Category: Music

The way it is

Here’s the obligatory end-of-the-week post-o-links.

A store sign spotted on the way to Freeport last week.
A store sign spotted on the way to Freeport last week.

ART
Sharks + Beer = (Bleep) yeah! : http://fuckyeahsharks.tumblr.com/post/153105566/nickdouglas-fuck-yeah-beer-fuck-yeah-summer

COMMENTS
Third comment : http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2009/08/omg-wicked-plants-is-the-cover-story.html

GARDENING
How to recycle rain : http://blogs.chron.com/lazygardener/2009/07/recycle_rain.html

The botanical collection : http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2009/07/the-botanic-garden-collection.html

I would wiggle mine, but it was mauled by a shark : http://blogs.chron.com/lazygardener/2009/08/for_mon83_whats_in_your_escape.html

GEEK + TECH
Smash it open : http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/01/why-the-fcc-wants-to-smash-open-the-iphone/

How to Bypass Stupid Voicemail Instructions : http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/how-to-bypass-stupid-voicemail-instructions/

Laughing Squid was banned for mysterious reasons for months from Digg, proving Digg is pretty worthless : http://laughingsquid.com/digg-bans-laughing-squid-without-warning-or-specific-reason/

MySpace steps toward open : http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/myspace_to_bet_its_future_on_open_standards.php

FileSoup under seige : http://torrentfreak.com/oldest-bittorrent-site-targeted-by-police-owner-arrested-090804/

WebTrends 9 is out : http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/08/webtrends-9-google-analytics-eat-your-heart-out.php

Die for freedom, but don’t you dare enjoy it yourself : http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/marines-ban-twitter-myspace-facebook/

Kill, kill, kill IE6 : http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/06/internet.explorer.six/index.html

A little more openness for facebook Pages : http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/08/facebook-opens-stream-further-pages-become-true-twitter-competitor/

The end of the codec wars? : http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2009/08/05/the-end-of-the-codec-wars/

Now that’s what I call a remote control : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10302894-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Bring. It. Down. : http://www.bringdownie6.com/bring-down-ie-6.html

IE6 – No More! : http://www.ie6nomore.com/code-samples.html

Transparent PNGs + IE 6 : http://24ways.org/2007/supersleight-transparent-png-in-ie6

A-Z of Free Photoshop Plugins and Filters : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/03/a-z-of-free-photoshop-plugins-and-filters/

Inside the Erskine redesign : http://www.alistapart.com/articles/erskine-design-redesign/

How to redesign your own site : http://www.alistapart.com/articles/redesigning-your-own-site/

HYPER-LOCAL
“Heck, you’ve already reduced the size of the weekday paper to a point the delivery folks are having to add weight to keep people’s copies from blowing away.” : http://loseaneye.blogspot.com/2009/07/chronblog-lets-talk.html

That’ll get their attention : http://www.fbherald.com/articles/2009/07/29/news/doc4a70b8ffe5487069255089.txt

New inspection stickers invoke feelings of cowboy pride, heritage : http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2009/08/new_inspection_stickers.php

No more (kid) culture at the Woodlands Mall : http://blogs.chron.com/woodlands/archives/2009/08/museums_to_clos_1.html

Hail Mary: Nutty Christians vs. Social Science : http://www.texasobserver.org/index.php?/pi/history-the-right-way/

The Smoking Gun vs. the not-so-merry pranksters : http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2009/08/prankster_smoking_gun.php
The right should ‘come to Jesus’ : http://loseaneye.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-time-for-come-to-jesus-meeting.html

MEDIA
Why the AP no longer matters : http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/02/associated-press-wil-1.html

MOVIES
New Wes Anderson flick, Fantastic Mr. Fox : http://www.29-95.com/movies/story/wes-anderson-totally-wes-andersons-out-new-wes-anderson-trailer

MUSIC
Meridian, JavaJazz merge in a move that makes no sense : http://www.29-95.com/music/story/meridian-javajazz-become-one

Rolling Stone nods Listen Listen : http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/07/30/hype-monitor-listenlisten-ramona-falls-neon-indian

Loving it up while you’re falling down : http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/08/06/aerosmiths-tyler-airlifted-to-hospital-after-falling-from-stage/

Get Tweedy on the phone and over here, stat : http://www.29-95.com/music/story/sigh-another-wilco-tour-passes

NEWS
A Palin divorce? : http://gawker.com/5327957/are-sarah-and-todd-palin-getting-a-divorce

Now we pay you, now we don’t : http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6557588.html

RECREATIONAL READING
A tribute to Pumpkin : http://seanmorrisseycarroll.blogspot.com/2009/08/orange-jack.html

Step right up to a mountain, chop it down with the edge of my hand

From Jimi Hendrix’s eighth and final song during his May 24, 1969 performance at the San Diego Sports Arena.

It will blow your mind.

I artistically altered the short clip from the bootleg using audacity, providing for an echo effect and a cross fade in during the fret scratching part. Best. Guitarist. Ever.

Download here: ~~~~* voodoo *~~~~

Hot legs and lawn seats

So Kim and her sister and I went to Rod Stewart at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on July 24, and you know what? It wasn’t really all that bad.

Kim and I on the hill at The Woodlands Pavilion
Kim and I on the hill at The Woodlands Pavilion

Well, getting out of the reserve parking garage ($15: for the privilege) was the worst nightmare ever, we were all the way at the top of the darn garage and it must have been 45 minutes before we could even get in the exiting line. There were other traffic jams elsewhere, thanks to the cops’ strategic decision to route traffic away from Woodlands Parkway, but a few turns away from the herd found us on that main road and onto the freeway while others probably waited another 20 minutes just to get to the feeder road.

I think the musical climax of the evening was when one of his backup singers, who’s from Houston, led the other stage performers in a Tina Turner-esque rendition of Proud Mary.

Apparently, someone bootlegged it and it’s up on YouTube, but I can’t vouch for the quality because, hell, I was there. No need to see it again. It appears to be an amateurish capture from the hill, which is where I was, just a little to the right of that obnoxious guy with the foreign flag who kept outstretching it and pissing off all the old people whose view he blocked.

I’m serious, a few of those old Rod Stewart fans almost threw down.

Rod played all the songs that I knew he was famous for, including that Van Morrison song “Have I Told You Lately” that kick-started his career once again when he did it on MTV Unplugged. I think that’s how the story goes. I dunno. He also sang that Creedence Clearwater Revival “Have you Ever Seen the Rain” song, I think it’s on his new (covers) record. He tossed around a few of Sam Cooke’s hits, too.

I could have done without all the soccer video montages and the constant stripteases … but his computer animated video intro was so … adorable. I can’t find it on the web, so I guess you just kind of had to be there.

He only performed one encore song – Maggie May – and then the large screen behind him lit up with “Mr. Stewart has left the building.” Kind of rude, but hell – it was Houston in July.

Links galore

Portulaca (moss rose) art
Portulaca (moss rose) art

GEEK + TECH

MEDIA

GARDENING

NEWS

COMMENTS

ART

HYPER-LOCAL

MUSIC

Yahoo has really sucked this week

So I use yahoo as my personal e-mail provider. I used to use Hotmail, a long low time ago, for quite a while, until Microsoft gobbled it up and in protest I started using Yahoo! I was brandonmoeller@hotmail.com – and now I’m brandonmoeller@yahoo.com.

Stick with the little guy, I thought. Of course, if I really cared about the little guy, I would have stuck with Juno. Does anybody remember Juno? I think it pre-dated GeoCities – and, yes, that was my first web space provider.

Juno was a dial-up ad-based system. You dialed up. It spat out your e-mail, then, disconnected. If you were lucky, and if the seven Houston numbers you had pre-programmed in weren’t busy. Man, those were the days.

But anyway, I remember having Yahoo mail back when you had, like, only a little bit of space. I was constantly deleting messages to keep from going over my limit. Then, one day, they opened up the floodgates … and now, size is no longer an issue. But I shouldn’t say that. You can only send like 20MB in one e-mail. Want twice that? You need to buy their premium product for like $20-30 a year, I believe. The premium product also allows you to export the e-mail into something like Mozilla’s Thunderbird and/or Microsoft Outlook. I’m pretty sure this used to be a free feature. Man, I should have configured it before they made it a revenue stream.

A screenshot of a Yahoo Mail fail.
A screenshot of a Yahoo Mail fail.

Today’s news that Yahoo will be incorporating Bing into its search system is likely what has my Yahoo mail on the fritz. It’s also probably why the search function on the Yahoo Groups has sucked for about a year or more … or, maybe like so many other Yahoo products, maybe they’ve just abandoned the Yahoo Groups Search function. It makes trying to moderate a group like VINELIST pointless … so I don’t, really, anymore.

Random thought of the moment: I miss San Antone.
Random thought of the moment: I miss San Antone.

Yahoo’s e-mail service is dead in the water so often lately – and so is it’s stock price, after today’s news. And I’m thinking about jumping. I guess it’s time for me to get a gmail account. Sigh. Maybe I’ll pay the premium fee for a Yahoo account, export all my e-mail to a client like ThunderBird, then I’ll get a free e-mail service that will also allow me to export to said client. With Google Wave coming up, and my current addiction to Google Reader, why the hell not jump onto the Google wagon. It’s not like they’re a large evil corporation or anything. Crap. brandonmoeller@gmail.com is already taken. What. The. Hell. Sigh.

Friday link post

It’s Friday, and it’s been a long week, and so here’s a collection of random links I’ve found this week that  you might find interesting. This week, I’ve the courtesy to break ’em up into subject areas.

"Them Navasota troopers ran me down / Escorted me right out of town / For cherry pickin squirrels and feedin dogs / And dreamin of Jamaica in a fog" -from "Cracklins," by The Gourds
“Them Navasota troopers ran me down / Escorted me right out of town / For cherry pickin squirrels and feedin dogs / And dreamin of Jamaica in a fog” -from “Cracklins,” by The Gourds

GEEK + TECH

ART

GARDENING

HYPER-LOCAL

MUSIC

MEDIA

RANDOM

I was there: Buxton 7″ release (sweat) party

I’m such a scenester.

That’s the feeling I was trying to convey by attending Saturday night’s Buxton 7″ release show at Mango’s on Westheimer.

Proof I'm a scenester: Look at all my summertime scene loot ... Two Buxton 7-inches (Kim joined me for the show), Buxton's A Family Light (up top), and the ArtStorm Summer Exposure compilation.
Proof I'm a scenester: Look at all my summertime scene loot ... Two Buxton 7-inches (Kim joined me for the show), Buxton's A Family Light (up top), and the ArtStorm Summer Exposure compilation.

For those who may not know what Mango’s is, let’s just say it’s that bar next to Helios – the two-story which used to be called The Mausoleum – and Mango’s has it’s own sordid and at times vacant-real-estate history. Mango’s used to be called The Oven, a name that’s a little more apt for all the sweat that poured out of me in the crowded-past-capacity-bursting-at-the-seems-someone-for-the-love-of-god-call-the-freaking-fire-marshall Buxton show.

I didn’t know who the hell Buxton was before the summer started, and then one day – around June 10 to be exact – there I was, poring over my RSS feeds, minding my own business, when all of a sudden out of the blue IndieHouston.org celebrated some new compilation coming out of some local outfit called ArtStorm. The original IndieHouston.org post, which had four embedded songs included with it, has since been removed – replaced later with a post that looks identical on July 8.

The compilation was advertised as super cheap ($4), and so I went to the ArtStorm site, put it in my cart, realized I also needed to cough up shipping ($3), flinched but didn’t yield, and then more than a week later, the CD finally arrived.

Note to ArtStorm, or whoever handles your orders for you: I’m on to you. I send CDs through the mail – a lot – and one CD plus a little bit of packaging (the comp comes in a paper sleeve) costs less than $2. Hope you enjoy handling my extra $1.50, and thanks for the speedy service.

But I digress. It’s an awesome compilation, and I’m really glad ArtStorm cares enough about us Houston scenesters to enlighten us with it. “Doctor” by Buxton has to be one of the catchiest and funnest song I’ve heard all year. And I listen to a lot of songs.

The compilation got me interested in Buxton. So, I checked out their gig (though a mistake for listening to music, I couldn’t really hear what the hell anybody was saying in that place! See my comments on this review here). While waiting for them to come on, I heard Wild Moccasins (read more and download three tracks here and one more track here), and they were freaking awesome. After listening to the aforementioned tracks I downloaded after the show, their lyrics ain’t bad, either. Couldn’t really hear them at the show, though. Maybe I’m old.

But the show allowed me to walk away with Buxton’s new 7″ – including “Feathers” and “Flint” (including a download URL so I can snag the tunes without dusting off a record player that, uh, I actually don’t own) – and I agree with those calling for “Feathers” to be song of the year. Also snagged their 2008 release A Family Light and it’s very impressive. Compared to the new 7″, though, it’s like Summerteeth meets A Ghost is Born. Look at me. Fitting in so well with this whole scene thing.

But we’ll never return to Mango’s for a big show. Maybe lunch. Or a drink. But never something as big as Buxton.