It's more fun to Compute

....

I was originally going to make this rant about journalism.


How journalism itself has been twisted into some kind of Frankenstein..., wrung by technological advancements, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered and, then,... put together. It was, back in the early 2000's "crowd sourcing boom," electrified by the amateur blogger power-to-the-people-type 4th estate movement. But now, things seem to be changing again.

Newsweek has two new articles that have stirred existential questions in me: Daniel Lyons has an article on the new Flipboard app for iPad that allows users to arrange the otherwise “clunky” news feed links they get on twitter into their own personal magazine.
-While Tony Dokoupil/Angela Wu’s Take This Blog and Shove It communicated to me the gravity of the, on some level, futility, of shouting one’s voice out into this hellish ether called the Internet. It discusses Wikipedia needing recruiters to keep its e-volunteers (now, likely to be students) to continue “updating” their articles, and about how majority of personal blogs (like this one) have started dying off like dinosaurs and that we now, ever more concretely, live in a micro-blogging world of 140-character tweets or four square updates or blisteringly brief iPhone flip-through’s where we maybe glance a news link posted by one of our facebook friends or we make a snarky comment on Huffingtonpost.

So. Much. Fucking. Access. Journalism is far from dead. As a calling, as a public service, its probably more galvanized than in human history. Because if you iPadders wanna “arrange” your own magazine via Flipboard, you’re going to need the reporters to do their job and write/ post the fuel for your personal cache.


It’s just all internet all the time.

That I take 29 minutes of my day to sit at my breakfast nook and read a newspaper, (emphasis on the palpable paper) makes me feel like an old man.


Find your audience(?)

Audiences are now limited resources. And that goes for everybody. Barnaby in Brooklyn or Floyd in Flint may be putting the most obscure links all over their own freshly bought iPad gizmos, from the scads of alternative news sites out there, from the unabashedly agenda-bent polito-blogs to the muckraking anti-establishment forums to wherever else you can go on the internet.

You, for example, are here. And what’s this blog mean in the long run?


There is no more long run anymore. It’s like climbing a tree now, and we only stay on one branch for so long. Newsweek would suggest that we’ve started climbing past the amateur blog and wikipedia-enthusiastic-updating branch.

Are you looking for news? Perhaps you can go onto Huffingtonpost, read up on the blitz of links and maybe post your humble comment in amongst the white noise of the other daily plod of 10,000 or so.

Are you looking for music? How about Pandora? Playlist? Apple? Last FM?


Shit...Bandcamp - or, you can use Hype Machine to find out which bands are the most "blogged" about.

Writer or reader? Looking for Books? Goodreads? HarperCollins? Publishers Weekly?


Searching....Finding...

We're befuddled by a blur of choices. At least, as audience members.

Which makes those on the other end: “journalists” “artists” “musicians” “writers”... have to reach otherworldly levels of dynamism in display and creativity via publicity stunt-type stuff... or otherwise fall into the rushing current left to either disappear into net blipped obscurity or hang onto slippery root weeds along the shore and be hailed as a niche voice on the internet for the Barnaby’s and Floyd’s to then “arrange” you into their preferences.

To at least know that someone, somewhere, is listening to you, reading you, hearing your music. Do we really need the reassurance?

Because if we do, we’re going to have to sell ourselves. Bedazzle ourselves, gird ourselves with absolute coverage, compatibility and net-adaptability to thus compete with the still-comparable big dogs of the internet.

How do you find your voice with these computers? Blogs once were the answer. Are they still? Aspiring writers/novelists could connect with their readers via blogs. Bands could start their own blogs or hopefully get picked up by one of the other veritable “big dog” music blogs be it an Aquarium Drunkard, Brooklyn Vegan or a Stereogum. But how long will we stay on that branch? How long will we use the Last FM branch?

Until we climb up and we all have to readjust again.

We’ve had to do a lot of readjusting – from the decline of books and newspapers, to the decline of letter writing and now, even the decline of fucking phone calls? (The latter being surpassed for either email, but, predominantly, texting!).

The old man in me, the one who reads the newspaper, thinks its just a wee bit too fast. Though, I am heartened by what I truly believe to be a sign of strength in “the calling” of journalism, via the various sources that exist out there for potential watch-dog-ism (whether they deliver or not), I have to say, so much of what I merely romanticize (printed paper, old tradition) has been ghost-ified.


Computer Voices

How do you find your voice without these computers? How do you keep it? In a music world where you can synthesize bass lines, where you can have computers be your drummer, where you can auto-tune your vocals, and you can now read your books and newspapers off of tablets, you can have computers tell you when to turn and how to get to the next stop by car.

And yet, the five basic modes of artistic expression: -the pen for the poet’s writing, -the acoustic wood instrument for the troubadour or orchestral performer, -the marble for the sculptor, -the paint and canvas for the painter, -and the stage/performing theatre for the thespian, all still survive to this day.

And yet, the poet can blog. The acoustic strummer can electrify even a violin. The sculptor could, if he/she wants, use a laser, perhaps? (Maybe not, I’m talking crazy, right?) But the painter has photoshop. And the thespian hasn’t gone electric yet. But still, in terms of performance, you have Daft Punk making themselves into robots.

I don’t know.


Stopping to Look at Squirrels

It only seems like it’s going fast when you stop for a minute. If we’re all swimming with the current, we don’t feel the monstrous shunt of the wave behind us unless we stop and try to stand up in the middle of the river.

I did that today. I stopped. On a sidewalk, on a sunny day, in suburbia. A squirrel pittered and pattered along the edge of the cyclone fencing beside me. He was a mere two feet away from me and had the gull or the nonchalance to stop right beside me, barely even acknowledging me and certainly not showing any prey-like quiver of fear.

That’s it, I thought. After decades of suburban sprawl, these fuzzy rodents have probably, by now, had generations of lil squirrel families adapt to us. Further and further squirrel-adaptation where the passing generation raises their lil fuzz tailed rattys in a world where the big, cloth-covered bipeds stomp about with their lawn mowers and their automobiles. They know the drill. Try not to get run over when you cross the street. And gather ye acorns while ye may before they turn the sprinklers on…’cuz otherwise those big lightly-haired creatures will leave you alone.

If they keep evolving like that, increasingly downplaying our potential power over them, will there ever be a Conquest of the Planet of the Apes type day where they organize and rise up? I’m sure there could be – but not for a while...they’re only evolving at a quasi-unnatural rate, whereas we keep climbing up this damned digitized tree.


What’s at the top? Cyber squirrels?

Anyway, we’ll use the sculptor’s laser beams to fight them off.

Bars of Gold - album release - 9/9 - Small's (Hamtramck)

Bars 0f Gold - Of Gold - The debut full length, out now, on Friction Records.

Graceful, gritty, valiant – Bars of Gold master a balance between soft-n-smooth to the rolling-n-thunderous –

Their first proper full length is a fibrous, bawl blasted post-punk production that’s wiry enough to throw some hard juking knees and elbows into any fray but glossed with an endearment of quieter croons and tight, spiny guitar sunrays that dance down over muscular, jazz-jolted drum barrages. It spans varying moods of grungy grandeur, noise-rock peekaboo cartwheels to barely-held in-place post-hardcore transmogrifications, all flexed into an initially bewilderingly, anthemic hurrah.

See: - the deliciously panoramic, up and down, dreamy rock ballad "…" (actual title, or "Civil War") with its patient, pensive guitars waving up and diving down over an about-to-trip-over-itself marching drum surge, until it breaks away for muted handclaps and off-mic acapella in low burly flannelled voices from all five men. Next, a banjo starts beautifully flitting around the space under a precious moment where vocals show off a melodiousness and are not belted in a bark to compete with the storming guitars, bending bass and occasional synths.

The intertwining guitars and seizing rhythms are key; the sound was honed while the four instrumentalists worked in Detroit as Wildcatting, 'till now, burgeoning with the tornado whirled, belt and bravado of Bear Vs Shark’s former frontman on vocals.

Mandolins waveringly wail in a blur over the most single-ready anthem "Birds" while the banjos set a groove over a devastating drum stomp on the epic "the Hustle"; throaty vocals span anti-consumerism, to avian enthusiasts to the show-stopping, slow-building, album closing ballad of being born "Cannibals."

Formula: The singer of Bear Vs. Shark + the guitars and bass of Wildcatting and the drummer of Wildcatting/Bear Vs. Shark.

Drunken Barn Dance - album release - 8/27 - Savoy (Ypsilanti)

Michigan’s New York son, singer/songwriter Scott Sellwood revels in a resonant, atmospheric-rock scoped, slight-country-twanged folk style. His strummy skeletal songs are bolstered into rich, reverb-heavy sagas by a quartet of Arbor/Ypsi musicians with commendable resumes: bassist Jim Roll (renowned producer/collaborator), guitarist Greg McIntosh (Great Lakes Mytho Society), guitarist Scott DeRoche (Saturday Looks Good To Me) and Ryan Howard (City Center). What begins as a jangly toe-tapping modest anthem ("Leaving Las Vegas, Reno, Laughlin") gets molded by these psychedelic scraping guitar roars bending and swaying over each other until a caustic feedback underpinning starts simmering underneath.

Drunken Barn Dance songs often start in realms resembling neo-folk ("Ain’t No Weather Fouler") or alt-country ("The Guest List") soon disarm the twang-expectation and stretch into indulgences for maybe a hard-boiled murder ballad or whirlpoolish tear into shimmering shoegaze. Songs may conjure a few indie/arty mid-90’s inclinations be it a dark-ish but rousing acoustic spurred dream-rock (ala maybe a Neutral Milk Hotel) or a spindly, quick tumbling, nasally Beatles-pop narrative (ala maybe, an Olivia Tremor Control) to soaring guitars singing the shuffling of a more pensive, woodsy wandering dirge (ala, maybe, a Neil Young). Each entry was captured within just a few takes, after an indeterminate (but considerable) amount of beers, in a whirlwind 8-hour recording span, laid down live.

More info

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Bottled In Cork (Funny-Or-Die)

Ted Leo And The Pharmacists - "Bottled In Cork" (Official Video) from John Hodgman

FAF 3...into 4

While my own energy and coherence is whittling away... featured bands' performances remain vibrant... Illy Mack are complete charmers... The building was packed with bodies... I saw a lot of paper-plates cradling devoured pizzas... loud harmonized zaniness continues tonight - Fucknig Awesome Fest - + more info -

The Hounds Below

Illy Mack

Conspiracy of Owls

Friendly Foes

Millions of Brazilians

~ FAF DAY 3

pics: mike milo

Friendly Foes - Liz, Ryan & Sean EP

it's over now, it's in the past...

don't count the sands in the hour glass

let's fill it up, let's make it last...

We're still fast........

The arc of the Friendly Foes existence seemed sped-up...similar to the swiftly spat anthemic lyrics' recounting on this final recorded entry's "Still Fast" (listen here). It jettisoned out strongly, these songs having gestated as singer/guitarist Ryan Allen's non-Thunderbirds-Are-Now-pennings, and by the end of summer 08 they had an full length debut of commendable indie-tinged power-pop beauties, with Born Radical. But a year or so in, as they were already working on a follow up EP, their drummer, Brad Elliott, departed and they welcomed Sean Sommers (of The Cold Wave) in...while bassist Liz Wittman (also of Kiddo) started writing and singing more (and, also, developing her own primary writing project, Lettercamp). Another EP, more shows, more festivals, all in a year's time; and soon Allen is joining the Cold Wave full time. And through the spring and summer, they prepped 4 new songs for this digital (limited print run) release. All this in less than 3 years. And now they break up.

'Break-up' can be a severe term, usually reserved for more bad-blood type situations; the Stone Temple Pilots break up, Van Halen breaks up, messy things like that. While this appears amacable, (and, natural...bands and scenes and songs all come and go), this, still, in a way, seems like a type of 'break-up' album, but not in a romantic or even necessarily friendship sense, just a reflection, a revved up, guitar soaring, hard-pounding requiem...a hook-filled heavy hearted look-back at their adventures.

It's story-book-ish or photo-album-ish in that way - but still heartening. "We were there to know we tried / now it's time to say goodbye." A sort of affirmation, that we were there, and it meant something.

No matter what - we have this.

And you can have this - Liz, Ryan & Sean - via their bandcamp download. They had 50-limited copies at their farewell show (via the Fucking Awesome Fest) - if there's any left, I would haunt the merch tables at any forthcoming Cold Wave or Lettercamp shows to see what you can find...

FAF 2...into 3

So maybe you were there (maybe you don't care) and maybe this is just an aid to help you piece together your own hop-jumbled memory, like a dusty polaroid spill-out onto your already water-ringed coffee-table... as we look back on night two's goings-ons: from a fierce mandolin solo, to projectile snot and faces bursting upon microphones, to doors of self-discovery...

Here's more of what night 1 looked and sounded like... "more energy!"

Info - Schedule - Fucking Awesome Fest

Cheers to all bands who performed, Ponys, Screaming Females, Noman, the HandGrenades, the Kickstand Band, Darling Imperial, Citizen Smile~


Zoos of Berlin

Fawn

Bars of Gold

Child Bite

Outrageous Cherry

The High Strung

pics: MIKE MILO