Been going through my Amy Winehouse mp3s of course. Thinking about how cool her attitude seemed when I first “Rehab”. I’m not a 12-stepper or anything, but I’ve cut way back on the sauce since then. I think her antics may have helped show how uncool it can get. Not to preach cause some people handle it fine, but I seriously stopped listening to her completely after being into her a lot and it shows in the duplicates in my playlists from songs being on numerous mixes. I’ll posts some of these old mixes again when I figure out a more clever way of doing it. They were made to be put on a CDR and were mostly for car listening—it’s all about segues and repeatability. My car CD player broke and I would replace it with a digital player if I had the money and I bet you would too. The CDR mix is not coming back. But I did spend a lot of time on em and like how they turned out, and there’s some really oddball tracks I got off myspace. That myspace period of 05-07 when it worked had a vibe that seemed to be going somewhere that just evaporated. Moving on, but trying not to forget it entirely. Some good stuff.

Been posting on 8tracks since April but haven’t been posting them anywhere or even linking to it. Working on a new one one now, doing one a month. I like the short mix idea. You can get a pro account and post longer mixes, but c’mon. Give everyone a break. You can link to other mixes to play after yours out of your liked mixes. It’s nice. No big deal. I always get stupid idea for mixes but never make them cause I take mixes way to serious. If you’re forced to keep it at 8 songs it can be fun. I like fun, on occasion. The only thing about 8 tracks mixes is they only play in order the first time through. I still sweat the segues. You’ve got to pay attention for 8 songs is all.

Got a profile on Mixcloud too, but didn’t post anything, might not. It’s very pro at Mixcloud. You can do more like a podcast there if you like. Thought about it, but I need to do through iTunes I think and I refuse to set it up on my main machine here. Unless there’s another way to make an m4a with chapters which is how they want you to it. I really need to get other laptop working. I was pretty terrified for a while to be working with no backup and lately by anxiety has really subsided, but for no good reason. I’m not completely fucked if this machine tanks, but I’m mostly fucked. Been using various services for cloud storage, I’m not totally buying into that concept for everything, but it’s obviously useful. Storage is not the only issue tho, of course.

But that’s got nothing to do with mixes. But what does really? Isn’t a mix like ending a blog post? Not really but they’ve got to end somehow.

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I think everyone has been moved by the recent tragedy of Amy Winehouse’s murder of 93 innocent people. Some wonder if we should still listen to her music. I think it’s pretty good. The music, not the murders. But was it that good? Maybe we made too big a deal out of it. She wasn’t much a live performer. Unless you count murdering 93 people performance art, which I DON’T.

RIP

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[edit: The singer's name in romaji is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. The song is by Nakata Yasutaka and the video is by 6%DOKIDOKI]

I’m sure everyone that isn’t actively avoiding current J-pop (most people) or me (again…) has seen this damn PON video. I watched this thing again today (for science) via FF’s autocomplete, frantically typing “ponponpon” and going to the page itself. I saw another upload by Warner Japan in the sidebar along with the expected response vids. Oh shit. They made this thing even crazier! There’s more animations added! The mix is different! Everything is crazier! Nnnnnnnnnnnope. Just me. Could be the heat, but I think this video definitely has caused some amount of brain damage:

July 16

July 18

If you’ve seen it already, watch the 2nd one first. It’s crazier. Yet it’s exactly the same. I had to make a draft post just to watch them at the same time, but why not share the insanity. There’s no way you’re leaving this post without watching this entire thing twice and then again simultaneously with a nice Steve Reich effect. (Planned! All planned!)

Did they take 2 whole days to realize they could have gone with a better preview image? The original is like the lone split second that looks like a normal video. But youtube’s default preview pic is exactly the midway point, which is at 2:07:

CONSPIRACY!

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Full Circle in Blackwood, NJ was my 2nd favorite record store in the 90s. If MTV walked up to you and asked about your opinion of a band in the 90s, (a then normal occurrence) you’d tell them you got the shirt at Full Circle first without hesitation, just like the guy in this video. Seriously! Where else were you getting Shonen Knife shirts? It’s where I got mine. Lotta my favorite records too. I started writing record reviews (there’s really drafts, really) and I’m trying to get through them without going off on how great this store was and how I never would’ve found that particular record any where else at that time. (Now I can refer back to this post.) The store itself still sort of exists under a different name as a video game store, with a fraction of the square footage. There was a painful to witness process where they sold off half and then half again to adjoining stores and sold more and more DVDs and games until they just changed the name or sold it completely to game guys, I don’t know.

The greatest thing about this store besides the general selection and huge used bins (thus the name), was the magazine and comicbook section. It eased my transition from comic-buying nerd to music-buying nerd. Now I never leave the house or buy anything, which is not true. But sadly it’s gotten close.

It is (of course) Shonen Knife Day. But I also found this Cibo Matto clip (same youtuber) with drummer Timo Ellis wearing a Third Street Jazz & Rock shirt:

Third Street was definitely my favorite record store of all time. It’s now a real estate office. Essentially the same store exits as AKA Music (really, no site?), but I’ve never gone there as much. (It’s only a block away from the old store, I just never find myself in Old City as much and rarely have record money when I do.) The store itself—separate from it’s inventory—was so cool at Third Street. All Jazz on the ground floor, Rock in the basement. Damn that basement was so cool. I spent the last Record Store Day at a Tunes, which is like a chain store in NJ. It’s indie, but it’s a chain store. You can’t really knock it cause they manage to survive still, but it was always on the edge of lame/cool (like, in my opinion, the idea of Record Store Day itself). I think the name AKA Music is a parody of “Tunes”, because their store is cooler and Tunes is kind of a lame name and both of these things are totally true. But I was in this store thinking, and I can only buy one record, which is ridiculous, to go into a store for an hour and buy one thing, but I’m there supporting this dying idea I still believe in for some reason. And the whole thing doesn’t feel that cool anymore, and I’m wondering how much of it is me, and how much is this particular store and whatnot. Because part of it is nostalgia, which is distorting, so I’m trying to look at it objectively.

But even the lamest CD store in the mall used to seem magical when that was the only place you could get music. It was the portal. The portal is in your room now, on the computer. Piracy is only part of it, cause you can buy all your music online as easily as steal it. I don’t see any way to give kids that magic back to a store. They try to do it with exclusives but it’s such a different thing to go somewhere only to get a limited collector’s item before it sells out. It makes records more like comics! That’s awful! Or maybe it’s not. I just had the illusion at some point in my life when I was getting into music that I was leaving Nerdland. This was it. We used to argue about if The Hulk could beat up The Thing and if Superman could outrun The Flash. Then we got into the “alternative” comics, and the gritty anti-heros. Then we got out of comics and into The Real Stuff. Zines. Punk. These guys are like real superheros doing real things. But they’re just regular guys who made different choices. And we are still nerds. No escape!

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