Review: Sufjan Stevens

Recently a friend of mine asked if I’d heard of Sufjan Stevens. His daughters were fans, and he was trying some of his music. He had a particular track off of a particular CD that he recommended. I replied I had heard of him somewhere (later recalling it was reading about him in an issue of Relevant Magazine), and that the youth director at my church had mentioned him several times as one of her favorite artists. I borrowed the CD from the church youth director and gave it a try.

Ray Wylie Hubbard

Last night I went with a friend to the Granada Theater and saw Ray Wylie Hubbard. It was part of a week-long premiere of a documentary about the radio station KHYI 95.3 The Range. The premier week started on Sunday, July 23 and will run through Thursday, July 27. Each night before the documentary is shown, one of the artists that is played on KHYI does a short concert. I found out about this while reading the Fine Line Live blog – a local D/FW blog about what is going on in the D/FW area music scene.

Though I’ve heard lots of good things about Ray Wylie Hubbard, and I know that friends of mine that appreciate really good music and really good musicans like his stuff, I wasn’t very familiar with it. I know – being a native Texan I should be ashamed of myself, but now the truth is out there and I feel much better about it.

As for the concert – let me just say that it is one of the best concerts I’ve been to in a long time. He played for around 50 minutes. He didn’t have his band with him for this. It was just RWH, a chair, a microphone, and 2 (amplified) acoustic guitars. I really enjoy performances like that anyway, but this one was just oustanding. And the venue added to that feeling. Since it is in the shell of an old, single screen movie theater, the Granada is on the small side for a concert venue. That made it even better. and it wasn’t even half full. Which for me made it better still (but not optimal for the Granada, I’m sure). The stories he told between songs were great. And with an admission price of 7.50, it was easily the best concert value that I think I’ve ever had. I’ve paid 2-3 times that for concerts that weren’t half as good, and enjoyed them. Everything about the concert was superb. (Have I used enough superlatives yet?)

Then came the documentary. It was 90 minutes, and that made it about 45 minutes too long. I expected more information on the history of the station and less of a commercial for the station and it’s annual Texas Music Revolution music festival. I didn’t really know much about the station before last night. I know a couple of my good friends who have varied musical taste both like it, but that’s about it. I didn’t even know it was a country & western station before I read about this event on the Fine Line blog. And after watching the documentary, I still don’t feel like I know much about the station other than it is an independent station and plays what it thinks is good music rather than what Nashville is pushing as C&W Top 40 stuff. I’ve added it to the presets in my car, and will be listening to it from time to time.

My main recommendation? If you ever get a chance to see RWH do a solo acoustic set, DO IT! If you appreciate musicanship as much as the music, you will be happy you did.

Live Music in Dallas

I really, really, really, really, really want to go here sometime. Sometime soon. Sounds like a great place to hear some live music.

Anyone else want to go? Email me.

Share your iTunes on your home network

MyTunesRSS is a Java application that runs on any platform that supports both Java 1.5 and iTunes. It makes an RSS feed of your iTunes library, making each song into an individual podcast. The application is both the server and the RSS feed manager. You can now access your iTunes music (mp3 and unprotected AAC files) from any computer that has a web browser and that can access your network. You can also make the access password protected.

I haven't tried it yet, but plan to soon. I'll report back when I do.

Finding new music

I stumbled across a link to a site last week called Pandora. It's a streaming music site, but it sounds much better than other streaming music I've tried on the interwebs. You start off by giving it the name a favorite artist or song. It then hits the Music Genome Project to get info about what you've entered. If you enter an artist, it then plays a song from that artist and asks you about it. If you like it, it then goes back and finds other things that are similar. But, instead of just using reviews or descriptions by the artists, it actually analyzes the music and compares things like tonality, guitar effects, rythm, timbre, etc. to find similar music. And because of this, it finds artists that you may never have heard before.

Pros:

• It finds new artists for you
• Very high music quality for streaming music
• Great, easy to use interface
• You can rate each song it plays (like or dislike, like but don't play again for a month) to more fine tune its selection process
• You can set up 100 different stations.

Cons:

• You can't back up and replay a song that has already played (due to their licensing agreement)
• You can only skip a small number of songs per hour (due to their licensing agreement)
• If you want it ad-free, it's $36.00 a year, though I must say I haven't heard any ads yet and I've used it for sessions of several hours for the last several days.

I've shown it to a few people around my office, and they made comments like "Oh, like Launch" or something like that.  I've never used any of those other streaming music services, so I'm not sure how similar it is. I just know I like this one.