Salt Pepper Ketchoop For Here Or To Go?

ArsTechnica has a piece today on Pandora’s support of the Performance Rights Act. 

Radio has ramped up its opposition to the act,  claiming that the act will cost thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue.  Somewhat ironically, the site also claims that the act will hurt music diversity on the radio. 

Um…?

Not saying…

Just saying…

Threw together a little 8tracks retrospective of my favorite dancehall/roots/rocksteady covers of mj tunes.

2 Busy Signal Remixes, Some TOK, Tarrus Riley, Derrick Laro, Shinehead and Olly Buck to round things out.  Enjoy

This is kinda sick.  Going to Rio in November, but may have to rethink getting over to Sao Paolo if this is how they throw down.

Still trying to find a direct download.

Andrew Sullivan Nails It.

The king is dead, long live the king.

Apologies in advance for the long and seemingly offtopic post, but I’ve been trying to figure out this solution for many years and finally having done it makes me happy.

Now that the weather is starting to cooperate, I’ve been working on figuring out the best way to access my music library from poolside.  I wanted to get it done without wasting any money on a unitasker media playback system like a squeezebox nor did I want to be stuck using apple’s stuff with an airport express.  Here’s my setup.

Hardware:
Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver
3 Sets of rock speakers    Snagged these for 25 bucks a pair a few weeks ago.  Mega Score!
A/B Switches
Old Dell Inspiron Laptop
Logitech Harmony 880 Remote Control
Iphone

Software:
Songbird
Songbird Remote Pro Iphone App
NTFS Link

First step: Route everything through the receiver.
Easy enough.  The onkyo badboy has a “zone 2″ option that allows me to play two different zones of speakers at the same time (because you know, the name isnt self explanatory), so the outdoor speakers were all connected to zone 2.  I have an a/b switch that allows me to choose which speakers get music outside.  Not much to explain there either.  It’s a big yard so being able to turn off certain areas (like the ones close to the neighors) makes life easier.    I added an activity to the harmony remote that allows me to control the volume level without having to be in the line-of-sight to the receiver.  That’s kinda clutch. 

Step two: Control the Library Remotely 
I wiped the laptop a few weeks ago in order to make it work as a little media server.  The music, is scattered across a bunch of other PCs, external hard drives, etc. across my house.  I needed a program that would let me pull from all the different sources in order to manage the library, and one that had a suitable remote interface for the iphone.  Itunes got knocked out real fast.  It’s a evil monstrous resource hog and it doesn’t support watched folders and has issues with networked tracks and it doesn’t update the library when things are removed and… well fuck itunes.  That’s enough.

The other two options, then, were media monkey and songbird.    I’ve been using media monkey for a long time and love it to pieces.  It’s far and away the easiest way to manage a big library across a network, so it was a solid and obvious choice from the outset.  The only problem – the remote.  iMonkey is a fully featured remote app for Media Monkey, but it’s frigging ghastly, expensive, and a pain in the ass to set up.  I don’t want to have to run separate software on my computer in order to control my media player, and if I do, I don’t want to have to fiddle with ports and IP addresses and sundry every time I try to get it up and running.  Sorry media monkey, I love you but for this one you lose. 

That brings us to Songbird.  I had fiddled with an early release of the program but was turned off when I couldn’t use it to manage my iPhone like i could with itunes and media monkey.  For this, though, it’s more than perfect.  The one thing I found tricky was getting it to watch multiple folders.  In order to do this, I had to install NTFS Link and create a special folder on my desktop pc with NTFS junction points.  What that does is trick songbird into thinking that every junction point is a subfolder in the main folder, and it then goes and watches and indexes every one of the folders.  Sneaky!

Getting the remote app up and running was a breeze.  Just a simple extension install within the program and I was on my way.  The ui is beautiful, and it pulls info from mashtape to do photo slideshows and artist information along with album art et al.  It’s a little tacky to have to pay $4 to control an open source application properly, but whatever.  It is what it is.  I’d also like to see search integrated into the app but whatever.

Now listening to my music outside is a breeze.  If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go out to my pool and sip a lemonade, read Brillat Savarin’s Physiology of Taste and listen to the new Fat Freddy’s Drop Album.   I recommend you do the same.  At your own pool, not mine.

[amazon-product image="51obZzbVflL._SL160_.jpg" type="image"]B001VGFMBY [/amazon-product]

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears – Tell em What Your Name is. 

I run the risk here of falling headfirst into #116, but I don’t give a damn because this is a great great album.  It’s not blues, it’s not rock, it’s not soul, it’s not funk.  It’s some crazy bubbling amalgamation of all of the above.

Basically, if they redid animal house tomorrow, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears could stand in for Otis Day & the Knights.  The whole album has that rip-roaring juke joint feel to it that makes you want to drink like a fish and run off and do questionable things with questionable people.  I can’t speak to the authenticity of Joe’s lyrics but I also don’t think that really matters.  It’s not a cerebral album , it’s a fun one. 

It’s an absolute steal right now for 5 bucks on Amazon.  I can’t praise this enough.  Go get it and let it power your more raucous summer evenings.

Smoove & Turrell – Antique Soul

RIYL: Michael Mcdonald, Otis Redding, Kraak & Smaak, Quantic

I hate the term northern soul.  It’s one of the few terms that has less to do with where the music originated and more to do with the audience it later garnered.  It’s a strange anomaly.  That being said, Smoove and John Turrell made names for themselves in that whole little scene and have transcended it with this new album.  Jalapeno is always stronger than strong but this latest offering goes above and beyond.  It’s a great, funky, soulful piece of music that, even with its fair share of covers and samples, doesn’t come off as too derivative or forced.  Be sure to check out “The Difference” which takes the Second Crusade sax sample from Queen Latifah’s U.N.I.T.Y. and turns it into an updated doobie brothers song; and their driving, funked up cover of 80s acid madness “Don’t Go” by Yaz.

Back in the days before trademark infringement suits and internet record shops, labels used to use RIYL stickers on the jackets of their albums.  RIYL stands for “Recommended if you like…” meaning that a person who liked a particular artist would likely enjoy the music of one such other artist.  Come to think of it, Pandora runs almost entirely off an RIYL engine.

There’s a metric fuckton of good music coming out lately, and lots of it can be related to other artists.   I figured I’d take a second and shed some light on the stuff i’m digging the most right now.  I’ll be doing this all week.

 Boxcutter – Arecibo Message

RIYL Burial, Squarepusher, Tipper

Now I’ve made absolutely no secret of the fact that I am decidedly not a dubstep fan.  I don’t get the appeal, but I know great music when I hear it.  This is great music.   All the artists I listed up top are wonderful, groundbreaking musicians, but they can get a little bit too “intelligent” from time to time, which makes the music a bit less palatable.  The same could be said for boxcutter’s earlier work.  This one is much more down to earth and is just a great, listenable album with a variety of different shapes, tempos and moods.

Great piece of music right here.  Jimi Tenor’s a Finnish musician with a rather extensive discography.  For his 18th [jeez] album, he teams up with German afrobeaters Kabu Kabu to churn out a hell of a release.  Jimi’s got a very distinctive, whiny voice that somehow doesn’t get annoying. Grind! is a particularly killer cut that’s an early favorite for me. The album’s yet another disconcerting instance of German’s droping the funkiest of the funky.  But hey, whatever works.

Check out jimi’s track-by-track breakdown at his site (note that he plays the sax, flute, string machine, synth, noise box, and organ on the album) then download it at amazon.