Blurring The Line
I’ve been playing L.A. Noire this week. It is hard to describe as a game as it is more of an interactive story that you can directly influence. That is not a bad thing at all, it’s just a different way of looking at a piece of entertainment.
There are not many typical video game mechanics in a traditional sense. There is the drive here, do that bits and some random street thug encounters that can result in a gunfight but for the most part this is a detailed story that you control. The line between game and story is very blurred.
I am still early in the game but so far I’m really enjoying what I’ve seen so far.
The technology behind the motion capture and acting is pretty impressive and detailed here:
Rat Trap
The other morning my music was on shuffle and it randomly played “Nothing Happened Today” by the Boomtown Rats. It made me realize I had not listened to them in a long time and how many of their songs I enjoyed.
They were a hard band to categorize. They sort of started out in that crush of punk & new wave artists in the late 70′s and then changed as time went on. It’s interesting to go back and listen to the first albums of bands like The Police, The Cure, U2 and others and hear how similar in energy they all sounded.
The Boomtown Rats did not make it very long and Bob Geldolf became more known for his charity than for his music. For a time, they put out some great energetic music and it was nice to rediscover it again as I did this week.
“Rat Trap” – One of my favorites, such a cheesy lip sync on Top of The Pops but a great song:
“She’s So Modern” – Late 70s punk at it’s finest:
“I don’t like Monday’s” – The song they are most known for, here is an interesting version performed live at The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball:
Still Alive
I’ve spent the last three weeks at work solving some very intense IT problems and working very long hours. My brain is pretty taxed out at the moment. How did I decide to relax this weekend? I played a puzzle based video game. Not just any puzzle game but the sequel to one of my favorite games ever, Portal. I originally had not planned on buying Portal 2 anytime soon but then I discovered this great iPad app that detailed the development of Portal 2 and specifically final hours before launching the game. I really enjoyed the book “Raising the Bar” about the Half Life development process so I was anxious to read about the Portal 2 process.
I ended up buying the game on Steam soon after reading the app. It is just as good as the first one and has a great deal of humor. I have been playing games mainly on my Xbox for the past 5 years but now that I have a powerful Mac I decided to get Portal 2 on the computer instead of the Xbox. I love the fact that for one price I can buy the game and play it on as many computers as I want to. One cool feature of steam that I did not know about now was that all my saved progress and settings are saved in the steam cloud and they are interchangeable between Mac’s and PC’s. I started playing Portal 2 on my Mac and installed it on the PC and picked up right where I left off. Very cool!
Band of Joy
I crossed one off my list recently. I was lucky enough to see Robert Plant and the Band of Joy live in concert. It was a great show. A lot more loud than I thought it was going to be. If you don’t know, Robert’s latest album is his spin on some Americana type music. Some traditional songs and some more modern (Los Lobos & Richard Thompson).
The Band of Joy is a natural progression of his Raising Sand album with Alison Krauss. This time around he has joined up with Patty Griffin and a few others. The one thing I definitely took away from the show was the love of music from the entire band. Each musician was getting energy and joy for each other. Here is a brief piece of “Satan your kingdom must come down” that I shot on my iPhone during the show:
Here is a compilation of songs from the start of the tour:
Robert told a story that cracked me up, he mentioned that he went shopping on Hawthorne to get some beads fixed and he took the Tri-Met bus to get there. I used to ride the Bus 14 a lot, I don’t think I would believe it if I suddenly saw Robert Plant walk on the bus and sit down for a ride to go shopping.
Besides the traditional songs, they sang quite a few Led Zeppelin songs. I have to say my personal favorite was their version of “Ramble On” and “Gallows Pole”. It was a great show and I’m glad I finally got to see this legend live.
Set list for 03-19-2011:
- Black Dog
- Down to the Sea
- Angel Dance
- Black Country Woman
- House of Cards
- Monkey
- Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go
- Tangerine
- A Satisfied Mind
- Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
- Move Up
- In the Mood
- Please Read the Letter
- Houses of the Holy
- Ramble On
- Encore:
- Harms Swift Way
- Gallows Pole
- And We Bid You Goodnight
Obsessive Music Tagging
When it comes to properly tagging my music with data, I’m pretty much a Tweaker. I’ll admit it, I never seem to be satisfied. I have to make sure the Genre is just right, the rating accurately represents my opinion of the song and that silly things like the year is accurate (for me it has to be the year the music was recorded, not the year it was finally released). I use this data in my listening and playlist creation quite often. Here is a typical example from a small section of my iTunes database:
I use iTunes because it works for me. I used to not care about the way my music was tagged but then I started to really use the power of some of the built in functions of iTunes and I realized how much it depended on accurate data. One of the most common tags I tweak is the rating tag. iTunes allows for between 1-5 stars (there are hacks that let you do 1/2 stars if you really want to). I tend to rate things like this:
- 1 Star Rating – Do not listen to on a regular basis (things like interviews, duplicate versions of songs from greatest hits collections, etc)
- 2 Star Rating – Below average song or something I will listen to once in a blue moon
- 3 Star Rating – Average song, neither good nor bad
- 4 Star Rating – Like this song a lot, tend to listen to it more often
- 5 Star Rating – Love this song, Perfect example of what I love about the artist, genre, style, etc
I utilize these star ratings all the time when I am organizing my iPod. There is not iPod’s available that will hold all of my music at once. What I do instead is pick what I take with me based on how I’ve rated my music utilizing the Smart Playlist feature in iTunes. Here is a smart playlist that I call “Electric Blues Favorites”. I tell iTunes to give me 50 songs in the Genre of “Blues: Electric” that I’ve rated higher than 3 stars and that I have not played in the past 5 days:
The great things about smart playlists is that when I come home at night and re-sync my iPod, it updates the database. If I listened to say 20 songs on that playlist, they are removed from it when I sync and replaced with 20 different songs that I have not listened to in the past 5 days. The most common playlist I use all the time is my “4-5 stars iPod” playlist. It is the same principal as the “Electric Blues Favorites” but it crosses all genre’s of music:
For this one, I choose 1.5 gigabytes from a playlist of songs that I have rated 4 or 5 stars. I further choose to have this pick songs that I have not played in the last 2 weeks nor have I skipped the song in the last 3 weeks AND it’s not part of what I call the archive playlist. The archive playlist is a base playlist that I use to not have things I do not want in my everyday listening. This archive playlist filters things out of my normal music listening like Comedy, Spoken Word, Audiobooks, Holiday music etc. I built it like so:
I also utilize the Year tag so I can organize music by decade or year of release. I use that a lot more for live concerts but it is still useful for studio songs as well. With concerts, this allows me to quickly find a specific tour date I am interested in listening to. My folder of Wilco shows below provides an example of this:
Probably the biggest use of the year for tours has to be in organizing my Grateful Dead collection. I have so many shows that I need to create sub-folders in my iTunes in order to not get lost:
I can quickly go into a folder and find a specific show or date based on how I’ve tagged it. I also have other utility smart playlists, things like “Blues – Unheard”, this is Blues music that the play count is zero or “Blues – Unrated”, this is music that has a play count of at least 1 but that I have not rated rate. That forces me to go in and rate the music so I can utilize it in other playlists. I will probably never be ever finished tagging my music but I do enjoy being able to automate what I listen to based on my tagging.
Bits and Pieces
I’ve been a bit busy lately and have not posted as much as I planned to. I spent most of January preparing to leave my job of almost six years just as they filed bankruptcy. I spent most of February ramping up to speed at my new job where I hope to be for a very long time. My music musings have suffered but my listening has not. A few bits and pieces below of what has come across my eyes and ears lately.
The Decemberists – The King Is Dead. Get this album, get it now. Wow, it is by far the best album I have heard this year and reminds me of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky in the way that it’s simply an album of great songs. It does not try to be anything more than that and it rocks. Add Gillian Welch and Peter Buck into the mix and you’ve got a great musical experience.
John Hammond at the Aladdin Theater in Portland – Every time I see this man live I get chills. He is an absolutely amazing blues singer and I love to go see him live. Every time I’ve seen him I’ve been close enough to see the spit fly when he’s blowing his harmonica. Truly one of the last great traditional acoustic blues singers.
Bob Marley – Live Forever. A nice historical piece of his last recorded concert. I still strongly prefer Live at the Roxy but any live Bob is good Bob.
REM – Collapse Into Now. Ugh. REM has become like the Author Terry Brooks for me. I keep getting their new stuff thinking “this will be the one that recaptures what they once had” and I keep getting disappointed. A bland shadow of what they once were.
I have finally got around to reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I did not read it when it was all the rage for one reason or another. It is taking me back to my days as a chef and I am laughing hard quite often while reading it. I’m sure the people on the train into town think I’m a bit crazy with my random bursts of laughter but I’m really enjoying this one. A bit of advice, do not read while eating lunch in a restaurant. Even though I worked in them, reading some of the things while waiting for my food to be prepared was not a good plan…
Sunday Morning Hike
I spent a very wet and rainy Sunday morning hiking in forest park with two friends. We went for a nice 2.5 mile hike along a muddy trail with a lot of overflowing water and very, very wet foliage. The weather was part of the charm, it kept a lot of people away except for a few hardcore runners who looked like they didn’t even feel the rain. My pants were so soaked at the end that the money in my wallet was damp. Nothing like a rainy Oregon Sunday to start the week.
An overview of the route via Google Earth:
Three weeks ago this was a clear, calm, shallow creek, today it was rushing muddy water:
Sex Changes and Burned Pizza
Here are some of my favorite misheard lyrics stories I’ve heard about through the years:
Rolling Stones “Beast of Burden”:
Real Lyric:
I'll never be your beast of burden
Misheard Lyric:
I'll never leave your pizza burnin'
REM “Losing my Religion”:
Real Lyric:
That's me in the corner, That's me in the spotlight
Misheard Lyric:
Let's pee in the corner, Let's pee in the spotlight
Jimi Hendrix “Purple Haze”:
Real Lyric:
'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky
Misheard Lyric:
'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy
Pink Floyd “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)”:
Real Lyric:
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Misheard Lyric:
The ducks are hazards in the classroom
My own contribution to this list. Robin still teases me every time this song comes on:
Chuck Berry – “You Never Can Tell”:
Real Lyric:
They bought a souped up jitney, 'twas a cherry red '53 They drove it down to New Orleans to celebrate their anniversary It was there that Pierre was wedded to the lovely mademoiselle "C'est la vie," say the old folks, "It goes to show you never can tell"
My Version:
They bought a souped up jitney, 'twas a cherry red '53
They drove it down to New Orleans to celebrate their anniversary
It was there that Pierre was made into the lovely mademoiselle
"C'est la vie," say the old folks, "It goes to show you never can tell"
Paying for Convenience
I was excited to discover that The Reverend Horton Heat are coming to Portland on the 12/30/2010. Tickets are listed on their web site as being $12. I went to buy two tickets this morning and discovered that the online sales were being handled by Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster was advertising the show for $15.95 ($12 + $3.95 service fees). I hate service fees but that was within my tolerance level.
I went to purchase them and I was faced with a series of options on delivery. Everything from printing at home to UPS overnight. To simply drop them in the mail and send them to me would cost me $12 more. I decided to print them. For the connivence of printing them from my own printer with my own ink and paper it would cost me another $2.50. Rationalizing to myself that at least it wasn’t $2.50 per ticket I forged ahead. That is when I was hit with a $4.50 handling fee. There was no explanation on how this was different than the $3.95 service fee I was already being charged.
Suddenly my $12 tickets were now $19.50 each from all the hidden fees. I abandoned my cart and closed my browser in disgust. You know the thing is, I would have gladly paid $19.50 a ticket but by the end of the checkout process I felt like I was dealing with a used car salesman who was trying to up sell me on a bunch of crap I didn’t want…