Wasn't planning on doing this... I had some new songs from a CD swap I took part in through the NaNoWriMo forums (which three people backed out of after receiving their CD...) and some new stuff kicking around... turns out I had more than I thought.
A lot of stuff not on the previous mixes, so it's kinda fresh. Not all brand-new stuff, but that's not always the case anyway.
The usual disclaimer: I'm not selling this. If you want it, get the songs yourself and build it yourself. I don't own the copyright to any of these songs, I only burn these mixes to have good CDs with a high killer:filler ratio (the latter figure being as close to zero as possible).
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Meet .mogg
And you thought downloading .mp3 files, compressed digital audio tracks, was bad. "Bad" as in illegal, you shouldn't do it. Obviously I don't mean legal Mp3 downloads, just the illegal variety. Anyway, meet .MOGG, or Multi-channel OGG. Whereas MP3 is actually a closed format (despite it being widely traded), Ogg Vorbis is a free alternative. Legally, MP3 decoders (players) and encoders must pay royalties to use the format. Ogg Vorbis doesn't have this stipulation, so it gets used in games. Games that have music, games that have sounds - that covers all of them. Anyway, an OGG is just another kind of music file; see also: MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, etc.
MOGG is different, though. Sidestep for a moment: When you miss a note in a Guitar Hero game, what happens? The game kind of belches at you, to let you know you messed up. That's because all Guitar Hero does is play the song, and it makes a sound effect (I think it's supposed to be a guitar string breaking?) if you miss a note. That's easy. But what happens if you miss a note in Rock Band? That *note* actually *doesn't play* but the rest of the song *does*. How exactly does that work? Well, Harmonix, the game studio that makes the game, actually licenses the master recordings of the songs, which are a bit more complicated than regular MP3 files. They have all the instruments separated, and that's how Rock Band works. It plays all the channels at once, and if you miss a note, it briefly mutes that channel.
Well, suffice it to say, some .MOGG files have "become available". If you're clever, you should know where to start looking. I cannot say more than that. Legal issues and all. I also know that efforts are under way to reverse engineer the game - I don't think it's so much that people want to get songs for free ($2 is more than fair for a song, considering how the game works) as that they want to import songs into the game that Harmonix hasn't brought out. (If I were involved in the project, some Nightwish would be going in there for sure.) Anyway, without the original master recordings, importing new songs won't be happening - unless people involved in the project are in bands themselves and can supply their own masters. A Rock Band downloadable song, it would seem, is one of these .MOGG files, plus the data files. 12 tracks - three instruments at four difficulty levels. Difficulty doesn't scale, so each difficulty does in fact get its own track. Plus the vocals and pitch/tone levels. Difficulty does scale for vocals (in terms of how far off the mark you can be) so that's its own thing. And the 30 second or so sample that plays when you're looking at the song on the list.
Anyway, I hear that these .MOGG files are quite fun to play around with. Not being much of an audio engineer, I wouldn't know what to do with them, but I imagine it should be trivial to mute channels. You could take out the vocals entirely and have an instrumental song. Be warned, they don't sound as good as you might think, vocals contribute a lot. Someone with Disturbed leaked pre-vocals MP3s of their first album, and when David Draiman is supposed to be singing, it sounds very... simple. Music with lyrics is, it's the solos that sound good because they're designed to be heard without the voice. The entire song is not like that when you remove the vocals. Anyway, you could also listen to just the vocals. Or the vocals plus the drums. Or, if you play an instrument (a real one, not a game controller that looks like one), you could just play that channel and jam along with it.
Your average audio-playing software (e.g. Winamp) won't play these files, but an audio-editor (e.g. Audacity) will.
MOGG is different, though. Sidestep for a moment: When you miss a note in a Guitar Hero game, what happens? The game kind of belches at you, to let you know you messed up. That's because all Guitar Hero does is play the song, and it makes a sound effect (I think it's supposed to be a guitar string breaking?) if you miss a note. That's easy. But what happens if you miss a note in Rock Band? That *note* actually *doesn't play* but the rest of the song *does*. How exactly does that work? Well, Harmonix, the game studio that makes the game, actually licenses the master recordings of the songs, which are a bit more complicated than regular MP3 files. They have all the instruments separated, and that's how Rock Band works. It plays all the channels at once, and if you miss a note, it briefly mutes that channel.
Well, suffice it to say, some .MOGG files have "become available". If you're clever, you should know where to start looking. I cannot say more than that. Legal issues and all. I also know that efforts are under way to reverse engineer the game - I don't think it's so much that people want to get songs for free ($2 is more than fair for a song, considering how the game works) as that they want to import songs into the game that Harmonix hasn't brought out. (If I were involved in the project, some Nightwish would be going in there for sure.) Anyway, without the original master recordings, importing new songs won't be happening - unless people involved in the project are in bands themselves and can supply their own masters. A Rock Band downloadable song, it would seem, is one of these .MOGG files, plus the data files. 12 tracks - three instruments at four difficulty levels. Difficulty doesn't scale, so each difficulty does in fact get its own track. Plus the vocals and pitch/tone levels. Difficulty does scale for vocals (in terms of how far off the mark you can be) so that's its own thing. And the 30 second or so sample that plays when you're looking at the song on the list.
Anyway, I hear that these .MOGG files are quite fun to play around with. Not being much of an audio engineer, I wouldn't know what to do with them, but I imagine it should be trivial to mute channels. You could take out the vocals entirely and have an instrumental song. Be warned, they don't sound as good as you might think, vocals contribute a lot. Someone with Disturbed leaked pre-vocals MP3s of their first album, and when David Draiman is supposed to be singing, it sounds very... simple. Music with lyrics is, it's the solos that sound good because they're designed to be heard without the voice. The entire song is not like that when you remove the vocals. Anyway, you could also listen to just the vocals. Or the vocals plus the drums. Or, if you play an instrument (a real one, not a game controller that looks like one), you could just play that channel and jam along with it.
Your average audio-playing software (e.g. Winamp) won't play these files, but an audio-editor (e.g. Audacity) will.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
$2M for 24 songs?
By now anyone not spent the last week in a cave has probably heard that a jury somewhere in the middle of Nowhere (Minnesota?) awarded that modern Mafia, the RIAA, nearly $2 million, to be paid by a working mother of two or four, depending on who you read, because she or her kids downloaded 24 songs on KaZaA. On iTunes, in America, songs go for 99¢ apiece, but I've heard in Europe they go for what amounts to $1.29. I pay 160 Microsoft Points ($2) for songs in Rock Band, but those aren't just songs, they include nine instrument tracks (3 difficulties times 3 instruments), a vocal track with lyrics, a couple facts about the band for the loading screens, and sometimes, custom band gestures for the virtual band on the stage (though Guitar Hero is bigger on this point). Even at $2, 24 songs are only worth $48. 24 into the $1.92 million award means each song got paid for, at the $1 rate, 80,000 times. Given the way file sharing networks work, you're not going to share a song you downloaded 80,000 times. I guess it depends.
Impulse or nonpayment?
The RIAA would like the general public to think that every song downloaded is a sale lost. Just ask yourself, of all the songs you've downloaded, would you have paid a buck for each one if you couldn't get it for free, or are there some you got just because? (Everyone downloads, including the "high and mighty" on Internet forums who say they've never downloaded - 9 times out of 10 those are the biggest pirates, testing the waters or somesuch.) So while every download represents a kind of interest, it doesn't exactly translate to a lost sale. Besides, it's clearly not lost sales they're concerned about, per se - how many sales will they lose with a $1.92 million fine? I'd say all of them; she's not going to be in a position to buy a CD for quite some time, and people all over are calling for boycotts of music from RIAA-represented labels.
From lost sales to sales
The recording industry's biggest challenge right now is converting lost sales, real or imaginary, to real sales that bring in money. CDs alone are pretty useless; since so many people play music on portable devices now, "ripping" a CD is almost too much work, so acquiring digital files is now the new thing, but the early players - mostly iTunes, but others as well - loaded the music with copy protection, which the industry demanded to keep piracy in check. Problem is, CDs remained more convenient - you could still rip a CD. But more cars play CDs than Mp3s, and more home stereos play CDs than Mp3s as well. So, though CDs can be burned from digital audio files, CDs remain relevant. But it's not just a convenient format - music has to be desirable. The packaging is a good place to start. When I was a kid, albums and tapes came with lyrics, and liner notes, and pictures. You can download that stuff, but the original packaging, back then, was special. They don't really do that anymore. All you get now is just the track listing, and that leads some to wonder, "why not just download it?" On top of that, so many people are saying the quality of music is deteriorating. Perhaps the labels should be listening to these prospective customers? But by far, the most ambitious method they've used to get sales, to get people buying music again, is the Rock Band franchise. This "game" lets you play along with music on plastic instruments, and it's available for all gaming consoles, even the last-generation PlayStation 2. It's not very demanding as far as games go and really only amounts to a puzzle game, at best, but it's getting people buying music. We've spent more on songs than we have on both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. We have 332 songs on our Xbox 360's hard drive. More importantly, not one downloadable Rock Band song has been pirated yet. You can pirate the game disc itself, which includes 55 songs (Rock Band) or 84 songs (Rock Band 2), but you need a modified console to do it, and not that many people actually do. And since it came out that the Xbox 360 has a killswitch Microsoft can flip if they catch you modifying that console, it's a really stupid thing to try.
Computer security
In the 1990s, we learned that a computer must have antivirus. In the later part of that decade, anti-spyware became the next big security measure to take. Now, a computer must additionally have PeerGuardian. The developers of PeerGuardian track the RIAA and other anti-filesharing companies and maintain a list of the IP addresses of these computers, and prevent these computers from even seeing your computer. So say you're downloading a song that is hosted by the RIAA. Your filesharing client will basically act like nobody who has the file is actually sharing it, when, in truth, all of the peers are blocked. You can see them but they cannot see you, so they are not going to share with you. Now, once some poor schmuck who isn't using PG downloads the song, you can download from them, and when they catch a C&D letter, you won't get one at all. Welcome to the third tier of computer security: anti-spy. A secure machine must now protect against viruses, malware, and online spies in order to be safe. Because now they don't just want to damage your computer. They don't just want to use your computer as a slave to attack other machines. Now they want to get to you through your computer and attack your economic situation; essentially, they want to rob you through your computer. "Don't they have the right..." No, they don't have the right to take away our Fourth Amendment rights, which protect us from unlawful searches, which is what this amounts to.
What comes next?
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the RIAA is not going to collect $1.92 million from this case. The RIAA traditionally offers a settlement in the neighborhood of $3,000-$5,000 to keep the case from going to trial, and they haven't ruled out closing the door on that offer, even though the case has been decided for much higher. That would stem any argument that the woman would never be able to pay the fine. It would be a huge economical hardship, but not impossible. Still, it would be a huge loss for the RIAA, twofold at that. First, the case has cost them a lot of money already, money they're not going to fully recover regardless. And second, if this woman has to pay anything above her means, she's probably never going to purchase a CD ever again. (Would you?) On top of that, people across the Internet are calling for a boycott of RIAA-backed labels' music. There is really just no easy solution for the RIAA. If they don't go after people for downloading music, more people will do it. The more they do, however, the more people hate them. And if you go onto an Internet forum populated by members of sites like The Pirate Bay and isoHunt and ask them what the RIAA should do, the unanimous answer will sound something like "roll over and die". Of course, if they disbanded tomorrow, and the record companies they represent all folded, the impact on the economy would be severe, as they do employ thousands. And of course, if they go under, who will bring us the popular music we like? Radiohead was able to offer their album "In Rainbows", I believe it is, for "whatever cost you feel like paying, including nothing" because they're already an established act. Millions of unsigned bands have been giving away music on MySpace and through other venues for years; it hasn't gotten them signed, let alone Radiohead-level fame (which, I admit, is quite a ways away from, say, Metallica fame, or better yet, The Beatles fame, but I digress).
In short, the recording industry needs to look at what's working and what isn't. Some things they're doing are effective, such as songs in Rock Band; also, microSD cards for phones which contain full albums in MP3 format. That's brilliant. Services like iTunes and its competitors are a good idea, moreso now that they're using regular MP3s, not copy-protected AAC and WMA files. Financially wrecking otherwise honest Americans is not working, however, and especially in this recession, amounts to both class warfare and economic terrorism. It's that serious. It's $1.92 million serious.
Impulse or nonpayment?
The RIAA would like the general public to think that every song downloaded is a sale lost. Just ask yourself, of all the songs you've downloaded, would you have paid a buck for each one if you couldn't get it for free, or are there some you got just because? (Everyone downloads, including the "high and mighty" on Internet forums who say they've never downloaded - 9 times out of 10 those are the biggest pirates, testing the waters or somesuch.) So while every download represents a kind of interest, it doesn't exactly translate to a lost sale. Besides, it's clearly not lost sales they're concerned about, per se - how many sales will they lose with a $1.92 million fine? I'd say all of them; she's not going to be in a position to buy a CD for quite some time, and people all over are calling for boycotts of music from RIAA-represented labels.
From lost sales to sales
The recording industry's biggest challenge right now is converting lost sales, real or imaginary, to real sales that bring in money. CDs alone are pretty useless; since so many people play music on portable devices now, "ripping" a CD is almost too much work, so acquiring digital files is now the new thing, but the early players - mostly iTunes, but others as well - loaded the music with copy protection, which the industry demanded to keep piracy in check. Problem is, CDs remained more convenient - you could still rip a CD. But more cars play CDs than Mp3s, and more home stereos play CDs than Mp3s as well. So, though CDs can be burned from digital audio files, CDs remain relevant. But it's not just a convenient format - music has to be desirable. The packaging is a good place to start. When I was a kid, albums and tapes came with lyrics, and liner notes, and pictures. You can download that stuff, but the original packaging, back then, was special. They don't really do that anymore. All you get now is just the track listing, and that leads some to wonder, "why not just download it?" On top of that, so many people are saying the quality of music is deteriorating. Perhaps the labels should be listening to these prospective customers? But by far, the most ambitious method they've used to get sales, to get people buying music again, is the Rock Band franchise. This "game" lets you play along with music on plastic instruments, and it's available for all gaming consoles, even the last-generation PlayStation 2. It's not very demanding as far as games go and really only amounts to a puzzle game, at best, but it's getting people buying music. We've spent more on songs than we have on both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. We have 332 songs on our Xbox 360's hard drive. More importantly, not one downloadable Rock Band song has been pirated yet. You can pirate the game disc itself, which includes 55 songs (Rock Band) or 84 songs (Rock Band 2), but you need a modified console to do it, and not that many people actually do. And since it came out that the Xbox 360 has a killswitch Microsoft can flip if they catch you modifying that console, it's a really stupid thing to try.
Computer security
In the 1990s, we learned that a computer must have antivirus. In the later part of that decade, anti-spyware became the next big security measure to take. Now, a computer must additionally have PeerGuardian. The developers of PeerGuardian track the RIAA and other anti-filesharing companies and maintain a list of the IP addresses of these computers, and prevent these computers from even seeing your computer. So say you're downloading a song that is hosted by the RIAA. Your filesharing client will basically act like nobody who has the file is actually sharing it, when, in truth, all of the peers are blocked. You can see them but they cannot see you, so they are not going to share with you. Now, once some poor schmuck who isn't using PG downloads the song, you can download from them, and when they catch a C&D letter, you won't get one at all. Welcome to the third tier of computer security: anti-spy. A secure machine must now protect against viruses, malware, and online spies in order to be safe. Because now they don't just want to damage your computer. They don't just want to use your computer as a slave to attack other machines. Now they want to get to you through your computer and attack your economic situation; essentially, they want to rob you through your computer. "Don't they have the right..." No, they don't have the right to take away our Fourth Amendment rights, which protect us from unlawful searches, which is what this amounts to.
What comes next?
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the RIAA is not going to collect $1.92 million from this case. The RIAA traditionally offers a settlement in the neighborhood of $3,000-$5,000 to keep the case from going to trial, and they haven't ruled out closing the door on that offer, even though the case has been decided for much higher. That would stem any argument that the woman would never be able to pay the fine. It would be a huge economical hardship, but not impossible. Still, it would be a huge loss for the RIAA, twofold at that. First, the case has cost them a lot of money already, money they're not going to fully recover regardless. And second, if this woman has to pay anything above her means, she's probably never going to purchase a CD ever again. (Would you?) On top of that, people across the Internet are calling for a boycott of RIAA-backed labels' music. There is really just no easy solution for the RIAA. If they don't go after people for downloading music, more people will do it. The more they do, however, the more people hate them. And if you go onto an Internet forum populated by members of sites like The Pirate Bay and isoHunt and ask them what the RIAA should do, the unanimous answer will sound something like "roll over and die". Of course, if they disbanded tomorrow, and the record companies they represent all folded, the impact on the economy would be severe, as they do employ thousands. And of course, if they go under, who will bring us the popular music we like? Radiohead was able to offer their album "In Rainbows", I believe it is, for "whatever cost you feel like paying, including nothing" because they're already an established act. Millions of unsigned bands have been giving away music on MySpace and through other venues for years; it hasn't gotten them signed, let alone Radiohead-level fame (which, I admit, is quite a ways away from, say, Metallica fame, or better yet, The Beatles fame, but I digress).
In short, the recording industry needs to look at what's working and what isn't. Some things they're doing are effective, such as songs in Rock Band; also, microSD cards for phones which contain full albums in MP3 format. That's brilliant. Services like iTunes and its competitors are a good idea, moreso now that they're using regular MP3s, not copy-protected AAC and WMA files. Financially wrecking otherwise honest Americans is not working, however, and especially in this recession, amounts to both class warfare and economic terrorism. It's that serious. It's $1.92 million serious.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Jollys' Mix 2009, Disc 2
I actually finished up this mix a couple weeks ago, but I've been so busy listening to it lately that I never quite got the chance to write about it. As usual with the mixes, we have a mix of songs from the musical puzzle games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, songs from sports events, and songs on the radio, as well as a good genre mix: we have rap, we have metal (some really heavy stuff, too), glam, a cover of an 80s classic, and college rock.
Click the name of any song to view the video on YouTube. I tried to get the "official" video wherever possible, not one uploaded by "just anybody" so none of these should get taken down for copyright violations, since the copyright owners put them up. If I couldn't get the "official" video I just went with whatever I could get.
1. Let it Rock (Kevin Rudolf, Lil Wayne)
This was used this January by the WWE for this year's Royal Rumble, based around that big match where 30 guys try to toss one another over the ropes, last one standing gets a championship match at WrestleMania a few months later. (This year, the Rumble was more entertaining than Mania, but never mind that.) This song's fun to listen to, sort of a cross between rock and rap with dance elements. It sets the stage for the rest of the album. From the earliest "beta" of the album, with just five songs, it was always the first track.
2. Magnetic Baby (Semi Precious Weapons)
This glam-rock song is hard to listen to at first, but it's really good. This is one of the 20 free songs that comes via a code with Rock Band 2, and it's fun as hell to sing and play on bass. Yes, that's a dude singing, if you were curious, though I can see (hear) how it's hard to tell. I went from putting this song on the mix (and it was one of the original five as well) as a joke, figuring I'd drop it by the final build, but it grew on me and I had to keep it. I'm also more apt to pick it on Rock Band. Watch it played on Rock Band 2; bass is the left track.
3. I'm Gone, I'm Going (Lesley Roy)
Another of the "20 free" Rock Band 2 songs, and more of a surprise. Think Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, but heavier. There isn't enough chick rock in Rock Band, and this one is worth paying for (not that I'm complaining that I got it for free).
4. Lifeline (Papa Roach)
I love putting Papa Roach songs on these mixes. Their songs are just consistently good. Seems like there's two kinds of Papa Roach songs. There's the hard-hitting ones like "Last Resort" and "...To Be Loved", and then there's these solid, semi-inspirational songs like this and "Scars". I never thought I'd like another of their songs as much as "Scars", but this one's pretty damn good. And with "Last Resort" and one other (drawing a blank here), it's part of a 3-pack on Rock Band. (It's not "Time is Running Out"; that's been up there, was released before.)
5. Life is Beautiful (Sixx:A.M.)
My favorite song on the mix and current favorite song, period. It's from the album "The Heroin Diaries" based on Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx's beating his addiction to heroin. I got the album after hearing this song, expecting it to be like this song. It's not, this song is pretty unique to the album, but it's a great album nonetheless. I remember getting this song. We had just bought a $50 Xbox Live card and had a party, and we were passing the controller around the room, letting people pick songs, whether they were playing the game or not. We just wanted to get a lot of variety. Somebody picked this, said it was a good song. I didn't notice it for the longest time, then we just started playing it. (When you have 332 songs, it's easy for a couple to get lost in the shuffle.) It's not an easy song to play on bass, harder to sing, but I'm fine just listening to it. Good stuff.
6. Young (Hollywood Undead)
Hollywood Undead's debut album is called "Swan Songs", but this is the only song that qualifies. "Undead" is a cool song and "Everywhere I Go" is funny, but "Young" is the only one that is genuinely good. And it was one of the free 20 songs. Fun to sing, really fun to play on bass. A nightmare on guitar, since the guitarist gets stuck with the keyboards as well.
7. Careless Whisper (Seether)
Anyone who has lived through the 1980s probably knows this song, even if not by name, or who did it. I can almost guarantee if you're 25 or older, you've heard it. "I'm never gonna dance again, cuz guilty feet have got no rhythm, though it's easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool. I should have known better than to cheat a friend, and waste the chance that I've been given, so I'm never gonna dance again, the way I danced with you." Sound familiar now? Yeah. That one. Sorry for that reminder. The orignal performer was George Michael, by the way. Seether render a faithful cover that's amazing to hear the first few times, but after the novelty wears off, you may find yourself wishing you were listening to something else. Still, it's worth having on the mix. (And no! It's not on Rock Band! Though RB could use some Seether, but I'd prefer they do "Broken", their song with Amy Lee of Evanescence.)
No official video for this one, so rather, I linked to a live performance that can be viewed in HD. Enjoy!
8. I Don't Care (Fall Out Boy)
It's easy to make fun of Fall Out Boy, but this song's fun to listen to. Another song in Rock Band, boring as hell on bass. Haven't tried singing it yet, though I'd like to soon.
9. Something in Your Mouth (Nickelback)
Yep, he's talking about what you think he is. A little too crude for the quality of the song, but it's fun if you're in the mood. Sometimes I am, sometimes not.
10. Too Drunk (Buckcherry)
Now this is college humor rock done right. Catchy, quotable lyrics (though not in mixed company), a real fun song.
11. Scream (Avenged Sevenfold)
Pretty good hard rock song, supernatural themes, kind of reminds me of Godsmack.
12. Re-Education Through Labor (Rise Against)
Rise Against seem to be the new political-angst metal band, after System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine before them. Fans seem to agree this song is about China, though some say it's about their sweatshops, others say it's about their prisons. Either way, it's good.
13. Two Weeks (All That Remains)
I'll sing this song on Rock Band, but I won't mess with playing it on any instrument. Fast and heavy, but not as much as "This Calling", also in the game (and also fun to sing). Jen's current "favorite song ever", or at least that's the latest she's told me.
14. Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now (Evans Blue)
It'll be a while before I run out of Evans Blue songs for these mixes. They fired vocalist Kevin Matisyn, and they kinda blow now, but we got two great albums out of their doomed union. The exact meaning of this song is vague and evades me, but the lyrics sound powerful, and the instruments are. One of the songs I'd kill to play in Rock Band.
15. Becoming the Bull (Atreyu)
If you've heard the name of this metal band before but you can't place it, it's likely you've seen "The Neverending Story" when you were a kid. He's the Indian teenager with the horse. You wouldn't expect a metal band to be named after a character in a kids' movie (ten years from now there'll be a band called "Harry Potter" - mark my words). This song is fun to listen to, though, and heavy enough.
16. Burn You Down (Opiate for the Masses)
The last of the Rock Band songs on the album, this also comes from the free 20. Toss-up between this and "Young" for the best, but like the last five songs, it's heavier. Doesn't really sound like it at first, but the chorus is a beast. Not as easy to sing as I'd like, and the bass is just how you'd expect. Boring during the verses and hard, though not too tricky during the chorus. And here's that bass track, you can see what I mean.
17. Dead Memories (Slipknot)
Ever since Stone Sour, the horrible secret has gotten out that Corey Taylor can actually sing, but in my opinion, Slipknot's only gotten better since. They're not as heavy, not quite as scary as the nine masked men who came out in the late 90s, but they make some good music. Not quite as heavy as "Psychosocial" from the last mix, this one's alright though.
18. Helden (Apocalyptica with Till Lindemann)
I have no idea what "Helden" means, or anything else Till Lindemann says in this song. It's all in German, so it sounds cool. Well, except "ja", that means "yeah" or "yes". And "Ich" (sounds like "ish"), which means "I" or "me". So I know a couple words in German. But I got no idea what he's saying. I like it, though. Video is real special because it's got translations. So if you want to know what they're talking about, you can find out.
19. What Have You Done? (Within Temptation)
In 2004, after I'd listened to all the Nightwish albums a hundred times apiece, I went looking for similar bands. Within Temptation were the most promising, but their "Mother Earth" album, a theme album about Mother Nature, was a little tacky. Some good stuff, but kinda silly. Then they put out "The Silent Force" which kicked all kinds of ass. The album this song is from (the name of which escapes me at the moment) is kind of a let down, but the chorus of this one is fun. I mentioned Guitar Hero in the first paragraph. Usually I make fun of Guitar Hero, but they got this song as downloadable content, and I was all over it. We hardly ever put GH in, but I killed this on bass. Not so easy to sing, but the singing is broken in GH anyway. Nobody sings good in Guitar Hero. Broken. Does not work.
20. Death to All But Metal (Steel Panther)
Who the hell are Steel Panther? I have no idea, but this song is funny as hell. It sounds like 1980s hair metal - fine by me - and then proceeds to rip on all kinds of music in the most vulgar way possible. Who all gets burned? In order of naming, Goo Goo Dolls, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Papa Roach, blink-182, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, MTV, record companies in general, Britney Spears, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, 50 Cent, and Kanye West. Well, Def Lep and Crue aren't really burned, but they're called metal, and... they really aren't. Maybe a case could be made for Crue, but not Def Lep. If they wanted to talk about 80s metal, they could have said Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, or Motorhead. Funny song, but it actually sounds good - good as in, it would be challenging to play on Rock Band.
And as always, this mix isn't for sale, but feel free to buy or otherwise acquire the songs and compile it yourself. It's great in the car, we've had it in the car for a couple weeks now, and I'm almost ready for a new disc, but it's been entertaining.
Click the name of any song to view the video on YouTube. I tried to get the "official" video wherever possible, not one uploaded by "just anybody" so none of these should get taken down for copyright violations, since the copyright owners put them up. If I couldn't get the "official" video I just went with whatever I could get.
1. Let it Rock (Kevin Rudolf, Lil Wayne)
This was used this January by the WWE for this year's Royal Rumble, based around that big match where 30 guys try to toss one another over the ropes, last one standing gets a championship match at WrestleMania a few months later. (This year, the Rumble was more entertaining than Mania, but never mind that.) This song's fun to listen to, sort of a cross between rock and rap with dance elements. It sets the stage for the rest of the album. From the earliest "beta" of the album, with just five songs, it was always the first track.
2. Magnetic Baby (Semi Precious Weapons)
This glam-rock song is hard to listen to at first, but it's really good. This is one of the 20 free songs that comes via a code with Rock Band 2, and it's fun as hell to sing and play on bass. Yes, that's a dude singing, if you were curious, though I can see (hear) how it's hard to tell. I went from putting this song on the mix (and it was one of the original five as well) as a joke, figuring I'd drop it by the final build, but it grew on me and I had to keep it. I'm also more apt to pick it on Rock Band. Watch it played on Rock Band 2; bass is the left track.
3. I'm Gone, I'm Going (Lesley Roy)
Another of the "20 free" Rock Band 2 songs, and more of a surprise. Think Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, but heavier. There isn't enough chick rock in Rock Band, and this one is worth paying for (not that I'm complaining that I got it for free).
4. Lifeline (Papa Roach)
I love putting Papa Roach songs on these mixes. Their songs are just consistently good. Seems like there's two kinds of Papa Roach songs. There's the hard-hitting ones like "Last Resort" and "...To Be Loved", and then there's these solid, semi-inspirational songs like this and "Scars". I never thought I'd like another of their songs as much as "Scars", but this one's pretty damn good. And with "Last Resort" and one other (drawing a blank here), it's part of a 3-pack on Rock Band. (It's not "Time is Running Out"; that's been up there, was released before.)
5. Life is Beautiful (Sixx:A.M.)
My favorite song on the mix and current favorite song, period. It's from the album "The Heroin Diaries" based on Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx's beating his addiction to heroin. I got the album after hearing this song, expecting it to be like this song. It's not, this song is pretty unique to the album, but it's a great album nonetheless. I remember getting this song. We had just bought a $50 Xbox Live card and had a party, and we were passing the controller around the room, letting people pick songs, whether they were playing the game or not. We just wanted to get a lot of variety. Somebody picked this, said it was a good song. I didn't notice it for the longest time, then we just started playing it. (When you have 332 songs, it's easy for a couple to get lost in the shuffle.) It's not an easy song to play on bass, harder to sing, but I'm fine just listening to it. Good stuff.
6. Young (Hollywood Undead)
Hollywood Undead's debut album is called "Swan Songs", but this is the only song that qualifies. "Undead" is a cool song and "Everywhere I Go" is funny, but "Young" is the only one that is genuinely good. And it was one of the free 20 songs. Fun to sing, really fun to play on bass. A nightmare on guitar, since the guitarist gets stuck with the keyboards as well.
7. Careless Whisper (Seether)
Anyone who has lived through the 1980s probably knows this song, even if not by name, or who did it. I can almost guarantee if you're 25 or older, you've heard it. "I'm never gonna dance again, cuz guilty feet have got no rhythm, though it's easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool. I should have known better than to cheat a friend, and waste the chance that I've been given, so I'm never gonna dance again, the way I danced with you." Sound familiar now? Yeah. That one. Sorry for that reminder. The orignal performer was George Michael, by the way. Seether render a faithful cover that's amazing to hear the first few times, but after the novelty wears off, you may find yourself wishing you were listening to something else. Still, it's worth having on the mix. (And no! It's not on Rock Band! Though RB could use some Seether, but I'd prefer they do "Broken", their song with Amy Lee of Evanescence.)
No official video for this one, so rather, I linked to a live performance that can be viewed in HD. Enjoy!
8. I Don't Care (Fall Out Boy)
It's easy to make fun of Fall Out Boy, but this song's fun to listen to. Another song in Rock Band, boring as hell on bass. Haven't tried singing it yet, though I'd like to soon.
9. Something in Your Mouth (Nickelback)
Yep, he's talking about what you think he is. A little too crude for the quality of the song, but it's fun if you're in the mood. Sometimes I am, sometimes not.
10. Too Drunk (Buckcherry)
Now this is college humor rock done right. Catchy, quotable lyrics (though not in mixed company), a real fun song.
11. Scream (Avenged Sevenfold)
Pretty good hard rock song, supernatural themes, kind of reminds me of Godsmack.
12. Re-Education Through Labor (Rise Against)
Rise Against seem to be the new political-angst metal band, after System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine before them. Fans seem to agree this song is about China, though some say it's about their sweatshops, others say it's about their prisons. Either way, it's good.
13. Two Weeks (All That Remains)
I'll sing this song on Rock Band, but I won't mess with playing it on any instrument. Fast and heavy, but not as much as "This Calling", also in the game (and also fun to sing). Jen's current "favorite song ever", or at least that's the latest she's told me.
14. Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now (Evans Blue)
It'll be a while before I run out of Evans Blue songs for these mixes. They fired vocalist Kevin Matisyn, and they kinda blow now, but we got two great albums out of their doomed union. The exact meaning of this song is vague and evades me, but the lyrics sound powerful, and the instruments are. One of the songs I'd kill to play in Rock Band.
15. Becoming the Bull (Atreyu)
If you've heard the name of this metal band before but you can't place it, it's likely you've seen "The Neverending Story" when you were a kid. He's the Indian teenager with the horse. You wouldn't expect a metal band to be named after a character in a kids' movie (ten years from now there'll be a band called "Harry Potter" - mark my words). This song is fun to listen to, though, and heavy enough.
16. Burn You Down (Opiate for the Masses)
The last of the Rock Band songs on the album, this also comes from the free 20. Toss-up between this and "Young" for the best, but like the last five songs, it's heavier. Doesn't really sound like it at first, but the chorus is a beast. Not as easy to sing as I'd like, and the bass is just how you'd expect. Boring during the verses and hard, though not too tricky during the chorus. And here's that bass track, you can see what I mean.
17. Dead Memories (Slipknot)
Ever since Stone Sour, the horrible secret has gotten out that Corey Taylor can actually sing, but in my opinion, Slipknot's only gotten better since. They're not as heavy, not quite as scary as the nine masked men who came out in the late 90s, but they make some good music. Not quite as heavy as "Psychosocial" from the last mix, this one's alright though.
18. Helden (Apocalyptica with Till Lindemann)
I have no idea what "Helden" means, or anything else Till Lindemann says in this song. It's all in German, so it sounds cool. Well, except "ja", that means "yeah" or "yes". And "Ich" (sounds like "ish"), which means "I" or "me". So I know a couple words in German. But I got no idea what he's saying. I like it, though. Video is real special because it's got translations. So if you want to know what they're talking about, you can find out.
19. What Have You Done? (Within Temptation)
In 2004, after I'd listened to all the Nightwish albums a hundred times apiece, I went looking for similar bands. Within Temptation were the most promising, but their "Mother Earth" album, a theme album about Mother Nature, was a little tacky. Some good stuff, but kinda silly. Then they put out "The Silent Force" which kicked all kinds of ass. The album this song is from (the name of which escapes me at the moment) is kind of a let down, but the chorus of this one is fun. I mentioned Guitar Hero in the first paragraph. Usually I make fun of Guitar Hero, but they got this song as downloadable content, and I was all over it. We hardly ever put GH in, but I killed this on bass. Not so easy to sing, but the singing is broken in GH anyway. Nobody sings good in Guitar Hero. Broken. Does not work.
20. Death to All But Metal (Steel Panther)
Who the hell are Steel Panther? I have no idea, but this song is funny as hell. It sounds like 1980s hair metal - fine by me - and then proceeds to rip on all kinds of music in the most vulgar way possible. Who all gets burned? In order of naming, Goo Goo Dolls, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Papa Roach, blink-182, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, MTV, record companies in general, Britney Spears, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow, 50 Cent, and Kanye West. Well, Def Lep and Crue aren't really burned, but they're called metal, and... they really aren't. Maybe a case could be made for Crue, but not Def Lep. If they wanted to talk about 80s metal, they could have said Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, or Motorhead. Funny song, but it actually sounds good - good as in, it would be challenging to play on Rock Band.
And as always, this mix isn't for sale, but feel free to buy or otherwise acquire the songs and compile it yourself. It's great in the car, we've had it in the car for a couple weeks now, and I'm almost ready for a new disc, but it's been entertaining.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
331 songs on Rock Band: Evanescence, Iron Maiden
I'm so used to writing Evanescence as Evanuisance because, well, that's kind of what they are. My Firefox spell checker even recognizes "Evanuisance"; yeah, I got that bitch trained. "Evanescence" is actually a real word, just not commonly used; it basically means the act of evaporation. (Sadly Evanescence didn't evanesce, and now they're in Rock Band. C'est la vie.)
Anyway, we got 3 tracks by Evanuisance: Bring Me to Life (feat. Paul McCoy of 12 Stones), Call Me When You're Sober, and Weight of the World. The latter I don't think is even a single; all I've heard from their new album is "Call Me" (and the radio station goes nonchalantly back to their first album... sure sign the new one sucks) but it sounds fun, so we get it. And they give you a break when you buy the whole pack, so some smart shopping there.
As for Iron Maiden, these guys kicked your grandpa's ass so many years ago and they still rock to this day. However, they do kinda suck live, Bruce Dickinson has mostly lost his voice. Doesn't stop me from getting the live version of "Hallowed Be Thy Name", probably their best song after "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which is too long for Rock Band anyway. So we've got Hallowed, and the studio versions of "Run to the Hills" (a cover was on Rock Band 1, and did not export with the others, so it'll be nice to have that again) and "Number of the Beast" (a cover we've had as DLC for a while). Rounding out the four is the semi-poppy "Two Minutes to Midnight", which should be fun to sing.
Anyway, "Midnight" is about to finish, and that's the last of 'em, so I'm gonna go get my ass kicked on vocals (I'm up to Hard now) and Jen's gonna get her ass kicked on drums.
Anyway, we got 3 tracks by Evanuisance: Bring Me to Life (feat. Paul McCoy of 12 Stones), Call Me When You're Sober, and Weight of the World. The latter I don't think is even a single; all I've heard from their new album is "Call Me" (and the radio station goes nonchalantly back to their first album... sure sign the new one sucks) but it sounds fun, so we get it. And they give you a break when you buy the whole pack, so some smart shopping there.
As for Iron Maiden, these guys kicked your grandpa's ass so many years ago and they still rock to this day. However, they do kinda suck live, Bruce Dickinson has mostly lost his voice. Doesn't stop me from getting the live version of "Hallowed Be Thy Name", probably their best song after "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which is too long for Rock Band anyway. So we've got Hallowed, and the studio versions of "Run to the Hills" (a cover was on Rock Band 1, and did not export with the others, so it'll be nice to have that again) and "Number of the Beast" (a cover we've had as DLC for a while). Rounding out the four is the semi-poppy "Two Minutes to Midnight", which should be fun to sing.
Anyway, "Midnight" is about to finish, and that's the last of 'em, so I'm gonna go get my ass kicked on vocals (I'm up to Hard now) and Jen's gonna get her ass kicked on drums.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
324 songs and counting! Alice Cooper and Social D added
"Poison" by Alice Cooper and "Story of My Life" by Social Distortion added. I think the Social D song was on Guitar Hero 2 or 3, but it sounds great and I'm glad to have it. Axel, our drummer, ALWAYS picks "I Was Wrong" by Social Distortion, I don't know if he digs the tune or just loves playing it, but it's a real SOB on bass. I can hang with it half the time, but I'd pick something else if it were on me. Good song though.
Gonna do something a little different with this bulletin. I'm now gonna play 'em and post my scores. Not tryin' to brag, unless you're a freakin savant, your first play ain't gonna be all that special, but if you know the kinds of scores someone gets on songs of the same difficulty tier, maybe it'll help you figure out your own chances at it.
Difficulty is out of 7. Zero filled circles on the difficulty chart is first tier. One filled circle is second tier. All five circles filled is tier 6, and 5 devil heads is the hardest tier, Tier 7. These are both pretty easy in comparison to, say, the Yngwie Malmsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Dream Theater stuff.
Regarding ratings, you're given a points score, a "star" rating out of six, the percentage of notes that you hit, and then the longest unbroken streak of successful notes. Here's how the new songs stacked up, and here's how I did:
STORY OF MY LIFE by Social Distortion from "Greatest Hits" (2007) (originally 1990)
BAND 2/7 GUITAR 2/7 DRUM 3/7 VOCALS 1/7 BASS 1/7
59,132 3 stars 91% 56 note streak
Notes: "Story of My Life" is long and tedious. It starts with one green note, a long green note, and then 2 together, and then repeats a similar pattern on seemingly random colors, with an occasional burst of, like, 6 notes in a row, real close together. There are maybe four orange notes in the whole song, they're not close to other notes, and you can see 'em coming a mile off. Bassists, keep your fingers green-to-blue and take the orange ones as they come. And don't stay on red-to-orange, just hit the orange note and then come on back. This song felt like it was ten minutes long, but I'm just out of practice. It ain't a short song; I'd guess six minutes; Wikipedia gives it as 5:48. Close.
Oh, and though my guitar reported half battery strength, the batteries died partway in. I just turned the guitar back on and kept rockin. After the THIRD death, I changed batteries - and started over. So it's not a true sightread, per se. Close enough though. And it ain't like I did great. Onto "Poison"...
POISON by Alice Cooper from the album "Trash" (1989)
BAND 3/7 GUITAR 5/7 DRUM 2/7 VOCALS 2/7 BASS 2/7
22,892 3 stars 79% 30 note streak
Notes: "Poison" starts out easy as hell, with two sets of two green notes and then a series of long notes on the red-to-orange track, so switch down as soon as the green goes away. Once the long notes are gone, it gets kinda random, with a lot of jumping around and then a long series of notes, with every seventh or eighth just a little off. I got up to half my overdrive, but was afraid to use it, because all the overdrive notes were on those one-off trick parts I couldn't nail. After getting up to 75% on pure chance, I went ahead and went, and even with overdrive (each note counting double) I dipped into the red, but held on for the whole song, which thankfully wasn't long. I could perhaps do better with practice, but this song's really for the real fast-fingered guitarists who can just fly all over the controller, being where they need to be on a split seconds' notice. There were a couple cruel tricks, but mostly it was just straightforward.
Now it's onto bed... I actually intended to follow up those sorry performances with me owning all over "Say it Ain't So" or "Orange Crush" but my wrist is so damn tired (and you'd think being single for 25 years, that wouldn't be a problem...).
In other news though, got some new equipment. Our Xbox 360 got the dreaded Red Rings of Death, so we took it back to Best Buy. Now, Best Buy is the best place to buy electronics, and they're not paying me to say that or anything (they don't know, and probably don't care). The trick is to always spring for the protection plan. Long story short, my camera goes out, and they give me a newer one, since it was actually the bottom of the line of the same brand, but still much better than the one I had. I did however have to buy a new memory card as it used another format. And a new warranty - that's always the gotcha. More recently, we took in a broken wired guitar, they replaced it with a wireless one. Sweet!
So we bring in the Xbox 360 - and now, we paid $350 for the old 20GB "Pro" model. They have the new 60GB "Pro" for $300. After the exchange, since the Xbox is now $50 less, that $50 actually went to us. It covered the warranty renewal (which gives us another year, since it starts now, or rather last week) and they gave us a gift card with the remaining balance. It's like $12! So we got a brand new Xbox 360, a 2-year warranty, and $12 to spend there (most likely on song credits for Rock Band). If you ask me, the Red Rings of Death aren't so dreaded! I think we came out alright!
A couple weeks before this, Jen and I both upgraded our guitars with authentic albeit entry-level guitar straps from First Act - they make a bunch of entry-level musician equipment, most of which can be used by Rock Band and Guitar Hero players. Guitar straps, drumsticks, a drum stool, guitar stands, a lot of nice stuff. (No, they're not paying me to type either - nobody is.) So we got their straps, and while they are sturdier, they still scrape my neck on long setlists. Here's what I did: We're in Walmart last night, and I got this thing meant for seatbelts. It's like a wooly sock thingy that goes around the strap for comfort. I put it on my guitar strap and it feels great. It does tend to slip as I adjust the guitar, so I'll have to work on something to hold it in place. Axel Steel - again, our drummer - is pretty demanding during practice. I'm talking about playing for 4-5 hours straight (well, with breaks - him and Jimmi Rivers (think Bret Hart), our guitarist, are pretty heavy smokers, they can't go too long without a Newport, which works great for me when I'm out of practice.
Now, I hope you realize these band names are made up. Well, they're the names we use in the game. I'm Ben Sisko, named after the captain on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Kinda look like him, but younger and with Costello glasses. Jen's Aura Jo, and the other guys, well, I haven't asked their permission to name them publicly, so they get called by their stage names up here. And Aura Jo on vocals, Jimmi Rivers on guitar, Axel Steel on drums, and last but not least Ben Sisko on bass, we're DysS\MemB/EreD. Don't laugh, either, dammit, we came in 3rd place at the Carolina Gaming Summit Rock Band 2 tournament in Goldsboro, NC this past February, and the 8 guys who bested us couldn't be nicer guys, even though the ones who came in 1st got their ticket to the finals by beating the event promotor's kids. A little bit of backstage trickery there, but they beat us fair and square, so it's all good.
Gonna do something a little different with this bulletin. I'm now gonna play 'em and post my scores. Not tryin' to brag, unless you're a freakin savant, your first play ain't gonna be all that special, but if you know the kinds of scores someone gets on songs of the same difficulty tier, maybe it'll help you figure out your own chances at it.
Difficulty is out of 7. Zero filled circles on the difficulty chart is first tier. One filled circle is second tier. All five circles filled is tier 6, and 5 devil heads is the hardest tier, Tier 7. These are both pretty easy in comparison to, say, the Yngwie Malmsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Dream Theater stuff.
Regarding ratings, you're given a points score, a "star" rating out of six, the percentage of notes that you hit, and then the longest unbroken streak of successful notes. Here's how the new songs stacked up, and here's how I did:
STORY OF MY LIFE by Social Distortion from "Greatest Hits" (2007) (originally 1990)
BAND 2/7 GUITAR 2/7 DRUM 3/7 VOCALS 1/7 BASS 1/7
59,132 3 stars 91% 56 note streak
Notes: "Story of My Life" is long and tedious. It starts with one green note, a long green note, and then 2 together, and then repeats a similar pattern on seemingly random colors, with an occasional burst of, like, 6 notes in a row, real close together. There are maybe four orange notes in the whole song, they're not close to other notes, and you can see 'em coming a mile off. Bassists, keep your fingers green-to-blue and take the orange ones as they come. And don't stay on red-to-orange, just hit the orange note and then come on back. This song felt like it was ten minutes long, but I'm just out of practice. It ain't a short song; I'd guess six minutes; Wikipedia gives it as 5:48. Close.
Oh, and though my guitar reported half battery strength, the batteries died partway in. I just turned the guitar back on and kept rockin. After the THIRD death, I changed batteries - and started over. So it's not a true sightread, per se. Close enough though. And it ain't like I did great. Onto "Poison"...
POISON by Alice Cooper from the album "Trash" (1989)
BAND 3/7 GUITAR 5/7 DRUM 2/7 VOCALS 2/7 BASS 2/7
22,892 3 stars 79% 30 note streak
Notes: "Poison" starts out easy as hell, with two sets of two green notes and then a series of long notes on the red-to-orange track, so switch down as soon as the green goes away. Once the long notes are gone, it gets kinda random, with a lot of jumping around and then a long series of notes, with every seventh or eighth just a little off. I got up to half my overdrive, but was afraid to use it, because all the overdrive notes were on those one-off trick parts I couldn't nail. After getting up to 75% on pure chance, I went ahead and went, and even with overdrive (each note counting double) I dipped into the red, but held on for the whole song, which thankfully wasn't long. I could perhaps do better with practice, but this song's really for the real fast-fingered guitarists who can just fly all over the controller, being where they need to be on a split seconds' notice. There were a couple cruel tricks, but mostly it was just straightforward.
Now it's onto bed... I actually intended to follow up those sorry performances with me owning all over "Say it Ain't So" or "Orange Crush" but my wrist is so damn tired (and you'd think being single for 25 years, that wouldn't be a problem...).
In other news though, got some new equipment. Our Xbox 360 got the dreaded Red Rings of Death, so we took it back to Best Buy. Now, Best Buy is the best place to buy electronics, and they're not paying me to say that or anything (they don't know, and probably don't care). The trick is to always spring for the protection plan. Long story short, my camera goes out, and they give me a newer one, since it was actually the bottom of the line of the same brand, but still much better than the one I had. I did however have to buy a new memory card as it used another format. And a new warranty - that's always the gotcha. More recently, we took in a broken wired guitar, they replaced it with a wireless one. Sweet!
So we bring in the Xbox 360 - and now, we paid $350 for the old 20GB "Pro" model. They have the new 60GB "Pro" for $300. After the exchange, since the Xbox is now $50 less, that $50 actually went to us. It covered the warranty renewal (which gives us another year, since it starts now, or rather last week) and they gave us a gift card with the remaining balance. It's like $12! So we got a brand new Xbox 360, a 2-year warranty, and $12 to spend there (most likely on song credits for Rock Band). If you ask me, the Red Rings of Death aren't so dreaded! I think we came out alright!
A couple weeks before this, Jen and I both upgraded our guitars with authentic albeit entry-level guitar straps from First Act - they make a bunch of entry-level musician equipment, most of which can be used by Rock Band and Guitar Hero players. Guitar straps, drumsticks, a drum stool, guitar stands, a lot of nice stuff. (No, they're not paying me to type either - nobody is.) So we got their straps, and while they are sturdier, they still scrape my neck on long setlists. Here's what I did: We're in Walmart last night, and I got this thing meant for seatbelts. It's like a wooly sock thingy that goes around the strap for comfort. I put it on my guitar strap and it feels great. It does tend to slip as I adjust the guitar, so I'll have to work on something to hold it in place. Axel Steel - again, our drummer - is pretty demanding during practice. I'm talking about playing for 4-5 hours straight (well, with breaks - him and Jimmi Rivers (think Bret Hart), our guitarist, are pretty heavy smokers, they can't go too long without a Newport, which works great for me when I'm out of practice.
Now, I hope you realize these band names are made up. Well, they're the names we use in the game. I'm Ben Sisko, named after the captain on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Kinda look like him, but younger and with Costello glasses. Jen's Aura Jo, and the other guys, well, I haven't asked their permission to name them publicly, so they get called by their stage names up here. And Aura Jo on vocals, Jimmi Rivers on guitar, Axel Steel on drums, and last but not least Ben Sisko on bass, we're DysS\MemB/EreD. Don't laugh, either, dammit, we came in 3rd place at the Carolina Gaming Summit Rock Band 2 tournament in Goldsboro, NC this past February, and the 8 guys who bested us couldn't be nicer guys, even though the ones who came in 1st got their ticket to the finals by beating the event promotor's kids. A little bit of backstage trickery there, but they beat us fair and square, so it's all good.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Disturbed for Rock Band DLC next week
Downloadable content (new songs) just announced for Rock Band; we're getting "Stupify" and "Stricken" by Disturbed.
"Stupify" has got to be one of the best jokes in radio. Most radio stations play the song uncensored, even during the day, even though he's dropping the almighty F-bomb after every other line. I guess because it sounds more like "rock!" or even just a grunt. I wish I saved it (and Jen probably did somewhere), but on the old Disturbed board, in the "Ask the Band" area, someone asked of vocalist David Draiman what he was saying at the end of the lines. His answer was short, sweet, and to the point. He basically said "X fuck, one luck, no rock" where X was the number of F-bombs in the song, and "luck" ends the line "shit outta... luck". It better be uncensored on Rock Band, long after the cat's been let out of the bag. But it probably won't be. If it were just me, I wouldn't get it, but Jen loves 'em, and I gotta admit it would be fun to sing.
"Stricken" on the other hand is an awesome song. Disturbed stuff is hell hard to play in these games. The four we have in Rock Band ("Inside the Fire", "Indestructible", "Perfect Insanity", and "Down With the Sickness") are no pushovers and I've played "Stricken" on Guitar Hero 2 or 3, and it wasn't easy there, either.
Also on deck next Tuesday is "My Old School" and "Black Friday" by Steely Dan. I'd never heard either - where's "Reelin' in the Years"? "My Old School" doesn't sound all that great, but "Black Friday" is a cool song - I might pick it up.
There's also a few songs by Social Distortion. I don't really care for punk, but it's always fun to play in the game, including Social D's other song, "I Was Wrong" included on the Rock Band 2 game disc.
And a song by Elvis Costello, "Radio Radio", but I've never gotten into Costello, and his song on Rock Band 2, the name of which escapes me at the moment, isn't anything special.
...And maybe another obscure song or two, I don't know. Jen left the post up for me and I didn't grab the URL. There's a small army of folks on Twitter who post the updates, you can follow any of them to be kept in the loop, or if you prefer to kick it old-school, you can hit up the announcements page on RockBand.com.
Note: Lot of links here. Clicking on song titles will take you to a YouTube video so you can hear it (most always not the official video). Clicking on artist names will take you to their Wikipedia page. The word "Twitter" goes to my boring-ass Twitter page, and the three links immediately surrounding it go to Twitter pages that post Rock Band updates. The last two are kind of self-explanatory.
"Stupify" has got to be one of the best jokes in radio. Most radio stations play the song uncensored, even during the day, even though he's dropping the almighty F-bomb after every other line. I guess because it sounds more like "rock!" or even just a grunt. I wish I saved it (and Jen probably did somewhere), but on the old Disturbed board, in the "Ask the Band" area, someone asked of vocalist David Draiman what he was saying at the end of the lines. His answer was short, sweet, and to the point. He basically said "X fuck, one luck, no rock" where X was the number of F-bombs in the song, and "luck" ends the line "shit outta... luck". It better be uncensored on Rock Band, long after the cat's been let out of the bag. But it probably won't be. If it were just me, I wouldn't get it, but Jen loves 'em, and I gotta admit it would be fun to sing.
"Stricken" on the other hand is an awesome song. Disturbed stuff is hell hard to play in these games. The four we have in Rock Band ("Inside the Fire", "Indestructible", "Perfect Insanity", and "Down With the Sickness") are no pushovers and I've played "Stricken" on Guitar Hero 2 or 3, and it wasn't easy there, either.
Also on deck next Tuesday is "My Old School" and "Black Friday" by Steely Dan. I'd never heard either - where's "Reelin' in the Years"? "My Old School" doesn't sound all that great, but "Black Friday" is a cool song - I might pick it up.
There's also a few songs by Social Distortion. I don't really care for punk, but it's always fun to play in the game, including Social D's other song, "I Was Wrong" included on the Rock Band 2 game disc.
And a song by Elvis Costello, "Radio Radio", but I've never gotten into Costello, and his song on Rock Band 2, the name of which escapes me at the moment, isn't anything special.
...And maybe another obscure song or two, I don't know. Jen left the post up for me and I didn't grab the URL. There's a small army of folks on Twitter who post the updates, you can follow any of them to be kept in the loop, or if you prefer to kick it old-school, you can hit up the announcements page on RockBand.com.
Note: Lot of links here. Clicking on song titles will take you to a YouTube video so you can hear it (most always not the official video). Clicking on artist names will take you to their Wikipedia page. The word "Twitter" goes to my boring-ass Twitter page, and the three links immediately surrounding it go to Twitter pages that post Rock Band updates. The last two are kind of self-explanatory.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tech News: March 2009
Haven't done one of these in a while. Pick a few news stories and pick 'em apart. There have been slim pickings in the news as of late, but I was able to find a couple at a glance tonight.
India unveils world's cheapest car
Ooh, I want one. The good news? For $2000 (or $2200, sources differ on this) you can get a four-door car, seats four, and in addition to being the world's cheapest car, it's among the smallest as well. "Smaller than a Mini Cooper" small. And it gets 47 miles to the gallon. The bad news... no heater, no A/C, no automatic transmission, and no radio. Top speed of 65mph... and you might get teased for driving what's being called a street-legal lawnmower. But the good news in that is that for the higher-end model with all of those features is still only $3800.
It must not ever get real cold in India. No heater? You probably couldn't sell a car in North Carolina without a heater. You get in your car which is covered in ice, you scrape the ice off the windshield, what stops it from reforming? And as you race down the road, even if it's only at 45mph, that actually lowers the perceived temperature. You go numb, your little car is now a liability, a hazard to every other car on the road. I can only imagine the problems with selling one up in Wisconsin or somewhere like that.
Still, a little car like that is all most Americans need. Now I'm not one of those Republinazi "do it my way or you're going to hell" types, but most SUV drivers really don't need an urban assault vehicle to carry them to Starbucks for a latte. But, people have issues, and they feel the need to compensate for something, maybe they got picked on in school, maybe they just have underdeveloped genetalia, and need to feel like they're on top of the world. One of these popular celebrities really needs to endorse these small cars, make "small" the new "big".
Oh yeah... they've received over one million orders, but they're only going to make 60,000. Smart, business-wise. Stupid overall, but par for the course. I mean, it's not like we're in a recession or anything.
Rock Band Track Pack: Classic Rock: Coming in May
Good news for those of you playing Rock Band who haven't got your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 connected to the Internet (or have a Wii or PlayStation 2, the former of which hasn't got a hard drive and the latter can't get online). Depending on your system, Harmonix is releasing the third or fourth track pack, 20 songs you can play independent of the original game and its songs. Track Pack 1 was only released for the Wii and the PS2. The first real track pack, available for all four platforms, was Track Pack 2. Then they put out the AC/DC track pack, only 18 songs but all of them top-dollar songs.
Here's how a track pack works. Rock Band isn't just a game, it's really just an interactive media player. Rock Band and Rock Band 2 have three elements: The media player (Quickplay), the songs, and the game (Tour). The track packs are simply the media player and 20 songs. Unfortunately and stupidly, it's the first version of the media player, not the second. That is, it's the Rock Band 1 engine rather than the updated Rock Band 2 engine. Not a big deal, but it's silly that the track packs don't represent the latest and greatest.
On the business side, Rock Band downloads go for $2 apiece, except in special cases where it's an independent artist and the song's only $1, though there are plenty of independent artists up there whose songs cost the same $2 as famous artists. The problem with downloads is that only two of the four consoles Rock Band is available for support them, and the lower-end Xbox 360 doesn't, either, unless it gets upgraded with a hard drive. (You can buy them separately, or in my younger brother-in-law's case, you can have an older sister who sprung for the 120GB drive and wound up with a spare 20GB drive in need of a happy home.) Then, not all PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles are online. Furthermore, for whatever reason, not everyone who can download, does. But they will buy track packs. Harmonix knocks $10 off the price of the 20 downloads, which would be $40, nevermind the cost of the disc and packaging, shipping and handling (to the store) and all that. Because not all the songs on the track pack are songs you'd pay $2 for. They give you some good ones and some not-so-good ones. It depends on your taste, but anyone can look at the list of songs and see songs they'd swap for something else. Some boil down to opinion, but some are just plain fact. Like the Lenny Kravitz song, "Let Love Rule". How about "Are You Gonna Go My Way"? I could do this all day, but instead I'll just post the list and let you decide if it's worth $30 for the lot:
Boston - Peace of Mind (1976)
Boston - Rock and Roll Band (1976)
Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles (1987)
Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia (1987)
Free - All Right Now (1970)
George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Bad to the Bone (1982)
James Gang - Funk #49 (1970)
Jethro Tull - Hymn 43 (1971)
Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule (1989)
Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot (1980)
The Police - Can't Stand Losing You (1978)
The Police - Truth Hits Everybody (1978)
Rush - Closer to the Heart (1977)
Rush - Red Barchetta (1981)
Siouxsie and The Banshees - Kiss Them For Me (1991)
Steve Miller Band - Take the Money and Run (1976)
Steve Miller Band - The Joker (1973)
The Stone Roses - Love Spreads (1994)
The Who - Baba O'Riley (1971)
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes (1971)
Some of those are pretty good. Both of the Who songs are excellent. Bad to the Bone and The Joker are evil if you're a bassist. Pat Benetar's song is fun as hell - for a bassist, at least.
Despite my comments about some songs not being as good as other offerings by the same artist, if I wasn't on Xbox Live, I'd get this in a heartbeat. But at the same time, if I had $30 to spend on Xbox Live and had no downloadable songs, I could come up with 15 songs I'd rather have than these 20 (though the 15 would include some of these). But since I do have DLC, I'll point out that I have all the songs on this list I want, though I don't have Closer to the Heart (Rush) and wouldn't mind having that. We have the Who songs, we have the Steve Miller songs, the first Boston song, the Free song, Bad to the Bone, Funk 49, and the Benetar song. Plus a bunch of other great songs.
India unveils world's cheapest car
Ooh, I want one. The good news? For $2000 (or $2200, sources differ on this) you can get a four-door car, seats four, and in addition to being the world's cheapest car, it's among the smallest as well. "Smaller than a Mini Cooper" small. And it gets 47 miles to the gallon. The bad news... no heater, no A/C, no automatic transmission, and no radio. Top speed of 65mph... and you might get teased for driving what's being called a street-legal lawnmower. But the good news in that is that for the higher-end model with all of those features is still only $3800.
It must not ever get real cold in India. No heater? You probably couldn't sell a car in North Carolina without a heater. You get in your car which is covered in ice, you scrape the ice off the windshield, what stops it from reforming? And as you race down the road, even if it's only at 45mph, that actually lowers the perceived temperature. You go numb, your little car is now a liability, a hazard to every other car on the road. I can only imagine the problems with selling one up in Wisconsin or somewhere like that.
Still, a little car like that is all most Americans need. Now I'm not one of those Republinazi "do it my way or you're going to hell" types, but most SUV drivers really don't need an urban assault vehicle to carry them to Starbucks for a latte. But, people have issues, and they feel the need to compensate for something, maybe they got picked on in school, maybe they just have underdeveloped genetalia, and need to feel like they're on top of the world. One of these popular celebrities really needs to endorse these small cars, make "small" the new "big".
Oh yeah... they've received over one million orders, but they're only going to make 60,000. Smart, business-wise. Stupid overall, but par for the course. I mean, it's not like we're in a recession or anything.
Rock Band Track Pack: Classic Rock: Coming in May
Good news for those of you playing Rock Band who haven't got your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 connected to the Internet (or have a Wii or PlayStation 2, the former of which hasn't got a hard drive and the latter can't get online). Depending on your system, Harmonix is releasing the third or fourth track pack, 20 songs you can play independent of the original game and its songs. Track Pack 1 was only released for the Wii and the PS2. The first real track pack, available for all four platforms, was Track Pack 2. Then they put out the AC/DC track pack, only 18 songs but all of them top-dollar songs.
Here's how a track pack works. Rock Band isn't just a game, it's really just an interactive media player. Rock Band and Rock Band 2 have three elements: The media player (Quickplay), the songs, and the game (Tour). The track packs are simply the media player and 20 songs. Unfortunately and stupidly, it's the first version of the media player, not the second. That is, it's the Rock Band 1 engine rather than the updated Rock Band 2 engine. Not a big deal, but it's silly that the track packs don't represent the latest and greatest.
On the business side, Rock Band downloads go for $2 apiece, except in special cases where it's an independent artist and the song's only $1, though there are plenty of independent artists up there whose songs cost the same $2 as famous artists. The problem with downloads is that only two of the four consoles Rock Band is available for support them, and the lower-end Xbox 360 doesn't, either, unless it gets upgraded with a hard drive. (You can buy them separately, or in my younger brother-in-law's case, you can have an older sister who sprung for the 120GB drive and wound up with a spare 20GB drive in need of a happy home.) Then, not all PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles are online. Furthermore, for whatever reason, not everyone who can download, does. But they will buy track packs. Harmonix knocks $10 off the price of the 20 downloads, which would be $40, nevermind the cost of the disc and packaging, shipping and handling (to the store) and all that. Because not all the songs on the track pack are songs you'd pay $2 for. They give you some good ones and some not-so-good ones. It depends on your taste, but anyone can look at the list of songs and see songs they'd swap for something else. Some boil down to opinion, but some are just plain fact. Like the Lenny Kravitz song, "Let Love Rule". How about "Are You Gonna Go My Way"? I could do this all day, but instead I'll just post the list and let you decide if it's worth $30 for the lot:
Boston - Peace of Mind (1976)
Boston - Rock and Roll Band (1976)
Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles (1987)
Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia (1987)
Free - All Right Now (1970)
George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Bad to the Bone (1982)
James Gang - Funk #49 (1970)
Jethro Tull - Hymn 43 (1971)
Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule (1989)
Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot (1980)
The Police - Can't Stand Losing You (1978)
The Police - Truth Hits Everybody (1978)
Rush - Closer to the Heart (1977)
Rush - Red Barchetta (1981)
Siouxsie and The Banshees - Kiss Them For Me (1991)
Steve Miller Band - Take the Money and Run (1976)
Steve Miller Band - The Joker (1973)
The Stone Roses - Love Spreads (1994)
The Who - Baba O'Riley (1971)
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes (1971)
Some of those are pretty good. Both of the Who songs are excellent. Bad to the Bone and The Joker are evil if you're a bassist. Pat Benetar's song is fun as hell - for a bassist, at least.
Despite my comments about some songs not being as good as other offerings by the same artist, if I wasn't on Xbox Live, I'd get this in a heartbeat. But at the same time, if I had $30 to spend on Xbox Live and had no downloadable songs, I could come up with 15 songs I'd rather have than these 20 (though the 15 would include some of these). But since I do have DLC, I'll point out that I have all the songs on this list I want, though I don't have Closer to the Heart (Rush) and wouldn't mind having that. We have the Who songs, we have the Steve Miller songs, the first Boston song, the Free song, Bad to the Bone, Funk 49, and the Benetar song. Plus a bunch of other great songs.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Music Mysteries #1
There's nothing like a good mystery, especially when it's about something cool, like music, more so if it's about a band we like. I'm sure there are a lot more, but I'm going to look at three of varying degrees of importance.
1. November Rain
The most interesting music mystery I've found is the secrets of the "November Rain" video by Guns n' Roses. A brief history lesson, if you don't mind: In the mid-1980s, Guns n' Roses exploded onto the rock scene with "Appetite for Destruction", still considered a great album 23 years later. Between that and the lesser-known "GnR Lies!" album, Guns n' Roses rose above most hair metal bands (though not enough to be pretentious). That changed with their double album, "Use Your Illusion", volumes 1 and 2. Three videos were done for the double album that were a little different than the other videos, and they were sort of linked, though it wasn't clear why. The strangest one was "November Rain".
Summary of the November Rain video: Tossing and turning in bed, Axl Rose wakes up from what seems like a terrible nightmare. He takes a drink of water and settles back down into bed. We see a symphony playing in an opera hall, and then a wedding, Axl Rose marrying real-life girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. Immediately after the kissing of the bride, guitarist Slash gets up and leaves, performing a wicked solo in the desert. As the couple leave, the newlywed bride looks unhappy. There's an afterparty, which is washed out by rain. Back in the opera hall, Axl, who was playing piano, changes the tune, and Slash gets up on top of the piano to jam. All of a sudden we're back in the church and there's a funeral - for the wife. A quick shot of the open casket shows nothing wrong, makes you wonder how she died, and why. The video ends with Axl crying over her grave, and the ominous note, "Based on the short story Without You by Del James".
Here's where things get interesting. Del James is a friend of Axl's, and as it would come to turn out, they worked together on the video. "Without You" is a short story about a band which is based on Guns n' Roses. Problem is, James' book, "The Language of Fear" was never published widely. After a run of just a couple hundred copies, the publisher went out of business. eBay was new then, and the few existing copies of the book went for hundreds of dollars. For the better part of 15 years, the meaning of November Rain remained a mystery. Axl wasn't saying anything, and the people making a killing on eBay weren't about to threaten their own livelihood by letting others in on it for free. To know, you had to pony up the cash and buy the book, read it, and then hope to make some of your money back. Every few months I'd search for it, and always come up empty.
Well, finally, somebody broke the silence and posted the entire short story online, including Axl's introduction he wrote for the book. The story follows a band called Suicide Solution and its crazy vocalist Mayne Mann, based on Guns n' Roses and Axl Rose. The band's success story mirrors that of GnR - crazy hair metal band puts out a rock ballad which changes everything for them - GnR's was November Rain; Suicide Solution's was Without You. In the story, Mann is newly married (like in the video) but the band is on tour. Mann calls his wife and asks if she'll come along for the last leg of the tour. She says no, she has a life of her own (she's a model or something). Last show on the tour, Mann's got a couple groupies in his bed, and there's a knock at the door. His wife thought to surprise him, but got a surprise of her own. So she went home, put "Without You" on on the stereo, and blew her brains out. Mann gets home, sets the place on fire, and plays along on the piano as his home burns around him. It's a really cool story, actually, and it's told from his point of view.
But wait, Stephanie Seymour didn't blow her brains out in the video. She was clean in the casket - it was an open casket funeral. But here's where things get interesting. Watch the best quality copy you can find of that video, and freeze-frame on the open casket. You'll notice there's a mirror installed. You can only see half of her; the other half is behind that mirror. Funeral homes can do a lot for a corpse, but sometimes damage is too extensive, and that's why we often have closed-casket wakes and funerals when the deceased died a violent death. However, for celebrities, public figures, open-casket is ideal, so they have reconstruction technologies which will pass a passive examination by grieving relatives. The mirror clearly indicates only that half of the body (most likely the face) was able to be reconstructed at all.
So there you have it. The November Rain mystery solved. There was more to the story than the video let on. The wedding and funeral were not on the same day. They were shown as such to illustrate the importance of the two events and to show that what happened in between doesn't matter (as much). He cheated on her with a groupie or a pair of groupies, and she blew her brains out. (Like Axl's worth it! But that's another matter.) And somehow, "Estranged" and "Don't Cry" tie in as well.
At some point I'll do #2, and it concerns a more recent band, though a significantly less important one.
1. November Rain
The most interesting music mystery I've found is the secrets of the "November Rain" video by Guns n' Roses. A brief history lesson, if you don't mind: In the mid-1980s, Guns n' Roses exploded onto the rock scene with "Appetite for Destruction", still considered a great album 23 years later. Between that and the lesser-known "GnR Lies!" album, Guns n' Roses rose above most hair metal bands (though not enough to be pretentious). That changed with their double album, "Use Your Illusion", volumes 1 and 2. Three videos were done for the double album that were a little different than the other videos, and they were sort of linked, though it wasn't clear why. The strangest one was "November Rain".
Summary of the November Rain video: Tossing and turning in bed, Axl Rose wakes up from what seems like a terrible nightmare. He takes a drink of water and settles back down into bed. We see a symphony playing in an opera hall, and then a wedding, Axl Rose marrying real-life girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. Immediately after the kissing of the bride, guitarist Slash gets up and leaves, performing a wicked solo in the desert. As the couple leave, the newlywed bride looks unhappy. There's an afterparty, which is washed out by rain. Back in the opera hall, Axl, who was playing piano, changes the tune, and Slash gets up on top of the piano to jam. All of a sudden we're back in the church and there's a funeral - for the wife. A quick shot of the open casket shows nothing wrong, makes you wonder how she died, and why. The video ends with Axl crying over her grave, and the ominous note, "Based on the short story Without You by Del James".
Here's where things get interesting. Del James is a friend of Axl's, and as it would come to turn out, they worked together on the video. "Without You" is a short story about a band which is based on Guns n' Roses. Problem is, James' book, "The Language of Fear" was never published widely. After a run of just a couple hundred copies, the publisher went out of business. eBay was new then, and the few existing copies of the book went for hundreds of dollars. For the better part of 15 years, the meaning of November Rain remained a mystery. Axl wasn't saying anything, and the people making a killing on eBay weren't about to threaten their own livelihood by letting others in on it for free. To know, you had to pony up the cash and buy the book, read it, and then hope to make some of your money back. Every few months I'd search for it, and always come up empty.
Well, finally, somebody broke the silence and posted the entire short story online, including Axl's introduction he wrote for the book. The story follows a band called Suicide Solution and its crazy vocalist Mayne Mann, based on Guns n' Roses and Axl Rose. The band's success story mirrors that of GnR - crazy hair metal band puts out a rock ballad which changes everything for them - GnR's was November Rain; Suicide Solution's was Without You. In the story, Mann is newly married (like in the video) but the band is on tour. Mann calls his wife and asks if she'll come along for the last leg of the tour. She says no, she has a life of her own (she's a model or something). Last show on the tour, Mann's got a couple groupies in his bed, and there's a knock at the door. His wife thought to surprise him, but got a surprise of her own. So she went home, put "Without You" on on the stereo, and blew her brains out. Mann gets home, sets the place on fire, and plays along on the piano as his home burns around him. It's a really cool story, actually, and it's told from his point of view.
But wait, Stephanie Seymour didn't blow her brains out in the video. She was clean in the casket - it was an open casket funeral. But here's where things get interesting. Watch the best quality copy you can find of that video, and freeze-frame on the open casket. You'll notice there's a mirror installed. You can only see half of her; the other half is behind that mirror. Funeral homes can do a lot for a corpse, but sometimes damage is too extensive, and that's why we often have closed-casket wakes and funerals when the deceased died a violent death. However, for celebrities, public figures, open-casket is ideal, so they have reconstruction technologies which will pass a passive examination by grieving relatives. The mirror clearly indicates only that half of the body (most likely the face) was able to be reconstructed at all.
So there you have it. The November Rain mystery solved. There was more to the story than the video let on. The wedding and funeral were not on the same day. They were shown as such to illustrate the importance of the two events and to show that what happened in between doesn't matter (as much). He cheated on her with a groupie or a pair of groupies, and she blew her brains out. (Like Axl's worth it! But that's another matter.) And somehow, "Estranged" and "Don't Cry" tie in as well.
At some point I'll do #2, and it concerns a more recent band, though a significantly less important one.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The big three zero zero
As opposed to the big three zero coming in just under six months, that is... No, Saturday night (or rather, Sunday morning) we got our 300th song on Rock Band. At the time of this writing, there are 614 songs available for the Rock Band platform. We've got 300 of them. And that's a good thing, because we don't want most of the other 314. There are a few I wouldn't mind having, but all in all I'm proud to say that we have the best of the lot.
For the curious, #300 was "War Zone" by Rob Zombie. It's the only song of his in the game. I passed on it when it came out because I'm not too fond of the song, but admittedly, it's fun to play. We let Jen's brother pick the 300th song because he got us into the game.
We still have enough for one more song, which will most likely be "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benetar when it comes out Tuesday morning. That'll put us at 301.
Update: 9 April 2009:
We never got that 301st track, so we still have enough Microsoft points to get another one. At this point we're trying to decide between "Heartbreaker" and one of the Toby Keith songs. I could go either way on that one. However, a friend of Jen's from the Disturbed board bought Pearl Jam's "Ten" album, which came with a code to download 3 of their songs for free, so we used that, and got a couple songs I've never heard of and a live version of "Alive", so, thanks Herb for that! And that puts the official count at 303.
Update: 1 May 2009:
The official count now stands at 316 (Steve Austin reference FTW) with "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction and "Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother. And we have points to buy nine more. Tuesday (5 May - Cinco de Mayo) it's "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Ant Farm (covering Michael Jackson), "Naked Eye" by Luscious Jackson, and "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Bros. band we'll be getting. That will leave us with credits for six more. Maybe a couple more Stevie Ray Vaughan?
For the curious, #300 was "War Zone" by Rob Zombie. It's the only song of his in the game. I passed on it when it came out because I'm not too fond of the song, but admittedly, it's fun to play. We let Jen's brother pick the 300th song because he got us into the game.
We still have enough for one more song, which will most likely be "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benetar when it comes out Tuesday morning. That'll put us at 301.
Update: 9 April 2009:
We never got that 301st track, so we still have enough Microsoft points to get another one. At this point we're trying to decide between "Heartbreaker" and one of the Toby Keith songs. I could go either way on that one. However, a friend of Jen's from the Disturbed board bought Pearl Jam's "Ten" album, which came with a code to download 3 of their songs for free, so we used that, and got a couple songs I've never heard of and a live version of "Alive", so, thanks Herb for that! And that puts the official count at 303.
Update: 1 May 2009:
The official count now stands at 316 (Steve Austin reference FTW) with "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction and "Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother. And we have points to buy nine more. Tuesday (5 May - Cinco de Mayo) it's "Smooth Criminal" by Alien Ant Farm (covering Michael Jackson), "Naked Eye" by Luscious Jackson, and "Midnight Rider" by the Allman Bros. band we'll be getting. That will leave us with credits for six more. Maybe a couple more Stevie Ray Vaughan?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Two games Harmonix needs in the Rock Band family
Last week I wrote about five songs that Harmonix needs to license for Rock Band. One of them was "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce. A day or two after I posted that article, I heard about Activision's forthcoming offering, "Guitar Hero's Greatest Hits" which will combine the best of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (those two previously only available for PlayStation 2), Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock into one big game. What's more, all of the songs will be master recordings, not cheap covers. (The covers were OK, but the masters are preferrable.) And what's best of all, "Through the Fire and Flames" is confirmed!
Oh yes. We will be getting that.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Rather than simply suggesting more songs, I now write about two expansion sets Harmonix needs to bring to the Rock Band family:
1. Rock Band: Adult Edition
One of the biggest problems with the Rock Band franchise is that, in order to get the coveted T rating which allows kids to buy games without parental permission, they censor songs and a lot of good songs would be impossible to do, because of the censorship. Disturbed's "Down With the Sickness" was completely butchered, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Sir Psycho Sexy" was just a mistake. The T rating affords them the ability to use songs with suggestive themes ("Sir Psycho" is about a sex fiend who, among other things, rapes a "lady cop" who pulls him over; "Sickness" is about a guy killing his abusive mother); they just can't use most words. Every now and then they do something cool. On the Rock Band 2 disc, "Man in the Box" substitutes words that are phoenetically similar enough to credit you for singing the original lyrics. "...buried in my shit" becomes "buried in my pit", and "...shove my nose in shit" becomes "...shove my nose in spit". And they let Weezer get by with saying "bitch" (rather, "beotch") in the downloadable song "Troublemaker". Why they don't go the Battlestar Galactica route and replace "fuck" with "frak" (hey, it worked for the Sci-Fi channel on cable) is beyond me.
So they can't taint the main games, but as far as I can tell, nothing at all stops them from making an adult edition of Rock Band. First, redo the songs that were butchered with their original lyrics. Second, include songs that aren't just profane for the sake of being profane, but rather good songs that would never be usable on a T-rated Rock Band title, so that groups of adults who play Rock Band (like me, my wife, her brother, and our friend, and many others) can enjoy some more adult-oriented songs. And since some of these songs have hidden joke songs that can be unlocked near the end (e.g. "Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld" from South Park on the first Rock Band), throw in a few overly profane songs for shits & giggles. That new "Death to All But Metal" by Steel Panther, for example, sounds fun to play on all instruments (especially sing) but it's way too obscene to even consider. Another good "joke song" would be "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jello. Borderline able to go in the T-rated game, it's still kind of harsh. Or how about going all out and doing "Fuck the World" by Insane Clown Posse, just for the line, "Don't bother trying to analyze these rhymes. In this song I say 'fuck' 93 times!" I haven't counted, but I don't doubt him.
The new GTA game on the DS drops two F-bombs in the intro movie alone. I thought I was being so funny modding my DS just to watch a porn clip on a Game Boy, and then Nintendo goes and proves that adult content isn't entirely outside the realm of what they can do with their handhelds. Kind of moots my point, but it was still fun to make. So if the Game Boy can swear, what makes Rock Band so puritan? There's nothing puritan about any rock star's life... unless your band is called Petra... so why not drop the pretense, at least for one game that, sure, kids won't be able to get at, but older players will eat right up, and of course like all the other games, you'd be able to integrate it into your master setlist by exporting the songs to the Xbox hard drive.
2. Rock Band Pro
Rock Band games are fairly balanced across the board. You've got easy games and hard games, and on the disc, it all balances out. While most of the downloadable songs lean toward the easy tiers, Rock Band's hardest songs, namely Yngwie Malmsteen's three, and Rude Mood by Stevie Ray Vaughan, are downloadable. But these games tend to wear out quickly for the best gamers out there. People who can master songs in no time. You see them on YouTube and score-tracking sites like ScoreHero. The top 100 or so scores all have 100%; once they can hit all the notes, they work on gaming the system to score the most points possible (overdrive timing). Even if you can top the high score by just a point or two, it's worth striving for.
My second suggestion, therefore, is to release a collection of the hardest downloadable content, plus some new stuff sidelined under the excuse that it would probably be too hard for most players. Songs that shouldn't be in the game because they'd just be stupidly hard, but a package that would appeal to the best of the best. I like telling people who are good, "You think you're good at Green Grass, but could you hang with Nightwish if Harmonix released some as DLC?" And then I'll put on the live version of "Wishmaster" and blow their minds. The song itself is a beast, but the live version is something else. Absolutely not to be fucked with. Might as well create a new difficulty tier in and call it "You've already failed". And then throw in some speed metal, and thrash, some death metal, in addition to the symphonic metal. And, as Stevie Ray Vaughan's DLC shows, songs don't need to be metal to be hard to play. Now that we have Yngwie Malmsteen, we need some Steve Vai. We need some Joe Satriani. We have blues. How about some jazz? Jazz is easy to make fun of, but try playing it.
The premise would be simple. In Rock Band, you start out as a garage band and end up touring the world, but even as you do so, the quality of the songs you're playing doesn't increase much. Rock Band Pro would put you in the shoes of a gifted musician, and your rise would not be in terms of venues played, but rather more like the respect of other musicians.
It seems like Harmonix answered Guitar Hero: Aerosmith with AC/DC: Rock Band Track Pack. Are they really answering Guitar Hero: Metallica with The Beatles: Rock Band? Sure, the Beatles are a good band, but will any of their songs offer a challenge? How about Nightwish: Rock Band Pro?
Oh yes. We will be getting that.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Rather than simply suggesting more songs, I now write about two expansion sets Harmonix needs to bring to the Rock Band family:
1. Rock Band: Adult Edition
One of the biggest problems with the Rock Band franchise is that, in order to get the coveted T rating which allows kids to buy games without parental permission, they censor songs and a lot of good songs would be impossible to do, because of the censorship. Disturbed's "Down With the Sickness" was completely butchered, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Sir Psycho Sexy" was just a mistake. The T rating affords them the ability to use songs with suggestive themes ("Sir Psycho" is about a sex fiend who, among other things, rapes a "lady cop" who pulls him over; "Sickness" is about a guy killing his abusive mother); they just can't use most words. Every now and then they do something cool. On the Rock Band 2 disc, "Man in the Box" substitutes words that are phoenetically similar enough to credit you for singing the original lyrics. "...buried in my shit" becomes "buried in my pit", and "...shove my nose in shit" becomes "...shove my nose in spit". And they let Weezer get by with saying "bitch" (rather, "beotch") in the downloadable song "Troublemaker". Why they don't go the Battlestar Galactica route and replace "fuck" with "frak" (hey, it worked for the Sci-Fi channel on cable) is beyond me.
So they can't taint the main games, but as far as I can tell, nothing at all stops them from making an adult edition of Rock Band. First, redo the songs that were butchered with their original lyrics. Second, include songs that aren't just profane for the sake of being profane, but rather good songs that would never be usable on a T-rated Rock Band title, so that groups of adults who play Rock Band (like me, my wife, her brother, and our friend, and many others) can enjoy some more adult-oriented songs. And since some of these songs have hidden joke songs that can be unlocked near the end (e.g. "Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld" from South Park on the first Rock Band), throw in a few overly profane songs for shits & giggles. That new "Death to All But Metal" by Steel Panther, for example, sounds fun to play on all instruments (especially sing) but it's way too obscene to even consider. Another good "joke song" would be "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jello. Borderline able to go in the T-rated game, it's still kind of harsh. Or how about going all out and doing "Fuck the World" by Insane Clown Posse, just for the line, "Don't bother trying to analyze these rhymes. In this song I say 'fuck' 93 times!" I haven't counted, but I don't doubt him.
The new GTA game on the DS drops two F-bombs in the intro movie alone. I thought I was being so funny modding my DS just to watch a porn clip on a Game Boy, and then Nintendo goes and proves that adult content isn't entirely outside the realm of what they can do with their handhelds. Kind of moots my point, but it was still fun to make. So if the Game Boy can swear, what makes Rock Band so puritan? There's nothing puritan about any rock star's life... unless your band is called Petra... so why not drop the pretense, at least for one game that, sure, kids won't be able to get at, but older players will eat right up, and of course like all the other games, you'd be able to integrate it into your master setlist by exporting the songs to the Xbox hard drive.
2. Rock Band Pro
Rock Band games are fairly balanced across the board. You've got easy games and hard games, and on the disc, it all balances out. While most of the downloadable songs lean toward the easy tiers, Rock Band's hardest songs, namely Yngwie Malmsteen's three, and Rude Mood by Stevie Ray Vaughan, are downloadable. But these games tend to wear out quickly for the best gamers out there. People who can master songs in no time. You see them on YouTube and score-tracking sites like ScoreHero. The top 100 or so scores all have 100%; once they can hit all the notes, they work on gaming the system to score the most points possible (overdrive timing). Even if you can top the high score by just a point or two, it's worth striving for.
My second suggestion, therefore, is to release a collection of the hardest downloadable content, plus some new stuff sidelined under the excuse that it would probably be too hard for most players. Songs that shouldn't be in the game because they'd just be stupidly hard, but a package that would appeal to the best of the best. I like telling people who are good, "You think you're good at Green Grass, but could you hang with Nightwish if Harmonix released some as DLC?" And then I'll put on the live version of "Wishmaster" and blow their minds. The song itself is a beast, but the live version is something else. Absolutely not to be fucked with. Might as well create a new difficulty tier in and call it "You've already failed". And then throw in some speed metal, and thrash, some death metal, in addition to the symphonic metal. And, as Stevie Ray Vaughan's DLC shows, songs don't need to be metal to be hard to play. Now that we have Yngwie Malmsteen, we need some Steve Vai. We need some Joe Satriani. We have blues. How about some jazz? Jazz is easy to make fun of, but try playing it.
The premise would be simple. In Rock Band, you start out as a garage band and end up touring the world, but even as you do so, the quality of the songs you're playing doesn't increase much. Rock Band Pro would put you in the shoes of a gifted musician, and your rise would not be in terms of venues played, but rather more like the respect of other musicians.
It seems like Harmonix answered Guitar Hero: Aerosmith with AC/DC: Rock Band Track Pack. Are they really answering Guitar Hero: Metallica with The Beatles: Rock Band? Sure, the Beatles are a good band, but will any of their songs offer a challenge? How about Nightwish: Rock Band Pro?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
5 Songs That Need to Be in Rock Band
1. "Scotty Doesn't Know" by Lustra
If the title of this song isn't familiar, you NEED to go out and see Euro Trip RIGHT NOW. The movie's about average among the great college humor movies of the last 30 years, but then again, it does have its moments. This hilariously dirty song about Fiona and Scotty's sham of a relationship told from the point of view of Fiona's backdoor man, who makes a big joke about everything, and it's a lot of fun to listen to, and sounds fun as hell to play for all four instruments. Best of all, nobody's heard of Lustra, even people who have seen the movie. You might remember the song, but the band is still an independent act out of Southern California. Harmonix should have no problem licensing their song, which would only make lots of money for both parties. And speaking of parties, it would become the essential song to play at a Rock Band party, along with The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)".
2. "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce
Yeah, I went there. But seriously now. Not only is TtFaF the sole measuring stick by which all virtual guitars are compared, it's the first song most people think of when you talk about Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, the last Guitar Hero title most Rock Band loyalists played. Before Rock Band came out, GH3 was THE music game to play, and while it had a lot of great songs which will still be legendary 25 years from now, the song that anybody who beat it will remember it for is "Fire and Flames". The song is nearly impossible to pass on Expert and it's solely responsible for clever gamers to rig "bots" to pass songs for them. God challenging Satan to a duel with this song at the end of the tutorial helps as well. Onto the gameplay, though. We know the guitar is challenging - or do we? When you play "Fire and Flames" in Guitar Hero 3, you're doing the work of two guitarists. Watch the video - during the solo, the guitarists trade off. They clearly show it. Put it on Rock Band and divide the work in half. It'll still be hard as hell, but people who do good on Rock Band's "Green Grass and High Tides" and Rock Band 2's "Painkiller" shouldn't have too hard a time getting through it. It sounds like a blast on drums, and it'd clearly be epic to sing. The only problem is that it could be seen as too closely tied to the Guitar Hero brand and it's widely hated by Rock Band loyalists, at least, in words on message boards. Put it out and watch them all download it to prove themselves on the other three instruments. I know I want a crack at it on bass. I might not be able to pass it on Expert, but I know I can on Medium and I can probably get Hard after a few tries.
3. "The Pursuit" by Evans Blue
I really don't know how to classify Evans Blue. They sound like Tool, but not as creepy. Maybe a cross between Tool and Disturbed, but with a vocalist who is completely beyond compare. As for the singing, you might label it as emo, and it's certainly emotional rock, very emotional, with lyrics about relationships, most of them amazing failures, but the music is beautiful and angry at the same time, but it's a controlled anger, more of a dark passion. Both of their albums proceed like a dream, especially their second and final album. "The Pursuit" is both an abbreviation of the title, "The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends", which is also the last line of the song, delivered after an epic buildup. This band has many great songs as both of their albums are nearly perfect for the kind of music it is (and how many bands can you say put out as many near-perfect albums as albums they put out in total?); other candidates include "Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now", "Q (The Best One of Our Lives)", "Kiss the Flag", "In a Red Dress and Alone", "Beg", and even the two songs that got heavy rotation on rock radio in 2006, "Cold (But I'm Still Here)" and "Over". Unfortunately, the band broke up last year - well, technically they just fired their vocalist, who was better than two-thirds of what made them special to their fans in the first place. While some bands, most notably AC/DC, have come back stronger than ever after changing vocalists, only time will tell.
4. something in Latin
Doesn't matter what. My picks are "Salva Nos" by Yuki Kajiura, the FIFTH version of the song from her "Fiction" album, and "One Winged Angel" by Nobuo Uematsu. The metal version used in the second Final Fantasy movie, "Advent Children". See, with all these wicked instrumentals coming out with "NO vocal part" as exclaimed in red when you go to buy the song, e.g. "YYZ" by Rush and "Rude Mood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vocalists need a song that is clearly a song for vocalists, but not a pushover, either. Rock Band has enough of them, they're called "Testify" and "Give it Away", two songs I can gold star in Performance Mode (track invisible) and I suck at singing. No, vocalists need a challenge beyond reading words on a screen (or knowing them by heart) and matching tone and pitch. Once you can do that, the hardest part seems to be singing songs by vocalists with certain special tones, such as Geddy Lee from Rush, or Bon Scott or Brian Johnson of AC/DC. Or if you're a guy, the female vocals will get you every time. But change the language, use one that nobody really speaks, and what you have would be to vocals what "Through the Fire and Flames" is to Guitar Hero guitarists. The new measuring stick. Oh, and both of those songs would be good on the other instruments, though "Salva Nos" is techno and would have to be translated. Not an impossible task. On the business side, I imagine either of those songs would be fairly easy for Harmonix to license.
5. "The Pharaoh Sails to Orion" by Nightwish
I used to say that the biggest reason Nightwish wasn't in Rock Band (clearly a match made in heaven) is that Harmonix didn't want to deal with a huge increase in customers returning broken instruments, but the release of Yngwie Malmsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan songs recently have shot a few big holes in that theory. The music is just as fast and wickedly twisted as DragonForce's "Fire and Flames" and would be a good answer to that song for the Rock Band platform. I would actually prefer that they wait for a future platform which would allow for dual vocalists (duets) as the male and female parts go so well together on this track. Activision has dealt a decent slap to Rock Band with the announcement of a Within Temptation song to go on sale next week. Within Temptation are one of the more successful European metal bands trying to copy the formula of Nightwish's second and third albums. While nobody's actually done it (including Nightwish themselves, especially after breaking up and re-forming with a new vocalist), Within Temptation have come the closest. Seems to me Harmonix can either do nothing and hope that their less-experienced customers who haven't heard either band won't notice... or they can trump Activision and drop some Nightwish. Pretty much anything from "Oceanborn" or "Wishmaster" - the live version of the latter's title track would win on all kinds of levels. We're talking metal somewhere between Iron Maiden and DragonForce with vocals in the opera range. Think Enya. But singing to DragonForce or Iron Maiden. And you wind up with something that, for years, I didn't think was possible. And it pretty much is impossible in America - you've got to go to Europe for music like that. The closest thing we have is very heavily diluted - I think Evanuisance is still the closest American approximation, and it's like comparing Dora the Explorer to Akira - both are animated, but one is infinitely more complex.
There are hundreds of songs that should be in Rock Band. The oldest compilation album I still have to this day that I made contains some of the best songs of the 1990s, and a lot of those bands aren't in the game. Sure, you have Alice in Chains, but what about Soul Asylum, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers (Bob Dylan's son Jakob's band), Collective Soul, Live? Where's Marilyn Manson? He's got to have a song that's both clean enough for the game and popular enough for the fans. What about Korn? Oh, and let's not forget two of the best of all time, Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin, are still absent. So are The Beatles, but that's coming in September. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Seger, The Doors, The Eagles, all on Guitar Hero World Tour but nothing for Rock Band. So while one can hardly fault the selection so far (592 songs at the time of this writing), there is still a long way to go.
If the title of this song isn't familiar, you NEED to go out and see Euro Trip RIGHT NOW. The movie's about average among the great college humor movies of the last 30 years, but then again, it does have its moments. This hilariously dirty song about Fiona and Scotty's sham of a relationship told from the point of view of Fiona's backdoor man, who makes a big joke about everything, and it's a lot of fun to listen to, and sounds fun as hell to play for all four instruments. Best of all, nobody's heard of Lustra, even people who have seen the movie. You might remember the song, but the band is still an independent act out of Southern California. Harmonix should have no problem licensing their song, which would only make lots of money for both parties. And speaking of parties, it would become the essential song to play at a Rock Band party, along with The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)".
2. "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce
Yeah, I went there. But seriously now. Not only is TtFaF the sole measuring stick by which all virtual guitars are compared, it's the first song most people think of when you talk about Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, the last Guitar Hero title most Rock Band loyalists played. Before Rock Band came out, GH3 was THE music game to play, and while it had a lot of great songs which will still be legendary 25 years from now, the song that anybody who beat it will remember it for is "Fire and Flames". The song is nearly impossible to pass on Expert and it's solely responsible for clever gamers to rig "bots" to pass songs for them. God challenging Satan to a duel with this song at the end of the tutorial helps as well. Onto the gameplay, though. We know the guitar is challenging - or do we? When you play "Fire and Flames" in Guitar Hero 3, you're doing the work of two guitarists. Watch the video - during the solo, the guitarists trade off. They clearly show it. Put it on Rock Band and divide the work in half. It'll still be hard as hell, but people who do good on Rock Band's "Green Grass and High Tides" and Rock Band 2's "Painkiller" shouldn't have too hard a time getting through it. It sounds like a blast on drums, and it'd clearly be epic to sing. The only problem is that it could be seen as too closely tied to the Guitar Hero brand and it's widely hated by Rock Band loyalists, at least, in words on message boards. Put it out and watch them all download it to prove themselves on the other three instruments. I know I want a crack at it on bass. I might not be able to pass it on Expert, but I know I can on Medium and I can probably get Hard after a few tries.
3. "The Pursuit" by Evans Blue
I really don't know how to classify Evans Blue. They sound like Tool, but not as creepy. Maybe a cross between Tool and Disturbed, but with a vocalist who is completely beyond compare. As for the singing, you might label it as emo, and it's certainly emotional rock, very emotional, with lyrics about relationships, most of them amazing failures, but the music is beautiful and angry at the same time, but it's a controlled anger, more of a dark passion. Both of their albums proceed like a dream, especially their second and final album. "The Pursuit" is both an abbreviation of the title, "The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends", which is also the last line of the song, delivered after an epic buildup. This band has many great songs as both of their albums are nearly perfect for the kind of music it is (and how many bands can you say put out as many near-perfect albums as albums they put out in total?); other candidates include "Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now", "Q (The Best One of Our Lives)", "Kiss the Flag", "In a Red Dress and Alone", "Beg", and even the two songs that got heavy rotation on rock radio in 2006, "Cold (But I'm Still Here)" and "Over". Unfortunately, the band broke up last year - well, technically they just fired their vocalist, who was better than two-thirds of what made them special to their fans in the first place. While some bands, most notably AC/DC, have come back stronger than ever after changing vocalists, only time will tell.
4. something in Latin
Doesn't matter what. My picks are "Salva Nos" by Yuki Kajiura, the FIFTH version of the song from her "Fiction" album, and "One Winged Angel" by Nobuo Uematsu. The metal version used in the second Final Fantasy movie, "Advent Children". See, with all these wicked instrumentals coming out with "NO vocal part" as exclaimed in red when you go to buy the song, e.g. "YYZ" by Rush and "Rude Mood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vocalists need a song that is clearly a song for vocalists, but not a pushover, either. Rock Band has enough of them, they're called "Testify" and "Give it Away", two songs I can gold star in Performance Mode (track invisible) and I suck at singing. No, vocalists need a challenge beyond reading words on a screen (or knowing them by heart) and matching tone and pitch. Once you can do that, the hardest part seems to be singing songs by vocalists with certain special tones, such as Geddy Lee from Rush, or Bon Scott or Brian Johnson of AC/DC. Or if you're a guy, the female vocals will get you every time. But change the language, use one that nobody really speaks, and what you have would be to vocals what "Through the Fire and Flames" is to Guitar Hero guitarists. The new measuring stick. Oh, and both of those songs would be good on the other instruments, though "Salva Nos" is techno and would have to be translated. Not an impossible task. On the business side, I imagine either of those songs would be fairly easy for Harmonix to license.
5. "The Pharaoh Sails to Orion" by Nightwish
I used to say that the biggest reason Nightwish wasn't in Rock Band (clearly a match made in heaven) is that Harmonix didn't want to deal with a huge increase in customers returning broken instruments, but the release of Yngwie Malmsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan songs recently have shot a few big holes in that theory. The music is just as fast and wickedly twisted as DragonForce's "Fire and Flames" and would be a good answer to that song for the Rock Band platform. I would actually prefer that they wait for a future platform which would allow for dual vocalists (duets) as the male and female parts go so well together on this track. Activision has dealt a decent slap to Rock Band with the announcement of a Within Temptation song to go on sale next week. Within Temptation are one of the more successful European metal bands trying to copy the formula of Nightwish's second and third albums. While nobody's actually done it (including Nightwish themselves, especially after breaking up and re-forming with a new vocalist), Within Temptation have come the closest. Seems to me Harmonix can either do nothing and hope that their less-experienced customers who haven't heard either band won't notice... or they can trump Activision and drop some Nightwish. Pretty much anything from "Oceanborn" or "Wishmaster" - the live version of the latter's title track would win on all kinds of levels. We're talking metal somewhere between Iron Maiden and DragonForce with vocals in the opera range. Think Enya. But singing to DragonForce or Iron Maiden. And you wind up with something that, for years, I didn't think was possible. And it pretty much is impossible in America - you've got to go to Europe for music like that. The closest thing we have is very heavily diluted - I think Evanuisance is still the closest American approximation, and it's like comparing Dora the Explorer to Akira - both are animated, but one is infinitely more complex.
There are hundreds of songs that should be in Rock Band. The oldest compilation album I still have to this day that I made contains some of the best songs of the 1990s, and a lot of those bands aren't in the game. Sure, you have Alice in Chains, but what about Soul Asylum, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers (Bob Dylan's son Jakob's band), Collective Soul, Live? Where's Marilyn Manson? He's got to have a song that's both clean enough for the game and popular enough for the fans. What about Korn? Oh, and let's not forget two of the best of all time, Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin, are still absent. So are The Beatles, but that's coming in September. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Seger, The Doors, The Eagles, all on Guitar Hero World Tour but nothing for Rock Band. So while one can hardly fault the selection so far (592 songs at the time of this writing), there is still a long way to go.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
New Music Buzz: January 2009
New Music Buzz: January 2009
I don't know if I'll be able to keep this as a recurring series up here, as I don't discover new music nearly as often as I'd like to, but over the last month I've heard a lot of new stuff that's showing some real promise. Not sure if it'll get picked up by popular radio, but it's certainly worth looking at if the genre interests you. These first two are from Rock Band 2, and both come from the free 20 songs that can be downloaded with a key on the back of the game's manual.
"Magnetic Baby" by Semi-Precious Weapons from "We Love You", Glam rock
Normally you wouldn't catch me listening to glam rock, and this song sounds like it missed the bus to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, but there's something catchy about the chorus that keeps me coming back at least once a week. Given the context of the song, I have to wonder if "Magnetic" is a code word for "Gay" (magnets do attract one another), and while I'm not, the song is a lot of fun.
"It's not my fault this is how [my mama/my daddy/I-I-I] made me
I've been magnetic since I was a baby..."
It is fun to play on guitar... and the vocals are less grating if you've got a woman singing (and has vocal track turned down and the mic turned up).
"I Don't Care" by Apocalyptica from "Worlds Collide", Symphonic rock
Apocalyptica have come a long way in the music industry since their first album in the mid-90s, "Plays Metallica on Four Cellos", which was exactly that: Four guys from Finland doing Metallica covers on cellos. And, to varying degrees, it worked. "Enter Sandman" was recognizable, sort of, and "The Unforgiven" was hauntingly beautiful, much like the original. For this new album however, Apocalyptica have gone the "Santana route" (to reference his "Supernatural" album) and brought in guest vocalists, including Till Lindemann of Rammstein, Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour, and in this case, Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace, as well as a drummer.
This song sounds like a Three Days Grace song, which would be cool on its own, but having the cellos in the background takes the ownage factor to a whole new level.
There are two versions of this song out. The first one, featured on the album, is good, but the single, retooled for the radio, is better. It's a little faster, it's heavier, and the lyrics are changed in some areas, most notably the chorus. The original's chorus is shorter, but hits a little harder, where the single's chorus and verses flow together more naturally. Both are good, but having heard the single first, the original seems lacking.
I don't know if I'll be able to keep this as a recurring series up here, as I don't discover new music nearly as often as I'd like to, but over the last month I've heard a lot of new stuff that's showing some real promise. Not sure if it'll get picked up by popular radio, but it's certainly worth looking at if the genre interests you. These first two are from Rock Band 2, and both come from the free 20 songs that can be downloaded with a key on the back of the game's manual.
"Magnetic Baby" by Semi-Precious Weapons from "We Love You", Glam rock
Normally you wouldn't catch me listening to glam rock, and this song sounds like it missed the bus to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, but there's something catchy about the chorus that keeps me coming back at least once a week. Given the context of the song, I have to wonder if "Magnetic" is a code word for "Gay" (magnets do attract one another), and while I'm not, the song is a lot of fun.
"It's not my fault this is how [my mama/my daddy/I-I-I] made me
I've been magnetic since I was a baby..."
It is fun to play on guitar... and the vocals are less grating if you've got a woman singing (and has vocal track turned down and the mic turned up).
"I Don't Care" by Apocalyptica from "Worlds Collide", Symphonic rock
Apocalyptica have come a long way in the music industry since their first album in the mid-90s, "Plays Metallica on Four Cellos", which was exactly that: Four guys from Finland doing Metallica covers on cellos. And, to varying degrees, it worked. "Enter Sandman" was recognizable, sort of, and "The Unforgiven" was hauntingly beautiful, much like the original. For this new album however, Apocalyptica have gone the "Santana route" (to reference his "Supernatural" album) and brought in guest vocalists, including Till Lindemann of Rammstein, Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour, and in this case, Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace, as well as a drummer.
This song sounds like a Three Days Grace song, which would be cool on its own, but having the cellos in the background takes the ownage factor to a whole new level.
There are two versions of this song out. The first one, featured on the album, is good, but the single, retooled for the radio, is better. It's a little faster, it's heavier, and the lyrics are changed in some areas, most notably the chorus. The original's chorus is shorter, but hits a little harder, where the single's chorus and verses flow together more naturally. Both are good, but having heard the single first, the original seems lacking.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
News Roundup 3
...At least I think it's the third one... It's been a while since I got any keyboard time. I never get much at home; I primarily write these at work, and edit and publish them at home. I've only recently found out that Blogger/Blogspot isn't blocked at work (having inadvertently stumbled upon one of their blogs), but I try to login to as few sites as possible at work, keeping in mind that communications channels can be monitored and logged at the server level, which is probably offsite, at corporate HQ or something. I don't know enough about browser security to know what is and isn't encoded, and to err on the side of caution, I prefer not to let sensitive login information go out over the Net here. Anyway, onto the news.
DRM-free iTunes
So, it seems that iTunes, arguably and at least perceptually the largest legitimate distributor of digital music on the Internet, has abandoned DRM entirely. This is a very bold move for a company which is known for setting trends. The original Macintosh brought desktop computing home in a way IBM didn't think of. Microsoft might have stolen the GUI concept from Xerox before Apple, but Apple did it right first. Fast forward 20 years - the portable Mp3 players were out years before the iPod. First one I saw was Creative's Nomad, a 4GB hard drive in something that looked like two Discmans back to back, ugly as sin with a $450 price tag - and I wanted one. But no, Apple hung back until they could accurately gauge consumer interest, and when the iPod came out, it was what everyone wanted, and they've led the game since. Likewise with cell phones. If they ever make a game console, I imagine it will be pretty impressive. (For a Microsoft product, the Xbox 360 is very good - if Apple's console is to the Xbox 360 what Mac OS X is to Windows Vista, we should all be in for a surprise.) For all this praise, I've never actually owned an Apple product. While I like what they're doing, I don't agree with their approach to certain things. Who I am, I can never be a "Mac user"; the most I'll do with them is appreciate from the outside.
That said, digital music has always been about music lovers. The last big thing, the CD, was the brainchild of the music industry. Actually, at the quality they wanted and the size they wanted, they'd only get 8 minutes on the disc, so I heard. They compromised on both (increased the size and decreased the quality) and we wound up with 5" discs that hold 80 minutes, much less than their predecessors, the cassette tapes, blanks of which came in variable size (limited by the amount of tape on the reels) and sold up to 120 minutes between the two sides. But with digital music, we had these CDs (or CD collections) and we had computers with CD-ROM drives, and hard drives were (and still are) getting bigger. We were willing to use 700MB per 80 minutes of music for our storage, impracticle as that would have been, but the technology just wasn't there. "CD rippers", as they were called, were not very good and failed often, and were not officially supported by any major company, and certainly weren't part of Windows Media Player, as they are now.
Long story short, Mp3s came about, but it wasn't through official channels. The MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards were hacked, and an audio format was born, not from a corporation or the MPEG group, but by "regular" people. The music industry ignored it, claiming that Mp3s were much lower quality than CDs. They were smaller in file size, but the quality was the same to most ears. By their claim that Mp3s were such low quality, the music industry all but gave permission for people to share them online. After all, if they were such low quality, they would want the popular songs passed around online. Remember that in the mid-to-late 1990s broadband access was very limited. If you were willing to spend 30 minutes downloading one five-minute song, it must be good, and if you were willing to do that for such a low quality song, you'd probably buy the CD, right? Wrong. DSL got big, a nerd named Shawn Fanning made a program called Napster, and everyone was off to the races. The record industry found itself fighting two battles. Their first battle was a PR battle for the CD format, to claim Mp3s were worthless. Their second battle was to stop people from swapping Mp3s over the Internet. But they really had no way to do that. Only the FBI really tracked people swapping files, but that wasn't music, that was kiddie. They were only willing to use this technology on stuff that was really, really bad, and with the RIAA swearing that Mp3s were far inferior in quality to CDs, it didn't look very serious.
Some years later, of course, the record industry began to recognize Mp3s as a viable means of listening to music. Even though the bitrate (amount of data per second) was about a tenth that of CDs (and keep in mind CDs were themselves inferior to the industry's ideas about digital music), they were all but forced to concede that the human ear just can't tell the difference, and most music lovers can't afford equipment that will make a CD sound better than a well-encoded Mp3. Suing people (or threatening to do so) wasn't working as a deterrent, so they began offering a legal alternative. Apple was one of the first to offer reliable music downloads from most record labels - to this day, only a few smaller ones hold out. The Beatles, for instance, will never be on iTunes, they say, because of a dispute over the name Apple. Apple promised them in the 80s they'd never use the name for music. With iTunes, they casually forgot about that, and John Lennon's band ain't too happy about that. But for the most part, you can get your favorite music on iTunes.
But the music industry has always been two steps behind the so-called pirates. While a pirate gets unrestricted Mp3s which can be used any way they like, the iTunes user can only use their iTunes songs on the computer they downloaded them on, and a couple other devices, and can only be burned to CD with certain restrictions. (Once something's on CD, it can be ripped to unprotected Mp3, but going from Mp3 or even iTunes' AAC files to CD "pads" the data to fill the space of a CD, and to rip that back to something like Mp3 means the whole track, including the "padding", is recompressed, meaning you lose a lot of quality.) So while iTunes was a good idea and worked for some people, it was widely argued (and irrefutable) that you could buy a CD and rip it to Mp3 for not much more than downloading restricted tracks from iTunes - or you could just download the songs for free, albeit illegally. Sony made a much bigger misstep - they planted computer viruses on several CDs under the idea that anyone sticking a music CD in a computer was going to rip it and share it online. They thought they'd kill piracy at the source, but as soon as word got out, many people just stopped buying Sony CDs and started downloading (mostly, illegally) the albums. The Mp3s didn't carry the viruses, and you could play and rip the CD just fine on a Linux computer. Linux, unlike Windows, doesn't take viruses. That is, how a virus works, to do damage and spread, Linux just ain't set up to allow that, like Windows is. So again the "pirates" win.
So now Apple's selling DRM (restriction) free music. They aren't the first - Amazon's done it for a while, for one - but again, Apple's looking at what works and what doesn't. Selling music with restrictions doesn't work. Hasn't worked. Well, it's made them successful, but they must be seeing now they could have done much better had they been DRM free from the get-go (although, the record industry most certainly would not have allowed that then). Now when you download from iTunes, you're getting about the same thing as when you download from illegal sites and services, except now you have a guarantee of quality and authenticity. Oh, and they're still using the AAC format, and the songs probably still contain your personal information, you know, so you don't go sharing them. But that shouldn't deter an honest customer, and if you're paying a buck per song as opposed to freeloading, you're somewhat honest to start with.
Porn industry now wants federal bailout
I'm not entirely sure MSNBC are being completely serious here in reporting that Hustler and Girls Gone Wild are asking for $5 billion from the government. Oh, I'm not surprised; the porn industry, much like pro wrestling, in fact, will do anything to be noticed or recognized by the general public. What the hell, I'll throw 'em a bone and drop 'em a mention. I'm nobody famous to start with. Anyway, Larry Flynt claims that the bad state of the economy means folks are spending less on pornography products.
Mr. Flynt, lemme tell you why your economy's hurting. Ain't got a thing to do with the economy, but economics does come into play. A pornographic DVD costs about $40, about twice what you pay for a Hollywood blockbuster on DVD. Granted, the porn DVD might be four hours long, so per minute it might be cheaper. But still, $40 was what we paid for DVDs before Best Buy and Walmart told us we could get them for under $20. Suncoast, FYE, and other mall-type stores sold most of the DVDs when the format came out, and they set the prices that high. The prices are still that high in those stores. It disgusts most people. We've come to expect to pay no more than $20 for a DVD. Walmart spoils the hell out of people with its $13, $7, and $5 bargain racks and drop boxes. Best Buy runs $10 sales regularly. And used DVDs are cheaper still. So nobody's gonna pay $40 for a DVD that, on top of the cost, they're only gonna watch in private, they aren't gonna watch it with their siblings or parents, and they ain't gonna put it on to occupy the kids - it's a different kind of DVD.
On top of that, commercial porn is pretty extreme... extremely tame, that is. It's commercial pornography. It's regulated. Everyone knows the most common laws. No kids, no animals. The animals part is easy. The kids thing, they have to verify each actor is 18 or older... they have procedures to do all this, get them certified. Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing, but with all the red tape, there's only so much they can do.
Here's the flip side. Here's what's sapping all their money away. It's the Internet. Like with the music, you can get all your commercial porn for free in much the same way. Those $40 DVDs? They can be downloaded for free. No brown bag shipping, your postal carrier doesn't get suspicious, and nobody has been sued for downloading porn that didn't feature kids or animals or rape or other crimes. The government don't care that you download a Hustler DVD. But the problem is bigger than that. High speed Internet plus the growing popularity in digital cameras that double as cheap camcorders means anyone - literally anyone - can whip up a video in ten minutes (as long as it takes to do the deed) and upload it in half an hour, as long as they have high speed Internet. They don't even have to be 18, let alone prove it. Say you download a video made by a pair of 16 year olds. Can you tell they're not 18? Do you really care? Sure, it's technically wrong, but if you don't know, is it so much worse than a video or picture of an 18 year old posing as someone much younger? Because that happens in the industry, and as long as the actor can prove he or she is actually 18, it's legal. A girl can be short, like midget height but not a dwarf, have a flat chest or a near-flat chest, and shave down there, and do a movie, in the role of a 12 year old. She's 18 and has the papers to prove it, but you can't tell she's not 12 by looking at her. What would you rather be caught looking at? What appears to be a 12 year old girl (who's actually 18) or what appears to be a college girl (who's actually 16)? I know what I'd rather be caught with, and it's the same as what I'd rather look at. Still, the point remains, anybody can make porn now. Anyone can get viewers. Selling it is another matter entirely.
Bottom line is, there's much less money to be made in the industry. If the economy was better... that would just mean people were spending frivolously, not that porn's any more valuable because people have money. It don't change the fact that you can get the same stuff and better stuff online for free. Oh... and in commercial stuff the women always fake it, and just about any guy who's not a virgin can tell. It's much more interesting when it's real and you can tell it's real. The industry can make money, they just need big changes in how they do things. Like any other business, really. Change, or be left behind.
Brave techies can try Windows 7 legally
Following, or perhaps to plug a leak, Microsoft has announced that they will allow anybody [brave enough to try] to download Windows 7 from their website. It's an early beta version, so it's not guaranteed to do anything for any particular system configuration, but the average Joe with a modern PC should at least expect it to boot.
Windows 7, Windows 7... what is Windows 7? In layman's terms, it's the next version of Windows, following Vista. The 7 represents (besides luck, which Microsoft will bank on - bank on it) the internal software version. Windows started using version names like most programs; Windows 3.1 was the last. Windows 95 and 98 also belonged to the Windows 3 family, as did the first Windows NT. Windows NT 4, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 represent Windows 4. XP is 5 and Vista is 6. I think. It's really confusing. What this means is that Windows 7 is a whole step above Vista, but since Windows 98 was still in the Windows 3 family with Windows 3.1, it doesn't seem to mean much. And that Vista, like ME before it, proved that newer is not always better. Especially when it comes to Microsoft.
7 isn't a lucky number for Microsoft. Windows Media Player 7 came shipped with technologies based upon the crackpot idea that if Windows Media Player refused to play .AVI files (which pirated movies come off the Net in) that people would give up and buy the DVD. Real smart, Microsoft - all ya did was send the business over to RealNetworks and Apple, as the RealPlayer and QuickTime could still play .AVIs. It's because of WMP 7 that WMP is still not trusted, to this day, why a lot of folks' favorite media players resemble WMP 6.4 (e.g. Media Player Classic, or even VLC, to an extent). WMP 7.1 quickly came out, able to take .AVI files again, but the damage was done. And then Internet Explorer 7 was the first version to come out that people really didn't care about. In the Internet Explorer vs. Netscape days, new versions of one would offset the userbase of the other. Now with Firefox, new IE versions 7 (and 8) didn't touch Firefox's userbase. Maybe if IE 9 includes ad blocking... nah, Microsoft'll never pop that titty out of their mouth. They want their share of the advertising revenue. Mozilla might not be invited to those parties, but something tells me they don't care. And now Windows 7. Third time's a charm?
Vista, for everything wrong with it, is a fundamentally broken OS. It's like what Mac OS was ten years ago. Sure, it looks pretty, but it can't do squat. At least it won't do what you want it to, the way you want it to. You have to learn the "Mac way". Same with Vista. You have to forget what you know and learn to do things the "Vista way". I say... "Uh-uh." I do things MY way. Even Windows XP doesn't always agree with me, but between nLite and a few other programs, I DO do things MY way on MY computer. (OUR computer, should my wife happen to read this.) But Vista, it's exceptionally bad. Take for instance my 750GB SATA drive. SATA's a relatively new hard drive technology that lets data transfer faster. Took me hours to get it working in my BIOS. I almost sent it back. For some reason, Windows XP has no problem with it. But Vista won't touch it unless I reformat it first. Nice, in theory, but it's almost filled with my stuff. Where will I PUT all that stuff while it's reformatting? Therein lies the problem with Vista. "We see you have a drive. We know it's SATA. We speak SATA. But we won't allow you to USE your drive until WE put OUR mark on it... and by the way, that involves erasing it." Before I drop the almighty HELL NO... would I have to reformat it every time I install Vista, or just once? (This ain't the C drive, the system drive, the drive I'm putting Windows on, by the way, this is just a data dump drive. Nothing gets installed on it.) Also, some genius (read: asshole) up in Redmond decided to dump XP's support for sound cards or motherboards' audio components made before 2007 or whenever Vista came out. In other words, I get no sound. Speakers don't work, headphones don't work. My motherboard was... well I bought it in 2005, so it was probably made in 2004... maybe 2003. Socket 939 Gigabyte nForce 4... you figure it out. Still decent, but in 2009 it's dated. And it wasn't blessed by Redmond, so I gets no sounds in Vista. XP don't mind it though.
One more F.U. before I play nice again. This ain't the first time Microsoft's let the public try an operating system before it came out. They did it with Vista, too. No problems there, aside from, well, what I said above, but just a couple months ago, they released the new Xbox 360 OS, Dashboard 2 aka "NXE" or "New Xbox Experience" early. When you install it (simply copy it to a flash drive or burn it to a CD and stick it in the Xbox) it gives you a bunch of crap to read. Nowhere does it say you get kicked off the paid Xbox Live internet service for three weeks until the OS gets force-fed to every 360 connected to the Net (3 months later, my brother-in-law's 360 still runs Dashboard 1 (aka the "blades"), but his isn't online). Nowhere at all. Nor does it give you a chance to reconsider, it just installs and restarts. And then every time you log in it spent 5 minutes looking for Xbox Live and not finding it. So now 3 months later, Microsoft's offering another OS for brave geeks to test... F.U. Microsoft.
Now, as promised, I'll try to play nice. Obviously Windows 7 needs to succeed. It needs to replace Windows XP on the desktop. Here's what needs to happen for that to come about. It's real simple. First of all, it's gotta run just as well on anything XP runs on. That has got to be a given. If I have a computer running XP and XP works with all my devices, Windows 7 needs to do the same thing. I can't install Windows 7 and have it tell me it doesn't like my printer or my camera or my flash drive, or my SATA drive, anything. It's gotta just work. All the basics need to be there. Because if they're not, I'm gonna go right back to XP and it's gonna take a small miracle to get me to try Windows 7 again. First thing they need to do is take all the drivers off the Windows XP disc and make them work with Windows 7. Maybe Windows 7 has some better drivers. Fine. But it comes on a DVD. It's not quite 4GB. There's room on the disc for both versions. Get everything working with the XP drivers during install. A couple days later, pop up a bubble saying "We have Windows 7 drivers for the following devices. This... that... the other... Would you like to try?" Then - and this is important - ONE at a time, starting with LEAST important, you upgrade the driver. If it works, the NEXT DAY, you offer to upgrade another driver. If it doesn't work, we go back to the XP driver. Once all drivers have been updated or tested, it gives you a report. Either all your devices work under Windows 7 drivers, or some (or all) need the XP drivers. The program then gives you a file, maybe even offers to burn it to CD (maybe you can even re-burn your Windows 7 installer DVD) and this lets it set the driver version during install, so you have the best working drivers next time you install.
Second, we need a transition mode. Full learning mode means you turn the OS into an XP clone. It's Windows 7 under the hood, but looks and feels like XP. Every time you go to do something, it offers to show you how the same thing would be done in Windows 7. You can tell it you know and it won't ask again, you can say "not now" to do it later, or you can look, and a Flash video or something would come up and show you. It ain't to my benefit that Vista moved everything around. I like how XP works. However, Vista is a little more approachable to Suzy Q Soccermom than XP, and that's a good thing, in the grander scheme of things. XP could pretend to be Windows 2000 and it did it quite well. Why can't Vista pretend to be XP, even if just for a while while the user learns the new stuff? Windows 7 ought to do this. As an extension of this point, not everybody wants a pretty OS. Yeah, we might all want a picture of our kid or a nice nature shot on the desktop, yeah, but the entire OS? Yeah, that's good for the soccer moms and junior high kids learning computers, but businesses and nerds alike want something more serious. Gates said 25 years ago that his vision was a computer on every desk running Microsoft software. We're there. We were there 10 years ago. Now they need to acknowledge that not everybody's the same, and give more people what they want, more choices.
Windows 2000 was the first really good version of Windows, and the only reason most of its users now use XP is because after the first service pack, it really had everything Win2k had, but a couple more features and looked a little better. Windows 7 needs to put the legacy of Win2k and Windows XP first, the productivity and efficiency second, and aesthetics a distant third, if it's to succeed.
Congress asked to delay the Digital TV conversion next month
Now what the shit is this? People are whining that their TV won't work after the change. The project's out of money. I say let them whine. These aren't real people who have anything to say worth hearing. These are just people looking for something to whine about. If it wasn't this, it'd be something else.
They've only been talking about doing this for over a year now. Several channels run a feed about the conversion; I know The CW runs theirs hourly, and it's very hard to miss. So people know. They've known for over a year. I would say that if you don't know by now, you haven't been watching TV, and you don't have any place to complain about not having TV in a month and a half because... you don't watch it now.
On top of that, the government is willing to pay for your conversion box. The basic model costs $40, the value of the voucher. There are more advanced models, but if your needs are simple, just get the basic one the voucher covers. All you're responsible for is the sales tax. Even if it's 10% it's only $4. If your TV's not worth $4 you don't deserve to have it. Don't you pay that much for batteries anyway when they go out?
And then you don't even need a converter box if you have digital cable or satellite, or a digital TV. Here's the real issue. Local TV stations which broadcast via antenna are going to switch to digital. Most already broadcast in digital as well. They're just going to stop doing analog. ALL this means is analog TVs (SDTV=analog; HDTV=digital, for the most part) receiving analog broadcasts are going to not be able to do so in March. If you have an analog TV and you get cable or have satellite, you're fine. If you have digital TV and have a digital antenna, you're fine.
Who relies primarily on an antenna anyway? Well, at work, we do. We have a tiny little TV with bunny ears on it. We can pick up four stations. We haven't got a converter box. If I had been working here six months ago, I would have applied for a coupon and bought a converter box. I'd have eaten the $4 so my coworkers could still have TV after the switch. Because I knew about this for months. But I'm relatively new here, and now that there are no more coupons, it isn't an option. Besides, some speculate that since the place has satellite TV in other areas, they'll hook us up. (Yeah, right, eh?) Me, well, I got my flash drive and (for now, until it's over) my Babylon 5 episodes. I watch TV and whatnot on the computer.
All that being said, removing access to a technology that seems to work fine is stupid. What, really, are we going to gain by cutting off analog TV? You ask me, I think this whole thing's funded by Sony or someone selling HDTVs. Maybe the HDTV makers, a few cable companies, and DirecTV and/or Dish Network got together and whipped this stupid mess up. Nobody should be forced to upgrade. But it's been on the table for over a year, they're willing to pay for your upgrade, so I say quit bitchin and take it - or shut up and enjoy the snow on your TV come March.
DRM-free iTunes
So, it seems that iTunes, arguably and at least perceptually the largest legitimate distributor of digital music on the Internet, has abandoned DRM entirely. This is a very bold move for a company which is known for setting trends. The original Macintosh brought desktop computing home in a way IBM didn't think of. Microsoft might have stolen the GUI concept from Xerox before Apple, but Apple did it right first. Fast forward 20 years - the portable Mp3 players were out years before the iPod. First one I saw was Creative's Nomad, a 4GB hard drive in something that looked like two Discmans back to back, ugly as sin with a $450 price tag - and I wanted one. But no, Apple hung back until they could accurately gauge consumer interest, and when the iPod came out, it was what everyone wanted, and they've led the game since. Likewise with cell phones. If they ever make a game console, I imagine it will be pretty impressive. (For a Microsoft product, the Xbox 360 is very good - if Apple's console is to the Xbox 360 what Mac OS X is to Windows Vista, we should all be in for a surprise.) For all this praise, I've never actually owned an Apple product. While I like what they're doing, I don't agree with their approach to certain things. Who I am, I can never be a "Mac user"; the most I'll do with them is appreciate from the outside.
That said, digital music has always been about music lovers. The last big thing, the CD, was the brainchild of the music industry. Actually, at the quality they wanted and the size they wanted, they'd only get 8 minutes on the disc, so I heard. They compromised on both (increased the size and decreased the quality) and we wound up with 5" discs that hold 80 minutes, much less than their predecessors, the cassette tapes, blanks of which came in variable size (limited by the amount of tape on the reels) and sold up to 120 minutes between the two sides. But with digital music, we had these CDs (or CD collections) and we had computers with CD-ROM drives, and hard drives were (and still are) getting bigger. We were willing to use 700MB per 80 minutes of music for our storage, impracticle as that would have been, but the technology just wasn't there. "CD rippers", as they were called, were not very good and failed often, and were not officially supported by any major company, and certainly weren't part of Windows Media Player, as they are now.
Long story short, Mp3s came about, but it wasn't through official channels. The MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards were hacked, and an audio format was born, not from a corporation or the MPEG group, but by "regular" people. The music industry ignored it, claiming that Mp3s were much lower quality than CDs. They were smaller in file size, but the quality was the same to most ears. By their claim that Mp3s were such low quality, the music industry all but gave permission for people to share them online. After all, if they were such low quality, they would want the popular songs passed around online. Remember that in the mid-to-late 1990s broadband access was very limited. If you were willing to spend 30 minutes downloading one five-minute song, it must be good, and if you were willing to do that for such a low quality song, you'd probably buy the CD, right? Wrong. DSL got big, a nerd named Shawn Fanning made a program called Napster, and everyone was off to the races. The record industry found itself fighting two battles. Their first battle was a PR battle for the CD format, to claim Mp3s were worthless. Their second battle was to stop people from swapping Mp3s over the Internet. But they really had no way to do that. Only the FBI really tracked people swapping files, but that wasn't music, that was kiddie. They were only willing to use this technology on stuff that was really, really bad, and with the RIAA swearing that Mp3s were far inferior in quality to CDs, it didn't look very serious.
Some years later, of course, the record industry began to recognize Mp3s as a viable means of listening to music. Even though the bitrate (amount of data per second) was about a tenth that of CDs (and keep in mind CDs were themselves inferior to the industry's ideas about digital music), they were all but forced to concede that the human ear just can't tell the difference, and most music lovers can't afford equipment that will make a CD sound better than a well-encoded Mp3. Suing people (or threatening to do so) wasn't working as a deterrent, so they began offering a legal alternative. Apple was one of the first to offer reliable music downloads from most record labels - to this day, only a few smaller ones hold out. The Beatles, for instance, will never be on iTunes, they say, because of a dispute over the name Apple. Apple promised them in the 80s they'd never use the name for music. With iTunes, they casually forgot about that, and John Lennon's band ain't too happy about that. But for the most part, you can get your favorite music on iTunes.
But the music industry has always been two steps behind the so-called pirates. While a pirate gets unrestricted Mp3s which can be used any way they like, the iTunes user can only use their iTunes songs on the computer they downloaded them on, and a couple other devices, and can only be burned to CD with certain restrictions. (Once something's on CD, it can be ripped to unprotected Mp3, but going from Mp3 or even iTunes' AAC files to CD "pads" the data to fill the space of a CD, and to rip that back to something like Mp3 means the whole track, including the "padding", is recompressed, meaning you lose a lot of quality.) So while iTunes was a good idea and worked for some people, it was widely argued (and irrefutable) that you could buy a CD and rip it to Mp3 for not much more than downloading restricted tracks from iTunes - or you could just download the songs for free, albeit illegally. Sony made a much bigger misstep - they planted computer viruses on several CDs under the idea that anyone sticking a music CD in a computer was going to rip it and share it online. They thought they'd kill piracy at the source, but as soon as word got out, many people just stopped buying Sony CDs and started downloading (mostly, illegally) the albums. The Mp3s didn't carry the viruses, and you could play and rip the CD just fine on a Linux computer. Linux, unlike Windows, doesn't take viruses. That is, how a virus works, to do damage and spread, Linux just ain't set up to allow that, like Windows is. So again the "pirates" win.
So now Apple's selling DRM (restriction) free music. They aren't the first - Amazon's done it for a while, for one - but again, Apple's looking at what works and what doesn't. Selling music with restrictions doesn't work. Hasn't worked. Well, it's made them successful, but they must be seeing now they could have done much better had they been DRM free from the get-go (although, the record industry most certainly would not have allowed that then). Now when you download from iTunes, you're getting about the same thing as when you download from illegal sites and services, except now you have a guarantee of quality and authenticity. Oh, and they're still using the AAC format, and the songs probably still contain your personal information, you know, so you don't go sharing them. But that shouldn't deter an honest customer, and if you're paying a buck per song as opposed to freeloading, you're somewhat honest to start with.
Porn industry now wants federal bailout
I'm not entirely sure MSNBC are being completely serious here in reporting that Hustler and Girls Gone Wild are asking for $5 billion from the government. Oh, I'm not surprised; the porn industry, much like pro wrestling, in fact, will do anything to be noticed or recognized by the general public. What the hell, I'll throw 'em a bone and drop 'em a mention. I'm nobody famous to start with. Anyway, Larry Flynt claims that the bad state of the economy means folks are spending less on pornography products.
Mr. Flynt, lemme tell you why your economy's hurting. Ain't got a thing to do with the economy, but economics does come into play. A pornographic DVD costs about $40, about twice what you pay for a Hollywood blockbuster on DVD. Granted, the porn DVD might be four hours long, so per minute it might be cheaper. But still, $40 was what we paid for DVDs before Best Buy and Walmart told us we could get them for under $20. Suncoast, FYE, and other mall-type stores sold most of the DVDs when the format came out, and they set the prices that high. The prices are still that high in those stores. It disgusts most people. We've come to expect to pay no more than $20 for a DVD. Walmart spoils the hell out of people with its $13, $7, and $5 bargain racks and drop boxes. Best Buy runs $10 sales regularly. And used DVDs are cheaper still. So nobody's gonna pay $40 for a DVD that, on top of the cost, they're only gonna watch in private, they aren't gonna watch it with their siblings or parents, and they ain't gonna put it on to occupy the kids - it's a different kind of DVD.
On top of that, commercial porn is pretty extreme... extremely tame, that is. It's commercial pornography. It's regulated. Everyone knows the most common laws. No kids, no animals. The animals part is easy. The kids thing, they have to verify each actor is 18 or older... they have procedures to do all this, get them certified. Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing, but with all the red tape, there's only so much they can do.
Here's the flip side. Here's what's sapping all their money away. It's the Internet. Like with the music, you can get all your commercial porn for free in much the same way. Those $40 DVDs? They can be downloaded for free. No brown bag shipping, your postal carrier doesn't get suspicious, and nobody has been sued for downloading porn that didn't feature kids or animals or rape or other crimes. The government don't care that you download a Hustler DVD. But the problem is bigger than that. High speed Internet plus the growing popularity in digital cameras that double as cheap camcorders means anyone - literally anyone - can whip up a video in ten minutes (as long as it takes to do the deed) and upload it in half an hour, as long as they have high speed Internet. They don't even have to be 18, let alone prove it. Say you download a video made by a pair of 16 year olds. Can you tell they're not 18? Do you really care? Sure, it's technically wrong, but if you don't know, is it so much worse than a video or picture of an 18 year old posing as someone much younger? Because that happens in the industry, and as long as the actor can prove he or she is actually 18, it's legal. A girl can be short, like midget height but not a dwarf, have a flat chest or a near-flat chest, and shave down there, and do a movie, in the role of a 12 year old. She's 18 and has the papers to prove it, but you can't tell she's not 12 by looking at her. What would you rather be caught looking at? What appears to be a 12 year old girl (who's actually 18) or what appears to be a college girl (who's actually 16)? I know what I'd rather be caught with, and it's the same as what I'd rather look at. Still, the point remains, anybody can make porn now. Anyone can get viewers. Selling it is another matter entirely.
Bottom line is, there's much less money to be made in the industry. If the economy was better... that would just mean people were spending frivolously, not that porn's any more valuable because people have money. It don't change the fact that you can get the same stuff and better stuff online for free. Oh... and in commercial stuff the women always fake it, and just about any guy who's not a virgin can tell. It's much more interesting when it's real and you can tell it's real. The industry can make money, they just need big changes in how they do things. Like any other business, really. Change, or be left behind.
Brave techies can try Windows 7 legally
Following, or perhaps to plug a leak, Microsoft has announced that they will allow anybody [brave enough to try] to download Windows 7 from their website. It's an early beta version, so it's not guaranteed to do anything for any particular system configuration, but the average Joe with a modern PC should at least expect it to boot.
Windows 7, Windows 7... what is Windows 7? In layman's terms, it's the next version of Windows, following Vista. The 7 represents (besides luck, which Microsoft will bank on - bank on it) the internal software version. Windows started using version names like most programs; Windows 3.1 was the last. Windows 95 and 98 also belonged to the Windows 3 family, as did the first Windows NT. Windows NT 4, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 represent Windows 4. XP is 5 and Vista is 6. I think. It's really confusing. What this means is that Windows 7 is a whole step above Vista, but since Windows 98 was still in the Windows 3 family with Windows 3.1, it doesn't seem to mean much. And that Vista, like ME before it, proved that newer is not always better. Especially when it comes to Microsoft.
7 isn't a lucky number for Microsoft. Windows Media Player 7 came shipped with technologies based upon the crackpot idea that if Windows Media Player refused to play .AVI files (which pirated movies come off the Net in) that people would give up and buy the DVD. Real smart, Microsoft - all ya did was send the business over to RealNetworks and Apple, as the RealPlayer and QuickTime could still play .AVIs. It's because of WMP 7 that WMP is still not trusted, to this day, why a lot of folks' favorite media players resemble WMP 6.4 (e.g. Media Player Classic, or even VLC, to an extent). WMP 7.1 quickly came out, able to take .AVI files again, but the damage was done. And then Internet Explorer 7 was the first version to come out that people really didn't care about. In the Internet Explorer vs. Netscape days, new versions of one would offset the userbase of the other. Now with Firefox, new IE versions 7 (and 8) didn't touch Firefox's userbase. Maybe if IE 9 includes ad blocking... nah, Microsoft'll never pop that titty out of their mouth. They want their share of the advertising revenue. Mozilla might not be invited to those parties, but something tells me they don't care. And now Windows 7. Third time's a charm?
Vista, for everything wrong with it, is a fundamentally broken OS. It's like what Mac OS was ten years ago. Sure, it looks pretty, but it can't do squat. At least it won't do what you want it to, the way you want it to. You have to learn the "Mac way". Same with Vista. You have to forget what you know and learn to do things the "Vista way". I say... "Uh-uh." I do things MY way. Even Windows XP doesn't always agree with me, but between nLite and a few other programs, I DO do things MY way on MY computer. (OUR computer, should my wife happen to read this.) But Vista, it's exceptionally bad. Take for instance my 750GB SATA drive. SATA's a relatively new hard drive technology that lets data transfer faster. Took me hours to get it working in my BIOS. I almost sent it back. For some reason, Windows XP has no problem with it. But Vista won't touch it unless I reformat it first. Nice, in theory, but it's almost filled with my stuff. Where will I PUT all that stuff while it's reformatting? Therein lies the problem with Vista. "We see you have a drive. We know it's SATA. We speak SATA. But we won't allow you to USE your drive until WE put OUR mark on it... and by the way, that involves erasing it." Before I drop the almighty HELL NO... would I have to reformat it every time I install Vista, or just once? (This ain't the C drive, the system drive, the drive I'm putting Windows on, by the way, this is just a data dump drive. Nothing gets installed on it.) Also, some genius (read: asshole) up in Redmond decided to dump XP's support for sound cards or motherboards' audio components made before 2007 or whenever Vista came out. In other words, I get no sound. Speakers don't work, headphones don't work. My motherboard was... well I bought it in 2005, so it was probably made in 2004... maybe 2003. Socket 939 Gigabyte nForce 4... you figure it out. Still decent, but in 2009 it's dated. And it wasn't blessed by Redmond, so I gets no sounds in Vista. XP don't mind it though.
One more F.U. before I play nice again. This ain't the first time Microsoft's let the public try an operating system before it came out. They did it with Vista, too. No problems there, aside from, well, what I said above, but just a couple months ago, they released the new Xbox 360 OS, Dashboard 2 aka "NXE" or "New Xbox Experience" early. When you install it (simply copy it to a flash drive or burn it to a CD and stick it in the Xbox) it gives you a bunch of crap to read. Nowhere does it say you get kicked off the paid Xbox Live internet service for three weeks until the OS gets force-fed to every 360 connected to the Net (3 months later, my brother-in-law's 360 still runs Dashboard 1 (aka the "blades"), but his isn't online). Nowhere at all. Nor does it give you a chance to reconsider, it just installs and restarts. And then every time you log in it spent 5 minutes looking for Xbox Live and not finding it. So now 3 months later, Microsoft's offering another OS for brave geeks to test... F.U. Microsoft.
Now, as promised, I'll try to play nice. Obviously Windows 7 needs to succeed. It needs to replace Windows XP on the desktop. Here's what needs to happen for that to come about. It's real simple. First of all, it's gotta run just as well on anything XP runs on. That has got to be a given. If I have a computer running XP and XP works with all my devices, Windows 7 needs to do the same thing. I can't install Windows 7 and have it tell me it doesn't like my printer or my camera or my flash drive, or my SATA drive, anything. It's gotta just work. All the basics need to be there. Because if they're not, I'm gonna go right back to XP and it's gonna take a small miracle to get me to try Windows 7 again. First thing they need to do is take all the drivers off the Windows XP disc and make them work with Windows 7. Maybe Windows 7 has some better drivers. Fine. But it comes on a DVD. It's not quite 4GB. There's room on the disc for both versions. Get everything working with the XP drivers during install. A couple days later, pop up a bubble saying "We have Windows 7 drivers for the following devices. This... that... the other... Would you like to try?" Then - and this is important - ONE at a time, starting with LEAST important, you upgrade the driver. If it works, the NEXT DAY, you offer to upgrade another driver. If it doesn't work, we go back to the XP driver. Once all drivers have been updated or tested, it gives you a report. Either all your devices work under Windows 7 drivers, or some (or all) need the XP drivers. The program then gives you a file, maybe even offers to burn it to CD (maybe you can even re-burn your Windows 7 installer DVD) and this lets it set the driver version during install, so you have the best working drivers next time you install.
Second, we need a transition mode. Full learning mode means you turn the OS into an XP clone. It's Windows 7 under the hood, but looks and feels like XP. Every time you go to do something, it offers to show you how the same thing would be done in Windows 7. You can tell it you know and it won't ask again, you can say "not now" to do it later, or you can look, and a Flash video or something would come up and show you. It ain't to my benefit that Vista moved everything around. I like how XP works. However, Vista is a little more approachable to Suzy Q Soccermom than XP, and that's a good thing, in the grander scheme of things. XP could pretend to be Windows 2000 and it did it quite well. Why can't Vista pretend to be XP, even if just for a while while the user learns the new stuff? Windows 7 ought to do this. As an extension of this point, not everybody wants a pretty OS. Yeah, we might all want a picture of our kid or a nice nature shot on the desktop, yeah, but the entire OS? Yeah, that's good for the soccer moms and junior high kids learning computers, but businesses and nerds alike want something more serious. Gates said 25 years ago that his vision was a computer on every desk running Microsoft software. We're there. We were there 10 years ago. Now they need to acknowledge that not everybody's the same, and give more people what they want, more choices.
Windows 2000 was the first really good version of Windows, and the only reason most of its users now use XP is because after the first service pack, it really had everything Win2k had, but a couple more features and looked a little better. Windows 7 needs to put the legacy of Win2k and Windows XP first, the productivity and efficiency second, and aesthetics a distant third, if it's to succeed.
Congress asked to delay the Digital TV conversion next month
Now what the shit is this? People are whining that their TV won't work after the change. The project's out of money. I say let them whine. These aren't real people who have anything to say worth hearing. These are just people looking for something to whine about. If it wasn't this, it'd be something else.
They've only been talking about doing this for over a year now. Several channels run a feed about the conversion; I know The CW runs theirs hourly, and it's very hard to miss. So people know. They've known for over a year. I would say that if you don't know by now, you haven't been watching TV, and you don't have any place to complain about not having TV in a month and a half because... you don't watch it now.
On top of that, the government is willing to pay for your conversion box. The basic model costs $40, the value of the voucher. There are more advanced models, but if your needs are simple, just get the basic one the voucher covers. All you're responsible for is the sales tax. Even if it's 10% it's only $4. If your TV's not worth $4 you don't deserve to have it. Don't you pay that much for batteries anyway when they go out?
And then you don't even need a converter box if you have digital cable or satellite, or a digital TV. Here's the real issue. Local TV stations which broadcast via antenna are going to switch to digital. Most already broadcast in digital as well. They're just going to stop doing analog. ALL this means is analog TVs (SDTV=analog; HDTV=digital, for the most part) receiving analog broadcasts are going to not be able to do so in March. If you have an analog TV and you get cable or have satellite, you're fine. If you have digital TV and have a digital antenna, you're fine.
Who relies primarily on an antenna anyway? Well, at work, we do. We have a tiny little TV with bunny ears on it. We can pick up four stations. We haven't got a converter box. If I had been working here six months ago, I would have applied for a coupon and bought a converter box. I'd have eaten the $4 so my coworkers could still have TV after the switch. Because I knew about this for months. But I'm relatively new here, and now that there are no more coupons, it isn't an option. Besides, some speculate that since the place has satellite TV in other areas, they'll hook us up. (Yeah, right, eh?) Me, well, I got my flash drive and (for now, until it's over) my Babylon 5 episodes. I watch TV and whatnot on the computer.
All that being said, removing access to a technology that seems to work fine is stupid. What, really, are we going to gain by cutting off analog TV? You ask me, I think this whole thing's funded by Sony or someone selling HDTVs. Maybe the HDTV makers, a few cable companies, and DirecTV and/or Dish Network got together and whipped this stupid mess up. Nobody should be forced to upgrade. But it's been on the table for over a year, they're willing to pay for your upgrade, so I say quit bitchin and take it - or shut up and enjoy the snow on your TV come March.
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