Liner Notes #9

Phew, Daron here. Time for a liner note. It’s been an intense series of posts lately, I know, and this is a good pausing for a breath. It’s Web Serial Writing Month (WeSeWriMo) and here’s the first of the minimum two promised for the occasion. There will be at least 3 story posts every week this month (4 if donations pass threshold!).

Dammit dammit dammit. Apple bought Lala, the streaming music widget provider I was just starting to really like… and they promptly shut it down. (Rumor is they are going to turn it into Itunes.com basically, but it means the tunes I had embedded here have gone up in smoke. Damn damn damn. I wonder if there’s something else out there which will let me embed song snippets?)

There’s always Youtube, I know. (UPDATE: When the site started tons of stuff was NOT on Youtube, and much of what was was blocked from embedding. But all the major labels in 2012 basically caved and started realizing that YouTube has replaced radio for millions of people. And so all of a sudden videos that were blocked or being taken down are suddenly now available in Official Embeddable versions. We’re going through and restoring as many of the dead Lala links as we can with new Youtube embeds. Youtube seems to be the one choice nowadays.)

Speaking of Youtube, have you seen this German band called The Baseballs? They’re German, but their shtick is pure 1950s Americana. It’s like if Elvis and Buddy Holly fell into a 21st century jukebox and came out performing only covers of Lady Gaga and Rihanna. Yeah, it’s that weird, but in a good sort of way. I think.

I’ll be the first to admit that pop music is frikkin’ weird. Embrace it, ok?

Then there’s something so cool that when Bart heard it he punched me in the arm and immediately wanted to try doing it ourselves. It’s called The Swinger, and it’s at a blog called Music Machinery, which is pretty darn cool anyway. The Swinger (http://musicmachinery.com/2010/05/21/the-swinger/) is a piece of software that takes any piece of recorded music and rejiggers the rhythm so that it “swings.”

The Swinger-processed “Enter Sandman” nearly made me fall over. Bart immediately ran “Bombardier” through it and well, the net result is that somehow I got talked into us doing a polka-ized version of it as a joke encore at our next gig. I promise it will be brilliant, but blame him, please.

And, for the ultra nerds out there, I present: the Millennium Falcon Guitar: http://www.urlesque.com/2010/07/19/millenium-falcon-guitar-interview/

Finally, this unbelievably rockin’ rendition of Kansas’s power ballad, Carry On Wayward Son, by a like 11-year0old japanese schoolgirl with a feather boa. It has to be seen to be believed. (I know, I know, that’s what they used to say about me, too.)

I hope you’re enjoying the extra posts for Web Serial Writing Month! There will be new posts every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and if we hit $25 in the tip jar, on Friday as well. And I promised at least two of these liner notes posts, so there you go.

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This is my story, and I’m sticking to it. Enjoy the month of intensive posting!