heavydog

If a day goes by and I haven’t heard something new, I get fidgety. My ears wiggle like they’ve gone and got their own set of muscles and a nervous system. My arms start to ache and I start to see white spots in the shape of crochets and semi-quavers appear in front of my eyes. I get home from wherever I am and listlessly leaf through my CD collection trying to find something to satisfy my need. As if I’m going to find an unopened CD. I never do, I’ll put something on that I’m not interested in and fall into this depressive lull. I often collapse upon the floor only to be woken by the sound of the silence as the CD ends. Either that or my wife kicking me demanding to know why I’m lying on the kitchen floor. I have to listen to something new every day. It helps if I listen to a few new artists in a day — that way, I’m bound to find something cool — if I only listened to one track a day and it was shit, I’d be miserable all day.

So, I’m glad the internet exists. I can visit emusic, iTunes, mySpace and any number of other sites to get a fix. For me, emusic is one of the best ways of discovering music. They have lots of features like Member Playlists; emusic members can create a playlist, so you can checkout the music that other people like. Then they have “Related Artists” which are similar artists, or artists that have links to the band of the album you’re looking at. Then they have fans, which is similar to a “Other People downloaded these also” kind of feature. They also have “editors picks” and “Discovery” which is the emusic magazine.

It’s a subscription service and that suits me, you can get more for your money that way - but the tracks are DRM free and you own them forever, unlike Napster and Yahoo. The biggest downside is their catalogue, while diverse, doesn’t really cover the mainstream charts. Or even the semi-mainstream. But there is some properly obscure stuff on there “Ziltiod the Omniscient” by Devin Townsend was one such obscure album I downloaded. Having said that, they do occasionally get an A list artist on there. I recently downloaded the new Paul McCartney album, “Memory Almost Full” (it’s awesome by the way) and Bjorks most recent offering.

Discovering new music nowadays is so easy, there are so many ways to listen to new artists that there really isn’t any excuse for NOT doing it. If you do one thing today, find a new artists you like from one of the many websites out there.

Oh, how we laughed.

I recently discovered Pandora, it’s like an online radio station, except, instead of rubbish DJs playing what they’re told, a whole bunch of musical genious’ have listened to more songs than I care to think of, and applied attributes to each.

So, as an example, you login and tell the site a band to search for, I used Tool, then the app goes away and finds all the songs/artists that have similar attributes to tool, then loads them all up and plays you each one in turn.

If it’s playing you a song you’re not keen on, just give it a thumbs down; it’ll skip to the next song and fine tune your listening experience, to avoid songs similar to the one you disliked.

It’s amazing and I can’t stop listening to it. You need to be a resident of America to register, but it’s not too hard to find an american zip code.

You need to check out this band > http://www.amplifiertheband.com/

Here is what metalhammer said: “Think Sabbath meets Floyd meets The God Machine. Think trippy, heavy as fuck sonic violence. Think the future of rock”.

See what I mean? Go have a listen. They are excellent.

I’m onto my second (actually, 4th, but for the purposes of this story, I’m only counting the two iPod colours) iPod from Apple. I got an iPod colour over a year ago now, it all worked wonderfully until I dropped it on the floor. Then it started making tractor noises and I sent it back.

Apple, bless them, sent me a refurb unit. But within 2 weeks, this refurb unit was doing exactly the same thing. Being that it was out of warranty then, there was not a lot I could do.

So, what I have to do now, is bang it on the desk, gearknob, knee or wall of what/whoever I am nearby and it works, for the most part.

Except, now it doesn’t work as often. It will have days where it freezes after every other song and requires a reboot - which is fucking annoying. Sometimes it boots into Linux, which is cool, but won’t play music because there are podcasts on there (WTF?), so I have reboot it back into the Apple OS.

So, I have a ?400 semi-useful paperweight now, which works when it wants to. Bastard thing.

I did the only thing I knew would make me happier: I attacked it with a dremel.

First I stuck some sticky-backed plastic over it, cut out the shape that I wanted to remain shiny, then used one of the brush things on my dremel to scuff it up.

I got a bit impatient after a while as it was taking too long, so I tried one of the more abrasive sanding bits, but that was a bad idea, you can see where I did that, it scuffed it differently and you couldn’t sand over the plastic (which you could with the softer brush).

Still, it’s come out OK and to be honest, I’m not that bothered, it’s destined for the trash anytime soon, unless I can get a replacement hard drive, but I don’t really want to fork over the money to Apple, as then it feels like I would have bought the same thing from them twice.

I’ll wait until the 20th April …

Don’t use your ipod! The RIAA will arrest you and bang you up in a Bangkok prison!

If I understand what the RIAA is saying, “perfectly lawful” means “lawful until we change our mind.” So your ability to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod is entirely a matter of their sufferance. What about all the indie label CDs? Do you have to ask each of them for permission before ripping your CDs? And what about all the major label artists who control their own copyrights? Do we all need to ask them, as well?

THIS PEOPLE ARE FUCKING RETARDED!

GRRRR, they make my blood boil with their money-grabbing, whiney little bitching. Fuck the RIAA. Not that it has much influence on what happens over here, or at least I hope not.

You’ve got a new iPod eh? Whats the first thing you do? You crack open the box, pull apart all the packaging, exposing the sublime trinkets that you get with your shiny new iPod.

Whats the next thing you do?

THROW AWAY THE GODDAMN HEADPHONES!

They’re shit. Nothing more, nothing less. OK, so maybe you shouldn’t throw them away. You won’t get as much for it on ebay if it’s not complete. But, after the novelty of the iPod has worn off, put the headphones back in the box and buy some new ones.

The standard iPod headphones are RUBBISH, why?

• They sound rubbish. This is probably THE most important point. I’d rather not listen to music than listen to it through the stock headphones.
• They will damage your hearing.
• They look rubbish, c’mon, what does white go with?
• Everyone knows you’ve got an iPod, geek.
• The sound quality is poor.
• They sound rubbish.
• Listening to two testicles being squashed between two bricks travelling at a high velocity is a preferable sound to anything the stock headphones can produce.

So, buy some new headphones for fucks sake. You don’t have to spend a lot. ?30 will get you a nice set of Sony earbuds and once you’ve used these, you’ll never want to put apples rubbish stock ones in your ears again.

Here are some headphones you might like to consider:

• Sony MDR-EX71 - these are a nice pair, I’ve owned two of these, the sound is very good and the bass reproduction is excellent (as long as you have them rammed into your ears far enough)
• Shure EC2 - these are the choice of a lot of professional musicians and are a big favourite amongst personal audio player owners, also, Shure have years of experience of reproducing audio. They are also not a bad price, these will be my next upgrade.
• Sennheiser HD25 - some call these “The Daddy of headphones”, they’re not ear-canal-buds, so offer no isolation, which means they’re best listened to when there is little or no outside noise, but are used by professionals worldwide.
• Band & Olufsen A8’s (Official Page) - many say that these are the best headphones on the planet, they use a “rare earth magnet” not sure what that means!

For a more indepth look at some of the best headphones and earbuds on the market, check this link: Music to Your Ears: 2003.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my ipod, its possibly the most wonderful gadget I have ever and will ever own. It’s just that the stock apple earbuds mar an otherwise excellent product.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to which you prefer with headphones, everyones hearing is different. Having said that, if you prefer the stock apple ones over sticking the danger-end of a lit cigarette in your ear, then you probably shouldn’t own an ipod (and you probably enjoy chart music…).

Don’t get me wrong. There are some amazing bands on the RR label: Chimaira, 36 Crazyfists, Betzefer, Fear Factory, Hatebreed, Machine Head, Poison The Well, Sepultura, Slipknot, Soulfly, Trivium and many, many others who I haven’t had the chance to listen to yet.

However, RoadRunner have developed this nasty habit. Let me explain: as a fan of one of the bands on the label, as soon as that album is available for purchase, I will purchase it. Yeah! I am supporting the band! I’m not downloading the album! I’m showing my gratitude for the great music these guys create by buying their album! I feel cleansed, pure and brimming with joy as I know I am amongst the first to own this new album and won’t the band be happy that all their fans jump on it as soon as it is released!?

What happens next? A new album? No! Roadrunner, in their infinite cunting wisdom, think “Wow, this album has sold well, I know we’ll re-release it as a “Special Edition” with some live tracks a DVD and PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED MATERIAL!

The band that I have had this happen twice with is Chimaria. 2 seperate albums, both with a special edition re-release.

What? So, I now have to buy the album a-fucking-gain? Whats with that? To me, that is the label taking the piss our of the fans of the bands on the RR label. Why would I want to buy the SAME album again, just to get the content? Why don’t you release an EP of live stuff, or a seperate DVD or something, at least that way I won’t be WASTING MY MONEY BUYING THE FIRST RELEASE OF THE ALBUM!

GRRRR! It really pisses me off. It’s no wonder that people download music from the interweb if this is the way that the record labels treat the fans. I think, in future, I will download the album first, then wait a couple of months and see if a “Special Edition” is released.

Thank you Road Runner, you fuckers.

Last night, I went to see Mastadon perform at the Scala in Kings Cross.

Now, I’ve been gigging aboutn 13 years and have probably damaged my hearing in all those years, I can’t hear as well as I used to. My wife, she can hear a mosquito at 40 paces, but I struggle to hear the same mozzie at 5 paces.

Anyway, the Scala. It sucks. Either the engineers there are the worst sound engineers on the planet, or the venue just isn’t suited to music (it used to be a cinema). Down in the pit, it was so loud and the bass so deep, that I felt nauseous after the first couple of songs from the first support band. It was so damn loud that I had to chew up some Rizla and stick them in my ears!

After the supports, we decided to stay upstairs behind the sound desk, where you would assume, it would sound awesome.

Wrong.

It sounds shit up there as well, but, a different kind of shit, it was at least at a volume I could listen to it. But there was hardly any bass and the sound was quite muddy.

So, in conclusion, the Scala is shit. It was my first visit though, so I will give it the benefit of the doubt and if anything else comes up there that I want to see, I will go and see it, you have to right? If you want to see the band live, you have to go to where they are playing!

Anyway, the Scala scores an unimpressive 2 of out 10