, you couldn’t hear a damn thing. It was like your ear canals were full of cotton. You were shouting to the person next to you just to tell them how great the show was!

This is a Rock band.

Source Read the rest of this entry →

“I’ll tell you again for the last time. The music is not important. It’s the desire for success that counts.”

Author: Gipi
Title: Garage Band
Publisher: :01 First Second
Medium: Graphic Novel
Decision: 4/5 Short, but great, read

1. About the Author

Gipi’s full name is Gianni Pacinotti. He’s an Italian cartoonist, and though he’s been producing work for quite a while, this is the first graphic novel of his that I’ve come across. In 2006, he won an Eisner award for a series called The Innocents! That will probably be the next piece of work by Gipi that I pick up. Read the rest of this entry →

Between Failures is an up and coming webcomic about a group of retail employees.  It’s filled with references to movies, music and video games and is reminiscent of movies like Clerks and Empire Records.  It’s writer and artist J.T. is a talented artist who puts a lot of work into the webcomic.  I asked him some questions about his experience working retail, his success as a webcomic artist and the music and art that inspires him.

Between Failures is based in a retail store.  What has your experience been in the retail industry?

I worked retail for many years.  My assumption is that my experience was typical.  Whether it was or not I really can’t say.  They tell me I have a unique reaction to the world, so maybe my experience was atypical, and I’ve been operating under a false pretense this whole time.  I guess it doesn’t matter either way really.  The long and the short of it was that people were angry all the time over what amounts to nothing.  The companies I worked for were controlled by faceless people who govern in a way that seems arbitrary.  It made me sick of humanity.  Eventually I came to a point where I couldn’t tolerate it anymore, so I walked away.  It all must have tainted me in some way though, since I’ve spent so much time essentially working through how I felt about all of it; through various forms of creative expression. Read the rest of this entry →

First of all, let’s settle this issue:

I am NOT addicted to coffee.

Nay, I can stop whenever I want. I just don’t want to! Now, we aren’t here to discuss the harmful or beneficial effects of coffee on the body and mind, but to discuss the associations attributed to the ideas of Coffee and Music. It is something that has constantly tickled my brain into thinking, and I have a few bones to pick with the idea of the perfect musical/coffee atmosphere.

Let’s discuss the ‘image’ of a coffee shop, café, lounge or whatever you’d like to call it. Specifically, we are concerned with a place that primarily sells coffee drinks, pastries and some other small snacks or perhaps some lunch. It is commonly associated with this type of establishment that you are going to have a pleasant time, isn’t it? Read the rest of this entry →

Artist: Mos Def
Album: The Ecstatic
Label: Downtown
Release Date: June 9, 2009
Decision: 4/5 A Great Listen
Favorite Tunes: “Life In Marvelous Times”, ”Supermagic”, “No Hay Nada Mas”

1. Background

Speaking as a person with little experience listening to rap music, I can say that this is an album that can be heard by those who would not consider themselves fans of hip hop so that they can remember what hip hop is when one isn’t listening to the radio.  Mos Def has crafted an album that is complex and listenable.

I never really listened to much hip hop music other than what was played on the radio and what I picked up from friends who did.  While I have knowledge of some of the history of hip hop (Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Public Enemy), current radio hip hop, like most anything on the radio, is more likely to make my eyes glaze over in boredom than to invite me to explore the genre.  So, it is with this non-background in hip hop that I decided to dive in on the deep side of the pool and review Mos Def’s new album The Ecstatic, an album I figured would be like the hip hop I associate with positive things, like skate tapes and Spike Lee films. Read the rest of this entry →

In which meandthestereo rambles on about the musical loves of geeks and debates his own geeklyhood:

I can’t normally tell other people this (they laugh, undoubtedly), but I can tell you, internet (can’t I?), that I am indelibly in love with geeky music.

I can only speak for myself, but in doing so, I tend to label myself as being ‘geeky’, but that’s only a small fraction of who I am as a whole. Take a look:

Is ‘meandthestereo’ a Geek? Read the rest of this entry →

What it is and the dynamics of their most notable bands.

Post-rock is a relatively new genre; one that I like to listen to frequently.  Surfacing in the 80’s and 90’s out of the indie scene, many of the early post rock bands actually sound nothing alike and the genre is so general that many different bands fall into its incredibly vague category.

These days, what characterizes a post-rock band is more of how they use their instruments.  The instruments, all generally used in rock music, are used to create melodies and harmonies typically not found in rock music.  One great example is in vocals:  In a traditional rock band, you will have a singer; this singer will have their own lyrics, and use pitch and melody to get their lyrics out to be recognized by the audience.  In a post-rock band, lyrics are sometimes non-existent; a singer is sometimes replaced by the whole band, who use their voice as an extra instrument to the song. The “words” that are sung are so low that they are indistinguishable, sometimes to the point that they [the lyrics] are actually just babble.  Read the rest of this entry →

Artist: Regina Spektor
Album: Far
Label: Warner Bros.
Release Date: June 23rd, 2009
Decision: 3/5 Mediocre…Right Away
Favorite Tunes: “Blue Lips”

1. The Background

After three years, Regina Spektor is back! Did you miss her? When I heard this album was coming out, I was extremely interested. And, of course, it’s going to do well. So much sells these days just because of the name that’s on the plastic. Let’s take a look and see if this album is worth all the hype: Read the rest of this entry →