Dave’s thinking about getting a MacBook Pro…but E.J. is encouraging him to wait

Well, I haven’t made a post in a few moons, now, so I thought I’d share with you one of the reasons why: My ongoing deliberation over whether or not to purchase a new MacBook Pro laptop computer. (In case you don’t know what one is, you can find out here.) However, by sending me recent Apple rumor threads like this, this and this, E.J. is, so far, successfully persuading me to wait it out in case Apple comes out with an updated model of the device, which they are supposedly going to do soon. How long can I wait? Only time will tell…

Update: live music archives online, JFJO show

Had the chance to witness an incredible performance last night by the highly atypical piano jazz trio Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey in Norman. (You can read a brief preview of the show here.) The show was part of the 2007 fall Groovefest and was scheduled to be held outside in a park. But due to the threat of a lightning storm, it was moved inside to a small, hole-in-the-wall venue called the Deli. The energy was perfect, and the band absolutely tore it up.

The band recently took on a new, younger drummer, and the energy he brings is indispensible. If you’ve heard JFJO before, you know their music can be both electric and acoustic and can range from the avant-garde to more traditonal jazz by the likes of Ellington, Monk, and Mingus. But last night, in an all-electric show, they also brought the funk — even more so than usual — and they applied the punk aesthetic to a jazz trio in a way I’ve seldom heard before.

Needless to say, this morning I’ve been trying to find some live JFJO performances online that bear resemblance to the marvelous spectacle I observed last night. Of course, I checked out the Live Music Archive that I blogged about previously. But I also found some good stuff at nugs.net, and found some tracks that are quite similar to the ones I heard last night.

While I was at it, I browsed around the nugs site to check out what else is available from other artists. It appears that nugs serves as a clearing house of sorts, where interested persons can see what live digital recordings are out there, somewhere, online for, say, Phish, Widespread Panic, JFJO, or some other outfit that could potentially be labeled as a “jam band”. I guess, since tape trading became a popular thing initially among Grateful Dead fans, it only makes sense that most live digital music would be centered around the jam band scene.

And sure enough, another good place to find live digital downloads is at the website of the Bonnaroo festival — an annual event in Tennessee that began a few years ago to give all the jam bands and their fans a place to congregate and “freak out”. Also, if you’re a fan of Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule, it looks like you can find some good stuff at this site, too.

I should point out that you have to pay for most of the downloads at the nugs and Bonnaroo sites (though nugs does have a “free stash“), while the downloads at the Live Music Archive are free. I don’t know if the quality of the pay-for shows are, on average, better than the free ones. But either way, there seems to be some good stuff out there.

And finally, here are links to some killer JFJO shows similar to last night’s; sound quality may vary. Some of the songs the band played last night were “Oklahoma Stomp”, “Dove’s Army of Love”, “Santiago”, and the closer, a cover of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. Outstanding.

[Update: Just found a good article on another recent JFJO show that elaborates a little more on some of the aforementioned songs and states, quite rightly, that the fellas of JFJO are "on top of their game".]

Fans say Radiohead’s online-only album of poor sound quality, may just be marketing gimmick

I find this quite hilarious. According to this MTV News story, some Radiohead fans are peeved because they pre-ordered the band’s new album — which, in case you haven’t heard, is only available online – and then found out that it’s only available in a bit rate of 160. I don’t know much about bit rates (though Chris will hopefully explain it to me), but apparently a 160 bit rate is pretty lame, far inferior to the 320 bit rate that Radiohead allegedly distributes their other albums in, and far below CD quality (though Radiohead’s guitarist says 160 bits is still better than iTunes — I don’t know … Chris, please help!).

Some disgruntled fans are even going so far as to say this Internet-only release, in which you get to decide what you want to pay for the album — and which has been hailed as a revolutionary new approach that could shake up the music industry as we know it — wasn’t radical at all. It was just a bunch of pre-hype to get people ready for the release of the physical CD, due out next year. So it’s possible that the indie rock music intelligentsia (a long, pretentious list) just got played by one of their Lancelot bands. Priceless.

[On another note, regardless of your personal opinions about the state of MTV, have you looked at their website lately? Every time you refresh it, the background is different. The arrangement is essentially the same; only the background changes. I know, I know, they're surely not the first to do it. But still a cool idea.]

Incredible live music archive

While working on a story about Oklahoma’s own Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, I stumbled yesterday upon a pretty incredible digital archive of live music, called (what else) the Live Music Archive, part of (again, what else) the Internet Archive.

Obviously, some shows are of better quality than others. But already I’ve listened to portions of some fantastic shows — many from 2007 — of acts like JFJO (with their new drummer), Charlie Hunter (with his new lineup), as well as the Derek Trucks Band, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, the Aquarium Rescue Unit, and the Rebirth Brass Band.

There are also links to collections of shows from slightly more established artists like Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Ryan Adams, and even the Smashing Pumpkins.

Like a lot of digital music archives (at least the ones I’ve seen), many of the artists featured here, including some of those mentioned above, are stalwarts of the “jam band” scene. For instance, there are 562 shows listed for Blues Traveler, 745 for the Yonder Mountain String Band, 779 for Phil Lesh & Friends, and a whopping 1,078 for the String Cheese Incident. Sadly, I couldn’t find any of my favorite garage-blues duo, the Black Keys, who have been known to perform at jam-band festivals like Bonnaroo.

Oh yeah, they also have 2,875 shows listed for some band called the Grateful Dead. Go figure. None for Phish, Widespread Panic, or the Allman Brothers, though. Maybe those are housed elsewhere.

All-in-all, they have tens of thousands of shows from hundreds of artists, going years back — even into the ’90s (oooooh…).

One particularly great thing about the site is that, with many of the shows, you can either listen or download. Or, of course, both. In other words, you don’t have to know how to deal with Kbps, M3U, Flac, or other kinds of data options that, quite frankly, I have no clue about. Often, all you have to do is press the “play” button. (Though, in all honesty, I haven’t tried to download any of the shows yet, so the site may or may not work well in that aspect — I’d love some feedback if you know.)

Frankly, I can’t believe I’ve never heard about this site or seen it written about anywhere before now. Maybe I’m just out-of-touch. I have a feeling I have only begun to scratch the surface of what both it and its companion sites have to offer.

Let me know if you’re aware of any other good digital archives out there like this one. One other I know of is at nugs.net.

First Post: WordPress, Coltrane, etc.

Thanks to my good friend, Chris, for getting me started on my first WordPress blog. A few days ago, when I initially viewed the WordPress sites and a few sample WordPress blogs, I was so struck by their high aesthetic quality that I had what some might refer to as a “moment of Zen”. Having just spent the previous two weeks tinkering with Blogger, this was quite a change, indeed.

As I write this, I’m reminded of a conversation with Chris and I’s mutual good friend, E.J., with whom (along with our wives) I’d just seen the film Sunshine. E.J. and I were discussing a scene near the end of the film in which one of the main characters has his own “moment of Zen”, so to speak. As we veered onto the topic of such moments, E.J. asked if I’d ever had any of my own. I paused, and then recounted that yes, as a matter of fact, I had recently experienced a Zen-like moment — or closer to 10 minutes, actually — while listening to John Coltrane‘s spellbinding rendition of “Afro-Blue” from the album Live at Birdland.

The entire album is truly one of my favorites, featuring Trane’s legendary quartet of McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and the seismic Elvin Jones on drums. But it is that opening number that truly takes my breath away. More so, even, than the first time I learned about WordPress.