Archive for the 'Musika' Category

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mobiBLU DAH-1500i

Published on September 1, 2005 in Geek, General and Musika. 1 Comment

So I broke down and bought a new mp3 player to take with me when I go jogging… well jogging/walking… well really more walking than jogging, but I’m still building up toward that. Anyway, looks like it should be a pretty cute little unit. Key features:

  • It’s about a 1″ cube
  • has a little OLED display
  • comes in 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB versions (I got the 512)
  • has an FM radio (can even record it at up to 160kbps)
  • 8-10 hours of battery life when playing mp3s
  • USB2.0 and looks like any other flash drive when you connect it to a computer

Seems pretty slick, and operates at the same price point as the iPod shuffle. Oh, and it also supports WMA and DRMed WMA for whatever that’s worth. And it’s sold exclusively at Walmart of all places.



Reviews: I4U, PCMag

CU Music, Parasol and Angie

Published on July 25, 2005 in General and Musika. Closed

A while back Lee clued me into eMusic, a cool indie music mp3 site (subscription based, but their high-quality, mp3s unencumberd by any crappy drm). Managed to stumble over Angie Heaton who has a few albums out. Was listening to her when Amanda asked me who that was… when I told her, she said Rachel had listened to her. I took that as a cue to ask Rachel what she listened to next time I saw her. She clued me into the fact Angie’s local and also recommended another local act, Sarge. Loved their 3 albums, and found the lead singer Elizabeth Elmore is currently in The Reputation up in Chicago. All good stuff, but like all good things I hungered for more.

Found out the bassist from Sarge, Rachel Switzky (turns out she played with Sarge while in grad school at UIUC), had also played in Corndolly… that also happened to feature Angie on drums. This was the first item I’d run across that wasn’t available on eMusic, but was available from Parasol Records. Richy had mentioned they had a brick & mortar shop over in Urbana, so I checked their website and noticed Liquorette, another band featuring Angie. Headed on over there after work and part way through checking out it came out that the person helping me was in fact Angie herself. Very cool. She was even nice enough to walk around with me and make recommendations… suggested her albums, which I already had, and Sarge’s albums, which I also already had… :) . Very cool though.

I suppose that while I’m at it, I should mention that CU has traditionally been an indie-pop hotbed. You’ve got the aformentioned artists, Red Hot Valentines, Fiery Furnace, Wofie, The Blackouts (now The Living Blue), Beezus, and who knows how many more. Oh, and REO Speedwagon was from here too, for what that’s worth.

Evanescence: DI Photo

Published on May 10, 2004 in General and Musika. Closed

Looks like the DI did actually send a photographer to the Evanescence concert… they just never bothered to publish a story or any photos about it until now. Basically, they’ve got a feature on the DI Finest Photos of 2004 (little presumptuous seeing as the year’s not even half over). But apparently, they thought this photo of Evanescence was one of their best of the year. Why it wouldn’t have warranted publishing earlier on that basis, I don’t know. Maybe they should have titled it “Finest Photos for Stories We Didn’t Publish.”


Ben Folds followup

Published on April 7, 2004 in General and Musika. Closed

So Richy had some nice news for me. Turns out somebody managed to get a high quality bootleg of Monday’s concert up by Tuesday afternoon. Quality’s quite good, so you may want to check it out. Also, Richy’s got his pictures up from the concert now. You can see them here.

Ben Folds

Published on April 6, 2004 in General and Musika. 1 Comment

So Amanda and I (along with Richy, Carrie, Lee, and Dan) went to the Ben Folds concert last night at Foellinger. The show was great! The opening act was a great string trio led by David Berkeley on guitar, and assisted by Will Robertson on upright bass and Adam Buchwald(?) on mandolin. They were really good. I loved the mix of the 3 instruments. You should definitely check out David Berkeley if you get the chance (there’s a mp3 available for download on his page of a song “Fire Sign” that was featured in CBS’ show Without a Trace). Really good stuff. Had to break down and pick up his two albums after the show.

And Ben Folds was absolutely freakin’ awesome. Quite a showman, and really damned hilarious. Does some amazing stuff with a piano. I never knew you could get that sort of sound out of one. Of course, I’ve also never seen anyone pound the shit out of one quite like that either. He really rocked that bitch last night. And hearing him do Liz Phair’s Chopsticks brought a certain smirk to my face. I know I’ve heard some live stuff the two of them have done together, but I wasn’t expecting that last night. All I can say is it was one hell of a show.

Ben Folds Ben Folds
(photos courtesy of the Daily Illini)
The DI even has a story on the show.

Evanescence

Published on February 26, 2004 in General and Musika. Closed

So I saw Evanescence in concert this past Tuesday at the Assembly Hall. Great show.

First opening act, Atomship, was kinda eh. They weren’t awful, but they certainly weren’t very good either. Lead singer was pretty weird. Had something vaguely resembling a British accent until he mentioned they were from Mississippi when he suddenly reverted to a good ol’ boy accent. And he had this weird twitchy, seizurey sort of “dance” thing. Bizarre.

Second opening act, Default, put on a really good show. I’ve actually heard some of their stuff on the radio and thought it was catchy stuff. The bassist actually did this wild thing with his pigtails… Believe me, it’s cooler than it sounds.

Evanescece though… They put on a great show. Amy Lee in particular was quite impressive. Man, she’s got one set of lungs on her. She was wearing this interesing white poofy prom dress over a pair of cargo pants along with her trademark b&w striped arm warmers. Their light show was a bit much for me though. Bright and flashy to the point where it was hard to actually watch the band which is what I went there to see. In particular they had some bright white halogens that were targetted out in the audience and were frequently tied to the drum beat. Got to the point where I was timing my blinks to the drum beat to avoid being blinded. Amy gave a really great show though. And I hadn’t realized that she plays all the piano stuff on their album (as demonstrated on a baby grand on stage).

Anyway, I’ll have to see if I can’t come up with any photos if the DI puts any up like they did for Liz Phair. Ooh, and I just saw them on Letterman as I was writing this. Will have to see if I can download a copy since I wasn’t paying close attention…

Liz Phair followup

Published on December 2, 2003 in General and Musika. Closed

Just wanted to post a quick followup to my previous Liz Phair post. Found this pretty cool shot of her performing at Foellinger (courtesy of the Daily Illini).

Liz Phair at Foellinger Auditorium

I lost count, but I believe she rotated between 3 Fender electrics and some sort of acoustic during the course of the show with her roadie retuning between swaps. She claimed she had to swap out guitars a lot because he would have to retune depending on the song. Apparently she used to smoke and had a much deeper voice, which is noticeable if you compare her older stuff to the current stuff. Hence, the guitar has to be retuned based on what era a song is from to account for her now higher voice.

She also mentioned that her white Fender recently had to undergo an overhaul after she took it underwater in a recent video shoot (certainly got me curious to see if I could track down some of her videos). She has a habit of stuffing her pick behind the pickguard when she plays, and I guess loses a fair number because when they opened it up they found all sorts of old picks hidden in there.

Speaking of guitars, I’m not sure what the problem was, but she kept losing the high E string on the same guitar. I’m not sure if it kept snapping because it was tuned too high, or more likely coming detached (I honestly don’t know enough about electrics to say).

Very cool experience overall. Being in the fifth row kicked much ass (even if my ears were still stuffed with cotton till noon the next day), and the size of the theater gave the concert a nice intimate feel. Foellinger’s much more cozy than say, Assembly Hall. Not that being in a venue of that magnitude would be terrible, but I liked the more personal feel of this concert. Anyways, I’m now on a quest to get my hands on tons of Liz Phair stuff. Her 4 main albums should be relatively obtainable (considering I already have the oldest and newest), but trying to get my hands on out of print EPs and such (not to mention concert bootlegs) should prove more interesting. So if anyone ever runs across a good source of Liz mp3s (unobtainable stuff only, not her main albums as that would be wrong), especially the original Girlysound demos, please hook me up!

Liz Phair

Published on November 18, 2003 in General and Musika. Closed

Yeah, so things have been pretty busy the past several months, and I haven’t made any posts here since the fall semester started. Anyway, just wanted to pop on here to say I went to the Liz Phair concert last night and it rocked. Quite outstanding. If you haven’t heard her stuff, and like “chick rock”, I’d suggest checking her out. Her most recent album is more pop than her older stuff. Apparently had the same production crew (“The Matrix”) as the Avril Lavigne album. But it’s still quite good. And her live performance is out-frigging-standing. She’s pretty funny in person.