Lately I haven’t been listening to very much music.  I’ve been busy with
work, then last week I caught a cold and was sick all week.  I still came
into work, but left pretty early and slept a lot.  I’m finally just about
over that, but work has gotten busy again as I have to prepare a talk for the
TREC conference early next month, and there isn’t much time to coordinate with
my supervisor about it.  I also sprained my ankle a week ago, and haven’t
been running since then.  Usually I listen to some music while I run, so
I’ve been missing out on my usual music listening opportunities.

Radiohead

I just bought
Radiohead’s
“In Rainbows”, but haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet.  (Well,
I’m listening to it now.)  I think it is great that they are distributing
their music themselves, and love the “pick your price model”.  I thought I
would pay about $7 or $8, but ended up paying 5 pounds plus their processing
fee, and who knows how much that is in American dollars.  Maybe something
like $13?  It is a bit more than I wanted to pay, but I completely support
their move to a new business model for self-distribution.  I should mention
that another favorite band of mine,
Bishop
Allen, also sells their stuff on their own website for very reasonable
amounts. 

Inspired by Radiohead

One group that I’ve been keeping my eyes on, Hard ‘N Phirm, has a new post on
their website where they are distributing for free two songs of theirs that are
Radiohead inspired: “Fitter, Clappier” (not so great, but worth a listen for the
price) and “Rodeohead”, which is very nice.  A kind of blues-grass
Radiohead montage.  More than that you, you really should check out the
video for their song “Pi”.  The Youtube clip is below.  I think it is
hilarious and a great parody of the 80s style “Electric Company” edumacational
TV shows. 

Flight of the Conchords

Not too long after finding that Pi video (forwarded on by someone) I heard about
Flight of the Conchords from the Hard N’ Phirm guys.  I have their
website’s RSS feed in my feed reader, and it popped up one day and said I should
check out the
HBO
show “Flight of the Conchords”.  So I did, and I thought it was
hilarious.  I thought it was great, and that my little sister would love
it.  She always seems to hang out with people that are cool, but are
somehow cool in spite of themselves, with a bit of a nerdy flavor.  That
kind of describes the Flight of the Conchords guys pretty well, I think. 
(Contrast this with myself: I am definitely nerdy, but have not even been able
to attain the geek-chic style that has somehow popped up.  I just land
squarely in the “geek” demographic.)  Since I thought Jana would like this
stuff so much, I bought her the DVD for her birthday.  Sadly, her birthday
is in October, and the DVD isn’t shipped until sometime in November, but as long
as she doesn’t read this website she’ll still be surprised.  Who expects a
birthday present a month late?  (Outside of my sisters, mothers, fathers,
and friends?)

For your enjoyment, I recommend that you check out the
Flight
of the Conchords song Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros.  It is very
funny.  It is also probably findable on Youtube. 

Say Hi

Another group that I absolutely adore,
Say
Hi To Your Mom, recently changed their name to the shorter “Say Hi”, and put
out their newest album, “The Wishes and the Glitch”.  The album is supposed
to be released on Feb. 5th, but if you are up on the interweb stuff you can
order it from their website and get it now.  It is a mere $7 for the
digital download, which is I think a bit inaccurately named as the “Immediate
Digital Download” because I ordered two hours ago but haven’t received any
download instructions yet.  I suppose they will show up within a day or so,
but that doesn’t quite fit my description of “Immediate”.  More like,
rapid.  According to the FAQ, you should get the link for the download from
12-24 hours after your order, or on Monday if you hit them up over the
weekend.  I guess that means that they have a human approving the process
somehow, which kind of baffles me since you really can automate the whole
process.  It is kind of rapid I guess, but not nearly what I would call
“Immediate”.

Still, I’m a huge Say Hi fan, I absolutely love their 2004 album “Numbers and
Mumbles”, and like their other stuff as well.  I’m really excited to listen
to the new one – even more than the new Radiohead album.  With Radiohead, I
expect a good album.  With Say Hi, I expected something that could be only
good, but might possibly be mind-blowing, or at least has a very good chance of
being very specific to me and my life.  What I mean is that I can sometimes
very strongly identify with Say Hi’s music in a way that the more large-issue,
big-world, Radiohead stuff doesn’t reach me. 

Radiohead will not sing about being a 13-year-old kid hanging out with your
friends dreaming of robots and spaceships.  Say Hi very well might. 
Or he might have a song about falling in love with a girl, and then falling out
of love with that girl, but not wanting to face it, and wanting to talk about
spaceships instead of the relationship.  Sometimes I misunderstand and
relate so poorly to women that I don’t understand why a conversation about
spaceship design would be a bad thing when we should be talking about failings
in communication about our relationship. 

I really like the range that can come out of Say Hi.  Of course, not
everything is gold, but I think having valleys to go along with your peaks makes
life more interesting.