Salvation For Some

Well, here I go again (on my own). Wilhelm's a jackass. Onward we go.

As many of you know, I am quite a fanatic of new music. Every time "New Music Tuesday" rolls around, I piss my pants and forget my name for about ten minutes. I shut off the world around me and sift through the iTunes store searching for the next band to rock my world and make me forget about everything I ever thought was cool. It's rather silly when you think about it. I find about two bands like this every year (i.e. 2006: Under the Influence of Giants, and Hard-Fi). That's about a 1:26 chance that you're going to find the one of these bands on a given Tuesday (well, if you're a snot like me). I shouldn't complain though. You don't find two remarkable romantic interests in a year, so why not embrace a new bombshell of a band every six months? Precisely. Hence, the weekly pilgrimage to my nerdery in search of new music.

The iTunes Store has always been a good resource for this need inside over the years. The store operators, for the most part, do a good job of making sure that the store is spiffied up
and ready to go every Tuesday morning (sometimes at the snap of midnight too). The fellas at Apple also thinks it be a good idea to hand out a free new song every week. This is typically done to help unveil new artists that have a relative amount of buzz surrounding themselves. This is all fine and dandy from time to time (except the R&B cuts. They're always awful.), however, the remaining portion of the store demands $.99 per song. It may seem like a reasonable price to pay. However, to some college students like myself, there are many other cheaper offers. Cheaper, as in, free. We all remember when we were little kids running around playing with Napster. We shared our libraries full of music with little boys and girls all over the world. We were unstoppable (especially those fortunate enough to have DSL/Cable connections in the late 90's/early 00's). Unfortunately, the network full of pirates fell apart just as quickly as it started. It went from free S&M versions of "Enter Sandman", to Metallica suing you in the comfort of your living room. Marketing techies always want to bring as much entertainment to the convenience of your favorite computer chair. Never did I think that it meant Lars Ulrich telling you to "f*** off," and paralyzing the use of your very own computer. Also a special thanks to Dr. Dre.

Fortunately for those of us who were exiled, there were other file sharing programs that survived the near extinction of pirating communities. The most notable one that remains today is LimeWire (running off of the decentralized Gnutella Network). Whether Jim needs a bootleg cut of Dave Matthews Band live at the Target Center, or I need a leak of an unreleased Under The Influence of Giants album, or even if McBeain needs some nasty ass pornography - LimeWire's got it all. And that's where it stops....

All of those mentioned above are/were Luther College students. At one point in Luther LIS history - somewhere during my fuzzy freshman year (2003 - correct me if I am wrong) - the network bandwidth was reduced and many file sharing programs like LimeWire and Ares were crippled. Not to worry though, we had Loafy (a cute program with a old couch for an icon that allowed people to share multimedia within the Luther network.) Creator Matt Jansen failed to create an Mac OS-friendly version of the program. No love lost though, Matt (even though you said "I'll get to it eventually." I think Jack Johnson said it best, "It seems to me that maybe, it pretty much always means 'no.'"), the tastes of pop culture at Luther do not match my own very much - I can never find what I need (besides, even if I did, some jackass probably imported the audio in at 128kbps MP3 - unacceptable).

Now hush hush, freshmen, I haven't forgotten about you. There are many thrills yet to be had on Loafy - we were all there once. Those "thrills" happened on Friday nights when we'd all crowd around somebody's computer and convince every last floormate that there was a "really hot porn video on Loafy that you have to see." Then there were those of us who woke up hungover on a Saturday, only to find "Tub Girl" playing on loop on our computer (I won't hyperlink that one, you know where to find it) . At some point, you've experienced every sick pornographic prank that can played by utilizing Loafy, and the concept suddenly becomes "so freshman year." Now you are reduced to the mp3 aspect of Loafy - thousands of mp3's of DMB, OAR, etc. - essentially not much variety.

So what do snooty Indie fans like myself do? What do Luther Mac users do? (If you say anything involving "torrents" I'm going to slice you.) You could hit up the iTunes Store and most likely find what you need for $.99/song. Unfortunately, there are those who made some poor choices in the Canary Islands by getting lost in Playas de las Americas, running into a few hookers, and aimlessly breaking sealed bottles of vodka. For such an adventurous idiot, music thievery is the only affordable option. For years it seemed so hopeless, until I discovered a couple of neat search engines that help you become the "unique" music lover you've always dreamt of. The snotty one that "invents" all kinds of new bands, and brags to all of their friends how they knew about a band way before everyone else did - we all do it at some level, it's what separates us from the animals. However it is that you play the game, there are indeed options to help you find your musical spirituality - whether you're in the middle of a corn field, messing with Sasquatch, or just plain dumb. The search engines I speak of are called "MP3 Blog Aggregators." These engines search through millions of blogs looking for mp3 files that are posted on blog users' posts. The two biggest ones I am familar with are: Elbows and The Hype Machine. Both work equally well, and like anything else, have their advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• comprehensive findings of independent/underground artists
• bootlegs - a) live performances b) songs leaked from the studio before the record is due
• background information available on many blogs with trivia about the band
  

Disadvantages

• importing quality is inconsistent (which really chaps me)
• anything older than six years if nearly impossible to find - if it had its 15 minutes of fame more than three years ago, don't count on finding it
• search engine will often bring up Mp3 links that no longer have the actual Mp3 file - by far the most frustrating part of process
• record labels that are picky enough will occasionally look for blogs with their copyrighted music and "politely" ask the blogger to remove the file (by politely, I mean, "Get rid of it, or we'll take legal action." - fair enough warning).

So as you can see, the engines have the moments. This week, I have found them to be quite helpful - 35 songs downloaded thus far. I'm enjoying myself thoroughly. I would never be able to find any of the music on Loafy, or torrents. Even better, I'm adding on to my sentence in hell with each song I steal - especially from the up and coming artists, whoops. Someday I will pay for my music - hopefully - and support the bands properly. But for now, I try to promote them after I steal their music, and have other people buy it - so maybe I'm just the salesman who gets his product comped for personal use. I just hope that I'm not assigned to the cell next to "Tub Girl" in hell - as part of my will I may require some Imodium AD to buried with me.

Now that you're appetized, search away. And just for starters I'll post a favorable song on my blog. Enjoy ya damnselves.

Energy - The Apples in Stereo

It's a happy song that makes you want to be outside, drinking, grilling, socializing....spring will be here soon according to that smug jackass Punxsutawney Phil.

Comments always encourage further posts, so please do so.