Rhythmforcedmelody

Warning: do not pinch without apple's permission

2008-06-30T21:36:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs, in his infinite wisdom, is working on patenting the iPhone's interactive "pinch" motion. As you may (or may not) know, the pinch is used to zoom in and out on photos and is just one part of a medley of flicks, taps, pulls, and double-taps that make up Apple's "multitouch" feature.

Even though I don't own an iPhone (I would rather pay my bills), I still know how to use it and - in the future, were I to purchase said interactive media device - I would fully expect to be able to pinch and pull any way I wanted to. But say...in the next three years or so....Apple wins this patent lawsuit. Nokia later comes out with its own version of the iPhone ("only better") for half the price! I buy it. But lo and behold - no pinching is allowed!! In order to zoom, I instead have to swirl my right pinky in a counterclockwise motion three times.

If Apple wins, this will be just the first in hundreds of similar patents that put a copyright on interactive media screen "gestures". What started with flicks and taps and pinches will degenerate into swirls and double-fingered drags and zig-zags, because all the simplest motions will be patented. If you own multiple interactive media devices, you would have to remember which motions go with which actions for each of them.

Obviously Steve Jobs has been plotting the demise of other companies' aspirations for years, because Apple has been filing patent lawsuits regarding the iPhone multitouch motions since 2004. According to Wired.com, Apple currently has 200 pending patents filed for the iPhone alone - including a patent on the term "multitouch". And if the patents are awarded...Apple will have virtually wiped out any competitor's ability to come up with a similar device that is even remotely user-friendly. No one will have a chance to develop a new and exciting add-on that builds on the same technology outside of Apple. The pinch patent is the first step, which will lead to an eventual stifling of most creativity outside of Apple concerning multitouch technology. Not to mention that the super-cool technology that already exists will double in price.

I really like Apple....but sometimes it makes me feel like the blowfish in this mass grave:

Sad.

Unlimited iTunes for Life?

2008-06-30T21:35:00.003-07:00

Apple's currently discussing a plan involving music subscriptions for iTunes. Although no specific parameters have been set, the general idea is that the consumer pays more for a new iPod and in return gets unlimited streaming/downloading access to iTunes for a year. After that (here comes the catch) you either lose all that glorious music that you got for free OR pay a subscription fee to 1) keep all your current music and 2) get more.

Which would you choose?

....duh. The rumored price for the monthly subscription is something like $7, which is a waaaay better deal than that 99 cents-a-track bullshit that they have going on now. Supposedly consumers also have the option of a lifetime subscription...which would be something like $100 for unlimited music FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!!! Well...your iPod's life anyway....which after further consideration actually caps out at around 3-4 years if you're lucky.

But still, this is a good move on Apple's part in a lot of ways. Illegal downloading, even with the recent RIAA prosecutions, is at an all-time high. More and more Gen Y-ers are staunchly unwilling to pay out the nose for their DRM-loaded iSongs when they can download anything they want for free elsewhere...and put it on any device they want. One of the ONLY ways to lure our fickle consumerist generation back would be to offer unlimited access for a reasonable price. The subscription fee would be just like another bill that we pay every month in order to still receive things we take for granted: a place to live, water, heat, music.

Some foreseeable problems:

iTunes still doesn't have a considerable amount of important music. No Tool, only a couple Beatles songs, etc.

Why pay $7 for unlimited iTunes songs (which you supposedly LOSE if your subscription lapses, forcing you into paying this monthly fee forever) when you can get unlimited (albeit illegal) access online for FREE and KEEP your music however long you want to?

This is a brave and valiant attempt, Steve Jobs, I'll give you that. But dealing with our generation sucks for people like you sometimes....and we'll just have to see how this pans out.

Twitter Me Kaybee

2008-06-30T21:35:00.001-07:00

After months of working at this technology-focused bloggging group with a bunch of internet freaks, I was finally coerced into joining Twitter. For those of you as generally web-app retarded as I am, Twitter is a social networking site where you slap up a profile that consists of a miniscule blurb about who you are/what you do, and a picture. That's it. No fluff about your favorite movies or about how your hero is white paint or your favorite quote from Socrates. Pretty much the bare essentials.

Next, you start following people. No, really. Following. Which is kind of creepy in the sense that "Joe Nobody (Read: complete stranger) is following you" but not so paranoia-inducing in the sense that "you have 127 followers" (Yes!! I am a GOD!!).

The whole idea of Twitter is that you post updates of yourself - what you're doing, random epiphanies, etc. AND you get updates to your phone or email every time someone you're following says something new as well. It's like a giant social gathering where you get past how someone looks and their awkward social eccentricities and it's cut down exactly to how they communicate themselves in 140-character clips.

Now, I'll admit it...when I first started twittering, I would try to carefully compose clever little excerpts to demonstrate my formidable command of the English language. Then reality set in. I don't really speak English.

Just kidding. I actually demonstrated myself to be remarkably absent-minded with regard to text messages. I would be chatting with some friend over text message, someone would twitter at me, I would hit "reply" and text the entire twittering world whatever message I ACTUALLY meant to go to whomever I was talking to. Awkward and weird? Yes. Everyone got to know how I was guilt-tripped into actually GOING to my parents' house for my mom's birthday. Even scarier? The little box that pops up when you remove a twitter from your profile that tells you "There is NO undo". Once twittered, never undone. SHIT. Also, I would attempt to reply to some clever twitter at 6 am when I was still 96% asleep and text some completely nonsensical run-on fragment to reaffirm how illiterate I am when unconscious.

Thusly, I decided it was probably better for everyone if I just didn't twitter anymore. But I couldn't bring myself to completely burn the bridge. It's a little heartwarming when you wake up to six text messages describing what your friends are thinking/feeling/doing at the moment. I really like getting updates of the goings-on....it's the laziest way ever to still feel like you're "in touch" with someone while not actually speaking with them.

So if you're lazy, have unlimited text messaging or spend all your time in front of a computer screen, and would like to experience a false sense of popularity, maybe Twitter is for you.

No, really, it's cool.

http://twitter.com

International weapons trading turns to craigslist

2008-06-30T21:34:00.003-07:00

You'd think the Best of Craigslist would be funny stuff, like the letter "to the guy doing my wife". Perhaps the weird and slightly disturbing "personal ads". Maybe other people's weird junk you definitely don't want chilling in your living room.

Personally, I think this one murders all of them: recently, undercover government officials decided to take a little cruise around Craigslist and eBay and discovered dozens of "sensitive military items" for sale.

* Night vision goggles? check
* Body armor? check
* U.S. military-issued Army combat uniform? check
* Authentic military MREs (Meals Ready To Eat)? check
* F-14 jet antennas? check
* F-14 Converter/Receiver Control? check

Oh and by the way, Iran is the only country that uses F-14s anymore. Comforting.

These items were sold to the highest bidder. Naturally, our government decided the best allocation of its citizens tax dollars would go towards buying back its own shit.

I wonder how much the F-14 parts went for...

Funnily enough, there are no laws against selling sensitive military equipment in such an anonymous online exchange. BUT, eBay DOES prevent the resale of previously used cosmetics. I'm glad we have our priorities straight here, people.

Of course, government officials are all in a tiff about the idea of former soldiers, forced to buy their uniforms with their own money (making them their property), reselling them indiscriminately to strangers. Really...what are they supposed to do with them? Have them hanging in your closet for a constant chilling reminder of your last tour in Iraq? Hey, if you can make a couple hundred bucks so some nobody can have a cool Halloween costume, I say go for it.

So now, the government's working on a law against selling any authentic military items less than 50 years old. Way to go, Congress.

On Life, Love, and really bad decisions

2008-06-30T21:34:00.001-07:00

I rarely use this blog for personal reasons but tonight I feel the need. I just got home from work (yes, I'm aware it IS 3 a.m.) and I'll be right back there in five hours for another glorious ten-hour day.

Ever have those times where you sit back, look at your life, and question every big decision you've made? Two years ago I scorned the University of Colorado as somewhere that all the dumb and unmotivated people went to school. I decided I didn't want to be a doctor because I thought it was something my parents wanted for me more than I did. I went to Notre Dame a solid Catholic who was majoring in Psychology, Political Science, and Russian, with dreams of becoming a lawyer.

Now, I'm turning down a $30,000 a year academic scholarship to the University of Notre Dame in favor of CU. Which, by the way, is giving me no money. I'm rethinking my career choice AGAIN because I think I can do a little more good in the world through the medical profession. I've lost religion, for good this time I think. My life no longer has a certain direction, which is scary and frustrating. I feel like I've lost nearly as much emotional ground as I've gained.

An attractive and charismatic guy asked for my phone number today. I turned him down because I'm in a happy and committed relationship, but wondered - just for a second - what life would be like if I had decided differently. What if I had never met Ian? What if my parents had decided to let me return to Notre Dame after only one semester off? What if I had never TAKEN time off school? What would I be doing with my life? Would I be content?

I'm seeing my life as a choose-your-own adventure novel, except this time I don't get to cheat and see all the alternate endings. I don't get to pick which one would make me the happiest in the end. This moment is a photon in a light spectrum of alternate and parallel universes bouncing around a roomful of mirrors...intersecting and colliding and curving away.

I hope I've picked the right thing.

I've Had Enough

2008-06-30T21:33:00.003-07:00

All right. I thought I could handle it. I thought that the pros outweighed the cons. But finally I have to say FUCK IT!!!!

Twitter blows. Just a little.

First of all, people, Twitter is supposed to be used in moderation. I had to turn my phone off for an hour today because it was on the verge of dying and kept chirping at me. When I turned it back on, I had fifteen tweets! All but two were from....the same person. All contained some semblance of "Hm. I'm feeling THIS way at the moment". C'mon now. Every thought that passes through your head needs to be mini-blogged?? I know, the easy answer is "Turn off phone updates from people that annoy you!" My easy response? "I'm too lazy, so I'm going to sit here and passive-aggressively blog about it".

Second, over half the tweets I receive contain links to other websites or online photos. I'm poor. My phone doesn't even have a camera much less the ability to follow links. So I can look longingly at your tiny URLs all I want...but I'm never going to know what it was you wanted so badly for the world en masse to see. And no, I'm not spending $150 a month to check them out.

Sometimes, everyone decides to Twitter all at once. OR, two people start a conversation and all you get is their "@" back-and-forths for an hour. This is when the phone updates get REALLY annoying. I could turn the phone updates off altogether, but then what would be the point of even being on Twitter? No one wants to look at a website to see that Lisa was running late three days ago. I get to my computer probably twice a day if I'm very very lucky, and that's generally only for 15 minutes at a time. I'm not going to spend those precious moments of wireless bliss looking through everyone's old-news tweets.

Twitter's got a real dilemna. The whole POINT is so that you can see updates in real-time....i.e., text messages. But what happens when the updates get too annoying/overwhelming? The site loses its whole appeal.

Also, their propaganda how-to video really bothers me. Thanks, Nabisco's Hideway, for giving me additional ammunition.

I

2008-06-30T21:33:00.001-07:00

Little Girl in the Big City

2008-06-30T21:32:00.002-07:00

Millions of girls from 14 to 30 growing up within the last decade have giggled, screamed, and gasped along with the love, life, and relationship drama in the TV series Sex and the City. Over its six-season span, the show won seven Emmys and gained national acclaim for its frank discussion of modern female sexuality. And TONIGHT, Sex and the City (the movie) makes its international debut in London.

Fans haven't heard from Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha since 2004 with the finale of Season Six...so its highly anticipated!
There appears to be a considerable amount of blogger apprehension about the amount of movie plot that's revealed in the trailer:

Carrie is left at the alter, Miranda's husband is a cheater, Charlotte buys an Asian baby AND gets knocked up....what is there left to surprise us with? Personally, having seen every episode ever made, I think the show was always a little predictable. Its warmth, love, and personality comes not with unexpected twists and plot devices, but with its honesty and continual theme of true friendship...no matter what. Fans watch the show not necessarily to discover what's at the end (unlike Lost...grrrr) but for the good times, fabulous/outlandish outfits and emotional moments that come in between. OR just to feel better about our lives - at least we're not THAT crazy/slutty.

Admittedly, no one said the show had that much depth. But it's cleverly written, funny, honest, and highly relatable for many women. I can't count the number of hours I've spent curled up in front of the TV with my best friend, one tub of Ben and Jerry's, and two spoons to blow through an entire season of Sex and the City in a night.

For all you women (and men) that can relate, Sex and the City the Movie comes on in the U.S. on May 30. Enjoy!

The Truth Is.....I AM Iron Man

2008-06-30T21:32:00.001-07:00

"I'm just not the hero type, clearly. With this laundry list of character defects, mistakes I've made - largely...public...." Tony Stark, "Iron Man"

With all the power and influence that prominent public figures wield, to what extent to they actually TRY to be “heroes”? The music and entertainment industries particularly reach a large audience of impressionable youth, and often in interviews with rock/movie stars the question of influence as a role model pops up. If you’re talking to Beyonce or Britney, the answer seems to be (strong Southern accent) “You know, I just try to be happy and be a good person and have a positive attitude”. TRY being the operative word here. If you’re talking to Avril Lavigne, it’s “Being true to myself and not letting haters make you feel like you have to suppress who you are” (even if you’re a posing emo wanna-be ‘hardcore’ rocker….oh sorry, does that count as hating?). 50 Cent would probably just straight up kill you for asking then stand over your lifeless body yelling, “How’s THAT for being a role model foo??”

Paris Hilton would be too drunk to understand the question, repeating “that’s hot” while intermittently puking.

Either the music and entertainment industries attract the morally questionable in the first place, or it makes them that way. I’m leaning towards a combination of both….kids that have musicians or movie stars as role models don’t know whether that person’s character is actually admirable. They’re attracted to the fame, obscene wealth, and power. Kids don’t tend to realize that many in the music industry are starving artists, scraping by on construction/waitressing jobs while they wait for someone to notice how brilliant they are.

On the other hand, do stars even HAVE a responsibility to be role models? They didn’t become famous for their upstanding character qualities. Mass marketing one’s own creative talents is the hardest business there is, especially when the products are solely aesthetic. There is no real USE for music or art of any kind. It's a high demand for a very abstract and subjective idea….and either you’re born into the industry or it takes years of struggle and hard work to make it anywhere. Once they DO make it somewhere…sometimes they go a little crazy. Perhaps too often they lose sight of what they learned on their way to the top. But should they be expected to behave well in public just because young kids look up to them? Musicians and movie stars achieved success in a business that rewards cutthroat, underhanded, unsightly behavior to get ahead. Only the most vicious survive. They should almost be congratulated.

Almost.

If you’re looking for a role model, perhaps you should choose Barack Obama. Or Iron Man.

Bugs Bunny Hits Broadway

2008-06-30T21:31:00.001-07:00

Last week I made the cold, snowy trek to Denver to experience firsthand the sensation that is "Bugs Bunny on Broadway". I never watched many cartoons when I was a kid - my mother always claimed TV rotted our brains and locked me and my brothers outside to frolick in the Rocky Mountain wilderness and be attacked by rabid coyotes instead. A reasonable alternative, I'd say.

So, when I settled into my red velvet seat at the Denver Performing Arts Center I came as a virgin to most of the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons that were about to be presented to me. The premise of the traveling show is that the premier state orchestra performs the original music in perfect synchronization to the short animation pieces. So I relaxed in my chair to watch the Denver Symphony Orchestra perform the music of Wagner, Liszt, and Strauss in time to the Roadrunner tricking Wile E. Coyote once again.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience...I never really listened to much classical music. Besides tapping out a garbled version of "Fur Elise" on the piano every once in a while, I never actually listened to classical music. But listening to the art of famous composers serving as a soundtrack to entertaining cartoons made me appreciate both the music AND the timeless Bugs Bunny classics. The Warner Bros. theatrical series was originally designed in 1930 to promote the sales of sheet music and phonograph records....mysteriously convenient, since Warner had acquired Brunswick Records and four other music publishers just months previously. The 'musical animated shorts' became a hit and the series continued until as late as 2004.

Most "critics" complain that the initial exquisite beauty of the composers' music is lost amongst slapstick cartoon gags, and that one isn't able to appreciate the original purpose and subtleties of the notes when Bugs is giggling in your ears. I disagree....the Warner Bros. cartoons are a fantastic and creative way to expose children and adults alike to some great composers of the last century. Almost everyone I talk to about Bugs Bunny remembers the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series with fond and wistful nostalgia. No one considers their childhood years parked in front of the TV watching those cartoons a waste or that the timeless music is drowned amongst the rabbit's schticks. I think the cartoons and the music enhance each other. The animated shorts are a fun way to bring 'culture' to anyone who appreciates fine art and humor. Bringing the series to Broadway is an even better way to emphasize the significance of the the original score.

Overall, the experience was highly enjoyable. Kids at the show experienced the wonders of Bugs Bunny for the first time and adults fondly relived their younger years as tots ahhhhhing at the wonders of color television. So if you ever feel in the mood for a little nostalgia combined with cheap culture (under $20 if you're a student), trot on down to the DPAC and have yourself some Bugs Bunny on Broadway.

That's all, folks!!

Fight Club...the Musical?

2008-06-30T21:30:00.002-07:00

“Fight Club” director David Fincher, with the support of writer Chuck Palahniuk, is in the process of developing a “Fight Club” musical which is slated to hit Broadway in 2009. Not only is Brad Pitt on board, but TRENT REZNOR (Nine Inch Nails frontman and musical genius, for those of you not in the know) is going to develop the music!! I think this will be an exciting and difficult test of the creativities of all involved, and I look forward to seeing the finished product….but the project also worries me a little. Here’s why:

“Fight Club” first started as a short story, written by talented satirical novelist Chuck Palahniuk. He expanded it into a full novel, which garnered mostly positive reviews, but led a disappointingly short shelf life. Luckily, Fight Club grabbed the attention of Hollywood and the movie adaptation – directed by Colorado native David Fincher – hit the silver screens in 1999.

Although “Fight Club” was #1 on its premier weekend, it was overall a box office disappointment. Not until its DVD release did the movie develop a cult following and become a social symbol for young counterculturalists everywhere. Although the story was partly based on truth (Chuck Palahniuk had a conversation once with a waiter at one of London’s finest restaurants who really did ejaculate in Margaret Thatcher’s food….twice…and this little detail found its way into the story), he had no prior knowledge of any actual fight clubs. It wasn’t until after “Fight Club” the movie became popular that evidence of old fight clubs surfaced in the wake of hundreds of new imitation organizations.

Now, almost a decade later, the story of “Fight Club” remains infamously popular as a critique of American consumerism and a beacon for defiant, rebellious young people who suffer a lack of things to actually rebel against. In the words of Nick Rombes, an associate professor of film and American literature,

(Fight Club) directs its furies at nothing less than the fact of its very own obsolescence in a culture where nothing really means anything, after all.

Why? Because there's nothing left to fight against…In Fight Club, this loss of history is figured as the obsolescence of the American male. "We are the middle children of history," says Tyler, "with no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression." The movie's rebellion doesn't seek so much to tear down the System, but rather to lash out at its absence, to re-create the Lost Father, to make Law in the Void, to reassert Order over Randomness…When history as simulacrum denies you real blood ("everything's a copy of a copy of a copy," says Jack) you invent your own rituals and myths in parking lots and warehouse basements.

“Fight Club” is more than just a well-written book or an entertaining movie. It’s a complicated social statement of which most people don’t seem to recognize the full meaning. My only fear in the development of the musical is that the original intentions and subliminal connotations will be lost.

What do you all think? Is it important for the Broadway adaptation to retain the messages of the original book and movie? Or since the story is switching mediums, should the project develop its own sense of meaning and importance within its new musical subscripts?

What if God Smoked Cannabis?

2008-06-30T21:30:00.001-07:00

So, marijuana has been taking baby steps towards being fully legalized for years now. By baby steps, I mean miniscule forward movements…..a millipede lifts up its leg, moves it a fraction of a centimeter, puts it back down. Step completed. That’s all folks!! …But I digress.

On January 28, (which happens to be this Monday), the world’s first marijuana vending machines will be open for business in LA. Located at a nutrition center and a pain relief clinic, the machines are contained in their own separate rooms constantly protected by security guards. The AVM’s (Anytime-Vending-Machines) are open 24/7 and all you need is a doctor’s prescription and a credit card. Sound deceptively simple?....it is. Once they get their prescriptions approved, customers need a specialized credit card loaded with their prescription profile: allowed dosage (up to 1 oz a week), and preferred strain. After a quick police fingerprinting, they can walk away with a vacuum-sealed package full of furry, crystallized THC-laden medical marijuana.

Personally, I’d worry about the quality. It would be just like the government to set up the Mecca of every stoner’s dreams and then stick it to you with schwag dirt weed.

And to make this article relate just a little bit to music, here’s a playlist of songs dedicated to smokin’ the ganja. NOTE: this article is not an endorsement of marijuana or illegal activity in any way. But a culture is a culture, and there’s a huge music scene dedicated entirely to the worshipping of weed and the rituals/traditions involved in smoking it. There are hundreds that I’m not including…this list is quite short for the number of MJ songs out there….feel free to add to the list.

Music and Technology Part One: The Soundtrack

2008-06-30T21:29:00.002-07:00

If you’ve seen the commercial for Apple’s newest way to take your money – Macbook Air – then chances are you liked the background song accompanying it. You’ve probably never heard of her, but that clear, strong, accented voice belongs to Yael Naim. Although she has been recording for 8 years already and has one other record (In a Man’s Womb, which flopped in 2001), she didn’t catapult to success until her self-titled album debuted in 2007. It exploded in France - even though most of the songs were written in Hebrew – and is now popular in the U.S. after Apple selected “New Soul” as the soundtrack to the Air.

Here are three of her best songs: “New Soul”, “Toxic” (a beautiful and stirring cover of Britney’s hit single…I like this better than the original), and “Pachad” (one of her Hebrew songs).

WHO can cover a trashy pop song and successfully transform it into a melodic masterpiece? That takes talent. Yael Naim is the epitome of all I like in international music: she was born in Paris, raised in Israel, sings in multiple languages (and no one has online translations for Hebrew, so the lyrics are a total mystery and the songs are still moving). She’s been in the army; she left her home and boyfriend in Ramat Hasharon to take a chance on a recording contract in Paris. She experienced miserable failure before achieving commercial success, and as a result is humble and nonplussed about her accomplishments.

Isn't international music great?

Music and Technology part 2: the technology to the soundtrack

2008-06-30T21:29:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I wrote about the beautiful and passionate music of Yael Naim, the newest artist to achieve fame and success in the U.S. almost....solely.....by being featured in Apple commercials.

Originally, when Apple started using hip and popular music in their advertising campaigns, they picked artists that had already been well-established: Jet, the Gorillaz, Eminem, U2, Mary J. Blige. Nowadays, they seem to have been moving towards lesser-known indie artists that immediately attain huge exposure and exponential sales increases after being featured - the Prototypes, Feist, and most recently Yael Naim.

Yes, you're right, these artists already had fans before being selected by Apple and the company's endorsement is not a determining factor of their success. However, the majority of people I've talked to had never heard of them before seeing a commercial. They liked the song, look up the artist, and BAM! They've got one more follower.

I know a lot of people are bothered by the idea that a frickin' Apple ad can have so much effect on an artist's sales. Apple has amazingly cool technology but is also the conglomerate stealer of souls. It's like the Antichrist: it has such a shiny package and a great message, a catchy soundtrack, and everybody loves it....then it takes over the world.

Seriously though, what's wrong with a little more exposure? You all just wish YOU had that much influence. If Apple helps indie artists with fantastic music to get noticed, that's great. The artists aren't "selling out"...they're just trying to survive in a rough-and-tumble, 15 minutes of fame business. No one can blame them for accepting a guaranteed several million dollars from Apple recognizing their talent.

I have to admit that I am a little wee bit bothered by Apple's influence. But look: the Antichrist is going to take over the world sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.

My Original Thought for the Day

2008-06-30T21:28:00.001-07:00

A comment I received on my recent Fight Club article got me thinking…does a social revolution/innovation lose some of its value and worthiness if the idea was stolen from someone who never received credit?

Plagiarism is, of course, an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward. In the U.S., the expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property – and is protected by copyright law.

Today, there are millions of cases of plagiarism – some blatant copy-and-paste jobs by lazy college students, and some intellectual copyright disputes over similarity of phrasing, key plot points, or main ideas.

Here are a few famous examples:

· Alexander Graham Bell supposedly stole the idea for the telephone from Elisha Gray. Ironically, a man who wrote Bell’s biography in 1998 (James McKay) was forced to withdraw his book from circulation because he plagiarized the last biography written about Bell.

· Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club contains very similar plot details (such as a radical soap collector who tries to push his friend into absolute freedom without actually existing; an elusive woman; identically wounded, burned hands and an intentional car accident) to Leonard Cohen’s 1966 book Beautiful Losers.

· Conservative blogger Ben Domenech, soon after he was hired to write a blog for the Washington Post in 2006, was found to have plagiarized a number of columns and articles he'd written for his college newspaper, lifting passages from a variety of sources ranging from well-known pundits to amateur film critics.

· Alex Haley, author of Roots, was forced to pay a $650,000 settlement after it was discovered that he copied about 80 passages from Harold Courlander’s The African.

· Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, has twice been accused of plagiarism from the books The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Legacy.

· In 1991 Boston University discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized large portions of his doctoral thesis…as well as parts of his “I Have a Dream” speech.

· In 2007, Timbaland was accused of stealing motifs and samples from Nelly Furtado’s song “Do It”.

· Senator Joe Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic presidential nominations when it was discovered that he failed a college course on legal methodology due to plagiarism. The Michael Dukakis campaign also released a video showing Biden quoting a speech from British labor leader Neil Kinnock without attributing its source.

· Helen Keller was accused in 1892 of plagiarizing Margaret T. Canby’s story The Frost Fairies in her short story The Frost King.

· Mark Zuckerberg, the “brains behind Facebook” was accused by his college friends of stealing the idea, formatting, and coding for the site from their innovative social network idea.

Which leads us to ask the imperative question: what’s more important – the ideas behind the social revolution…or assigning who gets credit for them?

I believe that originality is simply undetected plagiarism. You copy from one source and it’s called plagiarism, but copy from two and it’s termed research. No one has a unique thought anymore.

People have parallel thought patterns, the tendency towards the same phrasing. Yes, there are definitely cases where someone directly lifts another’s exact wording. But as far as intellectual copyright as far as ideas go….I think most cases are worthless and wrong. Somewhere, chances are, someone is probably thinking about the exact same thing as you. Does that give you grounds to call “plagiarism!!”?

I think not.

NOTE: this entire article was plagiarized. The idea to write a plagiarized article about plagiarism was itself plagiarized from another person…but I won’t name my source, otherwise it wouldn’t count as plagiarism.

Does the fact that it was copied make the ideas and points any less valid? Does it REALLY matter who gets credit –who said it “first”? Anyone who supports prosecution of plagiarism is a pure narcissist.

Internet Mistakes

2008-06-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

Just when will people start to realize that posting incriminating photos of yourself on the internet is…perhaps…NOT the best idea?

I’ll tell you a secret: sometimes I peruse the profiles of my most scandalous, least modest “Facebook friends” just to entertain myself with their latest shocking documented exploits. Oh look, there are Natalie Simon’s titties falling out again…kegstand #5, WOW that’s getting messy…on a nude beach, very tactful, props…..making out with a girl, typical night on the town……is she….pretending to blow a guy??

I know, pictures like this just bring you right back to the days of beer pong and frat parties, sweaty dark dance floors grinding with drunken ugly strangers and waking up with mascara smeared down your face as you wonder what happened last night and WHO you’re sleeping next to and WHY you have your pants on backwards with your underwear on your right foot. Remember those days? ….yeah, me neither.

So, what happens when your parents or potential employers do a little investigation and get smacked in the face with pictures like:

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What if you’re running for president when you’re 49 and some archenemy turns in this picture of 21-year-old you to the paparazzi?

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Dr. Phil recently hosted a show entitled “Internet Mistakes”, which featured the moderator (Jasmine Kalimullah) of a Facebook group called “Thirty Reasons a Girl Should Call it a Night”. The group has over 5,000 pictures (probably 70% of which feature girls under 21) of young women puking, passed out, half-naked with tongues out, or in other compromising positions. Jasmine says, “I don’t endorse public urination, or alcohol poisoning, but I do find humor in some of the things that happen when you do go to a bar and drink. Myself, the members, we aren’t trash, we aren’t whores, we don’t lack class, and we are intelligent. There’s still a double standard of genders. Thirty Reasons a Girl Should Call It a Night is the next step for women.”

Speak for yourself Jasmine…I can’t think of a single reason why it would “empower women” or make anyone look good to have drunken, slutty, drug-doing pictures of yourself on the Internet. I mean, look where all the above pictures ended up: on my blog, getting insulted.

In all fairness, I’ve had my share of “Internet Mistakes”…now there are pictures like THIS out there that I have no power to take down.

I’ll be the first to admit that that’s stupid. I think in this day and age, everyone makes some mistakes concerning this topic. Probably 95% of Facebook users have some sort of idiotic/incriminating pictures wafting around somewhere on the ‘net. But generally people have the good sense to untag them.

So Meghan Barger, if you ever want out of that Target cashiering job and on to something that pays more than $8 an hour (with the possible exclusion of stripping), maybe you should untag this…..
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Ryan Reynolds

2008-06-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

So a little while ago I was watching “Definitely, Maybe”, the cutest chick flick I’ve seen in years. Although a little unrealistic. But aren’t they all?

Anyway, the one thing that totally blew that worry out of my mind was the constant presence of Ryan Reynolds (read: sex god).

He’s gorgeous. And funny.

And built.

In one of the opening scenes of the movie, Ryan strolls out of his New York office, pops in these crazy super-cool wireless earphones, and starts cruising down the street. I gasped, fixated. I lusted, and no it was NO LONGER over adorable Ryan Reynolds, but over his high-tech wireless earbuds. They were sleek, shiny, stylish.

I wanted. I needed. I HAD TO HAVE.

I began an investigation. I discovered three things:

1) They are called the Sennheiser MX W1 Totally Wireless Earphones.

2) They are not due to be released until the END OF MAY.

3) They are $550 (down from the $600 they were a few weeks ago).

Whaaaat??? WHO has the right to charge $550 for two tiny little earbuds that are going to get all covered with earwax anyway??? iPods come with their own for FREE!! Is the sound quality arguably that much better? Really? What's the justification for this highway robbery?

(Hint: there is none)

I'm a little upset. Designer "cool" status brands that separate the money-burning elite from the rest of us have spread to engulf even headphones.

Psssh....eff you and your pre-released earbuds Ryan Reynolds, I'll keep my cute boyfriend and my ghetto iBuds.

Rolling Stone's Top 100: Why does "popular" music suck?

2008-06-30T21:25:00.001-07:00

One of the oldest, most renowned, widely respected music magazines has decreed the most popular music for the year. 2007’s #1 song, as declared by Rolling Stone: “Roc Boys” by Jay-Z. #3: “Umbrella” – Rihanna. #6: “Dough is What I Got” – Lil Wayne. #7: “Rehab” – Amy Winehouse. #14: “I Get Money” – 50 Cent. #15: “Piece of Me” – Britney Spears. #35: “Girlfriend” – Avril Lavigne.

Does anyone else notice what I’m seeing? A good half of RS’s Top 100 is shitty music. Catchy, maybe. But displaying talent, originality, creativity, and vision? Definitely not. Another quarter, I had never even heard of. A lonesome 25 % of the “Best Songs of 2007” were songs I deemed actually talented and worthy of their position. Feist, Bright Eyes, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, the Shins, Spoon, and the New Pornographers were drowned amongst the likes of T.I., Fountains of Wayne, T-Pain, Nickelback, and Kelly Clarkson.

If you’ve tried listening to the radio lately, you’d probably rather eat your own left testicle rather than do it again. Why does the most generally “popular” and publicly appealing music suck? Some bands have managed to achieve cult recognition and still be incredibly talented – Radiohead and Tool, to name a couple. But with Paris Hilton selling 722,400 albums, Jessica Simpson hitting 219,000, and Britney Spears reaching 1,200,000+ Blackout sales in 2007 alone……that doesn’t seem to mean much.

I have a couple theories as to why the most advertised, “popular” music is actually nauseatingly terrible.

1) It’s catchy! Lazy listeners (i.e. many young Americans) like entertaining ear candy.

2) It’s all great dancing music. If you can’t grind your ass off against some poor frat boy’s groin under neon lights while sloshing around a Solo cup of cheap beer, it’s not good.

3) It’s easily accessible. The most successful pop culture artists are constantly featured on the radio, front covers of magazines, etc. The vast majority of Americans are lazy and know only what the media tells them. So, if all Rolling Stone/the radio/People Magazine talk about are Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Avril Lavigne, and Amy Winehouse, that's all most teens will be repeatedly exposed to and what they're most likely to listen to, because they're familiar with the artists. Thusly, the most ubiquitous-in-media songs with the catchiest beats achieve the highest sales.

I speak from experience – I used to LOVE Britney and Jessica Simpson and Bewitched when I was 13. And let’s face it…their music was never, ever good. I was young, it was catchy, and I heard it everywhere.

However, I think lists like Rolling Stone’s are not really compiled according to record sales OR popularity. It reads more of like a “Who’s Who and New Developments in Music” for 2007. Britney came out with (hopefully) her last album after a tumultuous year, so they give her music a nod just because she’s been in the news so much. Kanye and 50 had a highly-publicized album sales competition, so songs from both of their records got a mention. Rolling Stone feels like they have to include music from all genres in the interest of fairness, so artists like Kylie Minogue, Herman Dune, Black Francis, and the Fratellis are all featured. (I’ve never heard of any of them, have you?) Maybe there’s SOME hope for the world if Rolling Stone was just kidding when they said “Umbrella” was better than “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”.

I wonder who’s writing for Rolling Stone nowadays. Probably the same idiots that predicted Angels and Airwaves would be the next Radiohead in ten years.

Sweeney Todd

2008-06-30T21:24:00.002-07:00

Let me preface this article by making it clear that I hate musicals. I. HATE. MUSICALS. I may not have gone to see "Sweeney Todd" had I known beforehand that it was a member of this despised genre. But, blissfully unaware, I settled in to see a good dramatic horror flick and was confronted instead with a song before the characters had spoken even a single word of dialogue.

But as the movie developed, I found myself kind of enjoying it. "Sweeney Todd" features Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in a gruesomely bloody blend of theatrical talent and musical brilliance. The story was originally composed in 1979 by Stephen Sondheim and is here adapted to the screen by Tim Burton - famous for his dark, gothic-style directing. Johnny Depp stars as Sweeney Todd, a barber who was wrongly convicted of a crime and sent away, losing his wife and child. He returns 15 years later to the news that his wife has poisoned herself and his daughter is being held captive by the very judge (Mr. Turpin, played by Alan Rickman) that sentenced him. Todd sets up shop again and selects as a business partner Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), owner of a bakery that boasts "the worst meat pies in London".

Todd lures Mr. Turpin into his shop, intending to slit his throat and exact revenge....but the opportunity for murder slips through his fingers. Crazed, frustrated, and bloodthirsty, Sweeney Todd begins killing every customer that comes in for a shave. After the unsuspecting victim’s throat is slashed and the windows/floor/Todd’s clothes/camera lens are splattered with blood, he is dropped through a trapdoor, ground up, and served in Mrs. Lovett’s famous meat pies.

The soundtrack, of course, mirrors the shadowy gory tones of the film. Johnny Depp’s and Helena Bonham Carter’s voices harmonize well, and they have several impressive duets together. My favorite was “My Friends” – a creepy and horrifying serenade to Todd’s razors (“Friends, you shall soon drip precious rubies…”) Alan Rickman’s voice was a little off, but he was also a fairly decent singer. The ambient music was mostly dramatic choir singing accompanied by sinister images of Todd examining his razors, caressing things with bloody hands, etc.

If you want to listen to the whole soundtrack, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Sweeney-Todd-2005-Broadway-Revival/dp/B000CRR3P6 and scroll a quarter of the way down.

Most of the film is about setting up the mood: it doesn’t contain a whole lot of action (killing) until the second half. Once it starts, the amount of blood spurting and gurgling that’s heard could count as a track to itself. The movie is shot in a grim, grey, pale light and there are numerous images of a dark and grimy London full of dirt, refuse, and smokestacks. Todd eloquently sets the tone in the first song of the movie: “There's a hole in the world like a great black pit /And it's filled with people who are filled with shit /And the vermin of the world inhabit it.”

I became legitimately scared/disgusted by the final scene of the movie, which is shot in the bakery’s “butchering room” surrounded by the bloody corpses of Sweeney Todd’s victims. One of the characters is unnecessarily and graphically burned alive (my greatest fear), which made me want to curl into a corner and throw up. I would recommend the movie if you like horror films and copious quantities of blood don’t bother you. I normally equate musicals to happy people dancing in fields of flowers and sunshine, so the contrast was interesting and refreshing. If you do go to see the movie, count how many people die and let me know. I found myself wondering about the final body count by the last 15 minutes.

Dolphins play the Batman theme song

2008-06-30T21:24:00.001-07:00

It looks like humans aren’t the only mammals able to produce music: scientists have taught dolphins to combine rhythm and vocalizations to create a short, high-frequency version of the Batman theme song. The lead author of the study (Professor Heidi Harley) declared, “Humans are sensitive to rhythms embedded in sequences of sounds, but we typically consider this skill to be part of processing for language and music: cognitive domains that we consider to be uniquely human”. Apparently humans aren’t that unique – dolphins can produce rhythms too.

This is how the scientists trained them: first they parked a dolphin in front of an underwater sound projector that produced six different rhythms. Then they rewarded the dolphin for performing a specific action in response to a particular rhythm – for example, flipping its tail when Rhythm # 2 is played and tossing a ball when Rhythm # 3 comes on. The scientists played the rhythms at various tempos and pitches to ensure that the dolphin was recognizing the actual rhythm despite variations.

Next, they introduced an underwater button that the dolphin could push to produce different sounds. They trained the dolphins to create various patterns of sounds in response to specific objects….For example, when shown a Batman doll the dolphin would play the Batman theme song chorus: “da na na na na na na na BATmaaaaaaaaaaan!”

The dolphin also began spontaneously vocalizing whistles and chirps to harmonize with the rhythm it was playing with the button. By the end of the experiment, the scientists could show a dolphin an object and it would “sing” and play the correct rhythm-and-vocals combination that corresponded to the item.

Even though the dolphins proved amazing learning/mimicking capacity, they still don’t seem capable of producing “music” in the human sense of the word. There are hundreds of minute details involved in the construction of music: pitch, tempo, frequency, instruments, rhythm, vocals…..and intentionality. The dolphins aren’t purposely creating a melody – they’re simply mimicking a pattern of sounds that they are conditioned to perform. So is it true that humans are the only animals capable of producing music - or are we just unable to recognize music in the forms produced by other species? Can dolphins really sing? Is there a melody contained in their clicks and whistles that we simply can't distinguish? How would we categorize music produced by another species?

Some fun dolphin facts: they are one of the only species to have sex for fun and not just reproduction. They only have sex face to face – which is the most common sexual position for humans as well. Dolphin births require an experienced dolphin midwife to be present to aid the delivery. There exists a mysterious chamber in the dolphin brain whose purpose befuddles scientists. Experimentations suggest that it aids in achieving meditative states, contemplation, abstract thought, telepathic communication, and holographic visualization. Research into the skeletal structure of dolphins shows that they possess vestigial fingers and toes that evolved into fins and flippers….meaning that they once lived on land and then returned to their home, the sea. The famous explorer Jacques Cousteau wrote that the punishment for man’s original sin was gravity and humankind would achieve redemption only by rejoining the water – as dolphins did millennia ago.

Girl Talk

2008-06-30T21:23:00.001-07:00

Have you ever had one of those times where you just want to listen to high-energy, fun dance music? Girl Talk is that…on speed. Girl Talk is an incredibly talented mash-up remix DJ who layers samples from the best Top 40 songs, oldies, classics, indie, and rock music together to create a musaic masterpiece. In a single song you’ll hear the Five Stairsteps, Eminem, Ciara, the Verve (Bittersweet Symphony), the Pixies, Ying Yang Twins, Elton John (Tiny Dancer), Relient K, and more. What’s more, he blends separate tracks together so that the album, played beginning to end, sounds like a single continuous song.

Here’s one of my favorite songs: “Hold Up”, which contains a clip from that fantastic Pixes song “Where Is My Mind” from the Fight Club soundtrack.

A little background on Girl Talk: his real name is Greg Gillis. 26 years old, graduated from Case Western Reserve University and by day a biomedical research engineer. He signed with Illegal Art, an anti-copyright sampling label, in 2002 and has since created three albums: Secret Diary (2002), Unstoppable (2004), and Night Ripper (2006). The first two albums were more self-exploratory works…Secret Diary used complex structuring but with lesser-known music that didn’t have a really cohesive flow to it, and Unstoppable had all the public appeal of recognizable popular music without as much mixing and structuring. Night Ripper contains both elements: complex structure and popular music, and is widely considered Girl Talk’s masterpiece. It was through this album that he jumped to stardom in 2006.

Here’s another fantastic song, “Once Again”, which contains samples from “Bittersweet Symphony” and “Wonderwall”.

I loved listening to this music for the first time because you never know what sample from one of your favorite songs is going to pop up next. One second you’re jamming to T.I. and then here comes Gwen Stefani and the Smashing Pumpkins. I’ve also heard that his live shows are incredible….the crowd is allowed on stage to gather around the DJ and mosh, crowd surf, and generally just scream, sweat, and spill beer all over him while he hunches over his laptop. Usually he performs some sort of striptease exhibition during the show as well and ends up mostly or completely naked. It’s like a rave, but with all familiar classic dance music. So the next time you throw a party and need a soundtrack…pick Night Ripper.

MC Solaar..(Le context es plus forte que le concept)

2008-06-30T21:22:00.000-07:00

MC Solaar is a fantastic French rap and hip-hop artist. If you haven't listened to him before, you should. He's one of the most thoughtful and talented rappers I've ever heard....his lyrics read like poetry and are full of literary references, puns, and clever multi-lingual wordplay. Unlike most mainstream rappers (who, regardless of how they started, eventually evolve into 'hardcore'), the background samples to MC Solaar's songs usually contain soft melodies or beautiful orchestral arrangements.

Here's a sample of his work: one of my favorite songs, Inch'allah.

Ok, yes, the lyrics are in French, and I'm guessing most of you don't have a clue what he's saying. You've got three options: 1) get someone who speaks the language to tell you what he's saying. 2) pop the original perfectly constructed poetry into an online translator and end up with some horrifically mangled version that says "Under the false bottoms cortex without dancing the funky yet jerk. If this is you, courbe-toi walking low profile and be quiet”. Really, I online-translated lyrics and that’s what it gave me. Fucking ripoff. 3) Let the music speak for itself. This goes back to a recurring theme in my blogs of appreciating the beauty of international music containing language that typical American listeners don’t understand. Sigur Ros went so far as to use a fake language (Hopelandic) to emphasis this point: meaningful music is meant to convey ideas and emotion when the spoken word fails to suffice.

That being said, anyone can appreciate MC Solaar’s work even if they don’t understand his exceptional linguistic talent. MC Solaar wrote this song, Solaar Pleure (Solaar Cries), right after he broke up with his girlfriend of four years. The lyrics contain heavy religious references and convey a general mood of sadness, despair, and confusion that is also emoted in the music video.

For those of you who are interested, a quick biography: MC Solaar was born Claude M’Barali in Dakar, Africa in 1969. He moved with his family to France when he was six months old, and by the age of 13 was a talented football player and fluent in French, English, Spanish, and Russian. After adopting the stage name Solaar from his childhood graffiti tags, MC Solaar released his debut single “Bouge de La” (Take a Hike) in 1990 and was basically an instant success. The song later won him France’s “Victoires de la Musique” award. MC Solaar recorded a full album - “Qui seme le vent recolte le tempo”- which was released in 1991, and has recorded six other albums since….the latest of which - “Chaiptre 7” - was released in June 2007. Throughout his career MC Solaar has chosen to use his public influence to make political statements. He participated in Amnesty International’s project “30 Films Against Forgetting” in 1991, as well as appearing at dozens of international charity concerts. He stood publicly against illegal music downloading in 2003 with a special marketing campaign for his latest album, “Mach 6”. His label distributed 300,000 free CD-ROMs of the album around French suburbs – mimicking the free acquisition of downloading music online – but the tracks erased themselves after six days! Now the artist has a wife and a child and has settled down from touring – but somehow I don’t think he’s going to stop at a mere seven albums…..

A little international music will do you some good. I hope you liked this cultural diversion!

Tool 11/21/07: We'll ride the spiral till the end and may just go where no one's been...

2008-06-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

This was my first time EVER seeing Tool live, and so almost by default it naturally had to be fantastic. I arrived at the show at the Pepsi Center in Denver with my twin brother and fellow Iggli bloggers Greg and Sam, and Sam's brother. We missed the opening show - some band called TransAm. The general consensus of the people surrounding us was that they blew, so I'm not too sad about it. Greg, my brother, and I all sat together in eager anticipation while Sam and her brother were on the other side of the arena. The fog on the stage grew thicker and suddenly the lights went out. Maynard (wearing a cowboy hat), Adam (in pigtails), Justin, and Danny (sporting a Laker's jersey and basketball shorts) ran onto the stage and jumped straight into Jambi - the crowd exploded. After it ended Maynard yelled something about holding on for a long ride and then played my FAVORITE song: Stinkfist. The giant projector screens behind the band showed scenes and images from the Stinkfist music video. By now the crowd was going insane and screaming along with the song: "I'll - keep - digging - till I - feel - something".

Then Tool relaxed a little, played some (-) Ions, and then Forty-Six & 2, the crazy great song about the gradual evolution of human chromosomes towards reaching a higher plane of existence. Next up was a long instrumental intro, which pulsed throughout the arena sounding like a person taking deep, unsteady breaths. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and lost myself in the music: this was good. The following three songs were Schism, Rosetta Stoned, and some unidentifiable song - probably from the Undertow album - but NONE of the Tool fanatics sitting all around me were familiar with what exactly it was. Next they played Wings for Marie (Part One), which starts off with solo guitar and rumbles of thunder, while showing an incredible CGI picture of the back of a skeleton- like figure looking across a desert wasteland at a huge solar eclipse looming massively on the horizon in a creepy twilight. When the Maynard started singing the vocals for Wings for Marie their trademark laser show kicked off - first with huge rotating wing-like fans that projected across the entire arena. Directly after this song Tool jumped into 10,000 Days (Part Two), complete with artwork from the album on the screens behind the stage.

Next the band played Lateralus - my second-favorite Tool song of all time. During the middle of the song is a long instrumental section, which the drummer and guitarist extended while Maynard frolicked around at the back of the stage. They assembled a second drum set on stage and had a drum battle between Danny and some other guy, who I'm told was the drummer from TransAm. Needless to say, Danny won - judged by Maynard at 9 to 8. Maynard also had a little fun TP-ing the pit with a giant roll of toilet paper and a fan. Then everything was put away and the band picked up where the left off on Lateralus. The end is the best section of any song I've heard in my life. The simple guitar chords and subtle drumming combined with Maynard's melodic voice are incredible....here are the lyrics to my favorite part of the song:

"I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.......With my feet upon the ground I lose myself between the sounds and open wide to suck it in. I feel it move across my skin, I'm reaching up and reaching out, I'm reaching for the random or whatever will bewilder me. Following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been. We'll ride the spiral till the end and may just go where no one's been. Spiral out, keep going....."

Finally, Maynard wrapped up the show with a couple words of wisdom: "Don't drink and drive on the way home....you might spill.....Peace.....OUT......" before ending with Vicarious. The crowd screamed its collective lungs out for a couple minutes while the band members had a group hug, exchanged a couple pats on the back, and waved goodbye before tripping off the stage. Any hopes of an encore were quickly killed when the lights went up.

So obviously, the show was incredible. I had a stellar time, even though my twin brother was so drunk he kept puking and I had to leave a couple times to get him water. There were a couple downsides: 1) they didn't play AEnima. Sad day. 2) Even though they played almost all their most famous songs and everyone was happy, they didn't play any of their older stuff or equally-good-but-lesser-known songs. H., the Pot, Eulogy, Pushit, Third Eye, Parabola, Sober, Undertow, Jerkoff, the Grudge, and Right in Two were nowhere to be found. I think part of the problem was that Tool constructs each of their album to flow as a cohesive unit. All the little intros and crazy stuff they have going on between songs adds to overall mood of the album, and when they play their Greatest Hits that intimate connection is lost. You're hearing everything that the radio would play and nothing more. Tool has achieved an incredible cult following, but it seems like at this show they were pandering to the masses by playing almost exclusively their biggest hits. Oh well. It was fantastic: the best concert I've ever attended, and one of the high points of my musical life.

music of mexico

2008-06-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm standing in a beautiful white stucco room edged with dark mahoghany and awash with pale marble floors. A ceiling fan silently circles, rhythmically forging invisible wakes through the yielding air. Weightless white linen curtains flutter gently in the Mexican breeze, framing the open doorway to the spacious balcony lining my entire three-room suite. I hear music. The classy resort at which I'm staying - hoping to cater to the tastes of wealthy, 'edgy' tourists - plays a hip techno medley of popular US music from speakers lining the four-tiered pool, swim-up bar, and three hot tubs. This leads to constant bumping bass remixes of Jewel's "Hands", Sean Paul's "Temperature", and various other "party vacation songs" playing relentlessly in the background. Mexican culture trying to adapt ambient music to American tastes? Not a good idea.

I'm lying on an ivory cushion on the beach of Cabo San Lucas at night, watching the stars twinkle and the Milky way swirl above my head. The vast Pacific Ocean faces me. The rhythmic swell and wash of waves curling along the pale sand lulls me almost to sleep. Dizzily dazed with wonder, I watch Mars wink knowingly at me and Orion stretch luxuriously over the space of a million light-years. I hear music. Farther along the beach, lit by flickering firelight against a backdrop of hotel construction, is a group of Mexican teenagers. They've driven their car onto the beach and are listening to a local radio station at full blast while smoking various cigarettes/joints. The music is fast-paced Hispanic rap, complete with drums and banjos. The lyrics consist mostly of a string of slang obscenities and drug/sex references.....maybe mainstream Mexican music isn't so different from that of the United States after all.

I'm walking along a narrow street in San Jose, Mexico. The melodic lilt of spoken Spanish wafts from shady tienditas and tiny chintzy tourist booths. Americans obviously are a huge source of revenue for the masses of low-income Mexicans that fight to feed their families along this hot, beautiful, glittering coast. I hear music. A toothless old man with skin like singed paper sits in a plastic chair in front of a little jewelry store with a harmonica. He tunelessly blows a few bars, then stops at intervals and warbles a mostly unintelligible line or two, then goes back to blowing. He seems to be one of those 'crazy old grandpas' that the rest of the family is taking care of in his last few years of life. He looks hopelessly content to be sitting in the sun, making music and propositioning strangers to buy jewelry from his store.

The music here is more similar to US music than I originally imagined. Yes, it sounds vastly different...but the messages are the same. Music all over the world conveys the same universally human emotions. From the poor singing on the street to earn a few coins, to rebellious teenagers playing popular club music as a soundtrack for illicit mischief-making, music plays the same roles in lives across the world. Everywhere I go...I hear music.

History of Music Labels

2008-06-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Record labels have played a vast role in the music industry since the early 1900s. Like all behemoth companies, their power waxed to a daunting pinnacle...but they are now faced with the possibility of certain death as bands have started flexing their independent muscles and appealing to fan support to survive and thrive without their label contracts.

This is a documentation of the growth and expansion of music labels, as well as their involvement in DRM media and their decline due to the advent of online music piracy.

The Role of Music Labels Defined
Music labels are essentially promo companies that enter into contracts with up-and-coming artists. They agree to produce and market the artist's music in exchange for royalties on the selling prices. Already-established and influential artists are sometimes able to negotiate contracts to their best advantage....but often, struggling but talented bands sign on to a label just to survive, end up becoming immensely popular, and eventually get screwed over by their record labels because of the restrictive terms of their original contracts. Often the relationship between labels and artists is disagreeable and combative. Record labels edit songs, change album artwork, and do whatever they feel will boost album sales - regardless of what the artist originally intended for his/her work. They also tend to charge vast amounts of money for their services, leaving even successful artists with not much money, because until very recently they believed that it was impossible for artists to survive in the harsh and jaded music world without them.

But let's back up a little.....

History
Music labels (surprisingly) found their origin in the inventions of Thomas Edison. In 1877 he created a recording device for the telephone (invented one year previously by Alexander Graham Bell), which basically functioned as an answering machine. Edison then set up the American Gramophone Company in the 1880s, which first sold dictating machines and then phonographs, which played music. Their popularity was unprecedented, and by the 1890s every major U.S. city was home to its own phonograph company.

Edison's original products were cylinders, which had audio recordings engraved on the outside metal. But in 1900 competitors began selling disc-shaped records (the beginnings of vinyl), which were 1) cheaper, 2) easier to store in bulk, and 3) a more efficient and less problem-ridden method of playing music. Edison's sales began to drop as the two companies selling discs (Victor and Colombia) steadily gained popularity.

In 1913 Edison succumbed and produced the Edison Diamond Disc Player. But by this time, most of the decades-old patents copyrighting record machines had expired, and dozens of smaller independent companies producing the same product sprang into existence. Throughout a swift couple years of founding, buying, and acquiring in the 1920s, these first record labels mostly focused on producing jazz and blues on discs. Edison was forced out of business shortly after Black Friday in October of 1929, mostly due to his refusal to produce jazz records because of his personal distaste for it....despite that fact that jazz was by far the most popular music of the time period.

Over the next few decades, business continued as usual with independent labels springing up/major labels buying out smaller ones/technology slowly but surely advancing. Two major labels (Colombia and RCA) first introduced vinyl records in 1948. In the 1950s, there were five major record labels: Colombia, RCA Victor, Decca, Capitol, and Mercury. Their stock plummeted during that decade as the independent labels began producing rock and roll/ R&B records while the "old fogies" stuck with jazz. But eventually they caught on and the labels rode the waves of musical evolution for the next four decades.

The cassette tape was introduced in 1963 and the CD in 1981. Cassettes were the most popular music configuration in the 1980s, until CDs finally ousted them from glory in 1992.

DRM
The idea of "Digital Rights Management"-controlled media became popular with labels by the late 1990s. The concept was, in theory, going to be used to limit consumption of audio and visual media solely to paying customers and reduce the amount of online piracy. Illegal downloading, the labels argued, would drop profits, limit creative input, and decrease overall quality of the media being produced - which would lead to a decline in the industry as a whole. In 1998 President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalized the production and use of any technology which could circumvent the securities surrounding DRM-protected media, and also raised criminal penalties for Internet copyright infringement. Companies like Napster, Kazaa, and MP3.com were essentially shut down as a result, and pay-to-listen sites like Pressplay and Rhapsody were set up. In 2003 the CEO of Apple (Steve Jobs) created the iTunes music store, which offered legal music downloads for 99 cents a song.

Now
Today, the four major music labels are: Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG, and Universal. Despite recent declines, they still hold a considerable amount of power and will not hesitate to sue millions of Americans for illegally downloading their copyrighted music. In 2007, Jammie Thomas was the first to go to court out of over 26,000 people sued by music labels for copyright infringement. She was found guilty and ordered to pay $220,000 to six labels for 25 songs she was found guilty of downloading illegally.

However, several bands have finally tired of being kicked around by their boorish labels and have started to stand up for themselves....led by three of the most famous artists in recent history: Radiohead, Madonna, and Nine Inch Nails.

It remains to be seen how well these artists will function without any ties to a label. After all their label-free hype, Radiohead ended up negotiating a short-term contract with XL Recordings to distribute physical copies of their newest album In Rainbows. Nine Inch Nails dropped Interscope, but has experience numerous problems and glitches with their self-distributed album Ghosts I. Madonna, of course, has yet to release any new material since she left Warner Music, but has signed with a concert promoter (Live Nation), which will allow her to keep 90% of her concert revenues.

Some say it's too early to tell, but most people agree....the death bell for traditional music labels is tolling. It will take a couple years....but more and more artists are jumping ship to prove that they can make it on their own. Labels won't die off completely, but their role is going to be dramatically revamped within the next decade.

Probably for the good of everyone.