Elysian Fields, Sept 30

A favorite band. My favorite people. Lovely venue. Beautiful flyer.

All of Me

Q: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
A: A drummer.

We like to put people into boxes–roles that are defined by simple rules. Like: a musician is someone who makes “complete” music: melody and harmony and rhythm. If a person doesn’t make melody or harmony, how can he be a musician?

Designers? We like to say that we are problem solvers, but the larger culture thinks that we make things beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »

Two-handed multi-touch goes mainstream

Looptastic HD for iPad

One wonderful effect of the iPad release is that it has made multi-touch computing mainstream. If you want to argue that the iPhone accomplished this, fine. But the iPad unleashes a world of possibility due simply to the size of the multi-touch screen. We now have a platform that allows two-handed multi-touch interactions. The possibilities are thrilling.

Bill Buxton, writing about the history of multi-touch systems makes a memorable comparison. Multi-touch, he says, allows us to: Read the rest of this entry »

Annotation: Roll Um Easy

Here’s an older video that I found recently in my archives. I made this one about Little Feat’s wonderful Roll Um Easy. Annotation: Roll Um Easy

Covers, and considering the familiar

Song covers, good and bad, expose something new in the familiar. The pleasure is that you’re never sure what will be exposed. Something about the original song or the original arrangement? Maybe the lyrics are better than you thought, or much worse. That the covering artist is a genius? An idiot? A cover gives you a new way to hear into the song, stripping away the particulars of the arrangments and performance so that you can discover the essence at the core.

This morning on Cover Lay Down I discovered a set of Tom Petty covers that were full of what a yoga teacher might call “new information.” Free Falling, that genius arena sing-along is, lyrically anyway, as empty as it’s characters:

“She’s a good girl, loves her momma, loves Jesus, and America too.”

So what made the original so effective? What was it about that chorus that made you want to meet 50,000 of your closest friends at Busch Stadium on a summer night so you could all admit how lost you are? This cover strips away Petty’s performance and arrangements, and you realize that’s where the genius lived–in the distinctive roaming bass line moving underneath that plaintive lead vocal, in the exquisite balance between bass, strumming guitar, and Tom’s vocal, and in all that empty space in the middle: that’s where we come in–all 50,000 of us are invited to sing background. And Tom really sells that vocal: he’s lost, you buy it.

So what were the Kings of Convenience thinking with that earnest reading? The song isn’t strong enough on it’s own: it doesn’t stand up to their Simon and Garfunkel preciousness. Despite that, the audience sings along anyway–they must be remembering the original–and almost rescue the experience.

But earnest works for Dawn Landes’s cover of Won’t Back Down. Tom works the successful side of familiar with the lyrics on this one:

“Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
and I won’t back down.”

It’s a resolute truth, spoken simply, and Landes’s understatement highlights the strength of the words. Compare that to David Baerwald, whose vocal goes from polished phony drama to weird phony growling. All the ornamentation conveys one thing: you’re lying. Leave the ornamentation aside, find the essence, and express that.

The best music for Omnigraffling

A dubstep mixtape, stream it while you can from:

Blog » India Calling | Mad Decent.

Outside the Met

Just outside the Met is a place that is not so much like the rest of New York. It’s more like the places outside the Prado and the Louvre and the British Museum. Crowded streets, slanting sunlight, taxis and tourists. Grand buildings and wealth and power.

Who is a native here? Who are the people who have sat on the walls for years and years? Who kissed in the park nearby, fumbled with buttons and snaps? Who drank and dodged and watched the clouds? Who come back sometimes and remember.

My friend Elliott, who wrote the music for this, was one of them too.

click the picture or here to download

Annotation: Rid of Me

Another of my favorite songs: Rid of Me by PJ Harvey. So simple, using such basic elements, but so carefully rendered. And damn thrilling too.

If you like the song, you can buy it, either on Amazon or with iTunes

Click here to watch the movie.