Category: Music

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Every year I think I’m ready for the Comic-Con crowds. And every year they astonish me. By the time I’ve gotten used to the crowd level from Thursday and Friday, it’s Saturday, and there are even more people.

Katie got up 2 hours before I did to make sure she got a spot in the Heroes line. She succeeded, and managed to get into the hall before I even made it to the convention center. Of course, that was in part because I wanted to grab cash, coffee, and a sandwich to hang onto for lunch before I got in. I think I stood in line for at least 10 minutes waiting for an ATM at a branch in the Gaslamp district. There were two machines, one of which was broken, and the two — just two — people ahead of me were both making deposits. And the machine was slow.

As for coffee, I figured I’d go to a Starbucks just because it was closer — but once I got to the nearest one, I realized I wasn’t far from an It’s a Grind. So I walked the two blocks, and passed another Starbucks on the way. 😕 So I grabbed coffee and something to eat, then spent at least 20 minutes at Subway. Then I had to wait for the trolleys so I could cross the tracks…

By the time I got to the convention center, they were letting the Hall H line in. It was running all through the park area at the end of the center, zig-zagging around, and reportedly went all the way to Seaport Village. Which doesn’t make sense, because IIRC Seaport Village is at the other end of the center, so maybe they were talking about the line for badge pickups?

I waited near the front, figuring I’d hand Katie her water bottle and crochet hooks on the way in, but then I asked one of the “Elite” staff when the line started moving — and it had been almost an hour earlier.

So I went back to Artist’s Alley to pick up that sketch from Todd Nauck. He was off doing a signing at the DC booth. So I went to the reservation desk to set up for dinner. Which took a while, since I went through the main floor, which was a very cattle-drive-like experience. At least my shoulders are starting to get used to the backpack again, though I’m starting to feel like I’m in that third-day convention haze. (Plus I had only a scone and coffee, instead of a full breakfast, which might have something to do with it.)

There are a lot more people in costumes here today. As expected, there are lots of Jokers this year — so many, in fact, that I’ve stopped paying attention to them except for the really good ones and the creative ones. I’ve seen at least two Nurse Jokers over the last few days, possibly three.

I’m waiting for the Tori Amos/Comic Book Tattoo panel now. I figured the line would be long, so I showed up about 45 minutes early, but it turned out they were letting people walk right into the Ralph Bakshi panel, so I wandered in, watched the end of it, then moved to a better seat at the break. The room’s packed, and there are about 10 minutes left before the panel. But I’m only 5 rows back, and a little off to the side, which is better seating than I’ve had at any of her concerts.

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On the subject of filk, and trying to define it, there’s a whole subset of songs by professional musicians that just rides the edge. (Half of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s repertoire, for instance.) Twice in the last week I’ve heard Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On,” which is apparently about Aragorn and Arwen from Lord of the Rings. It even makes references to Mordor and Gollum in the lyrics.

I’m not sure I’d ever heard it before, but Train covered it at the concert we went to last Friday (we went for the Wallflowers, who played after the intermission), and I just heard it on the radio this morning.

Talk about timing.

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Musician Tom Smith (author of the Talk Like a Pirate Day theme song and Girl Genius’ Transylvania Polygnostic University Fight Song, and a.k.a. filkertom on LiveJournal) is in the hospital after a nasty injury, facing expensive surgery and months of hospital bills…without insurance. And of course he can’t work while he’s in the hospital.

A bunch of other musicians in the filk community have put together a benefit album, “Mr. Smith Goes to the Hospital,” and are providing it as a download for people who donate to help him cover the bills.

What is filk music? There’s no solid consensus, but I think the simplest answer is: music about other media, by its fans. Songs about Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings, for instance. Sometimes with original music, often setting new lyrics to other people’s songs (“piggyback filk”). Most filkers just do it as a hobby (I’ve written a few filksongs myself, mostly back in high school and college), but some manage to eke out a living — or supplement one — by performing and selling recordings.

We’ve picked up a couple of his albums since we heard “Five Years” — a Babylon 5 filk to the tune of Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” — at a Loscon a few years ago (back when we still went to Loscon).

(News found via Girl Genius.)

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I’d been trying to decide whether to pre-order Comic Book Tattoo (the graphic novel anthology based on Tori Amos songs) or pick it up at San Diego Comic-Con next month. Now I know.

Colleen Doran reports that Tori Amos will be signing the book on Saturday. Tickets for the signing — just 200 of them — will be given to people who purchase the book at the con (limited each day, so that they don’t all go on Wednesday).

She’ll also be on a panel on Saturday from 11:30–12:30. Here’s hoping DC doesn’t schedule a “What’s really happening with the Flash” panel at the same time, ’cause if they do, I’m skipping the Flash news. Someone’ll post it online. (Oh, wait…)

I am so looking forward to this…

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Caught “Weird Al” Yankovic’s song, “She Drives Like Crazy” — appropriately enough, while on the freeway. I never used to understand why he did the funny voices in the song, until I remembered the Muppets music video of the original song (“She Drives Me Crazy”), with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog…and suddenly the voices clicked into place.

It’s odd that the intro on the title track to “The Phantom of the Opera” (the Andrew Lloyd Webber show) sounds so much like the MIDI file I found in the mid-1990s. I don’t know if that’s a comment on the quality of my old sound card, or a comment on how many synthesizers were used in the original recording. Either way, whoever sequenced that MIDI file got the timing exactly right.

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Went to see Aimee Mann on Friday at the House of Blues. She’s promoting her new album, @#%&*! Smilers (and yes, it’s pronounced as you might expect, though she also gave an alternate pronunciation of “Effing Smilers”), which just came out last week. Of course, this meant that most of the audience either hadn’t heard the new songs, or had only heard them a few days before. Old favorites like “Save Me” tended to get cheers as soon as people recognized the intro music. With the new stuff, people were quieter, as if they were waiting to hear the song for the first time. But they all got applause in the end.

In the past, when we’ve gone to the Anaheim House of Blues, we’ve tried to eat at Downtown Disney. It always proves problematical, with restaurants either not taking reservations for parties of two or not having any reservations left. This time we just ate near home and drove up after dinner. We got there after the doors opened, but before most of the audience arrived, and managed to claim a spot dead center in the main floor, much closer than we’d ever been to this stage.

The opening act was Rebecca Pigeon. She was quite good, and a good match stylistically. (Too often, you only get one — or neither. We still joke about “Corn Mo” who opened for TMBG a few years ago.) She started with “Tough on Crime,” which Katie figures has to have a Heroes video in it somewhere. Interesting fact: it turns out she’s married to David Mamet.

By the end of the opening act, the house had filled up considerably, and was respectably packed by the time Aimee Mann took the stage. Continue reading →

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Mark Pilgrim, in The Day the Music Died, points out what happens when DRM meets market failure.

On August 31, Microsoft will turn off the servers that validate their “PlaysForSure” DRM system (this predates the system they use for the Zune). This means that anyone who has bought music that uses PlaysForSure will not be able to transfer it when they upgrade or replace their computer, or get a new music player.

It won’t be an instantaneous death like DIVX was, or like a subscription system, because it doesn’t phone home whenever you try to play a track. But it’ll be a lot faster than simple technological obsolescence. I can still play my old VHS tapes until my VCR breaks down (and then I could probably still get it fixed if I really wanted to), even though I don’t think I’ve seen a pre-recorded tape in a store in years.

This is also why I prefer to check Amazon’s MP3 store first, before going onto the iTunes Music Store, and then prefer DRM-free iTunes Plus to standard iTunes tracks. Given their current position, Apple isn’t likely to get rid of iTunes anytime soon, but if they ever did, I’d be in the same boat as people who purchased PlaysForSure tracks. (Though I’m hoping they’ll move the entire catalog away from DRM long before that happens.) Whereas since Amazon’s tracks are plain, ordinary MP3s, they could abandon the business tomorrow and I’d still be able to play the tracks for as long as I can find software that plays MP3s.

(via ma.tt)