Stephen Fry on Apple and digital devices. I couldn’t agree more, even though I’m a XP user (for now) - but that’s just because I can’t afford 10 PC’s with XP, Vista, Linux and God knows what, like Stephen can:

“Apple gets plenty of small things wrong, but one big thing it gets right: when you use a device every day, you cannot help, as a human being, but have an emotional relationship with it. Its true of cars and cookers, and its true of computers. Its true of office blocks and houses, and its true of mobiles and satnavs. A grey box is not good enough, clunky and ugly is not good enough. Sick building syndrome exists, and so does sick hand-held device syndrome. Fiddly buttons, blocky icons, sickeningly stupid nested menus - these are the enemy. They waste time, militate against function and lower the spirits. They make the user feel frustrated and (quite wrongly) dense. Mechanisms so devilishly, stunningly, jaw-dropping clever as the kind our world can now furnish us with are No Good Whatsoever if they dont also bring a smile to our face, if they dont make us want to stroke, touch, fondle, fiddle, gurgle, purr and coo. Interacting with a digital device should be like interacting with a baby.”

Welcome to Dork Talk (Stephen Fry)

Dear friends. Here’s another song written, arranged and performed by yours truly.

As the title promises it’s heavily influenced by Prefab Sprout and Paddy McAloon. My beautiful wife plays the part of Wendy Smith and I’m the crooner, McAloon-style.

I’m trying to be a just a little bit clever lyric-wise, but alas, I’m no lyricist… I hope you enjoy this modest tribute to one of my favorite bands anyway.

The Prefab Song (Go Through That) [download]

If you read this, Jason: Sorry ’bout the parentheses, but I had no choice. It’s a good title.

Damn Near Righteous - Bill Medley (2007)
In Tune Productions / TuneCore

I must admit that I know very little about Bill Medley’s career. I know that he and Bobby Hatfield were the Righteous Brothers, and that he had a huge hit duet with Jennifer Warnes in 1987. Everyone knows that.

I didn’t expect much when I sat down to listen to samples from his new release “Damn Near Righteous”. Produced by Steve Dorff, I guess I expected a Christopher Cross record with a gruffier voice.

It’s smooth alright, with ace session players like Dean Parks, Vinnie Colaiuta, John Robinson and Joe Chemay, but it’s a big, fat, wonderful production with Wurlitzers, Hammonds, grand piano, real strings (if not, they certainly fooled me), real horns, guitars, drums and backing vocals. Not a cheap synthpad like, say, recent Leon Russell records, in sight. It sounds really expensive, actually, and when I think back, it’s been a while since the last time I heard a record sounding quite as good.

His voice is rustier than it used to be, but I think that’s an asset here. He has great tone. They’ve probably fine-tuned him a bit (he’s 67) but his voice sounds natural throughout the record - as opposed to something like…oh, yeah… ”Chicago XXX” (2006) - Jason Scheff and Bill Champlin sound like computers on that album. It’s a real treat to listen to Medley on most of these tracks.

It’s a bit too ballad-heavy, though. I like the bluesy and soulful numbers better, like “Sit Down & Hurt” , “Trick Bag”, “Hurt City”… there are lots of great tracks to choose from. His re-recording of Beach Boys’ “In My Room” doesn’t do much for me, even though Phil Everly and Brian Wilson participates. Too smooth. His cover of “Just Like A Woman” also leaves a lot to be desired. ”Beautiful” and “Two Lives” are boring in my ears. “California Goodbye” is definitely the best ballad as far as I’m concerned - it gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

All in all, highly recommended. But do listen before you download - I have this hunch that a lot of you might disagree with me here.

Musical trends is a peculiar thing. I’ve given it some thought lately, and there really doesn’t seem to be much logic to it.

A major contribution to the shifting trends in music is the innate impulse for journalists to boost acts all the way to heaven with nothing but the highest of praise, only to tear them down unceremonially after a couple of years.

That seems to be the “golden” (not so golden in my eyes, though) rule of just about any kind of journalism - it’s some sort of self-containment: The journalists (or bloggers, for that matter) create their own universe with their little stories and reviews, and when we, the public, read them, they become real.

Think about poor Steve Forbert, for instance. A young fellow who released a couple of wonderful, smart and unassuming records in the late 1970s. The press hailed him as “the new Bob Dylan.”

Oh dear. That’s the kiss of death for any young, aspiring artist. What do you do when the world wants your next record to be “Highway 61 Revisited”, but you’re stuck with the fact that you’re Steve Forbert, 25, living in 1980?

You do the only thing you can do. You release another good Steve Forbert album - but by then that’s not what the public (or the record company) wanted. They wanted the young Bob Dylan. Not even Dylan could provide them with that. So, another two Steve Forbert records goes by with poor record sales and mediocre reviews and then it’s bye, bye Forbert. Sad thing is, his music was good all the way through!

I remember I was actually surprised when I witnessed Phil Collins’ fall from grace in the 1990s. He was pretty cool in the 1980s, and I remember I thought he was kind of immune to criticism because of his self-irony and humour. It didn’t even matter that he had a receding hairline and that he was the same age as my dad.

Besides, in many ways he defined “the modern sound” of the 1980s - the booming drums and the rich, bombastic production which, believe it or not, sounded very fresh to a teenager’s ears in 1985.

But then he went all “…but seriously” on us, and I think that contributed immeasurably to killing his immunity to criticism forever after.

That, and a whole bunch of other factors, it must be said.

In one way, grunge guitars did to him what he did to the soft wisp of Dan Fogelberg and the simplicity of punk rock a decade earlier, when he boomed’em all with his echo machine (Just for the record: I know I’m oversimplifying my case, possibly even misleading you - but it’s my blog and it’s therefore my privilege to do so.)

Nowadays, of course, we’re told that the grunge revolution was totally overrated.

I remember reading Q Magazine in 1990, a well-renowned British music magazine at the time. They summed up the best records of the decade. I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much when I tell you that, according to Q Magazine in 1990, about 75% of the best records of the 1980s were released between 1987 and 1989.

And the poorest year in music in the 1980s was voted, well of course: 1980.

So sorry, Devo, Stranglers, Joy Division, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Echo and the Bunnymen, Talking Heads, The Jam, The Undertones, The Specials. You lost BIG time to the likes of George Michael, Def Leppard, Everything But the Girl, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Neneh Cherry and Faith No More.

I’m not totally convinced the result would be the same today.

Why do we have to hate the music we used to love just to be cool? Why does every thesis have to come with an antithesis?

Me, I’m an accumulative music lover. I’ve never really related to musical trends, and I think maybe that’s why I find it such an intriguing subject. It’s interesting to notice how people use music to adapt - to adjust their cool factor.

Consider Facebook, for instance. Why do people remove bands from their “favorite music” spot all the time? And I’m not talking about kids removing Fergie or Nelly after a couple of weeks.

I’m talking about people in their 30s suddenly realising that R.E.M. or Dire Straits isn’t worthy of a spot on their profile anymore. C’mon, guys! It’s been 15 years since the last Dire Strais release! If you love that stuff, you’ll know so by now. Or haven’t you decided yet? Did mr. Knopfler say something silly in the news last week?

I’m not stupid. I know people are adjusting their profile to reflect themselves in the best possible light. We’re all vain. We’re all insecure. But I’m still a little amused every time someone removes the Eagles or Rolling Stones from their Facebook profile.

I nicked this link from Boing Boing. The singers and dancers are obviously doing a parody (er, hopefully), but what I really, really love about this video are the subtle gestures of the keyboard player during the first 10 seconds of the song - he’s so freaking hilarious. I’m definitely stealing his routine.

…or not.

Anyways, I’m making a lot of music these days, so here are links for three more songs in mp3 format.

True Love and She Said are upbeat pop-rockers. I sang more or less constantly for 24 hours, and something happened to my voice. I think it’s kind of cool, but I don’t know - too much Bryan Adams? Or Richard Marx??

Left To Cry is a drumless ballad, it’s very simple - only 4 chords repeating themselves, but it kinda works…

The lyrics were assembled - as usual - within 10 minutes and with very little regard to rhyme or reason.

I actually tried to make some money off these tracks just for the fun of it over on amiestreet.com. I got a couple of recommendations and the tracks made a few cents each, but my income stream seems to have dried out by now - I’ve been stuck with a total of $2.84 for weeks - so I think it’s safe to offer them for download here…

And hopefully I’ll come up with something interesting to write about soon… well - I never seem to write about anything interesting - but I’ll be back writing about something, that’s for sure.

My head is about as empty as the void between Ernest Borgnine’s front teeth these days.

Hurry! Head on over to the music site Amie Street this morning. They have a lot of new partners and labels, and you can get a a good deal on some pretty fine music at no cost if you’re fast enough. They’ve rolled out a bunch of really good artists on their site today.

Their model is quite brilliant, I think. All songs start out as free tracks, and then the price starts to rise as the tracks become more popular. All MP3 - no DRM.

At the moment there are free tracks by Barenaked Ladies, Josh Rouse, Griffin House, Melissa McClelland (brilliant), Adrienne Pierce, The Clumsy Lovers, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sarah McLachlan, Guggenheim Grotto - probably many more, but I haven’t got the time - I need to get back there to buy more music - for the price of free!!

Just wanted to put in a good word for Particls, a brilliant free, open standards based app I discovered recently that instantly tracks your favorite sites and topics. It’s kind of like a filtered feed reader.

It’s very easy to set up. Install it, enter a few keywords to indicate your fields of interest and you’re ready to start.

I fed it with some music related words - favorite artists, music industry references such as ASCAP, BMI, DRM, record companies etc., eMusic, iTunes and so on - and I’ve been spending the entire evening reading interesting, highly relevant articles from a seemingly endless array of sources.

In addition you can add your regular rss feeds, and perform a number of tweaks to improve your news stream. But I’m thoroughly impressed with its performance even though I haven’t tweaked it at all.

You can sort your news stream by date or by relevancy. I immediately fell in love with the relevancy sorting option. In the future, I’ll probably use Particls for keyword searches, sorted by relevancy - and continue using Google Reader for my regular feeds, sorted by date.

Highly recommended!

I’m certainly no AC/DC fan, and thank God for that. Today the band announced that they skip iTunes in favor of an exclusive deal with Verizon’s online music store, PC World reports.

So, as iTunes move in a slightly more customer-friendly direction with their fresh deal with EMI, providing DRM-free files with better sound quality, Angus and Malcolm get concerned about their petty pennies and decide to locate their income base elsewhere.

If you’re an aspiring AC/DC fan and want to buy their “Highway to Hell” album online now, you’ll have to pay $11.99 for a DRM-infected, product-specific, Microsoft-dependent music file in an unknown quality (a quick browse on Verizon’s site didn’t reveal whether it was in 128, 256 or 56 kbps quality - I’m sure it’s there somewhere, though.)

In addition you cannot download a single track - you have to buy the entire album!

Now, you can get the same album on CD for $9,97 on Amazon. I don’t really know what AC/DC are trying to do here - a poorer product and a higher price - maybe they just want people to buy the CD? But I suspect it’s the same old concept that seems to drive most of the music industry at the moment - blind and stupid greed.

A couple of weeks ago I promised never to post my music on this blog again.

So I lied. I composed a new tune today, and once again I’m using it as an excuse for a blog post. I guess it’s the exhibitionist hidden somewhere deep inside of me that craves attention.

It’s another self-penned lyric - as I mentioned in my previous mp3 post, I had never written lyrics before - but it seems I’m on a roll here. I’m really not too happy with these lyrics either - it’s just a tool to create a “pop pastiche” - or whatever this is.

At the center of this track is a compressed piano sound - surrounded by assorted guitar sounds. My wife says it reminded her a little bit of Pet Shop Boys’ sound on “Release” (2002) - I didn’t think about that when I recorded it, but PSB is one of my favorite bands - and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that influence shines through in my music. I’d be happy if it did.

[Download mp3]