Your Railroad Gate
because two bloggers are better than one
Fozzie
Will
Fozzie's muxtape
Our old posts
Robot Johnny put together an IE6 denial page for Momentile. Notes and sketches on his blog.
Bullshit Party
Minnesota woman to pay Universal Music Co. a total of $1.92 million or $80,000 per song for the twenty-four tracks she uploaded to Kazaa. This is pretty much a bullshit party to begin with, but the list of 24 tracks makes the whole story even more depressing.
• Guns N’ Roses: “Welcome to the Jungle”; “November Rain”
• Vanessa Williams: “Save the Best for Last”
• Janet Jackson: “Let’s Wait Awhile”
• Gloria Estefan: “Here We Are”; “Coming Out of the Dark”; “Rhythm is Gonna Get You”
• Goo Goo Dolls: “Iris”
• Journey: “Faithfully”; “Don’t Stop Believin’”
• Sarah McLachlan: “Possession”; “Building a Mystery”
• Aerosmith: “Cryin’”
• Linkin Park: “One Step Closer”
• Def Leppard: “Pour Some Sugar on Me”
• Reba McEntire: “One Honest Heart”
• Bryan Adams: “Somebody”
• No Doubt: “Bathwater”; “Hella Good”; “Different People”
• Sheryl Crow: “Run Baby Run”
• Richard Marx: “Now and Forever”
• Destiny’s Child: “Bills, Bills, Bills” <—— LOL!
• Green Day: “Basket Case”
But the news that Grizzly Bear’s much-hyped, long-ago-leaked Veckatimest had landed in the top 10 this week is notable, if only because of a note buried in this week’s Billboard story running down the mag’s top albums:
Indie rock band Grizzly Bear is having its best week ever as its third full-length studio set, “Veckatimest,” arrives at No. 8 with 33,000. That’s the first album to chart on the Billboard 200 for the Massachusetts band and it also gives the quartet its best sales week. 40% of its sales came from downloads while another 24% were shifted at independent and small chain stores.
So, 40% of its sales–roughly 13,000 of them–came from downloads… and conveniently, Veckatimest was a mere $3.99 at Amazon MP3 last week. Now, the Top Digital Albums chart doesn’t break out data by store, and as anyone who glances at the Internet knows, the album was given kudos in almost every quarter of the Internet that fancies itself a place where “important” music gets discussed. But given that similarly lauded bands have seen monetary resistance to their recorded efforts, isn’t Amazon’s low price point at least worth noting? Especially as people figure out how to finance records that, like Veckatimest, took a notable effort to put together, that probably won’t be on the ever-shrinking music-centric shelves at Wal-Mart (although hey, if it is, kudos to whatever distributor hooked that up), and that can’t be paid for by just simply “making it back on the road”?
” - Good, thoughtful reporting on the music industry from Maura over at Idolator.
Ben is cooking me dinner tonight. I can’t wait to try some vegetable feature #10!!
Honestly, I thought Vegetable Feature #10 By Each left a lot to be desired.
Sony agrees to make back catalog available through emusic.com
This Rules, I’ve been a subscriber to Emusic for 3 years now and I can’t recommend it more.
(via amandalynferri)
I’m also a longtime eMusic subscriber. They are the best place anywhere on the internet to legally download music. They sold DRM-free MP3s long before Steve Jobs’ call to end DRM, they have a ton of rarities that could never support a physical release, and their criticism is top notch and regularly makes the year-end best music writing lists. Now it looks like the majors are finally starting to cave… color me siiiiked.
Male Models Wanted
Are you a good looking guy? Do you know a good looking guy(s)? Are you not all that great looking, but photograph well? Have you ever had an interest in modeling t-shirts that could make your parents think less of you?
If you live in the NYC area and would like to take a stab at a part time job as a male model for BustedTees please contact amanda@bustedtees.com
DailyCandy shows my girl Annamarie some love. Tell all your friends!
I’ve been working on Court & Plume since last summer in my little bits of free time. It’s a line of bridal headpieces for brides and bridesmaids. You can view them on the website or check them out in person by appointment at Gabriella New York.
Anna’s line of Court and Plume bridal headbands are featured on DailyCandy’s new wedding section today.
sometimes the demo can be SO much better.
Get Up Kids - Campfire Kansas
Whoa, I’ve never heard this before. I like it.
Whoa this is awesome. I was once told that Ed Rose originally produced On A Wire \and then they decided to go back re-produce it. I am not sure if this is true or not, but if anyone has any of those Mp3s floatings around please shoot me an email.
Is anyone going to the NYC Get Up Kids Show?
I am, Amanda. After I murder you and steal your ticket.
I'm just reposting this whole thing in its entirety because it is one of the funniest things I have ever read and it's not even made up.
via http://17dots.com/2009/04/06/worst-album-ever-prime-time/
In 1995, Deion Sanders — nicknamed “Prime Time” — was a two-sport star fresh off a 1994 Super Bowl victory with the San Francisco 49ers, newly signed to the Dallas Cowboys and still hanging onto a baseball career, then with the Cincinnati Reds. As the heir to Bo Jackson’s two-sport crown, Prime Time was at the peak of his cultural and athletic influence, with huge endorsement deals and numerous commercials in heavy rotation, all at the tender age of 27. Faced with immense pressure and a public hungry for more and more of his talent and wit, the young iconoclast did what only he could do: release one of the worst records ever made.
Opening with a refrain of “Prime time keeps ticking” — its cleverest moment by a good ten steps — Prime Time kicks off one of the most confusing records you will ever hear. Every song a rip-off of Dre/Snoop West Coast hip-hop (from the Florida-born “rapper”), it veers from homoerotic boasts (”Cause a brother like me is sitting on something fat”) to imagistic poetry as written by a dumb child (”The sun has now been taken prisoner/ By the moon the nightfall is cold/ Bumpity bump bump”) to, well, this:
As I fly the skies
And swim the seas
As I crawl through the land
Primetime is who I be
Free like a bee to a tree
So I talked to myself and told myself,
“Tell me how does it feel
To be me.”
It really isn’t that easy.
Me, myself and I
Me plays football, myself plays baseball and I rhyme
Number 24 minus number 21 equals three
Individuals divided into one
Or this:
Three to the two to the one
And it’s Deion stepping on the peon
(To his ladies) Have you seen one?
(Ladies answer) No we haven’t Deion.
Cool. So everything’s straight.
Or this:
No I’m not a phony man
You can ride a pony, and
If you’re really horny then we want you on the Sony cam
Deion has so much to say that Prime Time not only totals a whopping 68 minutes — with ZERO skits — but it was reissued seven years later as The Encore Remix, apparently because it was the only thing that could make his 2002 failed Oakland Raiders comeback look good.
“Produced” by Dallas Austin and Too Short — an atrocity that should sentence them both to a lifetime of Bryant “Big Country” Reeves remixes — Prime Time confronts the ennui of stardom head-on, particularly in regards to how jealous you — yes you — are of him. Songs like “Y U NV ME” (Why you envy me, get it?) are direct, confrontational and idiotic, but album single — you read that right — “Must Be the Money” reveals a darker side. Sanders recounts all the great things that happen to him, chanting after each: “Must be the money!” with a bravado that suggests maybe he isn’t listening to himself all that closely. Best part: “Women always coming/ Must be the money!” Oh yeah. He knows what time it is.
As you might expect, Deion talks quite a bit about his athletic career, often in deeply emotional tones. In “Papa San,” an ode to his father, he raps:
If it’s a crime I guess I’m doing my time
Because the time without my pops is the time I find
Myself crying, lying in my room alone
Hoping that I hear his voice when I pick up the telephone
So when I hit my chest twice and point to the sky
I hit this home run for you, big guy
Deion Sanders’ career home run total: 39. Sorry, dad?
Or check out how responsible he is. Say whattup, Jerry Jones!
Pulled out my Rolex to check the time
Damn I’m late
Call a limo so I can go to the Stadium
Michael Irvin called so we must be playing
And don’t think that just because he went to Florida State that he skipped his modernist poetry classes. Not at all.
So I jumps in the shower
And let the water rain
Drippy drip
And:
Roll ya’ll, we can stroll, ya’ll
Strikky strikkity strikky strikky stroll
One of Prime Time’s great strengths is the pervasiveness of its emotional themes. These are, in order: 1) Deion Sanders loathes you for being poor and not a sports star; 2) You loathe Deion Sanders back for having the temerity to think this is worth listening to; and 3) An overwhelming sense of pity for the hype men who have to bark back at him things like “Heidy heidy hey/ Heidy Heidy ho/ Mr. Prime Time I know you wanna go/ Gonna kick a funky rhyme/ YO.” Hopefully they at least got a commemorative fedora out of it.
In the end, however, Mr. Prime Time acquits himself nicely by digging deep for a literary reference to kick “House of Prime” over the top. Can you spot it?
Straw wooden or brick
It really doesn’t matter
Because the rhymes are thicker
Than your peanut butter
And it just keeps going from there. If you can stand it, give it a spin for yourself here. Best of luck!
