What a difference a year makes.
I saw Sufjan Stevens live for the first time last June, when he toured with Carrie & Lowell. It was a somber, moving experience, a concert of two halves. He came out in a t-shirt, alone, played the first five or six tracks of the album without interacting with the audience, beginning in darkness, a single spotlight on him, and then more of the screen behind him playing through a slideshow of family photos and coastal backdrops.
Destroyer’s Kaputt was my favourite album of 2011. I’d given up hope of ever seeing them live, as I doubt they’d ever tour Australia. The Vaccines’ What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? was a close second for album of the year. I got to see them both today. Live, back to back.
Oh, and did I mention the Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, The Black Keys, M83, Yuck, We Were Promised Jetpacks, St. Vincent, Bon Iver and Radiohead.
I’ve had the best two days of Coachella! It’s just that I’m 12,000km away, and have the wonders of streaming technology, social media, YouTube and State Farm to thank.
Yes, it’s not the same as being there, but it’s a darn close second!
Today I realised I’ve completely misunderstood what iCloud and iTunes Match do. It got announced at WWDC, and I, for whatever reason, assumed it was simply Cloud storage. In having a conversation with Mr. Colman on Google+ several hours ago, and the latest news that streaming has been added, the nature of what Apple pulled off dawned on me, and it’s rather impressive.
I haven’t downloaded music onto my PC in over a year, because I’m a happy Grooveshark subscriber, but, I know many people still do, and most likely, it’s pirated music.
The basic deal with iCloud + iTunes Match:
Watch it in full screen. The immersion adds an unbelievable amount to it.
“Today
You were far away
And I
Didn’t ask you why
What could I say
I was far away
You just walked away
And I just watched you
What could I say
How close am I
To losing you
Tonight
You just close your eyes
And I just watch you
Slip away
How close am I
To losing you
Hey, are you awake
Yeah I’m right here
Well can I ask you
About today
How close am I
To losing you
How close am I
To losing”
What can I say? This song is a mess of melancholy beauty. Matt Berninger’s baritone voice, the violin, the addition of the brass, the simple, yet deeply emotive lyrics, and the elation at 5:15 when it kicks into overdrive. I love it. I really, really love it. I was at peace and oblivious to the torrential rain surrounding me while walking home today, and felt this very out of place entry deserved a place on this blog.
The first version I heard of About Today was the live performance (audio only) that sits on The Virginia EP, but I was on the train today and saw the version above and fell in love all over again.
My only regret is that they didn’t play this live when I saw then at The Enmore earlier this year.
Note: This is for Grooveshark paying members only, as far as I know.
I’d randomly posted on /r/groovesharkplaylists a week or two ago about collaborative playlists, and someone replied today, and in browsing the subreddit again, I came across this post on Grooveshark having a Video Mode…
When you have songs in your “Now playing” bar, you will see a song count on the bottom right. If you click on that you get a menu with both these options on it. The video mode displays various YouTube videos that match the current song – very cool
So yeh, I went ahead and tried it, and it does indeed work!
I was thinking lately of how I hardly see music videos anymore since I do most of my listening on Grooveshark, but this is quite the convenient indeed!
Wow! What an amazing, three day musical extravaganza we [@ahmedbaghdadi, @reetssydney and Hari [damn you for not being on Twitter [and no, this was the non-douchey Hari]] just witnessed! I thought the Big Day Out was something, but my goodness, Splendour in the Grass was far beyond what I expected.
I don’t know if it was the best lineup of any festival this year, Marcus Mumford, but it was pretty darn impressive. In no particular order [there will be a particular order later], I saw…
Washington, Foals, Miami Horror, Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, Grizzly Bear, Ben Harper & Relentless7, Two Door Cinema Club, Operator Please, Tame Impala, Wolfmother, Florence + The Machine, The Strokes, Miike Snow, Whitley [10 minutes, anyway ~_~], The Vines, Passion Pit, Mumford & Sons, Empire of the Sun.
And of all that, only one disappointment; LCD Soundsystem. I think I can live with that. The whole lineup is here.
Well, here’s that particular order then.
Did you ever play Grand Theft Auto on PC, load the mp3 directory with all your music, and just drive around for hours on end? Well, I sure did, and probably spent more time doing that in-game than anything else. I’ve missed that feeling, and I’ve missed my PC’s music library, while I’ve not-so-secretly been gettin’ comfortable with The Cloud servicing my musical needs.
Well, no longer! I’ve just rediscovered my music library tonight, and fallen in love with it all over again thanks to AudioSurf!
The Johnny Cash Project is a global collective art project, and we would love for you to participate. Through this website, we invite you to share your vision of Johnny Cash, as he lives on in your mind’s eye. Working with a single image as a template, and using a custom drawing tool, you’ll create a unique and personal portrait of Johnny. Your work will then be combined with art from participants around the world, and integrated into a collective whole: a music video for “Ain’t No Grave”, rising from a sea of one-of-a-kind portraits.
Strung together and played in sequence over the song, the portraits will create a moving, ever evolving homage to this beloved musical icon. What’s more, as new people discover and contribute to the project, this living portrait will continue to transform and grow, so it’s virtually never the same video twice.
Reliving today’s MGMT setlist led to nostalgia overload, and me rediscovering the Triple J stream that I ripped after I saw them for the first time in December ’08, so I thought I’d finally convert it from an asf file [nfi why it was like that in the first place] to mp3 and throw it on here. Enjoy.
Setlist [~44:20]:
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Or download it [right click, save as…, bla]
I’ve been raving about Grooveshark to anyone that cares to listen, and I finally took the plunge today to become a VIP member. At $3/month or $30 a year, it’s just dirt cheap, especially considering my penchant for blowing large amounts of money on seemingly useless things/causes, like destroying my liver!
Oh, right, I should probably mention what Grooveshark is for the uneducated. Or just let Wikipedia do that for me.
Grooveshark is an internationally-available online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application, allowing users to search for, stream, and upload music free of charge that can be played immediately or added to a playlist.
c0up 