Povert

It’s freaky how music brings you back to certain periods of your life. Movies don’t really do that for me.

I’ve been listening to all unrated songs on my work laptop. It’s a small subset of of full music collection, but it’s got some good stuff in there.

I don’t recall ever getting that weird déjà vu feeling in my early and mid-twenties. That’s probably because that’s when those associations were being developed. Still, I was listening to Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth and Nirvana in my teens, and when I was in my twenties hearing that music never took me back in time. Now it does.

The weirdest one is The Strokes’ “Room on Fire”. It’s odd because the memories are so recent. Any song I hear from that album puts me in my car driving between Eagan and the Twin Cities in late 2004 / early 2005.

Another big one is Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. That usually puts me back to 1996-1997. Specifically in Las Cruces, NM, driving in my 1984 Buick Skylark to and from Scott’s house, where we’d often hang out, smoke cigarettes and play Magic.

Finally, the last major one I can think of is Beck’s “Sea Change”. Can you guess what one aspect of the memory associated with this is? Yep, driving in the car. This time to and from El Paso, TX from Las Cruces, NM. This was probably 2002 early 2003, after a particularly rough breakup. I would go to El Paso to buy clove cigarettes (this was me wanting to smoke, but purposely making it inconvenient). Someone had broken into my car and stolen my stereo, so I was listening to my music on a crappy little mp3 player. Listening with earbuds was probably not the safest way to drive.

I only mention all this for a couple reasons. First — WTF? Why is this happening now? Why wasn’t this happening 5 years ago? I think I know the answer to that, but it’s still weird. Second, and more troubling, is that these memories triggered because of specific music that I was listening to in the car. I don’t drive much these days — I live very close to work, and when I do drive, it’s brief. I also tend to listen to the radio. So I’m worried that I won’t have musical anchors to take me back when I’m, say, 40. I have a terrible memory, and music seems to be one of the few things that can jog it.

I take one thing back — Pearl Jam’s “Yield” was triggering that sorta déjà vu feeling as early as 5 years ago, I think. To this day, it reminds me of sometime around 1997-1999, rooming with Chris. We had a dumpy little apartment and my computer was in the kitchen. The specific memory is of modifying (I think) DikuMUD (?) to make a sort of “Poison Elves” MUD (if you know what Poison Elves was, congrats, welcome to the Nerd Club. If you know what both Poison Elves was and what a MUD is, then seek professional help). I remember adding an addiction element to the game — if your character smoked, he’d have to continue to smoke or suffer various physical consequences. I never made it public or did anything with it.

“Toaster Strudel” is available at Flapping Crane’s music section. Good stuff. I use part of it for one of my ringtones.

Also, I’ve revamped the Flapping Crane RSS feed. This sucker now has MP4 videos that are good for watching on TV (with Apple TV or probably XBox 360) or on an iPhone. Haven’t tested it on other iPods. May not work on them.

Finally, I’m in the process of compressing new versions of all our old videos and uploading them to Amazon’s S3. This should allow for faster downloads.

I haven’t flipped the switch on S3 yet, and probably won’t for a while. I want to get as many vids on there as possible.

I’ve been working on a Christmas present for my brother-in-law, who is a musician.

I went to a local goodwill and found the keyboard. I added a “crash” button to it and an audio out jack.

Circuit bending involves finding interesting short circuits. It’s kind of random, but a lot of fun. End result is some screwed up sounds.

Anyway, that’s what the crash button does, which is that large round red button.

I recorded some of it. To hear what the crashing sounds like, click here. I edited it and cut stuff out — because it’s so random, you often end up with silence, which is no fun to listen to. The very first part is just the “demo” song on the keyboard.

Something kind of neat — if you short-circuit the right points, you can get the keyboard to play some songs which aren’t otherwise available, like Happy Birthday, something by Chopin, Twinkle Twinkle and a Christmas song. I didn’t solder connections between those points, though. I’m still working on my soldering skills, I don’t think I’m using the best wire and I already had to use the dremel to route out paths in the plastic for the other wires.

Apple is really starting to irritate me.

I own 2 macs, an Apple TV and an iPhone. I am an iTunes customer — I currently subscribe to 2 shows. I would subscribe to more, but NBC is being dumb. But that’s another issue.

In the course of Flapping Crane’s existence, we’ve made some music. Funny music. Music I’d like to be ringtones on my iPhone.

I can kind of accept that Apple wouldn’t provide a means to make anything into a ringtone. But they appear to be actively trying to stop third-party developers from allowing it.

This is stupid. I can use iTunes to do all manner of illegal things. I can play music that I (gasp!) didn’t pay for. I can import friends’ cds. But I pay for music. The awesome thing about iTunes has always been that it’s convenient and fairly-priced. The DRM is potentially troublesome, but I’ve never run up against it.

I would probably be willing to buy ringtones from iTunes if they weren’t being bastards. Specifically — I want to be able to make my own music into ringtones. They are actively preventing it. They are removing functionality.

Is this of catastrophic importance? No. It’s just goddamn ringtones. But I am becoming increasingly annoyed by this, and my attitude towards Apple is starting to go south.

I’ve got a trial going with eMusic. I haven’t decided whether to subscribe. But Amazon now has an mp3 store with no DRM. If Apple wasn’t behaving this way I might stick with them out of loyalty. But I don’t foresee myself buying anything anymore from ITMS besides the TV shows I’m subscribed to.

Bottom line — Apple apparently thinks it can treat its customers like shit. I’ve influenced friends and family in their purchases, and for years I’ve highly recommended Apple products. I’m starting to question that.

They haven’t lost me yet, but they’re well on their way.