We had a chance to go see Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and TV host of NOVA scienceNOW on PBS, at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg, FL last week. Below is a video of Dr. Tyson answering a question about dark matter and the speed of light.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
R.E.M. on N.P.R.
To those of you that appreciate R.E.M....
If you did not catch the R.E.M interview on NPR this morning, it's worth a listen if you have a minute. Steve Inskeep does a so-so job interviewing them, but of course they make it pretty interesting. I had no idea that Michael Stipe came from generations of Methodist ministers. The "Extra Interview Clips" are pretty good as well. The sound clips in the interview from the new record sound decent. They also have a full concert recording from SxSW that I haven't listened to yet.
-Harry
If you did not catch the R.E.M interview on NPR this morning, it's worth a listen if you have a minute. Steve Inskeep does a so-so job interviewing them, but of course they make it pretty interesting. I had no idea that Michael Stipe came from generations of Methodist ministers. The "Extra Interview Clips" are pretty good as well. The sound clips in the interview from the new record sound decent. They also have a full concert recording from SxSW that I haven't listened to yet.
-Harry
Saturday, March 15, 2008
The Return of the Mix Tape
For a long time now I have been wanting find a good way to be exposed to new or different music that I will probably like. Way back when, the only to be exposed to new music was basically via radio or word of mouth. This wasn't all that bad; the music on the radio had to be palatable by the public and if someone you knew recommended music to you, there was a good chance you might like it.
When I was growing up, the thing to do was to make a mix tape. Throw down some of your favorite tracks, straight from vinyl or cassette or eventually CDs to another cassette. You would give these out to your friends and it was a good, actually great way to get exposed to all kinds of different music. This was real nice especially when pop radio didn't play the music you usually like to listen to. I had mix tapes galore and constantly had one in my car for years.
Eventually, the cassette format went by the wayside. Yes, I still have some cassettes, but I do not have a good player to listen to them on and most of them have deteriorated over the years. The point here is that we are no longer making or listening to mix tapes anymore. Now we have digital media, CDs, MP3s, and whatever comes next. Of course these formats offer better sound quality over the cassette, some would argue not necessarily over vinyl. However it is very easy nowadays to rip a CD, get the MP3s and put them on your MP3 player/iPod etc. You can even purchase your tunes à la carte, one song at a time. Folks I know have amassed huge collections of of digital music to the point where they have more than enough music to listen to for the rest of their lives and not have to repeat very much at all. While it may be nice to have every piece of music ever recorded at your fingertips, I do not find it practical for getting into new music, or finding music you might like that you haven't heard before.
Radio is nice in that it repeats songs at some, sometimes annoying, frequency. This gives that "oh yeah, I've heard this one before" kind of moment that might lead to purchasing music or just finding out more about the artist. The same things goes for cassettes, or even CDs that you might play over and over again in your car or home stereo. I guess satellite radio would be good for this too, except I still can't get over having a recurring payment for radio. So,mix tapes traded between friends or at least folks with similar interests in music, were an ideal way to get exposed to new music that you might like.
So now that computers that can burn CDs or even DVDs are pretty much ubiquitous, you would think that people would be making more mix CDs, but I do not really see this happening. While I have a handful of mix CDs from friends that are great, I do not see people getting into them in the same way that we used to get into mix tapes. Now, being a parent for the last 8 years and in graduate school for the 2 years before, it is quite possible that I haven't a clue what people are actually doing out there with their music. They may in fact be getting into mix CDs or even playlist sharing or something that serves the same purpose. However, I have not heard of this so much. Instead I see people sharing gigabytes of MP3s at a time, or maybe someone makes an MP3 CD with 10+ hours of music on it. Again this may be nice to have, but it does not have the repetitive quality of some kind of shorter format or radio station that I think is necessary to truly get exposed and get into new music. For me, getting this much music all at once it a little overwhelming. I think it does serve a purpose for the music collector, just not the purpose I am interested in here.
Internet radio stations can be real nice. I especially like the "personalized" internet radio stations like Pandora or Last.fm (I'm listening to last.fm right now). These are all certainly terrific ways to get exposed to new music. There is decent repetition, not too much and the stations tend to be very specialized, especially the the "personalized" stations where you can "seed" your own personal radio station with particular input related to the music you want to listen to. As great as these are, they are only good when I am sitting in front of a computer in a situation where I can listen to music. I think that currently, most folks are like me and can only tune in to these radio stations from their computers. I do not (yet) have the ability to tune into these internet radio stations from my car, where I spend at least an hour a day listening to something.
So until we have a new, better, portable, cheap, personalized technology that enables us to hear new music that we will like any time we want, I propose a return of the mix tape, or really a mix CD. In the meantime, 80 minutes of music selected by musically like-minded friends is exactly what I think would fulfill this need. I think it would be cool to get 3-12 folks with a shared interest and relative taste in music and start a mix tape club. Each person would take a turn and make a "mix tape" (CD) for everyone else. Now that some people have these massive digital music collections, it should be easier than even before to make a pretty good mix. I've been thinking about this for a while (hence the need to write this) and thought that while everyone should be free to make any mix they want to, it would be cool to at least have some kind of theme to tie the music together. These themes could be determined ahead of time or just kept in mind while the mix creator mixes.
Some mix tape themes I've been thinking of:
Keep on listening.
-Harry
When I was growing up, the thing to do was to make a mix tape. Throw down some of your favorite tracks, straight from vinyl or cassette or eventually CDs to another cassette. You would give these out to your friends and it was a good, actually great way to get exposed to all kinds of different music. This was real nice especially when pop radio didn't play the music you usually like to listen to. I had mix tapes galore and constantly had one in my car for years.
Eventually, the cassette format went by the wayside. Yes, I still have some cassettes, but I do not have a good player to listen to them on and most of them have deteriorated over the years. The point here is that we are no longer making or listening to mix tapes anymore. Now we have digital media, CDs, MP3s, and whatever comes next. Of course these formats offer better sound quality over the cassette, some would argue not necessarily over vinyl. However it is very easy nowadays to rip a CD, get the MP3s and put them on your MP3 player/iPod etc. You can even purchase your tunes à la carte, one song at a time. Folks I know have amassed huge collections of of digital music to the point where they have more than enough music to listen to for the rest of their lives and not have to repeat very much at all. While it may be nice to have every piece of music ever recorded at your fingertips, I do not find it practical for getting into new music, or finding music you might like that you haven't heard before.
Radio is nice in that it repeats songs at some, sometimes annoying, frequency. This gives that "oh yeah, I've heard this one before" kind of moment that might lead to purchasing music or just finding out more about the artist. The same things goes for cassettes, or even CDs that you might play over and over again in your car or home stereo. I guess satellite radio would be good for this too, except I still can't get over having a recurring payment for radio. So,mix tapes traded between friends or at least folks with similar interests in music, were an ideal way to get exposed to new music that you might like.
So now that computers that can burn CDs or even DVDs are pretty much ubiquitous, you would think that people would be making more mix CDs, but I do not really see this happening. While I have a handful of mix CDs from friends that are great, I do not see people getting into them in the same way that we used to get into mix tapes. Now, being a parent for the last 8 years and in graduate school for the 2 years before, it is quite possible that I haven't a clue what people are actually doing out there with their music. They may in fact be getting into mix CDs or even playlist sharing or something that serves the same purpose. However, I have not heard of this so much. Instead I see people sharing gigabytes of MP3s at a time, or maybe someone makes an MP3 CD with 10+ hours of music on it. Again this may be nice to have, but it does not have the repetitive quality of some kind of shorter format or radio station that I think is necessary to truly get exposed and get into new music. For me, getting this much music all at once it a little overwhelming. I think it does serve a purpose for the music collector, just not the purpose I am interested in here.
Internet radio stations can be real nice. I especially like the "personalized" internet radio stations like Pandora or Last.fm (I'm listening to last.fm right now). These are all certainly terrific ways to get exposed to new music. There is decent repetition, not too much and the stations tend to be very specialized, especially the the "personalized" stations where you can "seed" your own personal radio station with particular input related to the music you want to listen to. As great as these are, they are only good when I am sitting in front of a computer in a situation where I can listen to music. I think that currently, most folks are like me and can only tune in to these radio stations from their computers. I do not (yet) have the ability to tune into these internet radio stations from my car, where I spend at least an hour a day listening to something.
So until we have a new, better, portable, cheap, personalized technology that enables us to hear new music that we will like any time we want, I propose a return of the mix tape, or really a mix CD. In the meantime, 80 minutes of music selected by musically like-minded friends is exactly what I think would fulfill this need. I think it would be cool to get 3-12 folks with a shared interest and relative taste in music and start a mix tape club. Each person would take a turn and make a "mix tape" (CD) for everyone else. Now that some people have these massive digital music collections, it should be easier than even before to make a pretty good mix. I've been thinking about this for a while (hence the need to write this) and thought that while everyone should be free to make any mix they want to, it would be cool to at least have some kind of theme to tie the music together. These themes could be determined ahead of time or just kept in mind while the mix creator mixes.
Some mix tape themes I've been thinking of:
- Great covers
- The worst songs from the best bands
- Music history for your kids (à la School of Rock): the songs/artists that they must know about
- Songs about animals (Rock Lobster, The Monkey Song, Mammal, The Love Cats, etc)
- Food songs (like Weird Al, but not Weird Al)
- Songs that 'B' (or some particular letter)
- B-sides / rarities
- Old School
- Songs that make feel blue
- Songs that make you feel ???
- Songs that mention New York
- Songs about any city
- Acoustic songs
- Live music / bootleg compilation
- A compilation of songs from other compilations
- Favorite Reggae songs
- Putumayo favorites
- Great music to dance to
- Songs you can't play on the radio
- Punk influences
- The DC scene
- The _____ scene from the 19??s
- Great local bands
- Tallahassee in the 90s
- Songs ripped from vinyl
Keep on listening.
-Harry
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