How Does It Know?

Remember when I was complaining about the volume of TV ads here? Well, I just heard about a newish bill called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM, that proposes to lower the volume of those annoyingly loud commercials. So someone (U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo) has noticed (and it’s not just me), and there’s a possibility something might be done about it! Government, sometimes you can be pretty OK.

Here’s what I was talking about here

I’ve been seeing these ads on TV for this show coming up featuring the bands “News Boys”, “Superchick” and “DecembeRadio”… who the hell are these bands? They sound totally made up, and this is supposedly a big show at DTE or the Palace or something. Their names have now stuck in my head, unfortunately. But I’m still gonna believe they’re totally made up.

I randomly came across Project Song during my surfing today… From the NPR Website:

And just as we’ll do with each Project Song artist, we showed Merritt six vivid images, along with six words or phrases printed on white cards.

The instructions: Choose one photo to inspire the subject of the song; choose a word or phrase that will inspire the style.

The “Merritt” they speak of is Stephin Merritt from the Magenetic Fields (a band I am somewhat fond of, particularly their epic 69 Love Songs), and in this episode of Project Song (there only seem to be two so far), Merritt creates a song in 48 hours using the photo above as the inspiration for subject, and the number “1974″ as the inspriration for style (he ends up using the interval I-IX-VII-IV as part of his melody line). You can watch the writing and recording process and in the process learn what a Shepard tone is. (I did.)

I liked this

http://www.atomfilms.com/film/food_fight.jsp

It’s a short film that shows the history of war from WWII through present, using food as the characters and weapons (hence, Food Fight). Americans are represented by hamburgers, fries, and chicken nuggets, the Germans are pretzels and sausages, etc. Very clever way to illustrate it, I thought.

So I mentioned previously that I’m obsessed with Scrabulous on Facebook. Here are a few more things I am liking right now.

1. Flight of the Conchords - This is probably totally old news to most of you, since the first season has been on DVD for a while already, but this show follows a couple of New Zealand musicians and their novelty band as they try to make in the NYC. This is perhaps the funniest series I have seen in a long time. I am obsessed with it in a way that I haven’t been obsessed with other things since, like, high school. I am even into the silly parody music (which I am generally not a fan of), because they do such a good job of it and the lyrics are excellent.*

2. I got a Blackberry Pearl 8130 recently, and I am really enjoying it. At first I thought maybe I had made a horrible mistake and that I would never need or use any of the fancy features I was paying for. But after a week, I’m enjoying receiving email on it while away from the computer, reading my Google Reader RSS feeds while, let’s say, on the toilet, and syncing up my task list and notes (which can be exported to various organizer programs, but I am just using Comma-Separated Value files) with my laptop. I also am going to get a microSD card for it, which will turn it into a limited-space MP3 player and photo/video storage. You can also just dump text files, etc onto it for viewing. Very versatile. And I got a $50 rebate on it.

3. Phosphorescent - I know nothing much about this guy, but this track (by way, again, of You Ain’t No Picasso) has been bouncing through my head on and off since I downloaded it last month… It’s such a simple song… The bridge-y/breakdown/slowdown portions with horns remind me a bit of Neutral Milk Hotel, and the actual meat of the song is a simple repetitive (what is that little instrument in there that’s playing the constant subtle high notes in there? Is that just a guitar?) structure with few lyrics. But dammit if I don’t love it. I should check some more of his stuff out.

* One that comes to mind is a song that starts off about all the evil and bad things in the world, but includes this gem:
They’re turning kids into slaves
just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what’s the real cost,
cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper.
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers
when you’ve got little kid slaves making them?
What are your overheads?

It sounds, and is comedically, a lot better when it sounds like anything (and you’re not reading it), and with Jemaine’s emotive soul-style singing.

Y’all should check out It Came From Detroit… It’s a documentary about the Detroit garage rock scene, by one of my oldest friends, James Petix. While I don’t exactly care that much about the Detroit garage rock scene, I’ve seen the rough cut of the movie, and it’s excellent. It was previewed last fall at the Detroit Film Theatre and drew quite a large crowd. Check it out.

I mean, who wouldn’t love a family band, consisting of mom, dad and 11 year old daughter drumming, dressed in thrift-store chic, and singing songs about slides they’ve procured at flea markets and yard sales, while said slides are being projected on the wall behind them?

Sadly, I’ve never witnessed them do their show live, but last night we watched their DVD Off and On Broadway. It was very good, if a little short. But it included documentary-style footage showing them in everyday life and on tour. Jason Trachtenburg is hilarious in general, and it was cool to find out that Tina Trachtenburg was the brain behind the whole concept, even though she doesn’t normally perform on stage (she’s the one projecting the slides). The onstage footage was also very well filmed and really fun.

Hopefully I’ll get to see them next time they come through town.

In blog news, I cleaned up the Music and MP3 page so stuff isn’t as cluttered and unappealing.