Some weeks ago my external HDD died and took most of my re-digitalized audio-collection with it. This was actually a very cleansing occurrence and I decided to put music back to where it belongs. And I do not mean the heading-straight-towards-terabyte wide opens of current harddisks, which do a very successful job in robbing music of what it’s supposed to be, making it arbitrary and the listener indifferent due to the pure amount of accessible sound. No, what I had in mind was a rack. Filled with records. Those big vinyly things. To get back in touch with the music, handling a record, putting it on the turntable, carefully lifting the arm on the record.. and listen.

So I got myself a turntable on ebay, a solid Technics SL-Q2, nothing fancy. After some issues with a broken stylus and waiting for a new cartridge it is up and running. Sounds very warm. The only remaining problem is that the replacement-cartridge seems to have a very low output, requiring to crank up my amp pretty far. It does not sound too linear and slightly distorted up there. Anyway, it will have to do for now while I take my time to figure out what new cartridge to get or if I just get a replacement-stylus for the original system, an EPC-207C.

I also bought my first record (post ~1995), Brant Bjork’s Tres Dias, at a local second hand record store. Besides that I got myself a used copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon which includes both posters, kind of rare, or so I’ve been told. I can’t wait to slowly but steadily build a fine collection of records, rediscovering music in the process.

Sometimes, there’s still good news in these bleak times.

Yesterday a friend sent me an article describing the process of how a small band which is currently doing fine on some indie-label gets signed by a major. Interesting read, although a little bit scary. Well, it’s all about the money, and if the bucks are that big (which they are actually not), you can fully understand why there’s a total lack of, well, thinking on the band’s part.

When Against Me! signed to a major some time ago, one opinion I read was as follows: “I don’t need to spend my spare time watching other people working.” Although the last record has been released for some time now, I have yet to listen to it, so I can’t really decide wether or not the switch had negative impact on the music. Besides that, I don’t really care. Assuming those guys are all grown-ups, they probably know what they’re doing, and who am I to judge. And they can’t force me to buy their records anyway.

In all honesty, I guess one of the main reasons that your Punk- or Indie - or whatever “scene” or “undergroud”-listening Jane has such strong feelings about this topic is the fact, that the band will probably be recognized by a much larger audience which will result in Jane not longer being Punk or Indie or whatever. All the lame kids will start listening to it and even MTV puts it on heavy rotation..

At the same time, this elitist behavior of those scenesters is actually killing the scene. Have you been to a hardcore-show recently? All this tough-guy attitude is hardly bearable. If one wasn’t so scared by all those hardcore-hipsters, one would probably have to laugh out loud. If you’re not vegan/straight edge/whatever else those people are into right now, you’re not part of that scene. If you’re not 110% politically correct (which for example can be wearing an Ignite-shirt on a 25-ta-life concert) you’re not part of that scene. If you dare to smile every now and then, you’re not part of that scene. So, who actually wants to be part of that scene? There’s an EP of Dillinger Escape Plan with Mike Patton called “Irony is a Dead Scene”. Point made.

Yesterday I stumbled over Pandora, a "music discovery service". Open the page , create a "station" by entering an artist or song title of your choice, let pandora work a short time and listen. It always starts with a song of the band you entered and goes from there. Unlike the social music network Last.fm (formerly known and still powered by audioscrobbler), pandora claims to select songs played by their "music genome":

It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

And this mostly works. Ok, they tend to drift away from time to time, starting with Jets To Brazil once led me to Creed (which can’t be played at all. never!) and some real alternative rock like Pearl Jam or Meat Puppets. When the sound of some 80’s glam-rockers tuned in, I switched channels (ah, pandora.. and I wondered). Anyhow, it mostly generates a somewhat smooth playlist. Guess I have to be more flexible when it comes to generes. And haircuts. Also, it seems The Cardigans are more mainstream than I’m willig to admit. I really like them and find Nina Persson’s voice very comforting, but I can hardly listen to any other "Artist" following. Elitist asshole? ME? No way..

Last.fm gives a slightly more adventurous listening experience. For beeing based on the track submissions of its subscribers, if lot of people have a wide range of music they listen to, you get wide ranged stream. I created a stream for Hot Water Music and got Refused, NOFX, Lagwagon, Cursive and Fugazi. All related to the same genre (punk rock, anyone? ok, Cursive probably not) but hardly the same listening experience.

Another thing is the available streams: Pandora seems to have the bigger collection and plays pretty much everything you throw at it, given they sold at least seven to twelve albums. It created streams for Jets To Brasil or 13 & God, last.fm couldn’t generate a stream for both of them. Both failed for Countdown To Life, though. Guess they only sold 3 CDs and 2 times Vinyl.

A technical sidenote: Pandora uses Flash, last.fm offers precompiled clients for Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Wintendo and sources for the DIY people.

Anyhow, both services are fun to use and offer hours of enjoyment, well, Pandora only 10 of them for then you have to pay a yearly fee of 36 bucks. Give it a try, it’s worth it. At the moment of writing this, I’m listening to a Pandora-station that I started with Evergreen Terrace, followed by Twentyinchburial, Atreyu.. nice.

A friend just told me to visit americasarmy.ca. No way I told him, known any boycotted! He wrote back that I should take a closer look at the URL, especially the top-level-domain.. and et voilà! That’s way better. Seems like there’s some things you still can rely on..