End of Silence

This story (via Slashdot) is all the evidence I need of how poorly things are going for Rollins. I suppose I should reserve judgement until we find out what’s actually on the album, but given Shatner’s last foray into music, can we really expect anything other than comedy? BTW, the album is out of print, but if you really must hear it (and everyone needs to at least once in their lifetime), you can still get the two most well-known covers on this. What would we do without Rhino to preserve such classics? I’m fairly certain that I know someone with the original CD. I think I’ll borrow it from him and rip it. Those that are interested can email me and get access to the mp3s. Or you can probably find it on one of the P2P networks, but that would be wrong.

Lisa Rein quotes a Salon article that I read a few days ago which clearly outlines the problems with iTunes and other pay for download services. I haven’t signed up for any of these yet for the very reasons that he outlines. You can’t play stuff downloaded or ripped with Windows Media Player in iTunes and vice versa. Additionally, the selection is still not what I would like it to be. I’ve purposely used Musicmatch to rip songs into mp3 format to avoid the problems he’s talking about. However, now that Musicmatch is aligned with Dell, I’m not sure how long that will be an option. All of this is just going to drive the file swapping underground. The easiest way to deal with this is form private groups of people with similar music tastes and distribute the wealth among the members. For instance, I buy a CD, rip it and share it with my small group of friends and then they do the same. It should be relatively easy, especially for those with their own FTP sites. Plus, there’s still tons of other alternatives.

I was lucky enough to invited along to the Foo Fighters show last night in San Antonio and lucky enough to have a wife who was willing to deal with kids while I did the RAWK thing. The seats weren’t too bad, back right corner from the stage just off the floor. Those that had tickets to the general admission floor had to get a wristband in order to gain access to the floor. We arrived just before the Transplants went on. They’re sort of a punk rock supergroup with Travis, the drummer from Blink 182, and Tim from Rancid/Operation Ivy. As one would expect, they sounded a little like Rancid with some extra Clash thrown in and some rap for good measure. They weren’t very remarkable.

During the Transplants set, we noticed that people were going down to the front row of the bleacher seats and simply walking onto the floor. After watching about 20 people do this and stocking up with a few beers, we decided to go for it ourselves, fully expecting to be the only people to get caught. We walked down without any hassle from security and our mediocre seats turned into standing about 20 feet from center stage as the Transplants finished their set. By the time the Foo Fighters started, I think there were more people on the floor without wristbands than with them. Surprisingly, the place wasn’t totally packed, so the extra people weren’t a problem.

The Foo Fighters’ stage set looked very similar to the set that you see in the “All My Life” video and that video does a good job of conveying what the show was like. You can check out the set list here. They played a pretty good mix from their four albums. “Everlong” was clearly the crowd favorite and their last number. The sound was good and the band was tight. I saw them in late 1995/early 1996 on tour for the first album at Austin Music Hall and was less than impressed with the performance. This time they managed to have an arena-type rock show and still keep the small club feel. Good time. Good show.