On to music reviews

I've gotten sidetracked with some personal blog items.  At this point, I want to focus on writing about independent music.

I now write several blogs.  This one will focus on all things Girly Sound, independent music, and Liz Phair, who really cannot be described as an indie musician anymore.

The Liz Phair fan community

There seems to be some confusion over the Liz Phair fan community.  This is a group of fans of Liz Phair and her recorded works.

There are fans of Liz Phair sprinkled all over the world.

Nobody owns or controls the fan community.  Nobody should own or control the fan community.  The fan community is what it is.

I provide a number of pages devoted to the Girly Sound recordings.  Originally, I had accepted the job of promoting the girlysound.com website, which promoted the Girly Sound recordings.  I now directly promote the recordings and I also promote Liz as I am a fan of hers and all her works.  As long as I enjoy what I do and I receive the occasional "thank you" from other fans, I'll continue doing this.

I am going to continue with my efforts the same as always.  What I do is based on my best judgment.  The question that I have to always ask is "What is good for the fan community?" and "What can I personally do and what can't I do?"  That's all it comes down to.

New album by JP, Chrissie, & the Fairground Boys

I've just started listening to it.  Chrissie = Chrissie Hynde (of the Pretenders).  Sounds good so far.

My Budget for Promoting Girly Sound

Everything that I do to promote the Girly Sound tapes only involves my own time and no money.  I have a budget of nothing ($0.00).

This isn't particularly interesting, except that I have found that I can have reasonable impact and not spend any additional funds.

Many times, you can be quite effective by being persistent.

How you treat other people does make a difference as well.

Personal Integrity

How you treat your fellow man is incredibly important.

I recently disconnected relationships with people who did not have respect for others.  There really is no valid excuse for treating other people differently than the way that you want to be treated.

How you treat other people shouldn't depend on whether or not you are friends with them, or you agree with their opinions, or even whether you like them.

Updates to Tape 2: Girls Girls Girls

I uploaded the first 7 songs from Tape 2: Girls Girls Girls to twiturm.com and have updated the page for the second tape to include these links.

You can stream or download these files from a single location.

In Praise of the Feel Good Song

I like different types of songs for different moods that I'm in.  Sometimes, it's a serious song for when I'm in a serious mood.  There's also the musically accomplished songs that showcase the musical instruments and the artists that make the instruments sing.

But sometimes, I'm in a rut and I just need a feel good song.  Feel good songs are the Rodney Dangerfield of songs: they don't get no respect.  The Academy awards tend to overlook comedies, because there is a feeling that dramas require more skill and more imagination than comedies.

Feel good songs tend to be upbeat and cheerful.  They make you feel good, and that's OK.

Music is sometimes a very personal thing.  Don't let anyone tell you that your taste in music sucks.  If the music makes you feel good and helps you get through your day, then it has worked.

More updates to the static pages

I now have pages for the two named and one unnamed Girly Sound tapes.  All three of them list the known songs on these tapes and include links.

The links to twiturm allows you to stream and/or download the songs.

The legacy download points to girlysound.com.  The legacy stream points to twt.fm.

Uploading the individual songs of Girly Sound to twiturm

I am in the process of setting up pages for each of the Girly Sound tapes with tracks, links, and other track information.  I'm trying to consolidate all of the information, which has never been done before.

Enjoy!

The longer version of the Nietzsche quote

I saw a reference to the quote in a piece I read about the Tea Party.  I then started looking for the original quote because I have observed behavior that suggests sociopath resentment that has led to manipulation and bullying.

The sufferers, one and all, are frighteningly willing and inventive in their pretexts for painful emotions; they even enjoy being mistrustful and dwelling on wrongs and imagined slights ... they rip open the oldest wounds and make themselves bleed to death from scars long since healed, they make evil-doers out of friend, wife, child, and anyone else near them

Let go of your anger. Let the minor stuff slide.  Learn to both accept and provide apologies.  If someone pisses you off, then contact them and try to work it out.

That's what real mature people do.  Try it.

How does all of this look now?

I finally started making posts and have added some needed pages for Tape 1 and Tape 2.  There is more needed.

How does everything look now?

Anger

I am not an angry person.  Anger tends to hurt the people that feel the anger.

Be at peace with yourself.  Be at peace with the people around you.

Recent Music Purchases

I've purchased the following music releases over the last several months:

• She Makes War - I Am (Extended Single)
• Michelle Branch - Everything Comes and Goes (EP)
• Liz Phair - Funstyle (Wav format)
• Yusuf (Cat Stevens) - Roadsinger
• Sarah McLachlan - Laws of Illusion
• Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street Rarities
• Paco de Lucia - Entre Dos Aguas
• Paco de Lucia - Interpreta a Manuel de Falla
• Court Yard Hounds - Court Yard Hounds
• Yes - Fragile
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Mojo
• The Very Best of the Yardbirds
• Enya - The Very Best
• Willie Nelson & Asleep At The Wheel - Willie and The Wheel
• The Pretenders - The Singles
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland
• The Texas Sapphires - As He Wanders...
• Rosanne Cash - The List
• America - America's Greatest Hits: History
• Diane Birch - Bible Belt

My music tastes are all over the place.

Digital Music Releases

I find that I am purchasing more and more music in digital format only. There are a number of reasons for this, but this is not what I want to discuss today.

With the switch to digital distribution, there are several things missing that I would like to see corrected.

1. Liner notes.  The digital music package should include both a cover art image as well as either a PDF file with the liner notes insert or HTML equivalent.
2. Cover Art.  I haven't seen a problem with this, but the cover art is an absolute requirement.
3. Playlist file. If the music files are meant to be played, they should include a playlist file such as M3U.  This is a nice-to-have feature.
4. ID3 tags.  I have seen MP3 files that do not include information such as title of the song, artist, track, attached to the file.  This is commonly known as meta-data.  If the files do not have ID3 tags, then the user won't be able to identify the album, track, or artist when the songs plays  on the music player.
5. Multiple formats: 
1. MP3 with 320 kbps bitrate is absolute minimum.
2. Wav file is useful to avoid any kind of loss, but Wav files are huge.
3. Flac file format is a compressed kind of wav file.  Flac offers the same lossless nature of Wav files at 66% to 50% of the size of the original Wav files.  The downside is that Flac files are also huge in comparison to lossy formats like mp3 and AAC.
4. Mpeg 4 Audio (M4a-AAC) is the standard format for Apple iPod devices and is supported by iTunes.  There are two distinct subtypes of Mpeg 4 audio:  enclosed in Mpeg wrapper (M4a) and enclosed in native AAC ADTS wrapper (AAC).
5. Note: DRM generally won't impress music buyers.
6. Song names that naturally sort in play order:  "nn - title.mp3" is one good example, where nn is the track number and title is the name of the song. If the track number is not a part of the name of the song, it makes it difficult to play the tracks in the proper sequence, unless you have a playlist file.  Playlist files were my item #3 above.
7. Accepting payments with PayPal is nice.

Michelle Branch - Everything Comes And Goes EP (July 2010)

Michelle Branch started out her career as a pop single with the albums "The Spirit Room" and "Hotel Paper".

Details can be found on her wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Branch

Michelle Branch then teamed up with her friend Jessica Harp and became the Wreckers.  The pop sound was replaced with country.

Back in 2008, it was reported that she was working on a new album entitled "Everything Comes and Goes".  A new single appeared: "Sooner Or Later".  Unfortunately, the album never appeared.  Michelle had issues with her record company (they had layoffs in 2009) and the album never got released.

Finally in July 2010, Michelle took her songs and released them by herself, leveraging TopSpin Media.  Instead of a full album, it is a six song EP.  It is currently only available as a digital download.  It is supposed to be released soon on iTunes, but I was not able to find it today when I went to iTunes.

The songs are nice.  I really like "Sooner Or Later", a song which could very well appear on adult contemporary radio stations.  The rest of the EP is very much nice sounding and very listenable.

At $6, this is a must have for Michelle Branch fan s.  Nope, it's not the pop from the first two albums, but it's nice and relaxing music.

She Makes War - I Am (review)

She Makes Was is Laura Kidd.  I've been a fan of hers for several years.  I believe that she was one of the first independent musicians that I connected with on my old myspace account.  I listened to her version of "I Am" and it was one of my favorite songs of hers.

I am glad that she has redone the song as an extended single.  The new version of "I Am" is crisp.  Guitars are very clear.  The song combines both serious lyrics and soothing clear guitar strums.

The B side song is "Nothing", another serious song of despair.

The extended single is rounded out with 3 remix versions of "I Am".  The Richmanu remix sounds like something that you could dance to.  You could use terms like disco or trance, but somehow these words just don't quite convey the right tone.  Richmanu is a longer remix.

Warriorgrrl remix is more electronic sounding. 

The Haberdasher remix rounds out the bunch.  It emphasizes bass tones.

I've listened to the entire extended single a number of times.  I plan on picking up the new Disarm CD when it becomes available in September.

At two pounds (currently a little more than 3 USD), this is a good deal.

A Different Direction

The twitter account originally was girlysoundotcom to emphasize the fact that I was promoting girlysound.com.  On twitter, less is more, so I reduced the twitter name down to girlysound.  I believe the newer name, at that time, was the correct move.

Over this past week, I changed from girlysound to girlysound2. The focus changed: I no longer focus on girlysound.com, with which I am no longer associated, and I focus on the Girly Sound recordings.

This means little to no change for people that follow the twitter account. I created the twitter account on my own and I continue to operate it.

You can still pick up the Girly Sound recordings from girlysound.com.  However, I plan to use free services like twiturm to make the songs available and then provide links on this blog.

One other change that I am making is that I have identified myself.

Changes in progress

Some minor changes for the girlysound twitter account are in the works.  The first change is that girlysound twitter is now independent and autonomous.

The twitter account will not change in any significant way.

Welcome to my blog

Hello.  I have decided to create a blog to write longer posts that are available with twitter.

Who I am is not particularly important.  Just think of me as another Liz Phair and Girly Sound fan.  I am not Liz and have never met her or seen her in real life.  Maybe that will change, maybe it won't.  If Liz comes through, I'll buy a concert ticket like the rest of you and I'll try to catch her after the concert like some of you have.

I have volunteered to promote the Girly Sound recordings.  This is all done for the love of the music.

I love the music and I know that you probably do too.

A few ground rules.  I believe that musicians should be paid for their efforts.  I buy music and I encourage others to do the same.  I will not participate in music piracy.  We do not consider the distribution of the Girly Sound recordings to be piracy since Liz has indicated that she wants these to be available to her fans.  If Liz wishes for us to stop distributing the recordings, we will.

If any of you fans do share music, just don't mention it to me.  I don't need to know this and I don't want to know this.

If there is a question on the distribution of music, then I'll err on the safe side.

I plan to use the blog to talk about music.  This is my own opinion and not the official opinion of girlysound.com, Liz Phair, or anyone besides myself.

Music is a tricky thing.  We all have our own preferences.  What I like is not necessarily what you'll like.  This is not to say that I'm right and you're wrong.  We're both right, because music is a personal thing.

I don't want to hear that anyone is stupid because of the music that they like.  We are all entitled to our music preferences, no matter what.  I am here to tell you that your likes are valid.  We can share the enjoyment of the music that we both like.

More to come...