Recently in Music Category
I enjoy listening to podcasts and audiobooks on my iPod, especially in the car. I typically use an earbud headset, but with only one bud, keeping the other ear free for sounds of traffic.
Last week, though, I started using the tiny Griffin iTrip Pocket instead. It plugs right in to my iPod nano, and plays through the car's FM receiver. The three buttons along the bottom can be set to any unused FM frequencies.
I've tried FM transmitters before and have been disappointed. For some reason, the iTrip Pocket does a better job of transmitting a clear signal. I rarely get static.
The one downside to this is how quickly it drains the battery. I am guessing it'll exhaust the Nano's battery in under five hours, which could be a problem on long trips. But for driving around town, it's great. Link
Jim Carroll was a child-prodigy heroin addict who wrote a fascinating account of his life called The Basketball Diaries (later made into a pretty good movie). In 1980, he released his first and only music album, called Catholic Boy, and it is one of my favorite albums of all time. Every song is filled with scarily infectious hooks, and the street-wise lyrics are unforgettable. $9.98 on Amazon
I was prepared to be disappointed by the Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang concert that my wife's friend was dragging us to. Not because I'd heard anything bad about the kids' band (in fact, I'd never head of them at all until the day before we went to see them perform) but because I have disliked every kids' band concert I've had the misfortune of attending since my kids were born. And my kids have ended up being bored, too.
Thankfully, Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang were funny, and clever and lively. Their sly humor appealed to me, especially in songs like "I Don't Think I Like It" and Selfish Shellfish. My eight-year-old daughter doesn't like them because they aren't cool enough (she liked the Fall Out Boy show I took her to see), but my three-year-old and I know better. The are extremely cool. $11.99 on Amazon
I forgot how much fun it is to rifle through a stack of 12-inch LPs to select music. iTunes is a wonderful music management system, but it's so darn cold and mechanical. I came across an application that brings back the fun of browsing for music. It's called CoverFlow, and turns your iTunes library into a stack of LPs that you can flip through. It grabs the cover art already on your hard drive, and then goes online to find as much missing cover art as it can.
According to the Readme file, CoverFlow is a "tech demo" that will stop working September 31st. "There may or may not be a new version out by then." I hope there is one. I'll pay for it! Link
I love the 99-Cent Only Store. (Here's a piece I wrote about it several years ago for bOING bOING). I love to take my kids there, because they go nuts for the battery powered fans, tubs of knockoff Play-Doh, stuffed animals, and other toys.
On our last trip, I picked up a few kid music CDs. I like them much more than contemporary kid music, which all seems to have that same abysmal Disney Beauty and the Beast / Lion King style, with over-the-top Broadway musical vocals. The people always sound like the are crying over a lost dream in those songs. I hate that.
The CDs I picked up from the 99-Cent Only Store are more in the vein of Dumbo / Peter Pan style music -- chipper, melodic, inventive. That's because the songs were obviously recorded in the 1950s. My 3-year-old immediately pricked up her ears and started dancing to the music.
I suspect these songs are in the public domain. Maybe I'll rip them to MP3 to share with the readers of Mad Professor.
Startech's MP3 AirLink Wireless Audio Transmitter and Receiver uses the same frequency spectrum as a Wi-Fi network to transit your music from an iPod or computer to a stereo. The system comes with two palm-sized rectangular cubes — a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter has a button to let you scroll through eight channels, helping you get a clear signal.
Startech advertises the range to be 100ft in the clear, and 30ft through walls, and that seems about right to me. When I connected the transmitter to my desktop computer in one room and the stereo in another, I experienced some dropouts, until I moved the transmitter and receiver around.
The AirLink has become my preferred way to play songs from my computer to my home stereo, because I can control the songs from iTunes.
Advantages: You can control the songs from your iPod or computer; sound quality is good.
Disadvantages: Each device is powered with an AC adapter, but if you don’t need portability, this isn’t a problem; getting good reception can be tricky, range is limited to 30ft through walls. $64.38 on Amazon
What happens when Disney creates a phony band consisting of kids singing Devo covers? Surprisingly, something wonderful. Devo songs are among the best ever written, and these kids, under the direction of Devo member Gerry Casale do a fantastic job of making the songs fun and keeping them strange.
This two disc set includes a DVD with an hour and a half worth of video, including songs and interviews with the original Devo bandmembers. In a world where most kids' music is condescending and vapid, this is an instant classic. $12.97 on Amazon.com
For $70, this is a nice solution for playing your iPod through your home stereo system. You plug the cables coming out of the dock into the aux jack of your stereo. (You also have to plug a wall wart into the dock in order to keep the iPod charged.) I appreciated the ease of use -- I didn't even need to use the manual.
The remote allows you to jump from one playlist to another, and skip forward or back by track, but there's no volume control. Also, the remote uses infrared not RF, so you need a line of sight to the dock to skip songs, which is not idea for my set up (I hide the stereo system and HiFi-Link in a cabinet, so I need to keep the cabinet doors open if I want to be able to change a song.)
The HiFi-Link also hooks up to a TV, so you can view photos and videos (if you have an iPod Video) with it. I haven't tried that yet. $70.99 on Amazon.com
When the Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened for business in March 1927, guests enjoyed the sounds of the hotel orchestra in the Monarch Room. The ukulele player in the band was a 21-year-old named Bill Tapia, who learned how to play the uke after buying one at the age of seven from Manuel Nunes, one of the very first ukulele makers on earth (Nunes ukes are worth a fortune today.)
Bill Tapia is 97, and he still gives lessons and plays the ukulele in clubs around Southern California. I've had the pleasure of twices seeing the dapper and happy Tapia perform.
This CD, the Duke of Uke, has songs recorded recently and in 1936. They music is sweet and jazzy, as all uke music should be. $16.99 on Amazon
The earphones that come with the iPod are kind of like the one button mouse that used to come with the Mac -- good looking but functionally crippled.
Even though the latest iPod is much improved over the first 5GB model, Apple pigheadedly insists on including the same round earphones they issued with the original iPod. These earphones fall out of my ears and aren't loud enough.
Griffin's EarThumps are the earphones that should come with every iPod. I usually don't like buds that stick in my ear, but the EarThumps are very comfortable, even when I push them far into my ear canals to block out the grunting sounds that the steroid junkies at the gym make while they're weighlifting.
I'm not an audiophile, so I can't tell you about dynamic frequency response or that kind of stuff. They sound fine to me, but most of what I listen to consists of low-fi podcasts and MP3s of scratchy LPs and 78s. $19.99 at Amazon
1. MAKE: Technology on Your Time Volume 04
2. The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
3. Gonzo Gizmos: Projects & Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek
5. Life's Little Annoyances : True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore
6. Strange Angel : The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons
7. Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)
8. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life
10. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
11. The Week
12. One Two Three . . . Infinity : Facts and Speculations of Science
13. The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight : Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution
Thanks for visiting Mad Professor. BB has over 300,000 daily visitors, and MP has about 3,000, so I consider you all the cream of the crop. *:)
When our family travels by plane, we like to set up an iBook or portable DVD player for our kids. It keeps them quiet and occupied, which the other passengers enjoy as much as we do. I've been using a regular signal splitter so both girls can listen at the same time, but the jet's engines make it hard for them to hear the show.
The $80 Boostaroo Revolution High Definition Amplifier and Splitter is a battery powered amplifier and splitter that provides plenty of volume. It's a bit pricey but you can buy cheaper Boostaroo models (I haven't tried them so I can't vouch for them). The other bummer is that it uses AAAA batteries, which I never knew existed until I got this. The unit does come with a set to get you started. But it works wonders. The sounds is crystal clear. I also use it to boost the input volume of my phone recording gizmo so that when I interview people for stories I can hear what they are saying on the recording. Link
Robert Crumb picks out 24 of his favorite dance orchestra songs from the 1920s for this fantastic audio CD, That's What I Call Sweet Music. The CD case is actually a small book, illustrated, written, and hand lettered by Crumb, with biographical information about the bandleaders featured on the disc. Writes Crumb: "What you hear on this CD is the good-time, social music of a vanished urban civilization, a lost world of smokestack factories, clanging trolley cars -- and everybody wore hats!"
The music itself is happy, peppy, melodic, and indeed sweet. The 20s were good times -- architecture, art, music, fashion, and industrial design were at their peak. The people of the era were blissfully unaware of the tragic events of the future: the Great Depression, WWII, and the appointment of George W. Bush as dictator of the United States. I often pine for that era. I know everything wasn't peachy keen -- racism was rampant, for example, but just imagine how wonderful New York City must have been! We'll never know for sure, but this CD will sweep you into a fantasy version of the world of the 1920s. Link
In the mid-60s, Weird-Ohs were the cool toys for boys. These freaky monster men, with hanging tongues and bloodshot eyes, rode surfboards and drove cars with gearshifts that stuck way out of the car. You could buy Weird-Ohs as ready-made toys, or as glue-together models. 
I remember the older brothers of my friends having shelves full of assembled Weird-Oh models. I wonder how many of them had this album from 1964, called "Music to Make Models By." This collection of innocuous novelty surf and drag racing songs would certainly be good accompaniment to model making. It's also great for review writing. Free MP3s Link
Two Zombies Later is a 2-CD set of a modern "oddio" music, a genre that encompasses all sorts of oddball music -- lounge novelty tunes, obscure soundtracks, exotica, space age pop, moog music, etc. The selection here, by various artists, is great, and best of all, you can download all 30+ songs plus the beautiful art for the discs and covers for free. And it's even legal, so the RIAA won't be able to sue the pants off you. Link
On one of the music mailing lists I subscribe to, a British DJ reported that he's been spinning discs for people's 50th birthday parties. He writes: "They love their Punk Rock, the last one I did there was a bunch of BBC middle managers leaping around to the Pistols and the Clash. That's your Punk Rock demographic." I'm not 50 yet, but I'm definitely in the Punk Rock demogrqphic. I've been revisiting my punk rock collection, and one album that still sounds fresh is The Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope. Following their raw and wonderful debut album, Give 'Em Enough Rope is more polished, yet more energetic than the their first. From the first drum bang of "Safe European Home," this album tells me more about the punk era than anything else, including the Sex Pistols (which were really a fake band like the Monkees, assembled by Malcom McLaren after he saw the first punk bands from New York like Richard Hell & the Voidoids and The Ramones). Give 'Em Enough Rope may not be as artistic as The Clash's follow-up album, London Calling, but to me, it's the zenith of punk.
Link
I discovered punk in 1978, during my senior year in high school. Before that, I didn't really like music very much, except for the Beatles and bands like Paul Revere and the Raiders. Punk woke me up to the power of music. This 4-CD set has 100 songs from the the '70s and '80s so listening to it caused powerful flashbacks.
A friend told me he thought the selection in No Thanks! was "too predictable" but I think it's a perfect introduction to the era. The things that stands out to me, after listening to all the songs, is how strong the first punk bands were -- Richard Hell, The Ramones, The New York Dolls, Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Blondie. They were all from the USA, and started out before The Clash and The Sex Pistols (which aren't represented in this collection, thanks to Johnny Rotten's refusal to participate. Rhino probably didn't offer him enough money). The 100-page book that comes with the collection has some nice color pictures and commentary, but if you want to read the best history of punk, get a copy of Please Kill Me, the Uncensored Oral History of Punk. You can read it while listening to No Thanks!
There's a new Raymond Scott album! If you don't know Scott, here's a quick bio: he was a bandleader in the 40s, well-known for quirky, whimsical songs (many were used in Looney Tunes). In the 1950s he became interested in electronic music, and composed amazing pre-Moog marvels, including two albums designed to soothe babies. The Secret 7 is a group of jazz players headed by Scott and the 1959 album they recorded is called "The Unexpected." You can hear a Real Audio sample on the site. Be sure to look at the rest of Basta Music's offerings. They're a wonderful label out of Holland. Link
