In case you dont frequently visit the site - lastfm.com had some interesting news recently - read below...taken from the lastfm.com blog. Very interesting stuff here...
Free the Music
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
by Richard Jones
A few days ago we sent out some cryptic invitations to a press conference in New York that Felix and Martin are presiding over. We’ve had fun in the office reading the rumors and speculation, but it’s time to spill the beans:
As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.
Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.
Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks to the desktop client and beyond.
Free full-length tracks are obviously great news for listeners, but also great for artists and labels, who get paid every time someone streams a song. Music on Last.fm is perpetually monetized. This is good because artists get paid based on how popular a song is with their fans, instead of a fixed amount.
We will be paying artists directly.
We already have licenses with the various royalty collection societies, but now unsigned artists can put their music on Last.fm and be paid directly for every song played. This helps to level the playing-field—now you can make music, upload it to Last.fm and earn money for each play. If you make music, you can sign up to participate for free.
We’re not printing money to pay for this—but the business model is simple enough: we are paying artists and labels a share of advertising revenue from the website.
Today we’re redesigning the music economy. There are already millions of tracks available, and we’re adding more every day. We will continue to work hard to bring this to everyone in the world.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Rascal Flatts in The New York Times
Check out the Rascal Flatts article / review from Madison Square Garden. Stay tuned for info. on possible Flo
rida shows!
rida shows!January 21, 2008
Music Review Rascal Flatts
Music Review Rascal Flatts
Power Ballads for Suburbanites
By JON PARELES
Wholesomeness reigned when Rascal Flatts headlined Madison Square Garden on Friday night. The top band in 21st-century country music, with four multimillion-selling albums and a fifth that has sold a million copies since September, Rascal Flatts is fearlessly contented and relentlessly inoffensive.
Exulting that the band had sold out the famous arena, its bassist, Jay DeMarcus, called out, “Madison by God Square by God Garden!” — no cuss words for Rascal Flatts. During “He Ain’t the Leavin’ Kind,” a song about the omnipresence of God, a group of United States marines marched onstage to stand at attention, which might have offended only those worried about separation of church and state.
The three core members of Rascal Flatts — Mr. DeMarcus and the singer Gary LeVox, both from Ohio, and the guitarist Joe Don Rooney, from Oklahoma — write and sing about happy marriages, undying love and dreams coming true. Sometimes the reassurance is interrupted by a heartbreak, which gives Mr. LeVox a chance to make his high, quavery voice extra tearful.
Although the eight-man band is based in Nashville and includes some country instruments, its pedal steel guitar or mandolin are usually more visible than audible. Rascal Flatts is, by and large, a power-ballad band. Like many current country acts, it sings for suburbanites, and its prime sources are 1970s and ’80s soft rock and arena pop: Steve Miller, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Eagles and, especially in its vocal harmonies, Crosby, Stills & Nash.
It’s a proficient band. Mr. Rooney has a whole arena-rock guitar vocabulary at his fingertips, from crunchy blues-rock riffs to commanding leads. As if insisting that the band isn’t led by its main frontman, Mr. LeVox, the other two founders had their own indulgent solo segments. Mr. DeMarcus sang James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and Mr. Rooney offered the concert’s most aggressive song: the Guess Who’s “American Woman.”
The band had country moments like the witty “Backwards,” about hearing a country song in reverse: “You get your truck back, you get your hair back, you get your first and second wife back.” But most of the time Rascal Flatts specialized in simpering and big buildups, amid an arena-rock spectacle of flashing video and fireworks. Settled heartland Americans certainly deserve songs that address their lives. The question is whether those songs have to be so cloying.
Kellie Pickler, who opened the concert, was dressed in a low-cut red top and knee-high leather boots with spike heels. But she could sound like an old-fashioned country singer, with a North Carolina drawl and some twangy tension in her voice. She did a Dolly Parton impression in “9 to 5,” while alluding to her own career-building appearance on “American Idol” (she didn’t win) by calling Ms. Parton “my definition of an American idol.”
Ms. Pickler’s 2006 album is entitled with her demographic credentials, “Small Town Girl” (BNA). In its songs Ms. Pickler offered minor skirmishes of the sexes — making a guy miss her by going out on the town in “Red High Heels,” dressing casually in “One of the Guys” — and the autobiography of being abandoned by her mother in “I Wonder.” Ms. Pickler has her own power ballads alongside her honky-tonk, and she’s not challenging any Nashville conventions, but at least she’s keeping some down-home charm.
By JON PARELES
Wholesomeness reigned when Rascal Flatts headlined Madison Square Garden on Friday night. The top band in 21st-century country music, with four multimillion-selling albums and a fifth that has sold a million copies since September, Rascal Flatts is fearlessly contented and relentlessly inoffensive.
Exulting that the band had sold out the famous arena, its bassist, Jay DeMarcus, called out, “Madison by God Square by God Garden!” — no cuss words for Rascal Flatts. During “He Ain’t the Leavin’ Kind,” a song about the omnipresence of God, a group of United States marines marched onstage to stand at attention, which might have offended only those worried about separation of church and state.
The three core members of Rascal Flatts — Mr. DeMarcus and the singer Gary LeVox, both from Ohio, and the guitarist Joe Don Rooney, from Oklahoma — write and sing about happy marriages, undying love and dreams coming true. Sometimes the reassurance is interrupted by a heartbreak, which gives Mr. LeVox a chance to make his high, quavery voice extra tearful.
Although the eight-man band is based in Nashville and includes some country instruments, its pedal steel guitar or mandolin are usually more visible than audible. Rascal Flatts is, by and large, a power-ballad band. Like many current country acts, it sings for suburbanites, and its prime sources are 1970s and ’80s soft rock and arena pop: Steve Miller, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Eagles and, especially in its vocal harmonies, Crosby, Stills & Nash.
It’s a proficient band. Mr. Rooney has a whole arena-rock guitar vocabulary at his fingertips, from crunchy blues-rock riffs to commanding leads. As if insisting that the band isn’t led by its main frontman, Mr. LeVox, the other two founders had their own indulgent solo segments. Mr. DeMarcus sang James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and Mr. Rooney offered the concert’s most aggressive song: the Guess Who’s “American Woman.”
The band had country moments like the witty “Backwards,” about hearing a country song in reverse: “You get your truck back, you get your hair back, you get your first and second wife back.” But most of the time Rascal Flatts specialized in simpering and big buildups, amid an arena-rock spectacle of flashing video and fireworks. Settled heartland Americans certainly deserve songs that address their lives. The question is whether those songs have to be so cloying.
Kellie Pickler, who opened the concert, was dressed in a low-cut red top and knee-high leather boots with spike heels. But she could sound like an old-fashioned country singer, with a North Carolina drawl and some twangy tension in her voice. She did a Dolly Parton impression in “9 to 5,” while alluding to her own career-building appearance on “American Idol” (she didn’t win) by calling Ms. Parton “my definition of an American idol.”
Ms. Pickler’s 2006 album is entitled with her demographic credentials, “Small Town Girl” (BNA). In its songs Ms. Pickler offered minor skirmishes of the sexes — making a guy miss her by going out on the town in “Red High Heels,” dressing casually in “One of the Guys” — and the autobiography of being abandoned by her mother in “I Wonder.” Ms. Pickler has her own power ballads alongside her honky-tonk, and she’s not challenging any Nashville conventions, but at least she’s keeping some down-home charm.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
FOO FIGHTERS with Jimmy Eat World and Against Me! at BankAtlantic Center - January 16 - REVIEW
Foo Fighters performed live at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, FL on January 16 - with special guests Jimmy Eat World and Against Me! Check out the review below from the Palm Beach Post!
Concert Review: Foo Fighters Kick Their Tour Off With A Scream
In the very near future, some industrious someone recording the ever-tumultuous history of rock-n-roll will surely note that one Dave Grohl was part of one of the most important, ground-breaking, elastically stylistic rock bands in history.
No, not that one. The Foo Fighters.
In the two-hour kick-butt party that was the Foo's tour debut Wednesday night at the BankAtlantic Center, Grohl and his merrily emphatic band of men (and one woman) rolled out a never-ending collection of songs that combine poignant melody and passionate screams, ditties suitable for both humming along and head-banging along to. And man, are there a lot of them.
"We've been a band for kind of a (bleeping) long time now. So we got lots and lots of (stuff) to play," said the charismatically scruffy Grohl, who as a frontman has morphed into something of a rock-n-roll P.T. Barnum, albeit an emphatically profane one given to shaking his shaggy head like Animal from "The Muppet Show."
It's true: somehow in the past decade, as rock journalists continuously canonized Nirvana, for whom Grohl played drums in its last incarnation, the Foo Fighters became a reliable musical mainstay. Like Green Day, the Grammy-nominated band is one of the only big '90s bands that has continued to stay relevant by evolving while still staying true to their raucous roots.
The set, proceeded by strong performances by Gainesville's Against Me! and the Foo Fighters' contemporaries Jimmy Eat World, was a break-neck tour through Foo Fighter history. There were selections from the Album of the Year-nominated "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" like "The Pretender," the anguished "Let It Die" and "But, Honestly" tossed in with older hits like "Times Like These," the stunning "The Best of You" and the jaunty "Big Me."
All throughout the show, the band threw out surprises: a small circular stage that literally descended from above into the floor section for an intimate middle set; a hilarious pre-encore bit where, shown on a screen from backstage, Grohl smoked, drank a beer and let the audience literally beg the band to come back and play some more.
Of course, they were already going to, and part of the Foo Fighter's down-to-earth lack of pretension is that they knew you knew they were coming back. For this tour the lineup includes past guitarist Pat Smear, percussionist Drew Hester, who Grohl joked was about to rock the audience's world with a triangle solo and string instrumentalist Jessy Greene. The new additions melded beautifully with Grohl, drummer Taylor Hawkins, bassist Nate Mendel and guitarist Chris Shifflet, and their chemistry is partly what makes the Foos so much fun to watch.
The other key parts of their success are the strength of the songs — "Everlong," for instance, remains the quintessential rock love song with its sedated vulnerability that gives way to loud, passionate insistence - and the cursing charm and energy of his frontman. The moment that best exemplified that Wednesday night was, again, during "Everlong," which Grohl sang mostly solo, isolated from his band on the small second stage. He sang the heartfelt lover's plea in solitude and in stripped-down fashion - "The only thing I'll ever ask of you/You gotta promise not to stop when I say 'When'" - and then exploded down the long walkway to the main stage to electrify that pleading.
It was heart-rendering, heart-pounding and ear-splitting — all the same ingredients as the Foo Fighters themselves.
No, not that one. The Foo Fighters.
In the two-hour kick-butt party that was the Foo's tour debut Wednesday night at the BankAtlantic Center, Grohl and his merrily emphatic band of men (and one woman) rolled out a never-ending collection of songs that combine poignant melody and passionate screams, ditties suitable for both humming along and head-banging along to. And man, are there a lot of them.
"We've been a band for kind of a (bleeping) long time now. So we got lots and lots of (stuff) to play," said the charismatically scruffy Grohl, who as a frontman has morphed into something of a rock-n-roll P.T. Barnum, albeit an emphatically profane one given to shaking his shaggy head like Animal from "The Muppet Show."
It's true: somehow in the past decade, as rock journalists continuously canonized Nirvana, for whom Grohl played drums in its last incarnation, the Foo Fighters became a reliable musical mainstay. Like Green Day, the Grammy-nominated band is one of the only big '90s bands that has continued to stay relevant by evolving while still staying true to their raucous roots.
The set, proceeded by strong performances by Gainesville's Against Me! and the Foo Fighters' contemporaries Jimmy Eat World, was a break-neck tour through Foo Fighter history. There were selections from the Album of the Year-nominated "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" like "The Pretender," the anguished "Let It Die" and "But, Honestly" tossed in with older hits like "Times Like These," the stunning "The Best of You" and the jaunty "Big Me."
All throughout the show, the band threw out surprises: a small circular stage that literally descended from above into the floor section for an intimate middle set; a hilarious pre-encore bit where, shown on a screen from backstage, Grohl smoked, drank a beer and let the audience literally beg the band to come back and play some more.
Of course, they were already going to, and part of the Foo Fighter's down-to-earth lack of pretension is that they knew you knew they were coming back. For this tour the lineup includes past guitarist Pat Smear, percussionist Drew Hester, who Grohl joked was about to rock the audience's world with a triangle solo and string instrumentalist Jessy Greene. The new additions melded beautifully with Grohl, drummer Taylor Hawkins, bassist Nate Mendel and guitarist Chris Shifflet, and their chemistry is partly what makes the Foos so much fun to watch.
The other key parts of their success are the strength of the songs — "Everlong," for instance, remains the quintessential rock love song with its sedated vulnerability that gives way to loud, passionate insistence - and the cursing charm and energy of his frontman. The moment that best exemplified that Wednesday night was, again, during "Everlong," which Grohl sang mostly solo, isolated from his band on the small second stage. He sang the heartfelt lover's plea in solitude and in stripped-down fashion - "The only thing I'll ever ask of you/You gotta promise not to stop when I say 'When'" - and then exploded down the long walkway to the main stage to electrify that pleading.
It was heart-rendering, heart-pounding and ear-splitting — all the same ingredients as the Foo Fighters themselves.
Posted by Leslie Streeter
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Lewis Black - New Years Eve 2007!
Lewis Black at The Fillmore Miami Beach at The Jackie Gleason Theater - New Years Eve 2007!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)