LoudSpeakers

This is pretty damn funny. But it makes me wonder if blog posts are becoming the new email forwards?

By way of Brad Feld: State Of The Union

From my perspective, it would appear that Indian films have taken giant leaps in creativity and cinematography from what I remember. I have never been a fan of Bollywood movies. Ever.

Indian pop culture as a whole has never interested me. The films all seemed to revolve around a handful of themes and storylines. Much of the writing was just way too obvious in meaning. The end result, in my opinion, is that many of the films are too similar and lack any substantial differences. The emotionally repressed society seems to live vicariously through film. I’m just sayin’. No need to send any nastygrams my way — it’s just my opinion.

Recently, I watched a movie called The Terrorist, an Indian film about a Sri Lankan woman who sets out to become a suicide bomber to avenge the death of her brother. The cinematography is incredible!

I’m currently watching The Journey, a film by Ligy J. Pullappally. She’s a former Chicago lawyer of Indian descent who put out her first short after graduating from law school. Released on February 14 on DVD, the film will surely create a stir in the somewhat homophobic Indian community because of the themes involving love between women. Looking beyond the obvious, the film appears well constructed and obvious that significant effort was involved.

There have been some standouts throughout the years. Mira Nair is a director that I have followed rather closely. It all started when I saw “Salaam Bombay.” She also did Monsoon Wedding and Vanity Fair, but Salaam Bombay is still my favorite. I’m a sucker for female vocals and dramatic stories of poor people and their lives.

Then there was Born Into Brothels last year that completely consumed me. This is a must see movie. Read more about it here.

I get downright giddy when I discover that a service I use (other than a blog or traditional news content site) has introduced an RSS feed. Last.fm added an RSS feed for recent tracks. Can I get a hell’s yeah?

Here’s my RSS feed for recently listened tracks.

Via Mark Pincus

No, not the Gervais St. in Columbia, South Cackalack. I’m referring to Ricky Gervais and his podcast. From Britain even. Nice blokes. Not your ordinary bollocks. You need to listen.

We went to Chapel Hill on Friday night to see Portastatic and Robert Pollard play. It was a good show. Pollard’s new band is pretty damn tight. They played a bunch of stuff from their new release on Merge titled “From A Compound Eye” for the first set. The second set is when things got crazy. It was a GBV closer with a handful of classics over the years.

Portastatic pictured above.

Pollard in mid-air.

Well, technically it’s Carrboro, NC. I’m taking my original copy of Propeller to have Bob autograph it. I’m a dweeb and proud of it. I’m looking forward to taking a lot of pictures as well.

Apparently, the Art Brut live show is a performance not to be missed.  Eddie Argos, lead brut, supposedly has a wicked stage presence.

Art Brut Tour Dates

My very first live encounter with Guided By Voices was six years ago on this very day at the Elbow Room in Columbia, SC.

I was blown away, stunned, and hooked by their engaging live performance. I have never seen a band get quite as drunk on stage and manage to somehow play as tight as one might hope.

Do The Collapse had just been released and the critics were ready to pounce considering the immediately recognizable departure from the previous material.

The critics failed to judge the release by itself. They seemed to be put off by the polished nature of the recording rather than appreciate the span that Pollard was demonstrating. Sure, one of the singles from the release, “Hold On Hope,” wasn’t exactly high art compared to songs on Bee Thousand, but when you have literally written 10,000 songs some are bound to be less art-y than others.

Do The Collapse, their first release on TVT, remains one of my favorite Pollard releases next to Isolation Drills. A recent exchange with Fred Wilson has insprired an upcoming “intro to GBV” podcast that I am currently working on.

Stay tuned for that podcast during the week of February 6th.

To subscribe with iTunes:
1. Download iTunes version 6 and install it
2. Select Advanced, Subscribe to Podcast, and enter this into the dialog:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/internmentcamp/loudspeakers

LoudSpeakers At InternmentCamp.

Amazon delivered the “God Bless Bloc Party” DVD today and it wasn’t in my hands for more than 10 minutes before I was watching it. I’m sad to say that it just wasn’t that great.

They obviously put a great deal of effort into the production part of it, but it just seemed to lack any substance beyond the high-glow effects and production wizardry.

I was excited when I originally saw that it was coming out, but alas I realize that I should have rented it from Netflix instead of actually buying it.

The last really, really good music DVD that I bought was the Pavement’s Slow Century. It’s a hard music documentary to top.

Yeah, no kidding. They were the surprise entertainment for a private company event. I’m not a huge fan, but it was absolute mayhem. They cranked out most of their hits in just over ninety minutes. My only dissapointment: No Liv.

Robert Pollard is a pimp. Or is he a pusher? In either case, he’s managed to sell anything from lo-fi boom box recordings to hi-fi production studio material to the swarm of rabid fans that seem to have an endless appetite for all things Bob and his most well known band, Guided by Voices.

Such is the case with the most recent Pollard release. The 19 track vinyl-only release under the monicker Acid Ranch is called As Forever. They pressed 525 copies of this gem and it sold out in under 2 days.

The covers were hand printed over old records. I managed to get two copies of As Forever. One copy uses Juice Newton’s Greatest Hits and the other is a Dire Straits record, but I still can’t figure out which one.

As Forever is already being called the next Propeller in reference to the 1992 release on Scat records where the vinyl copies were handmade originals. Copies of the original Propeller have sold in the thousands of dollars on ebay recently. Here’s a copy that will probably sell for around $1200-1500.

Copies of Propeller autographed by Pollard fetch an additional hefty sum. I managed to pick up a copy several month ago autographed by Tobin Sprout for around $1300. I look forward to getting Pollard’s signature at his show in a couple of weeks in Chapel Hill, NC.

Damn straight. The Bloc Party documentary out on Vice January 17. Preview here.

Order from Amazon here.

The recent leak of the forthcoming Built To Spill record shows that the band has a sense of humor yet are determined to get paid for their work. The only leak available of “You In Reverse” samples from Mike Jones, the Houston rapper who sings his mobile number all over his own records and routinely asks the rhetorical question, “Who is Mike Jones?”

That rhetorical question was sampled and is used all over the BTS record and would surely get irritating after some point with continuous listen. I suppose they understand that leaks are just the norm these days and they can’t fully combat the inevitable, but they can make it annoying for repeated listening.

The retail version will leak at some point and this one will eventually fade, but there’s not much that a band or a label can do about the problem. Records need to get to the reviewers months in advance to make it into the cycles.

The only question I have relates to the band sampling the work of Mike Jones, presumably without permission. I doubt that they asked permission if in fact it was the band that intentionally released the rough cut version of the record with the audio watermark.

Mike Jones probably doesn’t know who Built To Spill is, but he probably does care that his music is being sampled without permission. Though not a proper release, the rough cut signifies an intention to release and that may be the only thing that matters.

But such is the case today where permission to publish is no longer required even in the face of the law.

Podcasting, mashups, mixtapes, and apparently audio watermarking using copywritten samples are just the new reality.

I was a little infuriated today after hearing this piece on Podtech.net.  I usually find John’s shows entertaining and informative, but his most recent podcast should have been researched more.  Listen to the episode and if you feel the same way, I urge you to comment on his blog.  A correction is in order.

Here are some of my comments on his blog:

Your characterization of independent music as being comprised of “a few good artists mixed with a sea of mediocre local bar bands” before the internet is complete conjecture on your part.

“But the web has helped to promote some quality.” Wrong. It’s just made the music more accessible to people who want to hear it created and distributed without the ill intent of the major labels.

Podtech.net: InfoTalk Podcast Series