My Own Biggest Fan

Ping. Apple’s new musical social media experiment. It would be an interesting add-on to iTunes, but it falls far short of actually being useful. It reminds me a ton of Facebook, with it’s hard to read timeline and the vague “Like” function, and reminds me not-at-all of Last.fm, who got this exact idea exactly right. Apple has utterly ignored what Last.fm got right because of their desire to use Ping primarily as a way to sell songs through the iTunes Music Store and not as a fun and cool place for their customers to find new music.

How does Ping fail in both usability and in usefulness? Let me count the ways.

1: If it’s not int the iTMS, it’s not allowed. Ridiculous. Some of my favourite albums are not available there. Major label albums. Suede have zero songs there. Pulp’s final album? Like it never existed. All of the 12″ and bootleg remixes I find on mp3 blogs? Won’t find them here. Apple’s little network is so embarassingly MOR that it’s primary goal “To help people find new music” is laughably unobtainable.
2: No real-time display of what’s being listened to.
3: Can’t right click a song in my music library and add to Ping (have to add in iTMS).
4: No easy way to find friends.
5: The genres are too broad. (“Alternative”? REALLY?) / No sub-genres.
6:The “Music I Like” area isn’t self explanatory. At first I didn’t know it only pertained to that bit in the top right corner of my profile, I thought it managed all the info that went through my profile. How about calling it: “My Favourite Songs”?
7: No explicit notification when someone comments on one of your Posts.
8: What the heck is the difference between a Like and a Post anyway? A Post lets you comment, so why would I just Like something then?
9: Once I Like something, either an album or someone’s activity, there is no way for me to find it again, it just goes into the ether. If it’s meant to be a bookmark for later reference, it fails miserably at it.

What the hell is this?:

Where do you suppose the logic is in being able to Like the fact that I Liked an album? I’m amazed I can’t Like me Liking my Like. I can’t believe that sentence was something I felt I needed to write. I can even Like me Liking someone else’s Like of a song. The ability to do THAT is exactly what the internet has been waiting for!

Ping will probably to be something I play around for maybe the next week or so and then forget about. The first two items I mention are reason enough for me to not care about it. So, if you want, you can friend me there under Mason Hastie. Or if you want to ACTUALLY trade info about what we ACTUALLY listen to, you can go to my Last.fm profile.

Last night I was asked to choose five albums to be stranded on a desert island with. I’ve played this game before and my list always comes up short. It’s a tough one.

Last night I accidentally denied myself Suede’s Dog Man Star, which I’d replace my last item with (sorry, Boss):

1: Spiritualized — Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space
2: David Bowie — Low
3: Scott Walker — Scott 4
4: Beastie Boys — Check Your Head
5: Bruce Springsteen — Nebraska
5: Suede — Dog Man Star

The only reason I chose the Beasties over Bruce is because I needed something upbeat. Check Your Head is the only hip hop/funk album I’ve listened to for over 15 years and not gotten sick of.

What are the albums YOU can’t live without?

A few days ago I was visiting friends in Toronto. We were hanging out in their apartment and it looked and sounded like there might be a lightening storm rolling in, so we walked down the three flights of stairs to sit on their front stoop — 227 style — to watch the storm. As we sat, the four of us noted that it really wasn’t raining, and the lightening was pretty far away, and this was a pretty lame storm to be sitting out and watching.

As we sat for a moment, wondering silently who would be the first to pipe up and say “let’s go play Mario Party”, a singular, beautiful moment occured. Off in the distance, about a half a block away, a voice rang out.

“TITS!

ASSCRACK!

BAAAAALLLS!

(huhuhuhuh)”

This became our greeting for the next two days. It was our “semper fi”. — Tits. Asscrack. Balls. and then laughter. Each separated by 1.5 seconds of pure zen silence. We hoped for one thing, but got something else that was even better. Like a Precious Moment that is impossible to immortalize in slipcast ceramic.

Something that I’ve been struggling with since I’ve started shooting Polaroid is the decision to digitally alter the images after scanning. If I’m bumping tonal range and filtering the imperfections, how is that any better than people turning digital shots into faux-polaroids and holga shots? I haven’t come up with a definitive answer to my dilemma, other than “I can do whatever the hell I want to.” This will have to do for the time being, because it isn’t like I’ve shot any masterpieces that this decision really becomes critical with. Having said all that, below is the extent I’d probably be altering anything in the future. The results are rather subtle, so I’m anticipating people looking, shrugging and moving on.

The Month of New Music ended long ago, but listening to this album feels like a continuation of my futile exorcise in listening . I’m a big fan of Sly Stone, The Spinners, etc. — I like the funk. I’m probably an unlikely funk fan, considering how whitebread my upbringing was and also my nature in general. I’m pretty sure that anyone who hangs out with me for a moderate amount of time would consider me completely unfunky. (my good friends know just how unapologetically off my music tastes divert sometimes, into territory that many of them find embarassing)

I received this album from Mark Hamilton, main man in Woodpigeon. A man as unlikely as any to feel the funk. He was trimming his collection and he told me to take this album in particular. (considering he was giving away this album tells us that he probably isn’t a closet funkmeister) If there’s one thing I trust Mark on, it’s his musical advice. He recommends things that he thinks I’ll like, not the things he does. I’m grateful for this recommendation especially, this is at least as good as Sly and the Family Stone’s earlier albums like A Whole New Thing or Life. I’ve only listened to it once through, (¾ of the way as of writing this sentence) but I’m certain that on relistening there will be stand out tracks.

One song in particular grabbed me, “I Have Changed” and it’s one fun fricking funk anthem. Coincidentally it started just as I was considering what I was going to say before writing this paragraph. It’s the lone survivor of this album within the digital milieu because it was put on the compilation Super Cool California Soul 2. Hence, it’s singular availability. Something else I learned while researching this post, HP Riot has auspicious beginnings that speak to me directly. Here’s an excerpt from the informative blog post found here.

Despite several attempts to uncover details about the band and the recording session, this LP remains one of the most mysterious in my entire collection. The band (known as H.P. Riot) was named after its San Francisco home neighbourhood that was marred by race riots in 1966. The band has often been confused as being Canadian because they spent much of their time touring western Canada. Concept Records was based in Regina, Saskatchewan – not exactly a funk music hotbed. It almost appears like this band signed a record deal while on tour.

I’m originally from Regina and the fact that a funk band from San Francisco, a REALLY good funk band, could come out to western Canada and feel at home (one member even stayed in Edmonton after playing in H.P. Riot) says something to me. What that is, I’ve no idea, but it borders curiosity, pride and amusement. Anyway, go over to The Basement Rug and download the album if you are so inclined. If you at all like Sly Stone, James Brown, The Spinners, even early Stevie Wonder, you’ll probably enjoy H.P. Riot.

So I’m the friend mentioned in the blog post found here. I suggest you read that before you continue with this. Trust me, Tyler is a better writer than I am and he has similar opinions to mine regarding the whole analogue v. digital debate.

Ok, so let me set the record straight on a couple of points. (pun mostly intended) First off, these records will not be melted down. Not only is it my intention to keep the records intact during the production of the furniture I’d like to create, but also consider that melting a record down is tantamount to burning a book — in my opinion. In fact, if you considered the amount of time I’ve spent listening to music and more so, TALKING about listening to music vs. reading, it would be fair to say melting down a record may be even more evil in my eyes. Yes, even UK hardhouse (progressive house? this old house?) 12″ singles, or whatever subgenre it was that Tyler spun when he was a vinyl DJ. The fact is, that no matter how you cut it, 300LB of vinyl is a valuable resource, whatever’s on it.

Secondly, I’m a vinyl lover. I’d be willing to say that ¾ of the music I listen to lately is from vinyl. If whatever musical itch I’m feeling can be satisfied by a record, I’ll go to it before anything. The reasons for this I could write hundreds of words on. I’ll spare you at the moment and just say I’m a huge fan of listening to records.

You may ask, “Well then, what do you have planned if you aren’t melting it down?” That’s for another blog entry, probably after I’ve tried, failed, tried again and hopefully, finally succeeded at creating something out of these records that both preserves their dignity and transfers their usefulness from medium to raw material. I just wanted it on record what was going on here. NOT a wholesale discard of music, just a re-appropriation of the material it was on — temporarily, at that.

So, if you are curious, stay tuned. Both to Lo-Fi Hi-Fi Me, and here. I’m hoping the results will be at least worth a glance. I gotta say, I’m feeling the pressure because my original plan wasn’t very impressive. I’m hoping that I can take it up a notch to make the whole thing worth keeping tabs on. Like I said, stay tuned.

You kids with your “InDesign” and your “WordPress”.

I don’t know about you, but I have certain albums and songs that I habitually listen to when I get home at 3am from a late night boozing it up with friends — most likely louder than I should expect my neighbours to deal with politely. I’ve put together a sampler of music I tend to listen to in the wee hours, when I’ve had more than my share of libations and am feeling particularly sentimental, introspective or melancholic. For the record, I’ve done this tonight because I’ve had libations and I’ve been feeling particularly sentimental, introspective or melancholic.

The amusement I’m getting from repetition as a joke is a red flag, so I’ll leave you with a link to the mix and wish you goodnight. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think in the comments.

Feeling it.

I got a bum pack of Time Zero film in the mail today. It gave me three photos that are almost worth the expense.

With Iceland in the news lately it made me wonder: When I was there, 10 years ago, did I get close to that volcano that is erupting currently? Not really. But this photo was taken about 40 km south, south east of there, pointing in the wrong direction.