Running on mp3s…

iTunes

If you’ve never installed Apple’s iTunes on your iPod, iPhone, iPad or computer, then you probably own a Zune—and your opinion on mp3 software doesn’t count. One of the—if not the—most prolific mp3 software programs, iTunes’ reach and straightforward controls are its biggest benefit. Users can create playlists or use the Genius function to turn the responsibility over to Apple. By selecting one song, Genius creates an appropriate playlist based on your selection. Sometimes an odd song sneaks in, but if you’re so lazy that you can’t make your own playlist—the new millennium’s mix tape—you don’t deserve a perfect set. While iTunes is sturdy and reliable, it doesn’t play well with others. Apple’s proprietary mindset means that you won’t find it on game consoles, most mobile phones, or third-party mp3 players. Other programs and retailers such as Amazon and Napster have learned to work around iTunes roadblocks, but it’s a one-way street. At this point, it’s hard to shake iTunes completely for another program, but there’s heavy competition on the horizon and iTunes’ days at the top of the charts may soon be a one hit wonder.

Google Music

In May, Google threw its hat in the music business by introducing a beta for a cloud-based mp3 program. Cloud-based programs store information, in this case mp3s, on non-local servers so any device can access them. Since the user interface (UI) is web-based, any device that can connect to the internet through a browser is now a Google music player, even an iPhone. On a computer, the UI is clean and smooth. Though it’s not called Genius, Google Music offers the same functionality for creating playlists based on a single song selection. Like Genius, it’s not perfect. I get that nothing in the world compares to Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” but at least try to create a playlist around it. It’s also incredibly easy, but very time-consuming, to upload all of your songs to the cloud. I don’t want to say a bad word about Google—mainly because when they turn evil, rise up, and take over the world I don’t want my negative comments to appear on, well, Google—but on mobile devices, the site is hard to navigate. Gmail remained in beta for more than five years, so the potential for Google Music to rise up and take over mp3 programs—and not just the world—is staggering.

Amazon Cloud Player

It makes sense that the place you buy music—no, not Borders—also offers a way to listen to it. As with Google Music, Amazon’s offering is a cloud-based program and contains much of the same functionality as iTunes and Google Music. The UI is clean but not as smooth and polished as Google Music is, and some album artwork, notably Spice Girls’ Spice, didn’t transfer correctly. There is less functionality than Google Music and iTunes. For instance, you can’t make “smart” playlists, but one extremely nice feature is the ability to re-download your library, which turns the cloud player into a backup drive, as well. On the flip side, big-name cloud servers are more likely targets for hackers, so the reliability as a backup drive is questionable. It’s more accessible than Google Music, which still requires an invite from current users, but accessibility will only take you so far. In the end, the program that effortlessly integrates music into our life through a variety of devices is going to win. My long-term money is on Google Music—and I’m not just saying that because the sleeping giant is watching what I write.

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Friday…

In life, there are the eternal questions: What is love? Why are we here? Which seat can I take? Rebecca Black is most concerned with the last question on her debut single, “Friday” (the answer depends on whether or not she wants to be “kickin’ in the front seat” or merely “sittin’ in the back”), which has garnered more than 100 million hits on YouTube after being online for more than a month. However, the music video isn’t receiving attention because it’s the pinnacle of musical achievement; quite the contrary. The 13-year-old’s voice (which for all we know could be perfectly lovely) is auto-tuned beyond recognition; the production values are straight from the ’80s; and the lyrics—penned by writers at Ark Music Factory, the company from which Black’s family bought the song—are abysmal. It’s so bad it’s good—and this is really, really good. It’s easy to dismiss as another viral video, but there’s something more here. The song embodies the positive and negative power of the Internet, from those who enjoy a good-natured laugh, to those who flood YouTube with anonymous hateful comments. What type of jackass wants to talk trash about a kid because she loves “fun, fun, fun, fun”? She’s just “so, so, so, so, excited” and “lookin’ forward to the weekend” full of “partyin’, partyin’, yeah.” There are worse ideas on the Internet to get behind.

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Slide…

Blondes are ditzy, overweight people must be unhappy and fast-food workers are not intelligent. These snap judgments are all things that we may accept without question because of repetition or stubbornness or because it’s just easier.

However, what if the world presents evidence to the contrary, are we willing or even able to re-evaluate these shaky certainties? Using music and theater, Slide, a performance making its Bay Area premiere as part of the Stanford Lively Arts program, examines this question and the potential loneliness caused by isolating ourselves from information that contradicts our beloved perceptions. Landing somewhere between a symphony and a play, Slide incorporates acting and singing into an 80-minute song cycle split into 11 sections.

“This piece is musically driven,” composer Steven Mackey explains in a phone interview. “In fact, there really isn’t much of a narrative in terms of a theatrical narrative. The whole piece gets its logic from the music.”

Mackey, who settled in California during the 1960s and, influenced by the musical culture, learned to play the guitar, attended UC-Davis “in case the whole rock-star thing didn’t work out.” There, in an elective music-appreciation class, he fell in love with classical music.

Through the Paul Dresher Ensemble, Mackey became a frequent collaborator with Rinde Eckert, a professionally trained opera singer who found his way into avant-garde musical theater. Eckert wrote the libretto for Slide and plays a psychologist named Renard, who addresses the audience and Mackey (onstage playing the guitar) while performing an enigmatic experiment.

“I love his acting and his fluidity in switching between spoken word and singing,” Mackey says of Eckert. “Some people might listen to this and say, ‘OK, there’s a song, and then there’s music accompanying a monologue,’ but to me it’s all part of the song.” The song cycle’s music comes from eighth blackbird, the Grammy Awardwinning new-music chamber orchestra for which the piece was composed. The group also appears onstage as part of Renard’s memory.

“The thorough integration of [eighth blackbird] is what’s intriguing,” says Eckert, who makes his home on the East Coast. “The attempt to incorporate this kind of ensemble into a poetic gestalt is unusual, and the fact that eighth blackbird takes on something like this is wild.”

For both creators, the ensemble’s presence, the acting and the themes are all part of the experience, but it always comes back to the music. “It’s a concert contextualized by these other elements,” Mackay summed it up.

“All of the elements serve as a frame; in a way they act as captions to the music,” Eckert said, “We want you to look at the painting and not the frame. We make layered work but the emphasis is always on diving in and being absorbed by the music.”

In the course of the song cycle, the audience learns that Renard’s self-created fantasy life has isolated him from the world and created an intense loneliness. “Slide illustrates a profound human tendency to hold on to the familiar instead of the truth,” Eckert says of Renard’s condition. “Whatever we’re used to believing, it’s what we want to believe despite what the world is telling us. You’ll cherry pick the evidence to confirm your worldview. We get comfortable with ourselves and when our labels prove to be destructive we hold onto them regardless.”

“For the audience, Slide is not about unpacking the loneliness of Rinde’s character, but rather contextualizing the loneliness for their own life,” Mackey adds. “I would hate people to go in there looking to learn something. It’s an experience, like a symphony is.” In maintaining emphasis on the music and away from the narrative facts of Renard’s life, Slide focuses on emotions, not evidence, to break into the audience’s comfort zone and wreak a little havoc on crafted realities.

SLIDE
Saturday, March 5, 8pm
Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford
$10-$50
Buy Tickets Now

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The Beatles: Rock Band…

It’s taken many hard day’s nights to bring the Fab Four to the video-game realm, but Beatlemania has finally arrived. With 45 songs that trace the career of the greatest band of all time, the story mode is brilliant. The staging of the songs starts out rooted in realism, but recreated performances such as The Ed Sullivan Show appearace eventually give way to studio sessions that dissolve into “Yellow Submarine”-inspired trips. The blend of realism and psychedelic elements is refreshing in a genre that’s growing stale with every cookie-cutter installment. However, at the core, this is still the same game we’ve played for years: Grab an instrument, hit the notes. The iconic band is both the appeal and the Yoko Ono of the game. You can’t customize band members to make yourself the fifth Beatle and if you ever get the hankering for some Steve Miller or Ozzy, you’re out of luck. Some wonder why this wasn’t just released as downloadable content for any of the pre-existing Rock Band games, but then you’d have to take the time to download 45 tracks … and yet you know you would download them all: It’s the freakin’ Beatles.

Ear to the Ground…

You know the old story. Girl meets girl. Girl becomes a boy. Boy and girl form a band. OK, so it’s not a familiar story, but thanks to Coyote Grace, it’s a story worth listening too. The duo of transman singer/songwriter Joe Stevens and vocalist/upright bassist Ingrid Elizabeth has an eclectic musical background that really shines throughout their third album. Opening with “Runaround,” we can immediately hear the mutual choral influences in what turns out to be a great mix of dusk on a dry Saturday evening and an even dryer Sunday morning in church. The faint banjo is lonely, and its distant sound brings more warmth to Elizabeth’s vocals. Stevens’ vocals are ashy and lush, but Elizabeth commands the mic. Her standout song, “Girls Like Me,” a genuine and beautiful summer country entry, pokes just enough fun at the closed-minded individuals who are shocked by the duo’s unique romantic relationship. Without politics, religion, or ideologies getting in the way, Elizabeth sums it up nicely, “Thank God boys like her, like the girls like me.” The details may be foreign, but the down-home music and love are old fashioned.

Chasing Silhouettes…

The summer party eventually had to end. After their 2006 release, Schizophrenic Love Songs, 2Me enjoyed the unofficial status of Sacramento’s boys of summer for three years. Now, after losing two band members, the group’s latest CD presents a side of the local favorites that we haven’t seen. Like the 5 a.m. quiet after a raucous party, Chasing Silhouettes reveals strangely beautiful images, yearning remembrances and uneasy hopes for the new day. Fans will find the familiar lyrical and musical build-ups in a few tracks (bar favorite, “Bed Bug”) but it’s the reserved moments, new territory for 2Me, which really surprise and delight. “Tonight,” a duet between lead singer Christopher Twomey and guest Katie Jane (female vocals are another first for 2Me), is amazing in its simplicity. Raw and vulnerable but sweet and tender, the song has a sad optimism that permeates the album. Even “Nashville,” a song that lays out grand dreams for the future, approaches the world with an amiable resignation. Twomey and Reid Foster still rock a live show, but Silhouettes shows they’re more than just party boys.

Distractions…

Since releasing their first CD more than three years ago, Cuesta Drive has been so busy playing their music that they seemingly forgot to record any new tracks. However, after hearing this sophomore release, it’s apparent that the time was not wasted. In Sacramento, Cuesta Drive is a safe bet for a high-energy show fueled by rock and soul. Distractions is inspired by, if not born from, this nightly stage presence. If their first CD was what you listened to on your way to a summer party, Distractions would be the live music you were looking forward to upon arrival. Solid guitar riffs and a definitive rhythm lead the show, but subtle (and subtle is the key here) soul and funk influences keep it moving. Songs like “Wild On” and “Rollin’” recall the open genre of ’60s and ’70s rock ’n’ roll, one that embraced soul, funk and the blues. Led by Dane Drewis, Mike Camilleri and Tim Diedesch, Cuesta Drive loves to throw a few curves (hip-hop vocals on “Slightly Off,” for instance) but it’s always a ride worth taking.

Guitar Hero: World Tour…

Seeking to end the battle of the fake bands, Activision has released its full-band kit for the Guitar Hero franchise. In some ways, Guitar Hero: World Tour makes its competitor, Rock Band 2, look like the defunct Seattle grunge scene. The drum kit, complete with symbols, is solid and much more natural feeling than any other peripheral on the market. Unfortunately, the music-studio feature, surely meant to be a one-up, falters in its execution. Downloading the tunes that other people have labored over for hours is a breeze, but most people won’t be willing to deal with the awkward controls when they could be jamming along with Zakk Wylde. For the most part, the gameplay is indistinguishable from Rock Band and it just comes down to a preference over the games’ track lists. World Tour doesn’t win the battle, but it poses the unthinkable question: Is it possible that both games rock? In the end, it’s a matter of taste. Do you prefer your Nirvana to “Drain You” or be “About a Girl”?

Moonalice…

Once upon a time, musicians would travel between bands, meshing genres and their diverse talents with a myriad of performers. These were the 60s and they gave us The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Starship, and Country Joe and the Fish. To compare, the new millennium has given us Fergie and Nelly. However, hope isn’t dead as Moonalice returns to Santa Cruz. Joined by Jack Casady, who’s played with the above list of 60s legends, Moonalice is a seven-person, all-bass band that maintains their psychedelic roots amongst a classic rock/blues feel. If you listen carefully on quiet nights, you can still hear their improvisational guitar riffs drifting down from the hills – or you could just go see their show, the sound will be much clearer.

Don Quixote’s; $15 door/$15 advance; 8pm

Fareed Haque & The Flat Earth Ensemble…

The epitome of a world traveler Fareed Haque traversed the globe as a child with extended stays in Spain, France and his parent’s native lands of Pakistan and Chile. A jazz guitarist, Haque’s world influences permeate his music. The frantic acoustic strumming on “Manresa” is decidedly Spanish in origin, while “Pairs”, off his 2005 album Cosmic Hugs, mixes funk with Indian. The founding member of Garaj Mahal, Haque combines with The Flat Earth Ensemble to create a sound that transitions genres as easily as most bands change bassists. The international mix of classic guitar, sitar, drums, tabla, and a haunting violin on “Ragas for Kala” works because Haque seems to command not only the sounds of each instrument but their roles within the composition.

Moe’s Alley; $15 door/$12 advance; 9pm