I saw Lisa Loeb.

I saw her in glorious color. But since my camera isn’t set up for long distance shots (also my skills have waned a bit) *you* get to see her in it-makes-crappy-color-photos-look-better Black and White.

See how that works?

If I’m not found peering up from an empty pint of the cheapest beer in this land by 9:30 PM CDT, I’ve gotten too old for This World and should be shoved onto the nearest canoe and pushed into the deep blue sea.

The beer peering, of course, will be after I drinks enough shots to fell a moderate sized elephant.

…but there’s light there. See it? Off in the distance?

Wonderful, glorious light.

Coming in a day late, yet still completely free, is today’s music note: Pearl Jam’s 2008 Bootleg Program. Now Pearl Jam is one of my curious bands from my College Life Mach I. I first heard them while I was attending College A(that’s what we’ll call it in effort for me to remain distanced and objective).

Totally Skippable Flashback Sequence
Growing up in the middle of nowhere has its perks but one of those is not an influx of new music. At home I had the mainstream movies and TV giving me peeks at what I was missing. High School was new music hell. It was a place and time that all anyone breathed, thought and drank was hip hop. To this day, I know I would not be as bored with the genre if I wasn’t near drowned in it for half a decade.

Cut to the early 90s. I hit the college scene. Being surrounded by music, people and ideas that were new and different. It was a bit off-putting at first. That morphed into fucking fantastic pretty damn quick. It was during this time Charles introduced me to Pearl Jam’s TEN. I knew I would never be the same again. I followed their sound as best I could. ( Remember kids, The Internet wasn’t as user friendly to as it is now.) I shudder to think how things would have turned if I had access to a proper Internets back in those days.

I grabbed up each and every new album. I just wanted that same feeling again. Each one had their moments but none ever lived up to TEN. Even so, I kept and eye on what they were up to. Their failed, yet inspiring, battle with Ticketmaster. Temple of the Dog.

Nowadays it’s their social battles that hold my interest. How they use their fame to affect change or the new ways they aim to get music to their fans. I like how they don’t crap on their fanbase like a lot of the “Big Bands” past and present.

What You Really Want to Know: 2008 Bootleg Programme
I’ve learned, by way of their myspace, Pearl Jam’s expanding on their Bootleg Program. Two weeks after each concert jam, you’ll be able to buy the digital bootlegs in mp3 or, the more awesome(yet space consuming),FLAC formats at a reasonable price.

For those of you who only want PJ streamed through their Intertubes and want nothing to do with this payment business, you can visit Pearl Jam Live.com. They’ve got concerts listed back to 1990. I can’t tell you about their quality because the site does not seem to like Firefox. The third browser crash gave me that clue.

If you must have the physical evidence of you Pearl Jam love in your hands, that can be arranged too. Also, Mobile Bootlegs of 3 stand-out tracks per concert. This is offered through Verizon, of course, because AT&T would never think to jump onto something quite as useful. Complete details for each are provided at Pearl Jam’s MySpace.

Who knew MySpace was still useful much less relevant?

While PJ, on the other hand, remains innovative well into the 21st Century.

Music week staggers forward. The other day BuzzFeed pointed out that Peter Gabriel has become involved with The Filter.

‘What is The Filter?’ you ask.

Well you could risk being bored to death by Gabriel’s Tech Crunch’d explanation on why we need sites like The Filter:

… or I can take a stab at the general tagline. What it aims to do is collect data on your likes and dislikes, be them music or movies or TV shows(currently unavailable), and from this data it offers up new things that might be up your alley.

First off, the navigation is clunky as hell. It feels like I’m in an 80s video rental store trying not to knock down random other merchandise off the shelves as I make my selections. I browse the music section and randomly gave the CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY soundtrack a 70% good rating. The Filter, in turn, recommends Ennio Morricone’s SQUARE DANCE. I’ve never heard of Morricone’s SQUARE DANCE but I know of his work via oh, so many, spaghetti western scores. So on some level I think The Filter is on to something.

But the movies need work. After toggling the necessary genres to get the ball rolling on movie rating I found that ball landed squarely in the 1930s era. There nothing wrong with a good old movie. I’m just not as versed in those flicks as I would be in the last few decades or so. Pinpoint searching and rating to tweak the movie finder didn’t help as most of the movies I liked denied me rating access. So here I am, stuck in the 1930s viewing pleasures.

I understand that The Filter is still in beta and because of this I’ll come back in a month or two to see if they’ve worked out the kinks. Otherwise, I’ll stick to Pandora to recommend my new music. I have hope for The Filter because just a few years ago Pandora was in the same place.

You’ll have to forgive the weak emptiness of this end of The Nation. I’ve either not had the time and not made the time needed to throw together words of woe, wisdom or otherwise. Short bursts is all I can mange these days.

We will try for themes though. This week will be music. My searches will refine to anything audio or visual. Anything worth a damn on the listening scale.

Ectomo’s Noise Du Jour kicks the week off with the tried but true “noise from random electronic objects that somehow makes a listenable sound experience.” Radiohead ran a mix contest for their song “Nude” and this is one of what they got: Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any)

The orchestra assembled?

• Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
• Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
• HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
• Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX

The Purple One.

The writer/singer/everything of such masterpieces as “Darling Nikki” and “Housequake” just rolled the life-odometer to half a century.

Half, a fucking, century.

The BBC charted his successes:

I’m taking my turn on a smaller level. In no particular order, my top 7 most favorite wouldn’t dare skip ahead or stop mid-song Prince songs are:

• Darling Nikki
• HouseQuake
• Pope
• Alphabet Street
• Get Off (The Dirty Version)
• Morning Papers
• Starfish and Coffee

What are your Top 7 Prince songs, ever?

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