Loquacious Music

All right. Seriously. Tell me the catch:

YourMusic.com

Your card is charged $5.99 a month. Each month, they send you a new CD from your queue. If you don’t have a CD in the queue, you still get charged the $5.99, but you can add a CD up until the day it’s supposed to ship.

All other CDs are $5.99 with no shipping and handling.

Is there a catch? Tell me the catch.

I just returned from “The Exorcism of Emily Rose”. So-so movie, great performance by Laura Linney, wonderful score by Christopher Young. He came up with some fantastically subtle cues. Unfortunately, everyone in the theatre talked for, like, the whole time. Blech.

I don’t want to jinx my recent foray into getting my finances in order, but someone at Google Answers posted an explanation of how I can liquidate stock certificates without opening a brokerage account. Sure, there are commissions. Aren’t there always commissions? Anyway, I’m going to drive to Salisbury on Wednesday, raid the safe deposit box, and hope to get to Charles Schwab (in Providence) by Friday afternoon. If I fill out all the forms, everything else shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Right?

I’m still going to return those CDs to Strawberries, though. It’s nice to have some room in the shelf…

Money problems are looming large right now on their way to being solved. Thanks, Bank of New York!

Suburban Home Records is amazing. They have just lowered the price of many of the CDs in their catalog (including all Adventures of Jet releases) to $5.00. Here’s Virgil’s explanation for the change:

We are always debating the value of music. From spending 9.99 on Itunes for an album to subscription services offered by Napster and Rhapsody for all you can stream, what is an album worth? We have decided to drop all of the prices of Suburban Home releases and a number of our exclusive releases to $5.00 each plus shipping. We hope that this drop in price will persuade you to purchase one of our releases instead of grabbing it from a peer to peer site. Paying 13.99 to 18.99 at a record store for a CD gets really old really quick. We hope you enjoy this price drop and that it makes it easier to take a chance on a new artist/band.

Please go to their Store and buy a few albums. You can listen to samples, or just go right to the AoJ page if you haven’t picked up their album “Muscle” yet:

Adventures of Jet | “Muscle”

Support Virgil and the gang and their quest to bring great punk, emo, and power pop to all of us! Buy some albums! I’ve just bought 10 copies of the two AoJ releases and will be doing something to auction them off for hurricane relief. 10 CDs for $50? That’s unheard of anywhere!

Even though there’s so much else to say about Katrina…

Let’s talk for a moment about the fact that I just discovered Brendan’s remixes of “Once,” “Alive,” and “Black” on the Pearl Jam greatest hits album, “rearviewmirror.” This makes me think that ol’ Brendan should remix the entire “Ten” album to make it sound less smarmy. Not that I mind smarmy, early-1990s production, mind you. But damn, he did some nice work.

Alvaro Morales, a New Orleans resident, has documented the before and after of Hurricane Katrina and has posted his 197-photo slideshow on the web, complete with commentary.

View Alvaro’s slideshow

This is moving in reverse chronological order. We’re at 09/08/05 now. Check out this clip from Oprah, who has sent some producers down to walk around the Gulf Coast: “Here’s the story…I wanna take the dog…We’re gonna take him and two other dogs that we met here and we’re going to send him to a house in Baton Rouge…And when you get back…” I’m sobbing.

THIS CLIP beats them all: Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, on “Meet the Press” today (09/04/05): “Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.”

SEE! Kanye West: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

HEAR! Fox News’ Shepard Smith to asshole extraordinaire Sean Hannity: “This is perspective! This is all the perspective you need!”

WATCH! As Geraldo Rivera breaks down in tears on national television: “Let them walk out of here! Let them walk the hell out of here! What the hell?”

GRIN! As Anderson Cooper hands Sen. Mary Landrieu her head on a silver platter: “Well, I mean, there are a lot of people here who are kind of ashamed of what is happening in this country right now, what is — ashamed of what is happening in your state.”

STARE! In disbelief as Paula Zahn eviscerates FEMA director Mike Brown: “Sir, you’re not telling me, you’re not telling me you just learned that the folks at the convention center didn’t have food and water until today did you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?”

LISTEN! Wide-eyed in amazement as New Orleans mayor Nagin speaks out: “Somebody need to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.”

CRY! As George W. Bush, the asshole who has been placed in charge of this country, says and does dumb things that will, hopefully, lead to control of this country by people who have a brain, a heart, and a conscience: “…Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — the guy lost his entire house — there’s going to be fantastic house. I look forward to sitting on the porch.”

LAUGH! (Amazingly enough!) with Bill Maher: “It only took him four days to make a plan. But finally, today, he said he had a plan. It is a faith-based plan that involves getting two of every animal onto a big boat…”

UPDATE: I didn’t always agree with him, but rest in peace, Justice William Rehnquist.

UPDATE #2: David Brooks finally gets it right.

UPDATE #3: Bob Scheiffer: “Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.”

UPDATE #4: Sen. Mary Landrieu, to Bush: “If one person criticises them or says one more thing including the President of the US, he will be hearing from me. One more word about it after this show airs and I might likely punch him, literally.”

I put my new song up, but screw that. This is the only song that matters to me right now.

“Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)”
Download from iTunes.

Dah, dah, dah, dah
dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah
Rockets, moon shots
Spend it on the have nots
Money, we make it
‘Fore we see it you take it
Oh, make you wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
This ain’t livin’, This ain’t livin’
No, no baby, this ain’t livin’
No, no, no
Inflation no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up sky high
Send that boy off to die
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
Dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah
Hang ups, let downs
Bad breaks, set backs
Natural fact is
I can’t pay my taxes
Oh, make me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Yea, it makes me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God know where we’re heading
Oh, make me wanna holler
They don’t understand
Dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah
Dah, dah, dah

Mother, mother
Everybody thinks we’re wrong
Who are they to judge us
Simply cause we wear our hair long

Donate to the Red Cross.
Donate to the Red Cross via iTunes (easier).
What can I do to help?

Makes me wanna holler. And throw up both my hands.

A few days ago, one of my students sent me some lyrics he was working on. In about 10 minutes, I had written a melody for him and had recorded a rudimentary demo in GarageBand. I don’t know — I felt like Carole King and George Goffin combined!

Yesterday, he sent me more lyrics and issued a challenge: 10 minutes, melody, go. Since he’s more emo-oriented, I had to remove about 60% of his lyrics to make room for the pop song to shine through. All the nice imagery, though, is his (although his original lyrics had more to do with boy-meets-girl-meets-emo). I spent about an hour and a half and worked up a proper demo:

“Heart Around It” (1.6 MB; 128 kbps MP3)

Writing two-minute pop songs. Does that make me Carole King, George Goffin, or Bob Pollard?

Probably Bob.

On another note, is anyone else finding him or herself more disturbed over Hurricane Katrina than any other storm in recent memory? Even Andrew? I’m ansy these days — and more pissed at George W. than ever before.