Monthly Archives: March 2008

It’s official. The G train will be extended to Church Ave. in Brooklyn! It should happen in November of this year, which will make getting to North Brooklyn and Queens a hell of a lot easier, as well as possibly offering us a way to catch missed trains if it goes express to Smith and 9th. Yippee!

Unfortunately, it will be accompanied with some major work on the F line. So there may be some tough roads ahead, but still it’s getting better!

I’ve resolved to start listening to more music on Myspace. Quite a resolution huh? No, but actually there are a ton of fantastic musicians on Myspace and I’m always kicking myself for not spending more time on the site, just listening to music from my friends and strangers.

I thought I’d put up a few finds from my recent listening excursions. I don’t know any of these people. Here we go:

Michele Zayla–
Her Myspace says Boulder, but her website says Brooklyn, so who knows. Alls I know is that her voice and music are ridiculous. She has an effortless silky strong jazz voice, but she adapts it to several styles: folk, soul, standards, etc. Here’s a song from her website. It’s real good, and I think the ones on her Myspace are even better:

By the sea – mp3

Vincent Bergeron–
I don’t really know how to describe Vincent Bergeron’s music. Yeah, ok… eyes roll. You’ve heard it before. I’ll attempt. It’s sounds kind of like Zappa meets The Books meets The Shaggs. Does that make sense? Bergeron is a proudly unphotogenic geek who writes vivacious music, mostly in French (he’s from Quebec), and the rhythm seems to follow the rhythm of speech more than that of a metronome. He needs to hook up with Florent Ghys.

Child Traumatismes – mp3

Henri Fabergé & the Adorables–
I’m a sucker for mixed male and female vocals. Especially vocals consisting of one male and several females. Hmmm… what does that say about me? Anyway, this is a fun-sounding band from Toronto. It would be cool to see them live. I dig the name too.

O Ella – mp3

Early Songs–
Early Songs is the pseudonym for David Scott, who writes and plays all the instruments on his album. It’s nice instrumental folk that can border on the sentimental, but I still dig it. It kind of sounds like a less self-conscious Iron and Wine, sans voice. It’s end-of-the-day chill out music.

Raining – mp3

Here is one person’s description of my neighborhood of Kensington, Brooklyn:

A very weird community in Brooklyn, has many ethnical backrounds ranging from Italians, Russians, Jews, Muslims, Irish, Albanians and others. Everyone always seems busy in this area and it’s usually all overpriced victorian houses. Kids all know each other but never really socialize and bring kids from other neighborhoods over. Very weird place but home to only two types of kids : extremely smart or extremely dumb. The smart kids usually go to Stuy, Brooklyn Tech, Midwood and other well rep’d school meanwhile the other kids go to F.D.R, Erasmus or some really fuked up school. The nerds usually never go out or are major pot heads/drunks who chill in other neighborhoods, the other kids usually hang around the corner. Adults have different jobs ranging from doctors, public health directors to taxi cab drivers. If you live around or in Ocean Parkway your used to the noises the russians make when its 2 am and they’re drunk as hell

Billy: I live in Kensington
Bob: Oh that deserted place?

Ha.. Leave it to Urban Dictionary.

Whoa. The demo isn’t exactly stunning, but a year or two from now, this could change everything.

I found this harder to watch than 2 Girls 1 Cup…

The Direct Note Access feature coming in the new version of Melodyne is exactly what sample-based producers like me have been waiting for. We doubted it’s possibility, but it’s here. Change pitch on notes IN a chord. Not just monophonic material, polyphonic. Yeah…
Here’s a presentation

I urge you to watch the whole thing, but for the crazy shit, fast-forward to about minute 10, for a string quartet demo, damn!

For a more concise explanation, check out the video on their website.

Farewell to a brilliant show:

I see no reason why Sally Kern, the batshit fucking insane Christian lawmaker from Oklahoma, should apologize for her anti-gay speech. I hope she doesn’t, and it boggles my mind why so many people are demanding her apology?

Why??

You are essentially demanding her to lie. If that could possibly make you feel better then you are as deluded as she is.

BTW in case you are in the dark about all this, here is her speech:

Yeah, she’s pretty evil.

I saw an interview with her today where she refused to apologize for her beliefs. Right on to that at least.

Look, to everyone who is outraged (and I am as well!): You want to this kind of speech to end, make sure she doesn’t get re-elected. If you believe at all in democracy let it do it’s work, and help it if need be. But don’t pretend to yourself that this woman is going to somehow feel bad about this. This is what she thinks and believes, and no matter how callous and evil she is, she ain’t gonna change. On the bright side, millions of people are going to know what a crackpot she is.

This is a good thing.

I wasn’t sure how happy I felt about Spitzer going down (presumably) for the Prostitution thang. I don’t think it should be illegal, so I didn’t want the fact that he’s kind of a douche to sway me too much. But after, ya know, reading a bit more about MY governor, including this gem thrown my way by my buddy Clayville:

Media content has gotten more graphic, more violent and more sex-based… Currently, nothing under New York State law prohibits a fourteen-year old from walking into a video store and buying… a game like ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ which rewards a player for stealing cars and beating people up. Children can even simulate having sex with a prostitute…

Yeah, it kinda feels good. Still, I was somewhat ignorantly happy to have a Democrat as governor after more than ten years of Pataki, oy…

Ok, while I’m at it. Does anyone think that Pataki,

is really the scary kid from the Twilight Zone:

It’s a fucking conspiracy I swear it!

Oh yeah, did I mention that Hillary is just as rabidly anti-video game as Spitzer??