As we await the excitement of the House vote on the Boehner plan, let’s entertain ourselves with a new reader video, from the band Super Duper.
Update. The reader is a member of the band, that’s how these things work.
by DougJ| 53 Comments
This post is in: Music, Readership Capture
As we await the excitement of the House vote on the Boehner plan, let’s entertain ourselves with a new reader video, from the band Super Duper.
Update. The reader is a member of the band, that’s how these things work.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 45 Comments
This post is in: Music
For those of you looking for a distraction from the debt ceiling, here’s a review of Spotify after the break.
I got an invite to Spotify via this link the other day, and so far I’m very impressed. Free or cheap unlimited streaming has been around before, but Spotify’s implementation is by far the best I’ve seen.
Spotify has a desktop player that seamlessly integrates your iTunes library (or other music libraries) with their seemingly infinite music collection. When you search Spotify for an artist or track, it returns everything it can find in its collection and yours. Both search and playback are virtually instantaneous. In practice, it’s impossible to tell whether you’re streaming a song or playing it from your own music collection.
You can also do things like share playlists over social media, or create a playlist and email a link to it to your Spotify-using friends. The artist bios and related artist components are decent quality and work well with search.
The key fact about Spotify is that it “just works” — the player isn’t overfeatured and the streaming is glitch-free. There are three editions: free, with an invite, which plays an (annoying) ad every few minutes and displays ads in the player; unlimited ($5/month), which does away with ads, and premium ($10/month), which also lets you stream on your mobile device or on other network devices. I’m still mooching on the free service but I’ll probably throw down for the unlimited, since it’s less than the price of one album.
This review sounds like a goddam commercial, but I was predisposed not to like this service, and I’m surprised at having the opposite reaction.
by DougJ| 89 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
To think of anything positive to say today. Can you think of anything?
by DougJ| 85 Comments
This post is in: Music
I’m not usually one to follow celebrity lives and deaths too much, but I find Amy Winehouse’s death very sad. Her songs and lyrics were clever, and I really liked her singing, which was sophisticated and jazz-inflected in a way that you just don’t hear much on pop radio. So much of popular culture is frankly stupid and tasteless, so when someone gets immensely popular doing something that goes beyond stupid and tasteless, I have a lot of respect for them.
by DougJ| 39 Comments
This post is in: Music, Readership Capture
I’m going to do these on a regular schedule, once a week, I think, but it’s a bummer weekend and I thought another one would be fun. From reader Paul Belliveau, who’s a high-school math teacher by day.
by DougJ| 32 Comments
This post is in: Music, Readership Capture
A Balloon-Juice reader asked me to play this music video that his wife made. I thought that could be a new fun thing around here, videos made by readers and their friends and families.
Also too, this is a week, politically, so I’m for more light-hearted threads.
by DougJ| 34 Comments
This post is in: Music
This time I’m putting it up at happy hour rather than the break of dawn!
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Jacobites, “It’ll All End Up in Tears” (1985)
The Jacobites were a British band circa the mid-’80s consisting mainly of Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth, with support from Sudden’s brother Epic Soundtracks (great pseudonym), Mark Lemon, and others. I think of Sudden and Kusworth as among the lesser-known Mick & Keith knockoffs, with David Johansen/Johnny Thunders, Axl Rose/Slash, Neil Hagerty/Jennifer Herrema, etc. Maybe it’s the top hats and kerchiefs that make me want to group them, but there are whiffs of weary jaded 19th-century French poet decadence about them all too. This song is a good example, with a woman grieving the death of a friend by lighting a candle and letting herself feel “dead for just one moment.” I think I know how she feels, looking down the maw of this debt ceiling circus. Paradoxically, it’s always been a good way for me to dispel gloom. They could get pretty noisy too, as heard in “Big Store,” among others.
Jacobites, another side (“Big Store”)
Review and more stuff at Can’t Explain.