geekpdx

Ever wondered about the lyrics of Carmina Burana?

2 comments March 21st, 2008

Amazon’s MP3 store hates me (and proxied networks).

I related my first experience on the blog of a friend. To summarize, when you buy an individual song from the Amazon MP3 store, you can download it directly from the web page - when you buy an album, you must use Amazon’s download utility. Amazon’s download utility won’t play nice with the network here at work, and no information on which ports it wants seems to be readily available on the Amazon website. Additionally, your downloads have a time limit of approximately 24-48 hours before they “expire”.

Two of the several albums I have purchased from the new Amazon MP3 store have been purchased while I was at work. After the download utility failed on both occasions, I forgot about them for a little while, which means that the downloads had expired before I tried to download them from home. The first time, I tried to use Amazon’s call-back feature to contact them. Nobody called me back. Not even a robot. So I emailed them, and two days later I received a response with instructions to head back to my account and view my downloads, where I would find that my expired music would again be available.

Now, it looks like I need to email them again to get this second album unlocked for downloading from home.

So, the thing is - Amazon offers DRM-free MP3 downloads. That’s exactly what I want. iTunes allows me to buy music while at work. Which is also what I want.

Dammit, get your shit together guys!

On a side-note, I also made a very bad purchase on the Amazon store. I bought a M.I.A. album*. I bought the “regular” version, since that’s what you should listen to before checking out any remixes and like. Turns out that regular album was the censored version (it’s got the bad words removed, someone thought of the children!!!). To actually get the “regular” album, I should have scrolled down a bit further about bought the “explicit” album. So, I’m also going to ask Amazon (nicely) if I can download that album (or the affected songs) as well. Perhaps I’m being a bit optimistic, but hey, it’s not like I have physical media that I can resell or return eh?

_{*Incidentally, the album is pretty good, even if it has been sanitized for those who live in terror of naughty words and the inevitable and awful sullying of innocence they wreak among our wee ones.}

3 comments October 3rd, 2007

Zappa, American Baddass.

A clip of Frank Zappa defending the first amendment, when I was in second grade.

Add comment June 11th, 2007

Gifford Pinchot CD

The Gifford Pinchot CD I ordered from CD baby arrived yesterday.
I’m impressed. It’s pretty damn good.

Negatives:

• The CD showed up a little more scratched than I would have liked. The envelope was pretty beat-up though, so it probably had to deal with some rough handling.
• Noise levels. When alone, I like loud music. Really loud music. I’m no audiophile, but I have some pretty decent mid to high-end gear and an okay ear. On the CDs initial listen, I gave it some volume and there was a little too much hiss in the background for my tastes. I tried it on two other stereo systems in the house and on my car stereo and got the same results. Of course, I realize that perhaps the hiss is there for artistic reasons, but I’ve just never been a fan of hiss.
• No lyrics in the CD packaging. Not a big deal, but I’m a sucker for a lyric booklet. This could easily be rectified if they posted them on their website.

Positives:

• The music is great.
• Nice variety. Some of the tracks feel pretty accessible, and definitely radio-playable. Some of the other tracks rock a *lot* harder and really make me feel good. One or two of them aren’t as polished and fit-together as the others, but that may be by design - and they’re still good tracks. The track length varies too. From 6 second tracks to 17+ minute songs.
• The packaging. The art and layout is nice, and the packing is made of 100% recycled paper and printed with vegetable based inks. Nice touch, and very respectable.

Do yourself a favor and buy this cd. I’ll add that I think it would be a good idea if they tossed all their tracks online instead of just a few. Let people have a good and thorough listen, and why not post a paypal link? CD baby is nice, but I would have been more than happy to download some decently encoded mp3s and paypal over some money.

Add comment November 10th, 2006

Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot National Forest is one of my favorite national forests. In fact, Secret Waterfall Camp is located there.

During the recent Musicfest NW, I was at Dante’s (watching a pretty bad band), and I picked up a sleeved CD that was sitting on the bar. The name - Gifford Pinchot - caught my attention. So I pocketed it and took it home. Once I gave it a listen, I felt a bit let down. After all, it was pretty damn good, but only had four tracks. I wanted more. So I dug around online and found the band’s website at GiffordPinchotMusic.com. Not much information. Indeed, not even any contact info.

Apparently they had a CD release party at Berbati’s last night. Unfortunately, their website still has no contact information. And even worse, there’s no information on purchasing a CD (or purchasing some mp3 files, which is what I really want). Hopefully they’ll Google themselves, find this post, and rectify the situation.

Anyways, you should still have a listen.

[Update: 11/06/06 12:44 PM] If you happen to be involved with Gifford Pinchot, please post a comment. I’d be more than willing to paypal over some money for the rest of the tracks (in mp3 or CD format, though if I get a CD I’ll rip it to mp3 files anyways) - no need to wait for a some sort of ecommerce system to get setup on your website.

[Update: 11/07/06 4:07 PM] It looks like they’ve updated their website to inlcude a link to buy the cd on CD Baby. I just bought it. Hopefully it’ll show up soon!

Add comment November 5th, 2006

Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadooloop

NPR : The Dog Who Loved to Suck on Toads

For those of you who don’t get the title… Get some Parliament!

Add comment October 25th, 2006

Classical Surf Juice

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Japanese Surf Versions of Classical Themes (MP3s)

I’m not sure how my morning browse dropped me at this WMFU post, but I’m glad it happened. What we have here is a selection of popular (and often overused) classical pieces redone as surf rock/pop. Apparently, the Bunnys are quite the OG remix artists. Lots of good stuff can be found.

In semi-unrelated news, the last few days have been pretty good to me in terms of finding new (to me) music. Good enough that I’/ve just created a “Music” category.

Add comment September 11th, 2006