My girlfriend, my neighbors, and I all went out last weekend and had one of the most unexpected but wonderful experiences in a long time.  Too much awesome happened to write down, but here is a little summary.

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of The Decemberists, but I’ve become especially enamored with their latest effort entitled The Hazards of Love.  Shara of My Brightest Diamond fame is one the guest singers on the album, and while I’ve been aware of her for a little while, I really never listened to her music that much before.

Shara’s voice on The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid is one of my favorite parts of the album so I decided to do a little research on Shara which obviously led me to My Brightest Diamond’s website.  Once on the site I was pleasently suprised to see that Shara was coming to Detroit very soon to play a free show at The Yes Farm!

Shara with the gang

Needless to say I was pretty excited, but I had no idea where The Yes Farm was located.  After a few minutes on Google I found their website.  Oooh boy!  Looks like we’re about to take a trip back to a ’60s style hippie community!

Once there I found that my suspicions were correct.  The Yes Farm is basically an abandoned house that has enough of it’s holes patched up to protect you from the elements.  The show was actually a fundraiser so they could install permament electricity.  To power the house for this night they had run two extension cords across the lot to the house next door!  It was actually kind of scary since it was raining pretty hard and I did see water on the floor around the extension cord.  All was fine though, and no one ended up dead.

We were a little unsure as to what to expect, but everyone there was really nice, and once the show started everyone was glued to Shara on stage.  Shara put on amazing show and then stayed out to drink beers and hang out with the crowd afterwards.  She even signed her setlist for us

Brandi with her new art

After the show we went to Bert’s in Eastern Market to get something to eat.  At this point we were all pretty happy having just experienced something awesome and unique in an area of Detroit that doesn’t have much going for it.  The night was just about to get even better though as Thornetta Davis walked into Bert’s halfway through our dinner.  I don’t think Thornetta intended to sing, but they called her up on stage after she ordered her dinner.  She only sang one song, but man oh man what a song it was.  The whole place came alive.  Everyone was up clapping and dancing.

Pictures from the night here.

]]> http://www.jaylark.com/blog/2009/04/28/detroits-brightest-diamond/feed/ 0 http://www.jaylark.com/blog/2009/02/27/massive-riaa-layoffs/ http://www.jaylark.com/blog/2009/02/27/massive-riaa-layoffs/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:50:05 +0000 Jay http://www.jaylark.com/blog/?p=64

Boo hoo! Massive RIAA Layoffs: I’m feeling lazy, and the write of the article sums it up pretty nicely so I’ll just quote.

“The real issue is that the RIAA has basically managed to run one of the dumbest, most self-defeating strategies over the last decade. Rather than helping major record labels adjust to the changing market, it continually, repeatedly and publicly destroyed its own reputation and the reputation of the labels — each time shrinking their potential market by blaming the very people they should have been working to turn into customers”

“They may claim that they “had” to take this strategy because it’s what the labels wanted (and, indeed, that was Hilary Rosen’s excuse), but that’s ridiculous. It was evident to pretty much anyone who took the time to understand the issues back in the mid- to late-90s, that the internet represented an opportunity to those who embraced it. The RIAA’s decision to fight progress and its own customers at every turn has been nothing short of a complete disaster.”

You couldn’t make up something as stupid as this if you tried.

Story Here

Apparently a royalty collecting firm is trying to collect royalties from a car repair shop because the employees there listen to the radio.  This makes the music a “public performance” since the customers can hear the music, and the firm feels they should be compensated for these performances.

I guess Sony won’t be joining Amazon’s new MP3 service any time soon.

“When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’,” she said.

I guess if I legally buy a Sony CD I still have to buy the iTunes version of the same album if I want to put it on my iPod.

I guess I’m confused because the RIAA website clearly says” Record companies have never objected to someone making a copy of a CD for their own personal use.” RIAA website Question 11

Stupid Sony. Story Here

inrainbows

October 10th.

For years I and many others have been asking for online music store that offered affordably priced music without all the restrictions that places like iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, etc. put on the files.

Amazon has finally answered our prayers with their new MP3 download service.  Prices vary depending on the song or album, presumbly set by the artist or label, but they average around the $0.99 mark that everyone seems comfortable with.  The big news however is that there is no DRM on the files at all!  You can play your songs on your iPod, Zune, your computer at home, your office computer, anywhere you want!  You can even burn to CD as many times as you want.

Amazon doesn’t have all the major labels signed up, but there is a pretty decent selection, and if it works, we my see the other labels follow suit soon.

Also of note, Apple’s current “theme song” for their new iPods, 1234 by Feist, is the number one song on Amazon right now.  It’s also cheaper ($0.89) at Amazon.