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From the Barstool of the Publisher - July, 2008
We’ve become a really half-assed society, to a sickening degree.
This month’s industry profile on Gus Skinas from Super Audio Center proves that. Skinas has developed a system that makes digital audio sound like an analog recording, bringing warmth and emotion back into digital music.
I’ve heard it. I sat in his room as he played me an SACD (Super Audio CD) surround master of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” It’s safe to say that I’ve probably heard that song more than a couple hundred times in my life, but hearing it there was like hearing it for the first time all over again — only better.
Marquee Tags: Elton John, Gus Skinas, SACD, Super Audio Center1 comment
From the Barstool of the Publisher - June, 2008
Stop it! Stop it, right now!
Put down the God damn mouse and step back from the computer. Don’t blame it on your teenage child either. You’re the parent, go into their room and rip the internet connection from the wall.
Call your friends and family, too, and make sure they knock it the hell off as well.
It’s people like you who are killing music.
This week’s no-talent, ass-hat, plague on the music business is David Cook, who apparently won this country’s most stupid-ass TV show, “American Idol.”
No tag for this post. 1 commentFrom the Barstool of the Publisher - May, 2008
One of our great local heroes is gone.
Jon Henderson, who nine years ago was told he had only six months to live, finally ended his battle with cancer on April 24.
Jon had gone to happy hour at Conor O’Neills in Boulder the evening he passed. While he was entering his car to leave, he suffered a seizure that knocked him unconscious. Medical teams were unable to revive him.
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From the Barstool of the Publisher - April, 2008
The music industry is desperately in need of a healthy dose of “wow.”
In recent months I’ve seen a lot of shows, listened to a bunch of new releases and all of them seem to have one thing in common, a staggering deficit of anything that would make you exclaim, “Wow!”
Now a wow factor is a difficult thing to measure because, of course, something that makes me say “wow” might leave you saying “blah,” but I think that regardless of differing opinions, music fans right now are poised to embrace something special, as long as that something special reveals itself with some guts and substance. Continue — Read more »
From the Barstool of the Publisher - March, 2008
When talking about musicians, people always seem to say the same thing; that they’re “just normal people.” But if they’re so normal, why is it that they do things that blow the minds of other seemingly normal folks?
I personally think that musicians’ brains are wired differently than the rest of ours, much in the way that rocket scientists’ brains differ from your average Joe Schmoe, and a story that I recently read in The Week kind of backs up my feelings.
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From the Barstool of the Publisher - February, 2008
I took a lot of flack a few months ago when I wrote an editorial that claimed the CD was a dying medium. People told me I was out of my mind and that I should basically just shut up and go to hell. Well, this month my predictions came a bit closer to being true.
Marquee Tags: CDs, Death of the CD, MacBook Air
Apple has released a new laptop, called the MacBook Air, that doesn’t even have an optical drive (That’s a CD/DVD drive to you and me). Oh, sure, you can purchase an external drive, but according to Apple, it’s not really needed.
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From the Barstool of the Publisher - January, 2008
:: January 2008 ::
No tag for this post. No commentsBy Brian F Johnson
Just before the holidays hit last month, AEG Live officials received notice from the Denver Zoo’s President and CEO Craig Piper, that the Zoo would be “unable to endorse the proposed music festival in City Park.”
The proposed Mile High Music and Arts Festival at City Park, according to AEG Live, was to be Denver’s answer to Austin City Limits; a multi-day, multi-stage event originally scheduled for mid-July.
From the Barstool of the Publisher - December, 2007
:: December 2007 ::
By Brian F Johnson
Is it just me, or is one of the most thrilling things in life discovering a new band on your own terms - finding that act that no matter how hard you try you just can’t get them out of your CD player, or off of your iPod?
Now, I’m pretty damn lucky, as I’ve had this happen many, many times in my life, but there’s still that amazing feeling each time, and as the Thanksgiving leftovers turn into science projects in the back of my refrigerator it is this for which I am thankful.
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From the Barstool of the Publisher - November, 2007
:: November 2007 ::
By Brian F. Johnson
Best wishes are in order this month. Actually, truth be told, they were in order last month, but we had already gone to press by the time the announcement was made.
After nearly five years of service to the musicians and music fans on the Front Range, Fox general manager John Caprio has moved on to take the spot as the G.M. for the Broomfield Event Center.
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From the Barstool of the Publisher - October, 2007
With this being the October issue, it’s pretty safe to say that summer is finally and quite officially over. But September — that month on the cusp with summer weather and an autumn calendar — certainly did its best to take the title of the best summer month for concerts.
Here’s the quick re-cap (in no particular order and with obvious omissions for space): two nights of Wilco, two nights of Yonder Mountain String Band, Snoop Dogg, The Killers, VHS or Beta, STS9, Built to Spill, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, the Black Crowes, Marc Ford (without the Crowes), Rilo Kiley, The Academy Is… and two nights of Monolith at Red Rocks, to name a few.
Each show was amazing and should provide enough momentum into the fall and winter to hold us freaks over until next spring, when we venture outside again for music.
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From the Barstool of the Publisher - August, 2007
By Brian F. Johnson
A lot of people are talking about death in the music industry these days. “CDs are dead” is the new hip catch-phrase of the last two years. These days you can’t swing a dead Sony Discman without hitting someone who will proclaim that it’s a dead media.
Satellite radio is still relatively new, but the viral proliferation of iPods may be lumping it together with cassettes and eight-tracks, or at least AM-FM radio.
But the final nails may have been driven into the CD and satellite radio coffins earlier this month when Bob Lefsetz, an industry legend who writes a column for celebrityacess.com, re-iterated the statement in his “Lefsetz Letter.”
In his column, hysterically but appropriately titled “Blood on the Click Wheel,” Lefsetz said he was talking to his shrink, who had just gotten a new car equipped with free satellite radio. He asked his head doc how he liked it and he learned that since the car also came with an iPod jack, that the guy hadn’t even used it. “Satellite radio,” Lefsetz wrote, “is a boy band with a minor hit, never to be heard from again.”
Lefsetz explained that the reason iPod is so easily killing these mediums, seemingly with its eyes closed, is that the iPod does one of the most magnificent things since the remote control: “It gives us what we want, when we want it,” and it does so quickly and easily at that. “Napster wounded the CD, but the iPod killed it,” Lefsetz wrote.
Truer words aren’t often uttered.
And you know what? I might not even shed a tear when the CD and satellite radio are placed in the ground. I hopped on the bandwagon early with the iPod (when the 10GB model was twice the size of the current 80GB model), and the only time I’ve listened to a CD or radio since is when my iPod battery ran out, or when I forgot it at home. The times I have had to flip through radio stations, I’m appalled at how bad it is. I heard, like, 15 Eagles songs in one one-hour trip and that’s just completely unnecessary.
So I’m going to agree with Lefsetz that these mediums are dead, or at least very riddled with cancer, but I’m going to say that it’s not the iPod that’s doing them in. What’s doing them in is the same thing that’s causing death in other areas of the business: Failure to change. The programming directors that still allow the Eagles to be played 400 times a day, they’re the fuckers killing radio, satellite or otherwise. The labels that want to give you 12 songs, and no bonus material or DVD on an $18 purchase, they’re the fuckers killing the CD.
The iPod isn’t the Kevorkian of those mediums, it’s the blindfold we can use to avoid seeing the gruesome death — and sometimes avoiding gross things is the best thing you can do.
See you at the shows.
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From The Barstool Of The Publisher - June, 2007
I remember when I was 16 years old, begging my parents to let my friends and I camp out at the mall on a Friday night so that we’d be first in line for concert tickets on Saturday morning. This was long before the internet made ticket buying what it is today. We froze our asses off that night but we were first in line for what we thought was the concert event of the decade — Journey.
At 10 a.m., when the sports store that housed the Ticketmaster outlet opened, we proudly approached the counter expecting to walk out with the front row seats we thought we had earned that night in the cold.
But alas, we ended up with nose bleed seats, tucked so far up and back from the stage that we could almost touch the commemorative banners that hang from the rafters of the Philadelphia Spectrum. We had gotten shafted.
Marquee Tags: Getting in Demand Tickets, Internet Ticket BuyingNo comments