A Few Zen - Music, Fusion, and Life

If you haven't heard of this site, go and bookmark it now. This is the video napster (but more legal). This site was made for you to load your home videos onto this site to make them available for anyone to watch. BUT people started taping shows off TV or taping DVD's or old VHS tapes and uploading them also. Pretty much anything people have owned on a video tape is here. I have searched for the most obscure bands I like and this site has concert footage of all of them. Every single band and group I have never seen live from the beginning of film up until now is here. Music videos, bootleg concerts, tv shows, funny ass amateur video, and everything else in between. If you are a music fan, play around with this site. I know alot of people have loaded bootleg VHS tapes of alot of these performances onto this site and they exist nowhere else in the world except for someone's home tapes. I posted recently on my blog about a Hendrix jam on some guy's bed that is definitely some guy filming Hendrix in his pad in the 70's. You couldn't buy this if you wanted. Plus the site makes it easy to e-mail a video to a friend or add it to your blog. This site is legally allowed to exist for this reason, if an artist sees his copywritten material on this site, there are easy ways for them to report that to the site, and the site removes that video and will not allow it to be uploaded again. Quite ingenious. Artist doesn't like it, they take their stuff off. This site is the greatest site I have yet to find on the net. Check it out.

www.youtube.com

Posted by JJ at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My buddy hipped me to this site and I have been happy ever since. This site is a scientific experiment with music and music exposure. As a scientist by day....this intrigues me. I love genetics and this site tries to break music down into genes. It's hard to describe this to you, but it's very avant-garde! The human body is completely made up from 48 chromosomes. Every strange facet about your mind and body is pre-programmed into these chromosomes. Chromosomes are comprised of genes. 4 different amino acids groups for humans, in some combination, creates everything about you. Pandora uses this as a metaphor in their dissection of music. They break every song down into so many parts that they can group songs you like based on the different styles of everything. Making some sort of lifeform from the pieces of music that drive you. Be specific though. If you just list an artist, this program adds every style in every part of every song of that person into your mix. Try to pick just songs you like and try to think of other songs you like that sound like that song. Or what you like about it. Or add an artist if you really like ALL of their stuff. Pick any artist you like. Pick a song you really like. Pick and album you really like. It starts pulling from the way they have examined the songs. They have dissected them in every which way. The first shuffle I saw better than the iPod because it plays music I don't own. But they link to iTunes so they got it hooked up. Please get iTunes off of my site if you do not have it yet. There is a tab for "a million songs..." on the right hand side of my webpage. Pandora is free if you can deal with their amazon ad in the corner of the screen (I can). It also saves your stations and you can access them from any PC. This site is awesome. If I am on the net, I am using this as my player. You can type in any songs that have been stuck in your head, at any point, and have this service mix up you request in ways you never thought, and like it. It works best if you rate the songs it plays because it will not play them much again if you diss it. If you say you like it, it knows and proceeds. It works off of you, SO USE IT!

5 out of 5 thumbs.

Passport to Pandora.....

Posted by JJ at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I first tried a link I saw for this site, I thought I'd found heaven. A site that has free online concert videos from 2 clubs in Amsterdam in the Netherlands (Pardiso and Melkweg). Much like the Cabaret Metro club here in Chicago, these two clubs digitally film every night's shows. But unlike any other club I have yet to see, these clubs put the shows out online for free viewing. GENIOUS! In an age where artists are so uppity about not getting paid for their music, this kicks all the doors open. I have also never seen as good an outlet to gain new fans. If you can play, they will come! I've checked out a ton of bands there that I was curious about but didn't want to invest money in without a preview. Now I would go and pay to see these bands live because I know they rock already (and not just on the album). It's a good thing whether they think so or not. I've found a ton of bands that are great live. Most of the bands on the fabchannel.com are good to watch live. So it's a ++ situation. It's all stored there. You just stream the shows in their entirety. Close it whenever. Come back and finish the show off a week later. Nice. The first show I saw online there was Jaga Jazzist and they rock live. This site has so much potential in my mind, I have to tell the world about it. I hope that more clubs will do this so that the list of bands who do this will increase. Truly an aspect of the future of music.

www.fabchannel.com

Posted by JJ at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This shop has always had 99% of anything I have wanted in movies and music. Sometimes it takes them awhile to ship it because their online site is all of their US stores' inventories (if any store of their's across the US has your album, they will ship it from there, but u get it!). Someone there takes the time to enter all the info they can about bands and artists into their site. It is my #1 resource for music (and movies) trivia. Who is the bass player from the Average White Band.....Alan Gorrie, just found it there. They have every album no matter how obscure and all of the album liner notes and band info, including guest artists on the album. I buy 90% of my music through iTunes for the quickness and clarity of the music. Instant gratification. But they don't have everything, especially the underground music or the old obscure music. They also don't have the info about the bands, who's in them, or anything about the album. Please use Tower for every musical question you have. They have the answers.

5 out of 5 bills

Posted by JJ at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)