Friday, June 11, 2010

Pharmacists and Sharing

Hi.  I haven't contributed in any way for quite awhile.  I wanted to, and I meant to, but there were a series of distractions that prevented it.  For instance, I went to Japan.  It was crazy.  Also, there were employment issues, and other really exciting stuff.  I'll spare you the details, and I'll try to post or at least comment more.

It's been so long, and I've listened to so much, but over the past few days I've listened to MGMT - Congratulations several times in the past few days.  I like it.  The first song reminds me of Velouria by the Pixies.  Because of all the keyboards and whimsy, it them reminds me of the Eric Drew Feldman produced stuff of the late Pixies and early Frank Black solo material - which I love.  The songs have good melodies, the band is precise, the changes are excellent.  The keyboards are awesome and I think I heard a flute on one track as well.  I know this has been posted about before, but I thought I'd throw in my .02.  

Other things I've been listening to the past few days include:
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks
Black Keys - Brothers



The newest Ted Leo is good.  His rock is clean and bright.  I haven't seen him perform in quite awhile, but I highly recommend the live show.  Some songs on most recent records can be a bit political, but the guy writes well, and he play what some may call "a mean guitar."  He gets down to business.  I saw him in 2000 at a strange benefit show in Boston just before the release of his AMAZING The Tyranny of Distance.  A friend of mine wanted to go because she went to school with his sister, and wanted to say hi.  I had never heard of him, but he was formerly in a band called Chisel.  Anyway, the live show was awesome.  Soon after that The Tyranny of Distance was released, and he toured the shit out of it.  The band was a power trio in that first show, but on the tour he added another guitar player.  I think I saw him 15 times on that tour, and every show was worth it.  If you aren't familiar with him, give him a try.  If you don't like the record, give the live show a shot.  If you don't like Brutalist Bricks, give The Tyranny of Distance a shot.

I have a suggestion for y'all.  It's a service called Dropbox.  Dropbox  is kind of like a combination of yousendit and a thumb drive that you can share with a friend.  I know that some of my previous posts regarding computer stuff have sent some to "the 5th dimension," but bear with me.  This is really easy.  The free service is 2gigs of server space on the Dropbox server. Then you install the Dropbox software on the computers you plan to use the service on.  Once you install the software, a folder appears on your computer.  This folder is attached to your Dropbox account, so anything you put in the folder is uploaded to the 2gigabyte server space.  Then if you right click on the the file in the folder you are given a download link that you can distribute to your chums, or you can leave it there for personal use on other computers.  
I have it installed on my computer and on my lady's laptop.  I've saved my resume and other files that I update frequently in my Dropbox.  This way, I know that i'm always working on the most recent version of those files.  If I happen to need those files while away from either of those computers, I can access Dropbox from the web.  I'm sort of smitten with the functionality of this service.  It's super simple, practical, and free.  

That brings me to why I'm posting it here.  

You can set up a folder within the Dropbox folder to share with another person or group of people.  So if you and a small group of people were interested in swapping photos or files of any sort, all you would have to do is drop them in the shared folder on your desktop (or home folder, or wherever you store your folders), and it would be accessible to the people you are sharing with.  pretty cool.  

Does that make sense?  To simplify it even further, you put files in a folder on your computer and they are automatically uploaded to a free 2gb space.  You have the option of sharing a portion of that space with other people.  You can also send people public links to files in your dropbox.  When you delete the files from the folder, they are deleted from the server.  It's free FTP made easy, and it works on mac os, windows, or linux.    

Here is a link.  If you click this link we both get an extra 250mb of space.  >>>  https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTc0NTA2MDc5 

okay then.  until next time.  

5 comments:

DC said...

Dropbox could be WWALT blog 2.0 music sharing service.

This is something that has been on my mind, so i'll drop it here instead of doing a post. On the MP3 download tip, i was watching this youtube clip of an interview with Black Dice, and one of the guys was like "I pretty much exclusively buy vinyl, and pretty much exclusively don't pay money for MP3's. I see MP3's like a cassette tape in the 80's... it's lesser quality, doesn't come with the artwork or anything, and it's free. Some people will still want the object and the official product, though..."

That resonated with me. Again, philosophically, peer to peer sharing of music is clearly 100% fair game... if i want to pass on a recording to my friend via Cassette, CD, DVD, USB, Email, Dropbox, etc., fair game, that's the precedent that's been set for 20 years.

It's the mass blog distro where this analogy breaks down, but i do it anyway, so whatever.

Guess that wasn't that deep, actually.

Igor said...

I love Ted Leo. I first heard him when I was working in college radio and he had come out with the tape-hissy bundle of weirdness Tej(?) Leo/Rx Pharmacists CD, which remains a favorite to this day. I saw him play solo electric guitar in support of that record in the basement of a church in Normal, IL.

For me, the more political he has gotten, the more I have found his music resonates with me, but I still name his early "The Great Communicator" as my favorite Ted Leo song. We had it on 7" at the radio station a couple years before Tyranny of Distance came out, so I was jumping up and down to see it on a CD for Tyranny. Chisel's "Set You Free" is also an excellent, polished record.

So, yeah, I also love this new Ted Leo record. It just figures that he played Siren Fest the year before I arrived in NYC and he plays Siren Fest again right after I leave.

rootless said...

DC, there are so many holes in your argument I don't know where to begin..... hahaha, I can't believe you are even mentioning anything about music sharing again, I thought you were about to punch through a wall with incomprehensible rage about that.

I think I have to read that whole dropbox thing again to grasp it, but generally sounds cool. next level would be where the peoples on this blog could easily share music.

did you say something about a new black keys album?

Gabino said...

for Rootless:

http://www.nodata.tv/?p=4864

Jim Turbert said...

re: black keys
yeah, i mentioned the album brothers which was released in (i believe) may. it's good. it is full of round, reverby jams with soul and swagger. so far i've listened to it while cooking, grocery shopping, and writing e-mails. it makes all of those activities far better.
i just started a mail delivery job, and i'm looking forward to delivering mail to it.
it's pretty laid back. it starts off kind of bouncy and finishes up on a more melancholic note. check it out.