In the month that I have subscribed to it, Rhapsody has improved my life two main ways; in class, whenever a student mentions a song, I can almost always cue it up immediately and create a lesson around it (they believe I am a sorcerer) and in the car, where i can drive for hours and never hear a song I’ve heard before. My six hour drive home from the Cape seemed shorter for my playlist, which was built from albums in the “New This Week” section, including Jack Johnson, LCD Soundsystem, Black Keys, Band of Horses and The National. All of it so good and inspiring and free (for the price of $10/month) to listen to whenever I want. How could I ever be expected to keep up and purchase each of those records? They all need to be heard and enjoyed. And how would I ever have found Abigail Washburn and Shanghai Restoration Project’s beautiful “Afterquake” without a related artist section under The Postal Service?

There is so much amazing music out there and most of it has been buried by radio and labels. When a tiny minority decides what everyone else will listen too, it is never in music’s best interest. When the listeners are given the freedom to choose, it is not corporations but music itself that will prosper and return to its original purpose of communication and community. We have been losing sight of music’s true value for years and have convinced ourselves that it is a commodity like toothpaste or lighbulbs or swiffers, but it is not. It is a primal expression, our howl at the sky, that synchronizes and blends individuals into a emotional omni-state. We need access to everything to find the music that inspires and represents us and Rhapsody is simply the most efficient means of hearing anything anywhere anytime.

I saw the band OK GO perform “This Too Shall Pass” on The Colbert Report then saw their videos for the song and am overjoyed by their brilliance. They made two versions, one featuring a giant Rube Goldberg contraption and one performed live with a marching band and choir. Absolutely Amazing. And if you have never seen their first video, dancing on the 8 treadmills, then you should probably watch that as well.

Thank Good there are still great music videos despite the fact that MTV has turned into a wasteland of our culture’s worst. Interestingly, State Farm Insurance paid to make the first of their videos, which demonstrates how inverted the system has become: while record companies used to make videos as advertisements to sell the record and MTV would use videos to sell advertising, now the advertisers directly pay the self-distributing artists to make the video. That is cutting out a few middlemen! And because the band was allowed complete creative freedom (unlike under the old feudal system of labels), selling-out refers more to the advertiser than the band! This is the Internet induced transfer of power from corporation to creation and it is beautiful to watch!

Freedom is the most important concept for artistic creation and inspiration. I also believe that artists should be supported and compensated for their contributions, but we are still figuring out how to do that efficiently, as opposed to the master/slave relationship between labels and artists. Eric has been insisting that I join Rhapsody Music for months and I had been reluctant for a few reasons, but their recent price drop, to $10/month and their upgraded iphone app that allows downloading made it irresistible. It is pretty awesome. Instant access to an enormous catalog of music from around the world is an enormous increase in my freedom to listen to music; I no longer have to consider which albums or tracks I want to purchase with my limited budget and thus eliminate an unnecessarily competitive music market. In the past hour, I have discovered great music from Owl City, Talvin Singh, Segun Bucknor and Ke$ha. While it is not free, it is a step closer to freedom.

My neighbor is one half of Sonic Uke and host of the monthly Ukulele Cabaret, which is an eclectic variety show featuring that wonderful instrument. I joined the cabaret this month and played with a laptop running Reason/Record and a small keyboard, which I used to record loops on-the-fly. This is a condensed arrangement of the sounds I made last night.

Ukulele Cabaret 4.30.10

It is far from home-studio perfect, but I love that my studio is mobile and that I can improvise and create a unique recording anywhere I go. O Technology!

This blog is written irregularly for sure, but when almost two weeks go by with no word from me, I am concerned. Where have I been these first few weeks of March, if not dutifully transcribing my every move on the ORG? It turns out I have been in front of my computer for most of that time, playing with a new piece of software that is SO MUCH FUN! I have been a user of Propellerhead’s synth rack emulator Reason for a long time; it is an amazing studio tool with unlimited sound synthesizing potential, but it has always been limited by its lack of audio capabilities, meaning I had to use another program (Ableton Live) to record guitars and vocals. At last, Reason has incorporated audio into its brilliant interface, streamlining my studio “gear” and making music creation and recording an effortless and organic endeavor. I figured out the basics of the new aspects and in the past 4 days, I made these recordings.

Insomina

I Dream of Waking Up

Poach the Poachers

Upsidedown Underground

I love computers for lots of reasons, but in my world it is the unlimited free studio time that makes me happiest.

The Backwardest Mountain is The Best. It is some of the most challenging skiing on the East Coast, with steep gnarly pitches over rocks and through trees covered in the best moguls (thanks to their no-snowboard policy) all serviced by a double and a single chair. While every mountain around it is owned by a ski resort mega-corporation, Mad River is cooperatively owned. It is an amazing ski experience. Eastern skiing definitely means contending with ice and trees and other natural objects impeding your progress, which makes it a very technical exercise, but also makes it more exciting and MRG’s terrain, ungroomed and covered strictly with natural snow, is the perfect showcase for this type of challenge. The ultimate throwback, it makes me nostalgic for a period before I was born…

That was Saturday. Sunday was spent at Mad River’s “younger sister”, Sugarbush, which exemplifies state-of-the-art resort technology. Of course, the lodge is amazing and chairs whisk you up the hill rapidly, maximizing downhill time, but something is lost in that evolution. Regardless, I managed to have one of my best Sugarbush days ever, discovering some great woods that I had never found before. This is one recent development in skiing that I have been very impressed with: resorts’ willingness to open up their woods and allow skiers to take their own risks. Terrain parks have also been an example of increasing risk of bodily harm at skier’s discretion. It is a dangerous sport (which is why I just purchased my first helmet) and people are injured and even DIE recreating this way but, and perhaps it is for precisely that reason, it is my absolute favorite day-long activity and I enjoy doing it on any mountain.

I am lucky to have friends whose media recommendations I can always trust… I had never seen a Wong Kar Wai film before “Internet Poster Person/Stringer Bell” introduced me at BAM and it was quite an experience. Happy Together tells the story of the dissolving gay relationship of two Hong Kong expatriates living in Buenos Aires; it is chaotic and disorienting in the same mostly great way that foreign travel is and the cinematography captures it perfectly, using different speeds and color techniques to make it one of the most visually remarkable movies I’ve ever seen. There is a beautiful birds eye view of Iguazu Falls that appears twice in the film, each time simply a few minutes of the stunning visual with gorgeous and sensual music. It does not develop the plot in any way, yet serves a greater purpose of establishing mood and emotion. It is a unique and beautiful style and I have already added Chungking Express to our Netflix queue, continuing my new quest to familiarize myself with this artist’s work.

I saw Furthur play at Hammerstein last night and was feeling nostalgic for a time before I was born. Grateful Deadians Bob Weir and Phil Lesh led a great Dead cover band through a classic set, drifting from heavy blues to deep funk and utter confusion to euphoric resolution:

I: Truckin > Dire Wolf > Doin That Rag > Ramble On Rose > Reuben and Cerise > Looks Like Rain > Cosmic Charlie
II: King Solomon’s Marbles > He’s Gone > New Potato Caboose > The Other One > Days Between > Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain > Cold Rain and Snow
E: Touch of Grey

And of course, because the Dead always understood that fan taping is the absolute best form of promotion, there were plenty of mics in the air capturing the event for posterity and eternal enjoyment. Back in my day… these could be traded on tapes — always free but for cost of postage and tapes. The internet has made them truly free (but for the cost of a computer and internet!). They were selling instantly printed CDs of the show for $25 and I would bet that they made a nice profit on that operation, but if you want it for free you can have it for free.
And so it should be!

This has Four(!) different recordings of last night’s show, one of which you can hear here:

Here it is from my vantage point:

Furthur 12.08.09 from Supergood on Vimeo.

Long Live The Dead!

New Fall colors! I’ve been inspired by the leaves beginning to change and so the ORG has been brightened. Also, having realized that I can bookmark this page directly to my main iPhone screen, I took the liberty of creating a special icon for this feature. To add Supergood to your iPhone or iPod touch, just open the page in mobile Safari then click the + symbol and “add to mainpage” button. Enjoy the “eyecon” and content on-the-go!

It must be incredibly annoying to hear iPhone users constantly raving about how amazing these little devices are, so I’m sorry that you need to hear more about it from me, but without any hyperbole, I can say that this is the most incredible anything that I’ve ever owned. It would be pretty lame and pointless to describe everything I love about this machine, so I will limit myself to fawning over the instrument apps… Drums, piano, guitar, ukulele and synths all in my pocket and I am never bored again. I make music anywhere. Though I have never owned one, I have always loved the slide guitar and while it may not be quite as awesome as the real thing, it is damn fun to jam with the app. Ukuleles are small, but not this small and it knows every chord! Nothing compares to sitting behnd a drum kit and pounding the skins, but making finger beats is surprisingly satisfying. And then there’s Bebot, a truly unique synth instrument that takes classic sounds and sets them into a beautifully playable touch-screen format. I am simply blown away by these aspects of my “phone” and eagerly await new additions to my quiver of sound creators. Any suggestions are much appreciated…

I just made the iPhone transition and am currently testing my new mobile posting capabilities. I feel liberated! I am sure that soon the thought of a phone that simply places calls will seem quaint as we progress toward full computing power in the palm of our hand. Someday we will tell our children about the mobile computer revolution and they will marvel at our life before personal pocket omniscient machines. Even today, seven years after I purchased my first cell phone, I can hardly comprehend how I must have lived my life in the dark ages of ground lines. And to think there was a time when I didn’t publish my thoughts for all to see…