A Commonplace Book

There aren’t many times when I can claim to be ahead of the curve on new music. I don’t think I started listening to New York dance-rock until years after it broke. I just started listening to LCD Soundsystem some 6 months after Sound of Silver came out. And even my fondness for Daft Punk, dating back to 8th or 9th grade, is going to have to be counted a fluke unless people start rediscovering the genius of Rabbit In The Moon and Future Sound of London too.

With this in mind, I was amazed to learn in the past year that Andrew Bird is a widely respected independent musician, since he was the first artist I ever saw in concert. I was 14.

I suppose it might be less impressively hip that I was there to see Squirrel Nut Zippers (this was at the height of the Gap-inspired commercial swing revival) and that I was there with my mother (I was 14). But I was impressed enough with his performance as an opener for the opener that I walked away from The Electric Factory with a copy of Thrills.

Since then the Squirrel Nut Zippers have dissolved and faded into obscurity while Bird has ascended as a respected musician in his own right. Unfortunately, Armchair Apocrypha didn’t rate nearly as high as I expected it to on the end-of-year lists I have read. Even so I am excited to have rediscovered him after so many years, and I look forward to catching him in concert the next time he comes through New York. I’ll probably even go with my mother just for old times’ sake.

There were a lot of highlights at Daft Punk’s Keyspan Park show in August. It might be a touch dramatic to describe that night as a gesamtkunstwerk but the robotic duo definitely brought a show that was more than the sum of its parts. One of my favorite moments was their new remix of “Harder Better Faster Stronger”. It was tinged with a more acid synth line and set off by a more trancey bass line. Combined with some well-placed samples from “Around The World” it absolutely tore the roof off. (Granted, there was no roof to begin with, but I think my point is clear.)

Although the artists allowed anyone to come and film the concert, it was insinuated after the tour that there would be no concert DVD. That was a bit of a letdown, but Daft Punk has come through with the next best thing, a live concert album. Right now the lead single, that very remix of “Harder Better Faster Stronger” I was so enamored with, is only available on the French iTunes here. But for people on the cheap, the good folks at Discobelle have it up to check out here: “Harder Better Faster Stronger (Alive 2007)”. The usual music blog disclaimers apply.

(Photo courtesy of Cobrasnatch.)

Not Web 2.0, that is, since I think The Hype Machine has qualified for that moniker since its inception. No, The Hype Machine is entering version 2.0 and its latest incarnation as a music blog aggregator. Unsurprisingly, most of the upgrades follow the standard format of social-networking sites.

Signing up for an account gives every user a dedicated page, currently at beta.hypem.com/UserName, and from there its possible to track your favorite songs, favorite blogs, and favorites users. Although not quite as slickly polished, the general structure of the site is reminiscent of Last.fm (a slickness I don’t necessarily miss) and I assume Hype Machine is positioning itself to be the cross between Last.fm and elbo.ws.

Right now I only have two major complaints. First, there is no way to make your public page private, which means use of the favoriting function is only possible if you’re OK with everyone seeing what you’re favoriting. Since I like to maintain a greater control of my online footprint, I’ve had to register using a handle other than my name, something I prefer not to do.

Second, the programmers have removed the external media player that used to open in the previous iteration of their site. That itself is great and I applaud the inclusion of a new fully integrated player that still runs through through your search results as before, but does so without opening a new window. Unfortunately, the site takes damn near 5 to 6 minutes to accomplish that task. So if you’re not paying attention to click on to each new song, thats about 6 minutes of waiting for every 3 minutes of music. Without knowing anything about how their site works, however, I’m guessing this is something that will be solved sooner rather than later.

These two complaints aside, the new design looks great both visually and structurally. With Last.fm not as useful as I was hoping it would be for discovering new music, I’m now putting my faith in Hype Machine to come through as my go-to site in the next few weeks.