Cool new online music service - Deezer.com

I’ve discovered a new online music service called deezer that’s doing something that has eluded most current online music services up to now - the ability to get to the point of listening online music. That is, there is no rigmarole to get to the music; no signing up for anything; no music recommendations (as if I don’t already know what I want half the time anyways). There are no low quality streams of the songs when you finally get to them or obtrusive ads that you must listen to in between tracks.

Nothing of the sort. It’s straightforward in allowing you to search for songs and artists that you want and allowing you to create playlists. In other words, what we always wanted in the first place anyway!

the France-based Deezer isn’t completely new though. It’s actually a phoenixed remix of the embattled blogmuzik.net. The original site went down in February under pressure from industry big-wigs. It’s imperative to note that if these innovatation killers get their way this latest reincarnation could be going down the drain as well. [PC World Story]

Potentially disabling legalese aside, the downside for me, though not a direct critique of the service itself, is that there is no way to scrobble the music I listen to here to my last.fm profile yet. As online music goes, I’m a last.fm adherent turned evangelist. I’ve been on the bandwagon even before the RIAA (music industry equivalent of the feds) stepped in and shut off their main competitor Pandora to the wider world. After two years on last.fm, the most telling indicator of how integral it has become to my listening habits is the way in which it helps determine what I do and don’t listen to. Quite often, I’ll refuse to listen to music, regardless of how good it is simply because it can’t be scrobbled to my profile. Weird I know.

Hopefully though, the Deezer people will release an API soon that will allow for mashup’s a la pandora.fm and all will be right in musicland once more.

That’s it for my weekly geek-out moment. Laters

Tags: last.fm deezer deezer.com online music riaa

My response for and related to people who complain that music is getting too commercialised

synopsis:shaddafuckup!

extended answer: You can only complain that ‘the music’ has become too commercialised because YOU are too lazy to actively seek out whatever you consider ‘good music’ to be. The ‘industry’ is NOT your nanny.

Up to five years ago, I would have accepted the over-commercialisation argument as true but not today. The Internet and the proliferation of free-to-air radio stations means that there is now much more access to musical variety, both legal and… well… the other kind for me to agree with these notions anymore.

iPod Touch.. streups

Most of the persons who actively campaign against ‘over-commercialised’ radio are neo-backpackers. The funny thing about backpacker-types is, in their quest to prove their uber-unique non-mainstream nature, they all forge some higher-plane, meta-physical, far out definition of what constitutes ‘good music;’ each definition a galaxy apart from the others. Now if we can’t get most of these persons to agree definitively on what constitutes ‘good’ music even among themselves, how can they feel comfortable sitting back and blaming the different arms of mega-corporations for taking a risk and selling their ideas of what ‘good’ music is to us?

Finally, who gives these critics and some of the artists they support the right to assume that the world is crying out for their brand of self-righteous, conscious music’ anyway? I’d certainly give Talib, Little Brother and Ro Blvd. some pride of place in the download queue (er… u know… from the iTunes store and stuff heheheh) but that’s my CHOICE. I’m into that kind of thing. But what about the people who aren’t into that? Some people just don’t want to be saved! I mean, what’s wrong with just wanting to ‘walk it out’ or ‘call dung di rain’ huh?

Talib Kweli - Ear Drum (apple store)

I agree that the playing field is somewhat imbalanced in terms of what kind of music gets out to a wider cross section of the public but as I said earlier, this is now due more to laziness on the part of listeners than just the ‘industry’ itself. In any event, Its called ‘the industry’ for a reason. That said, the assumption should not be made that once people hear your ‘deep, thoughtful’ shit thats being suppressed by industry cats, they’ll just lap it up!

Life is a pressuring thing, we WANT mindless garbage to spaz out to from time to time. D’fuck are we supposed to ‘unwind’ on the weekend with some negroe telling me ‘the white man’s out to getcha, the white mans out to getchaaa!?” My reality is already telling me that during the work week anyway, I DONT need a reminder of how hard life is on the mutherfucking weekend too. Damn!

So listen backpacker dudes and dudettes, the next time you hear some the radio playing some ‘commercial’ music, pop in some earphones and crank up your [insert random unsigned 'deep' emcee or some extra-intelligent underground cats here] collection on your iPod and shadafuckup!

Elephant Man - Let’s Get physical (literally!)

signed: disgruntled fringe backpacker who can’t seem to let go of that R.Kelly ‘make it rain’ type shit

Tags: backpackers music industry commercial music

Nerdy T-shirts

If there is a heaven, I want mine to be the factory where they make these shirts!

Nerdy Shirts .com

Some of my fave’s below:

 

 

More here: link

Tags: cool t-shirts nerdy

Signs of Things to Come?

Bruce promised a leaner cabinet. In contravention of that, earlier today he went in the opposite direction and named a cabinet that has 15 ministries. link [.pdf]. This is one ministry bigger than Portia’s previous administration.

His justification, in his own words “the question of [cabinet] size is relative”

Most of his supporters are in no mood to entertain questioning a non-answer like that so that leaves the rest of us to wonder alone. Is this first obvious breaking of a promise a sign of things to come? For Jamaica’s sake, I hope not.

Naturally, the JLP’s mouthpiece - the Observer Editorial team - came out swinging in advanced defense. Sep 11 editorial.

Tags: politics jamaica bruce golding cabinet promises

Kanye West - the Truth

People can say whatever they want about how arrogant or stuck-up Kanye is. Be that as it (unlikely) may, I know that Kanye is one of the people in music that I’m going to be proud to tell my grand kids about when I’m giving them the “afta oonuh nuh know GOOD music nowadays” lecture. It’s all simply because I find his version of the god’s honest truth to be that much more plausible.

Also, if you’re into paying for music then you should definitely get his album when it drops on Sep 11.

In Defense of ‘Read a Book"

Recently I posted a video by Bomani Armah called ‘read a book.‘ The title for the post was “I wonder how come this hasn’t been Don Imus-ified as yet?” Well, ol’ time people have a way fi seh “so said so done.”

Unknown to me, the video was apparently stirring up a debate for quite a while. The concerns - “it’s packaged wrong” and “young people are seeing this.”

My biggest concern in all of this is that people will not come out and critique BET for all that its been doing to highlight all the negatives of black western culture by virtue of all the video’s they regularly promote (read: glorification of drug dealing, financially irresponsible lifestyles and the general degradation of the role and worth of women. You know… just like dancehall pretty much). Yet, the one time some brilliant minds do something to address this, they get the Don Imus treatment.

Check out my home girl Amanda’s response to the matter. Like me, she get’s the video. I hope you did too

Luciano Pavarotti 1935 -2007

Only in his death did I come across this extremely powerful piece of advise he gave to a fan:

“Family is everything, there will always be more work.”

On that note, R.I.P. Pavarotti and to those of us still on this side of existence, remember to give roses while they can be given.

official site || Wikipedia page || NY Times obit

No Profit for the wicked?

No profit for the wicked.

Me back on hip-hop

I’m about as… or at least used to be as ethno-centric as they come.

In my case my fixation was on everything black, working class and Jamaican (in that order). Thankfully(?… or not) I also have an uncanny liking for new things. This curiosity is what serves as the counter-balance to what would otherwise be an (even more!) ego-driven, self-obsessed, I’m-already-perfect-shaddafuckup type personality.

The latest result of the ebbs and flows of my personhood and journey is a rekindling of my appreciation for the hip hop culture. Like most kids, back in highschool and such, I used to know all the popular songs word-for-word. ‘Rick-Dee’s top 40′ on a friday night as well as Fame fm every week morning at 7:15 am for Francois and Danae to play exactly two current rap songs before I went of to school were my well appreciated plug-in’s to that world.

Later with things like growing up, greater knowledge of self, UWI, black consciousness and chicks who dug ‘rootsy’ guys, my appreciation for hip-hop wained. It was too ‘regular’ and never fit in with who I saw myself as at the time. While it was still apart of my pop-culture diet regimen, i think somewhere along the line, I took a conscious decision to drop it a few rungs down the totem pole.

Recent internal tides of change have seen me reawakening my passion and curiosity around this culture of my cousins. Who’s responsible for this? A variety of people and things. If I had to squarely drop the blame somewhere (hey, the Observer does it with Portia everyday doesn’t it? Why can’t I) then I’d have to blame Lil Wayne.

Weezy F. Baby freestyling over the beat for ‘upgrade you’ (see video below) was the car salesman giving me a bargain on a car I never knew or realised I wanted before he pitched it to me.

The post ends there really but I still feel like I have more things to say so yah… nuh seh nutten… uptown! Bang, bang kaboom!

I guess it might come as a shocker to some for me to say that my new found admiration for a culture would come at the hands of someone who isn’t ‘deep’ or ‘conscious’ or any of that nice sounding stuff. Funniest thing is, while I’m just now enjoying the thrill of (re?)discovery, for years I’ve been on to semi-underground, conscious rappers. You know the type - Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Common, Immortal Technique - the usual suspects. I figure more or less, they were present because they fit into my image of self; not as emissaries of hip-hop but as consciousness dealers. Me cuing up some Aquarian jam was no different in purpose than say a Peter Tosh.

Having made the discovery, the next step you ask? Why I’ve already begun learning to make beats haven’t I? I’ve even been inspired to freestyle. I want to do it in Jamaican but the whole ebonics-accent-imitation thing does kinda bring a swagger to it.

5k: update

I posted recently that while I wasn’t posting, I was still running.

My last run was the first one for week 3 where after warm up, you run 3 mins, walk 90 secs, run 5 minutes, walk 140 secs then repeat the steps after warm up.

Tonight I was going out to run when a variety of things went wrong enough to convince me not to go.

I lost the battery cover for my mp3 player, I feel extremely sweaty even though I havent run, I feel a case of the shits coming on.

I’t s a sign. I’m not going running tonight.