Rob Chartier ~ Contemplation... : Music

Kiss my a** iTunes...

Rob Chartier — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:59:00 GMT

I will be moving my blog out of asp.net and over to blogs.mscorlib.com permanently.

In the mean time I will be echo'ing the titles here until most of you move your habits to that site instead of this one. Here is the main RSS feed for the new site you can subscribe too.

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So one of the biggest pains that I have been dealing with for a while now is maintaining iTunes on my primary home machine which my wife and I frequently use.

Without getting why exactly I hate iTunes (that should be obvious to most, other than those silly Mac people) I wanted to let you know that you do not have to suffer in the iTunes world. WinAmp can handle your iPod just as well.

First off, buy WinAmp, it rocks. Dont kid yourself anymore. Secondly get and install the ml_ipod plug-in. Its as simple as that. WinAmp will do the rest for you.

Lastly, you can also take WinAmp "portable". You can either tell it to install directly onto your flash drive, or copy/paste your winamp installation over onto your drive. Take it anywhere, plug in your drive and your done. So easy.

I have yet to see if my Pro registration will migrate from machine to machine with me or if it does something silly like use the registry.

Life just got better.

Slipknot at the PNE Forum

Rob Chartier — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 19:27:00 GMT

Slipknot has been on my top 10 list for a few years now and they finally decided to pay Vancouver a visit. Great Show!

Opening for them was Killswitch Engage and Unearthed; an all ages show.

The PNE forum (just a big ass room with a stage at one end) was a needed break from the typical Commodore Ballroom (a fairly large night club). The line up in the "Beer Garden" sucked and was expensive.

I'm sure some of you saw Slipknot perform on Jay Leno a while back. They stuck out like a sore thumb. I think Jay was scared for his life. A bunch of weird fucks in clown suits jumping around and banging on shit with bats.

Amazing to see a group of 9 or 10 guys feed off of each other for energy, which in turns feeds into the crowd and enormous mosh pit.

About 1/2 way through the performance he got everyone to shut up and actually go down on one knee. The entire crowd was down. He instructed us what his que will be when we all can get up. Amazing to see that the entire crowd actually listened. Drunk kids, adults, stoners, cronics, goths, everyone in synch waiting in anticipation for the single word to jump and finally it came and we all screamed and jumped to our feet. Fun.

I wonder if Steve Ballmer was trying to have this effect in is famous "Developer Developer developer" speech back in the day. Ha.

One last thing. This wasnt the first time they came to Vancouver. They were here a few years ago, second stage at Ozzfest. Thats one festival I just lost of memory of....I wonder why... ;)

One of the dead was guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, 38, of the band Damageplan....

Rob Chartier — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 18:11:00 GMT

For those of you who do not know Dimebag or had the opportunity to hear him play he was one of the best in the world; beside greats like Jimmi Hendrix...

If you havnt heard about the band Damageplan, it was Dimebag's and Vinnie Pauls (brothers) latest adventure in music. But you might be more familiar with the band Pantera which both of them played with for many years.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/09/nightclub.shooting/index.html (watch out for the annoying popups)

Makes you wonder how some guy got a gun into the club and what his motive was to target the two brothers.

Headbangers Ball...

Rob Chartier — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 18:44:00 GMT

Last night I attended the Headbangers ball with a few friends, and of course my fiance.

Awesome show. If it comes your way make sure you attend.

Himsa was the first on stage. I wasnt impressed. Sounded more like a rabid barking dog. Enough.

Bleeding Through was on second. Much better. More along the same lines of Himsa (the rabid dog), but much more fine tuned and smooth.

Arch Enemy was up next. Some say she stole the show! This was my second time seeing them. (flashback)A while back while I was in Vegas speaking at a JupiterMedia conference we noticed that Slayer and Arch Enemy had a show that same night so we bought tickets right away. Oh yeah, this is the concert that I dragged Dave Penton to. I think it ruined him. ;)(/flashback) Anyways, the metal industry is dominated by males and its nice to see a single female (the lead singer) is doing such a damn good job.

Finally the big show. Cradle of Filth. A band I've been waiting for a long time to see perform live. The only words I can use to describe their performance was... fucking onslaught... Dani Filth was crazy. Amazing vocals, amazing drums, amazing riffs. Defintely made up for the rabid barking dog.

Cheap tickets, excellent music. Keep it up!

Next show is already planned. Slipknot in January.

Fear Factory (3rd Time), Lamb of God, Children of Bodom (twice), Throwdown

Rob Chartier — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 15:46:00 GMT

Back on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 we (a bunch of friends and the Fiancé), all hit the Commodore Ballroom for another metal concert. This was my roommates younger brother's first time at a metal concert and first time in a mosh pit (Go Dev!), he of course was grinning ear to ear as we departed the event in the limo.

Fear Factory (not Fear Factor, the lame TV show) put on an exceptional show. I've said it before and I will say it again, they have to be the best bad I have ever seen live, and would see them live anytime that I get the chance to.

Lamb of God, which is supposedly the next big thing for the Metal scene, put on a great show but I thought could have did a better job. I've listened to a few of their tracks over the last few months and have always enjoyed it but I think they are plagued with the same curse that Hatebreed has; they suck live.

I didn't spend much time in front of the speakers this time or in the mosh pit so my ears were not plagued with the 2 day ringing after the event. I remember after Korn one year I heard the ringing something like 4 days later.

Excellent show, for only $35.

Next concert coming in early December is Cradle of Filth.

Copy protection on Beastie Boys Latest Release...

Rob Chartier — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 19:38:00 GMT

Whats the quickest and easiest way to turn thousands of fans off of purchasing your music?

First came The Metallica Corporation. Now the Beasties.

Musicians and the RIAA need to realize they will never be able to stop the trading of music online, they will simply cause the fans to begin hating the band and its music and hinder sales. It would be interesting to see if the drop in downloads of Metallica's music was due to them threating theose 12 year olds that were stealing it, or if it was due to the fact that all of their new music sucked ass and that they lost the fan devotion because of those petty lawsuits.

I've said it before, and I will say it again. What they need to do is simply produce higher quality content (more than one track that is worth listening too per album), with more “add-ins“ (inserts/dvd extras and such), at a significantly lower price.

In Canada the average price for a decent CD these days is still well over $20 in most retail locations; and on those releases they typically only have from 9 to 15 tracks. Drop the price way down and make it worth my time and money to go out and purchase it.

ps. Is it just me, or should the Beasties be renamed to “The Beastie Old Men”?

huhu

iMesh is crap...

Rob Chartier — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 03:40:00 GMT

I was pointed to this new P2P download app by my Dad and was extremely disgusted by it.

NOTE: DO NOT INSTALL iMESH!!

As with most proggies like this you must accept the fact that they install a bunch of AD Programs. The always hated Gator (GMT), the MyWeb IE plugin, and even the BIG piece of crap "New Dot Net" client. This one lets you know they are installing it, but doesnt give you the option to NOT install the additional proggies.
Well it took 1/2 second to agree to install and about 1/2 hour to uninstall; a few reboots, even had to boot up into safe mode to get rid of some of the shell integration of some damn DLL. (c:\program files\newdotnet\...).
P2P is all good and we must understand that nothing is free in this world, but Jesus these guys need to cut back. One maybe two AD Programs are enough, but 4+ is just too much.

Once you get past that, the actual UI is muddled and confusing. Not to mention I couldnt really find anything of use to me. I admit, I only did a few quick search's for some popular music -slipknot, death, korn- with little luck.

Next time maybe I will wait for someone else to beta test these new tools and to blog about it. ;)

Canada, Copy Levy on blank audio recording media...

Rob Chartier — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 21:42:00 GMT

I recently went to my local London Drugs and decided to grab 50 more blank CDR's for some backups that need to be done at home and work (amonst other things). They advertised a price of $29.99, which I felt was a decent price so I grabbed a pack.

Little did I know that their advertised price did NOT include the relatively new Copy Levy that we have in Canada. An additional $10.50 on the price shocked me. I quickly ran to the Computer Department and got a refund. I dont belive I should have to pay the levy for backup CD's.

Interesting enough, this tax was put in place to accomodate those people that pirate/copy music but they have no way to ensure that the media is used for that specific purpose nor do they pay that money to any artist or recording organization. Seems weird that our government wants exploit this fight and take a very undeserved piece of the pie.

Ill find a shop in town that doesnt charge the levy, cash only, no questions.

Interesting Q/A in this faq:

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Can I legally share music over the internet?

The simple answer is NO.

If you post a song on the internet, or make it available to others via a peer-to-peer network, or if you send it to someone as an email attachment or via FTP, you are considered to be making a public transmission of the work. It is also clearly not for your own private use. You would be infringing copyright unless you had explicit permission from the rights holders.

However, unless the legislation is changed or the courts interpret matters differently, it appears that making a private copy for your own use of a musical work downloaded in any manner from the internet is not an infringement of copyright. In their decision, the Copyright Board states:

The regime does not address the source of the material copied. There is no requirement in Part VIII that the source copy be a non-infringing copy. Hence, it is not relevant whether the source of the track is a pre-owned recording, a borrowed CD, or a track downloaded from the Internet.

The more complex answer to the question posed above is you cannot post a song on the internet in any manner, but you can make a private copy of any songs you find on the net.

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DevilDriver, Moonspell, Opeth...

Rob Chartier — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:57:00 GMT

No, they are not new Microsoft code names for new and exciting technology which wont be released for years, but instead they are the names of the bands which I saw live last night at the Commodore last night.

We actually arrived late and were only able to catch last few songs of DevilDriver's set, unfortunately they were my driving force for going to watch the show. You might recognize front man Farfara from Coal Chamber, from what I hear he felt that Coal Chamber didnt go down the path that he had wanted (heavy fucking metal) so he decided to leave and start up DevilDriver. Either way, the last few songs we did get to see they really kicked ass. Damn good too see he seperated from Coal Chamber and went his own way. This bad has a future, IMHO.

Next up was Moonspell [official site] (from Portugal). They had the best set of the night (yes even better than Opeth, Ill explain why in a bit). Their dynamic set from long drawn out -slow- melodies, to extreme beats and ear drum shattering screaming was really exciting to watch. I will definetly be digging into their music more, hopefully some of the local music stores have the balls to actually keep their stuff in stock.

Last up was Opeth (iirc from Sweden). Now from these guys you would expect some serious metal., this was not the case tonight though. They gave us the excuse that their drummer was sick, and even went so far as to say he head back home. It appears that he will be back with the band tonight for their performance in Seattle. Maybe he just didnt feel like playing in Canada? So with no drummer what options did they have? Well they offered us a full refund, or a rebate of $5 at the door. We took the $5, hell we were not there just for Opeth either way.

So their solution was to have their drum tech play with them for the first part of their set, about 5 songs, all really slow, and from previous year's album releases. It felt like the crowd was going to explode. They came for metal and moshing, they got a mixture of Nirvana, and acoustic 80's rock. Not a very good impression. Half way through their set they annouced that they wanted to get into more of their heavy shit, so they enlisted the drummer form Strapping Young Lads (cant find a url), a great local band. This guy had only a few hours to learn a couple of their songs and he did it well. Amazing drums. Finally the crowd got what they wanted and they enjoyed the hell out of it. Two, maybe three tracks later (by then I had enough whiskey in my system to blur the lines) they wrapped up their set. How shitty, but I guess we were warned.

If your in Seattle tonight, or in the path of this band for this tour, get up off your ass, stop coding and check them out.

Now go back to your regular reading.