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Saturday, April 12
Sunday, January 20
Saturday, January 19
Thursday, January 10
The Guggenheim Grotto
 I'm not sure what drew my attention back to them, but I bought an album (for the benefit of those who have been asking that's a useful archaic term for "a collection of related MP3s grouped under a fanciful name") by The Guggenheim Grotto, an Irish acoustic/folk band with a talent for both lyrics and melodies. I'd first picked up their track Told You So off the 2006 SXSW sampler and then Philosophia showed up as a free song on iTMS US. That second track finally got to me and I decided to get the whole album, Waltzing Alone (that's Amazon MP3 and US-only, but Amazon UK has the CD).
There's a lot of Oasis sound in there, but it's generally more accessible and laid back (and, yes, I suppose, OK, I admit it, melancholic) as well as heading deep into folk sounds (try Rosanna). 'Philosophia' is still a stand-out, but several others are already sticking including the thoughtful Koan and the fascinating close harmonies of Ozymandias which is indeed derived from the Shelley poem. On continuous play and recommended - the free EP on their download page is great and they have even got ready-to-use free ringtones there.Labels: Music
posted at 10:55 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Tuesday, January 8
Sunday, December 23
Monday, November 26
Saturday, October 27
Monday, October 8
Sunday, October 7
Saturday, September 29
Tuesday, September 25
Wednesday, September 5
Tuesday, September 4
Tuesday, August 14
Wednesday, May 23
Saturday, May 5
Genoud in Honolulu
 I've stopped in Honolulu on my way to JavaOne, pretty much because I could (I am using an air ticket where stops are free, and the hotel here is less than half the price the one in San Francisco is gouging out of me). I spent the day walking from Waikiki towards the town, and quickly came to the conclusion that Waikiki is not designed for a fat fortysomething married guy travelling alone. While I was walking though I did get the chance to listen to one of the new albums I've bought.
The album in question is 'Aqua' by Moncef Genoud. Yes, hardly a name that's rattling around the charts. This is another one where I got a free track from iTunes and went back for the album. It's great jazz, deliciously syncopated and melodic, with the sort of rhythms and melodies that remind me of Brubeck and Take Five. Putting it on repeat, it was all I could go not to hum along with it as I was wandering around Ala Moana shopping centre, realising that almost all the stores sell designer clothing for people other than me.
It was the title track that first hooked me, with its descending minor-key melody that runs as a motif through the whole album. Genoud improvises beautifully on piano, and he has sax and drums supporting effectively (I miss having sleeve notes). All ten tracks are long, around 8 minutes, and the confection lasted easily with only one track skipped (10) until after sunset for me in a walk on the beach watching the waves lit by the lights on the promenade. Just as bouncy Venus Hum was a good soundtrack for a Saturday morning walking towards Bondi from Sydney CBD, so Genoud provided a great soundtrack for a day even more alone in dense crowds in Honolulu.Labels: iTunes, Music, travel
posted at 11:05 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Wednesday, April 18
Tuesday, April 10
Kate Walsh and the Crumbling Monopoly
 I posted a couple of weekends ago about singer-songwriter Kate Walsh and the delicious track iTunes UK were giving away that week. I'd actually heard another of her tracks, on the SXSW showcase, and loved that one too. Try the free SXSW Showcase track, Your Song.
Those of you in the UK can go straight to iTunes as I just did and buy the whole album (it's only £4.74, amazingly ungreedy of her, almost double on plastic on Amazon). Those of you in the US can get it on the iTunes US store already too, it seems.
Turns out that this weekend she hit the new-era big time, which she deserves without a doubt - check out the clipping on her blog from The Times. No, not a number 1 single or even a number 1 album - she was top of the chart on iTunes! She has a super voice, singing hauntingly to her own guitar accompaniment (with the odd seagull added for effect). The album has many tracks I'll be playing over and over, not least that free one I linked above.
It also reveals how the music monopoly is gradually crumbling. Like Imogen Heap, who you've also read about here, she decided to start her own label rather than submit to the greed of the music industry (by the looks of it after tasting first hand how far that was going to take her). She is working incredibly hard - look at that tour schedule - but it's paying off.
You'll see in the article she was unimpressed by the industry meat market she found at SXSW Music in the US, and she stuck to her guns. The key to market access here was not talent scouts or "being signed" but iTunes and her own courage. The Music Store gave her access to a market ready to experiment and ready to buy. I'm sure she had to pay dearly to be the "free track" two weekends ago, and that aspect still sucks, but her gamble paid off.
It's the music-downloading-public that's given her this victory. The same ones who hang out on MySpace, the same ones who like to download tracks by new artists (hint to Kate: that free SXSW track could be the making of you after all and could make up for the meat market!). The same people the music industry hates and accuses of theft. Only it turns out we (as a category, probably mostly as individuals too when the price is this honest) will pay when we can for what we actually want. And the ones who won't will probably pay for a live gig. And the rest - well, who cares really once those two groups are paying at the point of value?
When we hear the RIAA and their cronies moaning about how downloads are killing their industry, they are right and we are cheering. Their greed, lack of imagination and hatred for their customers means the demand is being met not by their scheming but by the talent that's making its own way to the market through the new channels. Let's hope they stay clueless long enough for the revolution to truly take hold and build a new industry without them!Labels: Music
posted at 5:12 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Saturday, March 24
Kate Walsh
It's been a while since I've liked one of the free tracks that iTunes is giving it's UK users, but this week's track - Talk of the Town, by Kate Walsh - is pretty good, if you like female singer-songwriter-guitarist stuff (which by now you may be working out that I do - although not exclusively, James!) Worth downloading and liberating to CD.
Update Apr-9: Well, another new talent you heard here first, folks! She hit the number one spot in the iTunes UK chart this weekend - check out the clipping on her blog. I just hope she'll be performing some place near where I am soon. The more I listen to this, the more hauntingly gorgeous I find it, and the way she just beat the system and cut out all those people-hating music middle-men bodes well for the future of music. More on today's blog.Labels: iTunes, Music, UK
posted at 8:50 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Thursday, February 22
Sunday, January 21
Amazon Is Parochial
I find Amazon something of a paradox. They have some very innovative thinking in their retail business, and I find the "associates" scheme very effective (I am now using their AStore to manage three of my interests lists, on photography, books and music). Yet they have an amazing blind spot when it comes to geography.
The problem is this; the Associates schemes for each country are distinct. They have stores in many different countries and they expect me to maintain totally separate accounts on each of them. I could live with that, but it gets worse. To earn credit for a sale delivered in a country, I have to have an account in that country and I have to use the unique ID for that country in the referral. To do that, I would have to know which country the reader resides in. Amazon provides no assistance in doing this. The result is that, in the case of AStore, I need to have completely separate stores for each country. I don't bother, the return on the effort isn't worth it since my primary motivation is actually having a simple CMS rather than driving revenue anyway.
How can such an advanced company have such a huge blind-spot when it comes to the international nature of the Internet? I have readers in every country where Amazon does business, and from one page I could be gathering attention for their products in all those countries. As it is, they pretty much force me to focus just on the readers in the UK and the US. How myopic and reactionary. Come on, Amazon, get with the Web on this one.Labels: Amazon, Books, Music, website
posted at 1:56 PM (UK) | Comment? (3 so far)
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Friday, January 5
New Booklist for a New Year
I decided that my old book-list page on Webmink was looking a bit freyed around the edges, so I have been meaning to rework it for some time. The problem is that editing HTML takes a repeated investment in time. That's the reason I use an aggregator to build my home page - it simply gathers the work I've already done elsewhere automatically rather than requiring an additional process step.
This, by the way, is the reason most club, small business and church web sites fail - because people don't factor in the effort involved in working regularly to keep things fresh. All they look at is the up-front effort and cost, cover that and then fail to budget for upkeep. It's also the reason gathering metrics for driving quality improvement in an organisation fails if the data-gathering is an additional process step. If you need a metric, measure something people have to do in order to achieve the goal, don't ask them to fill in an extra form or visit an extra web site because when the going gets tough they just won't.
This is all by way of saying that I may have found the perfect tool in Amazon AStore. You'll remember I have been using it to document my camera system - well, I think it may be the perfect mechanism for creating an attractive and useful book list as well. Take a look and let me know what you think of that and the new music list, both with comments of the length I use on del.icio.us for links.Labels: Amazon, Books, Music
posted at 7:42 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Another free taster has done its work and I've now got 
. I'm not sure that the single,