Stefan Hayden

I haven’t written much about music here and I think I might in the coming future. What I really should be writing about is design and yet here I go with my music plug.

Bishop Allen (wikipedia) is a small band out of New York City that has decided to go without a record label and just do the work themselves. So far it seems to be working great as they have not starved to death after almost 3 years as a band. They only have one album out called Charm School but every song on it is amazing.

A lot of bands put out good albums though and there seems to be a difference between a band that puts out a good album and a band who can continue to produce good music. With only one album I was afraid Bishop Allen might not be up to the challenge.

This year though they are planning on releasing an EP every month of 2006. That about 4 songs for 12 months or 48 songs in a year. I was skeptical if they could hold up their quality in such a small time frame. 2 EPs and 8 songs in to the year and they have yet to hit a bad note. I’m actually amazed that they have kept up the quality of the songs they are putting out.

These songs are fully finished. They don’t feel like demos or rough stuff they are working on for an album. Each song is a gem that I listen to in wonder.

If Bishop Allen keeps up this quality they are quickly going to jump to my number 2 band of all time right behind Cake, another band that has stood the test of time.

Each EP is only 5 bucks and they have even offered up a several free songs on their site so you know what you getting. You need to buy these EPs.

January - Corazon.mp3 February - Vain.mp3

bishopallen, indie,indierock, indiepop, music, download

As hard as I might try I really can’t get in to Rocketboom. I can’t figure out why it’s as popular as it is. It’s not that I don’t like Amanda Congdon It’s just that I don’t find her sense of humor very endearing. Her enthusiasm seems fake and no matter what the news story is it always has some sort of cheese spin to it. I don’t wish bad things upon them, I just don’t get it.

On the other hand I love MoBuzzTV. Karina Stenquist has the perfect personality for the online world. Smart, sarcastic and just a little snarky everyday the news is delivered with just the right amount of dark humor. In general I can’t say enough great things about it besides I wish it was longer.

It makes me kind of annoyed that Rocketboom gets so much attention and yet MoBuzzTv seems so over looked. I can only hope they are doing well and will continue to produce shows for a lone time.

rocketboom, mobuzztv, vlog, AmandaCongdon, KarinaStenquist

The dream dies today as Arrested Development will stop pursuing a new network to air on. I’m not exactly sure how many Showtime subscriptions it takes to pay for a show but something tells me they would have made their money back if they had actually picked up the show.

ArrestedDevelopment, showtime

Joan of Arcadia was an awesome show that was plagued by a fatal flaw. That flaw is in fact what the entire show was based on though you might not even know it. On the surface the show was about Joan and how god talked to her. Yet if you watched Barbara Hall talk about the show on the DVD you quickly learned something slightly different.

Barbara explains that the show is about Joan, the metaphysical warrior, as well as her father the cop, as the physical warrior. Barbara really wanted to play the two side off each other and form a balance of the world of god that you can’t fully grasp and the world of being a cop.

This view of the show puts more focus on the contrast of Joan and her father then on the fact that Joan talks to God. This is not necessarily bad but this was not what any publicity or even the opening credits focused on.

When ever a show gets canceled there is usually a fairly clear reason why. Shows get pulled because they are not getting the viewership they wanted. Who was Joan of Arcadia target audience? 50% of the shows focus was Joan and her friends. The other 50% was a about the Father who was a cop and his trials at work.

This 50/50 split seems to have been the problem. If you liked the kids the best then you did not care about the parents and if you liked the parents you most likely did not want to watch a teen drama.

Barbara was so focused on the contrast between the two that she did not see the fact that she was spreading her audience too thin. Not to mention that advertisers like to know who they are advertising too. An audience that was 50% adults and 50% teens is not an effective way to market to either. At the end of the day if a show can’t bring home the bread it’s going to get canceled.

I might sound a bit hard on Barbara but that’s only because I love the show so much. While it was flawed on such a basic level it did everything else right. The writing was snappy and very emotional. While I did not enjoy the parent story lines they were still well written and I would have enjoyed them more as a separate show instead on woven in to the same show.

The amount of character development she managed to pack in to thirty minutes (With the other half taken by the parents) for about 8 different characters was amazing. Yet there was still so much that could have been done. Friedman was neglected and kept as a flat character until the second season where he only started to shine. Even Joan’s brothers were left fairly flat until later in the first season.

A couple years back in college I ripped Memento, a move sequenced in reverse, and re-sequenced it in chronological order. I keep talking about trying the same thing with Joan of Arcadia and cutting out most of the parent scenes. I’m sure it would be extremely rough but it would be closer to a show that would have actually grabbed their target audience and kept them for season after season.

joanofarcadia, cbs, dvd

I’ve written this email to enough people now that I really should just post it for every one else: I say if you want an mp3 player to go head to head with the ipod the Creative Zen Micro is great.

One of the decisions that should go in to buying any mp3 player is how much music you’re actually going to want to put on it. With most mp3 coming in around 3mb and a cd coming in between 40 - 70 mbs you should be able to figure how much music you want to have with you at all times. the more music you are willing to swap on and off the device the smaller hard drive you can get.

The Creative Zen Micro has 5gb of space which is roughly 1666 songs or about 83 hours of music.

Cnet has a great list of best of the best mp3 players and also navigation to change what type of mp3 players you are looking at. The most important categories are: Flash memory MP3 players | Hard drive MP3 players | Micro hard drive MP3 players

Flash memory is the hardest to break since it has no moving parts but has the smallest space. typical about 1gb.

hard drive and micro hard drive are easier to break (both the ipod and Creative Zen Micro micro hard drives) but have much larger storage. micro hard drives are smaller and have less storage then regular hard drives but stay about the same price as regular hard drives. regular hard drives have more space but can become annoying to carry around since they are so big.

mp3, mp3player, creative, ipod, cnet, review, guide