Great indie list by last.fm

they're not bad at this...

Built to Spill – Just A Habit just listened
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – In This Home On Ice 4 minutes ago
Pavement – Perfume-V 8 minutes ago
The New Pornographers – Jackie, Dressed in Cobras 10 minutes ago
Sufjan Stevens – Sister 13 minutes ago
TV on the Radio – Blues From Down Here 19 minutes ago
The Microphones – The Moon 24 minutes ago
The Magnetic Fields – Strange Powers 29 minutes ago
The Unicorns – Emasculate the Masculine 32 minutes ago
Neutral Milk Hotel – The Fool 36 minutes ago

last.fm now part of CBS "Media Empire"

A great buy for CBS. last.fm is (was?) really great. They needed money in the wake of the recent evil copyright decision where record labels get paid more for internet airplay than for radio airplay. (makes NO sense!) $280M should cover that.

Anyway, I added a little widget to the blog which is over to the right. I haven't done much "scrobbling" so it's not exactly a top songs list like you'd see in my itunes.

I am thinking about changing the name, location etc. of this little gem of a blog. There aren't that many readers, but I love them all dearly, so I am reluctant to move it and then have no readers. However, I recently discovered a wash dc band (a capella group actually) that "stole" the name staticflow, so it is now dead to me. dead i tell you...

Anyway, check out last.fm before CBS pulls any shenanigans with it. You can choose to be my friend on there (I am called "staticvars") and then we can recommend silly songs to each other. Won't that be nice? Happy scrobbling!

Rez

Lots of posts in draft (still- I am sucking at writing lately) but here is something that caught my interest:


Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails lets rip at ignorant record labels for charging $10 more for his disc-
Why is this the case?" He goes "Because your packaging is a lot more expensive". I know how much the packaging costs -- it costs me, not them, it costs me 83 cents more to have a CD with the colour-changing ink on it. I'm taking the hit on that, not them. So I said "Well, it doesn't cost $10 more". "Ah, well, you're right, it doesn't. Basically it's because we know you've got a core audience that's gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whatever". And I just said "That's the most insulting thing I've heard. I've garnered a core audience that you feel it's OK to rip off? F--- you'. That's also why you don't see any label people here, 'cos I said 'F--- you people. Stay out of my f---ing show. If you wanna come, pay the ticket like anyone else. F--- you guys". They're thieves. I don't blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s--- that they pull off.

Saw the link on AlternateIdea

I knew the ol' Rezzer was a proper geez from the first, back in say, 1990. 17 years ago. Makes my head hurt.

What is emo???

Have you ever wondered what "emo" is? I found it amusing...the whole concept is one of those things that makes me feel old. I was emo before there was emo! Or something.

[pic is Dashboard Confessional dude- emo!]

Getting all twittery

Follow along at: http://twitter.com/mattmcknight

More failure

Just read page one of Mind Set, by Carol Dweck.

It's basically a Kings of Convenience lyric, made into a psych book.

"Fail-ure is the best way to learn."

So why do we fear it?

In Twee Wee Tryst

Just about everything from waah/bring on bull is now downloadable. These guys were a sort of 2nd division UK label in the 1990s along the lines of Sarah records. Delicate stuff, it's really cool.

While I am writing this I am watching The Merlin Show and he just said "email bukake" to Chris Wetherell.

While I was looking up Chris's url for the above link, I just saw this post about names of wifi nodes on his way to work. We had a similar experience running around our building at work. "I hate everyone in this building" was one of our favorites, although I think "Penis Pain" was probably the popular choice for best/worst network name. Mine is a unintelligible string of characters.

Mad Chopstix Skillz

Saw this on Make advocating long tweezers. Learn to use chopsticks already...they're not just for sticky rice. I've used them for retrieving tiny screws that fall into inconvenient places under the motherboard, places where my Mr. Magneto screwdriver was not working.

I know some people believe that chopsticks are inferior to the "barbarian" fork, but they really come into their own in precision work. I will admit that they have certain failings when used for Jello or the odd heavy item...but I guess my actual favorite thing about Asian food is that it comes pre-cut- no knives out on the table. Just tweeze and eat. Yumalazious.

DRM is dying

Yes, dying I tell you, dying! It's actually almost safe to get back on the iTunes Music Store again. Now I just need to get my Tivo to play AAC (too much pain to always convert to mp3), or buy one of those apple tv things so I can enjoy the entertainments on my hi-fi.

April Fools' Day

April fools day on the internet completely fails to be interesting or funny to me anymore, it's completely predictable and lame. Even this.

I think everyone should take a few years off, maybe it would seem fresh again. Probably not though, it's just a dumb idea.