I don’t wanna lose you tonight
You’re the only thing that matters
I don’t wanna lose you this way
Just need your love

No. This video is the only thing that matters.

So when I happened to see he was coming back around this past spring, I snagged some tickets for the whole family. This time we saw him at the Fraze Pavillion. It was out first time there (and we’ve lived here 4 years now) and we were impressed with how nice it was. Bonus that it’s just a few miles down the road. Kinda crazy that we have the Nutter Center (seats about 12,000) and the Fraze Pavillion (seats a little over 4000) both less than 10 miles away. Pretty much any act coming through Dayton stops at one of those two places. I need to make more of an effort to get out and see some live entertainment.

At any rate, Weird Al was as enjoyable as you’d expect. Good stuff. We had seats in the 4th row, but they were a little too far to the side of the stage for my liking. I think I’d have rather sat a few rows back, but more centered. It was a perfect summer evening for an outdoor venue though and that alone made for a nice night.

I just realized while posting this that I didn’t take a single photo. Sorry. You’ll just have to imagine it.

November 6, 2007 – Your Music Is Worthless
November 8, 2007 – Your Music Is Still Worthless
May 6th, 2008 – NIN The Slip
February 2, 2010 – The Plan To Save The Music Biz

What can I say? It irks me that this mentality took hold.

Today I saw this story showing how much (or rather how little) musicians earn online and what they’d have to sell to make minimum wage.

From the article:

If recording artists ever go the way of the blubber merchants, it won’t be because there’ll be no demand for their product. It will be because making recordings makes no economic sense.

Here’s the same info in chart form if you’re illiterate or like pink circles.

I dunno. It’s a pet peeve of mine. Mostly because something like music seems to me to be one of the most valuable things there is. I know it sounds weird to say I think there needs to be an incentive to create art, but I do.

The alternate title considered for this post was, “I’m Mighty Tighty Whitey and I’m Smugglin’ Plums“

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Got an email last night from Ticketmaster with a list of upcoming shows in the area and I saw Weird Al was going to be in our neck of the woods – like literally. If you’re not filling the Nutter Center (almost literally a hop, skip and a jump away), the Fraze Pavilion is the place to be and is the second closest place to my home that one can do a show at.

So I logged my ass on this morning and bought four tickets (presale even) to see Weird Al…again.

We went to see Al in 2007. Since then the kids have grown a bit and I turned my daughter onto some of his stuff. This time I’m dragging them all out for a Friday night, 4th of July weekend show…and I’m looking forward to it…

…still from the bottom of the social totem pole.

A Tap Dancer’s Dilemma

Bedlam Sticks

I know I’m WAY late to the party, but I recently discovered Dr. Steel and I absolutely love everything about the character – the music, the videos, the concept, the gimmick. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

(Back and Forth)

Not feeling it:

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Feeling it:

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So anyway this article take a look at the current state of the industry and I think it’s quite interesting – even if it’s only because I feel like it sort of confirms what I’ve said all along.

By the time the band files onto the stage, masks in place, it’s after 9 p.m. Beyond the heavily pierced kids in the front row, the crowd of 19,000 stretches back, boxed in by starlit cornfields….

Few adults over the age of 30 have ever heard of Hollywood Undead, whose fan base consists largely of teenagers enthralled by the band’s dangerous image. Most of these kids discovered the band on the Internet. When Hollywood Undead posted its first song on MySpace four years ago, it was an overnight sensation, garnering tens of thousands of online friends in a few months. An overnight sensation — but not a profitable one until the band signed with a traditional record label.

And indeed, more artists than ever are putting out albums online — there were 106,000 new releases in 2008, compared with 44,000 five years ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Precious few, however, ever break through. Of the 63 new releases that sold more than 250,000 copies last year, 61 were issued by major music companies. Yes, occasionally a singer-songwriter like Ingrid Michaelson, whose self-released hit album, Girls and Boys, has sold 286,000 copies since 2006, makes it big. But as the story of Hollywood Undead suggests, the record labels will continue to play a major role, albeit a new one.

It’s a cool read if such matters interest you.

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The end of The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien (also kicking serious ass):

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Dave’s reaction is classic. Never seen him do that in the 20-some years I’ve been watching. The encore might be even better than the first run.

Cool article. I’ve always been ok with compression and I believe you can push it quite a bit before it gets ugly, but popular techniques have long passed that point.