Idiot Banter

I wrote about Moneen for Much Music

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

June 18th, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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I wrote a about a NXNE show featuring Moneen, Casey Baker & The Buffalo Sinners and Songs From A Room for the Much Music blog, check it out. NXNE: Moneen @ El Mocambo - Much Music.com Blog

Who Cares What Old Joke Bands Have To Say?

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

June 18th, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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I just read a Punknews.org article that contains this quote from Gene Simmons:

“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this. They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilized. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.”

For the love of God I hope the music industry doesn’t “pop its head up”. The last thing we need is another album full of joke songs by a bunch of assholes that think they were anything but a joke band. Kiss were worse than Britney Spears or NKOTB ever were because they disguised their shit pop as rock and roll, dicks. This quote just proves Kiss was never in it for the music, they’ll just wait until they can cash in again, why would they play music otherwise?

I just thought you dudes should know about this, that’s all.

I Wrote About My Morning Jacket For Much Music

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

April 22nd, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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I wrote a blog post about My Morning Jacket’s new single, album, Saturday Night Live appearance and Toronto show for the Much Music blog. Check it out: New Music From My Morning Jacket

I borrowed the photo from Brandon Hirsch, check out his photos on Flickr.

2007 Album Of The Year

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 20th, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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Because of the Times by Kings of Leon is my favourite album of 2007. This was the first I had heard of King of Leon and it blew me away. The musicianship, the songwriting, everything. It honestly gives me new hope for music. This is a real rock band. Listen to the song "Fans " on their MySpace page, listen to it as loud as you can, I do every morning on my way to work, it’s amazing.

Runner Up: Boys Night Out - Self Titled

My Top Five Albums

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 1st, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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1 Comment

There are many albums that come and go but these are the ones that remain constants in my life. When I listen to these albums I am transported back to a place and time, a feeling. When I listen to these albums I am blown away by the level of musicianship or the quality of songwriting. These are the albums that I will listen to over and over from the moment I first heard them until the day I die. These are my top five albums.

The Get Up Kids - Something To Write Home About

The Get Up Kids are the band that changed it all for me. They demonstrated that music can be extremely emotional and personal while still being well written and super catchy. Truthfully, you could replace this album with Guilt Show, Four Minute Mile or The Woodson EP, they are all equal in my mind. But Something To Write Home About is the album I remember listening to with Justin Lee as we drove around Caledon and Brampton all through high school, it’s the album my old Grind Core band used to blast in the van on long drives through Quebec while other Metal bands made fun of us for listening to “Emo”, it’s the album I made my parents listen to in the car on my birthday one year as we drove to Toronto to buy new hi-hats at Steve’s Music. Something To Write Home About is the one album that (almost) every member of every band I’ve ever been in knows every word of.

Refused - The Shape Of Punk To Come

It has never made sense to me, can Refused see the future and knew that this album would actually become the shape of punk to come or did it become the shape of punk to come because that’s what the album was called? I had never heard hardcore like this before and these guys are insane musicians. This is the most influential hardcore album of all time.

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

Rust In Peace contains some of the best musicianship I have ever heard. The songs are fast and amazingly tight and Megadeth pulls it off live, no studio magic involved. The lyrics are the perfect amount of political without it getting in the way and becoming preachy. In grade 7 I analyzed the lyrics of Dawn Patrol for a school project. The drums at the beginning of the last song, Rust In Peace…Polaris, are amazing.

Sloan - Twice Removed

The songwriting is amazing and the fact that all of the guys in the band can (and do) play every instrument makes this band incredibly tight because everyone is totally aware of what everyone else is doing. This album introduced me to Canadian indie rock. I remember hiding under the covers when I was a kid, listening to Twice Removed on my yellow Sony sport Walkman when I was supposed to be in bed.

Led Zeppelin - II

This was my first Led Zeppelin cassette, I wore it out. No one else plays drums like John Bonham played drums.

I Used To Be In A Band

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

November 14th, 2007

Posted In:

Music

Comments:

4 Comments

I used to be in a band called The Pettit Projoect. We had a good time with unicorns at our CD release show, we hugged in stairwells while strangers took pictures for magazines, we sat in vans for insane amounts of time and grew our hair, and we were featured on a TV show called Radio Free Roscoe. Good times.

New Tax On Downloaded Music

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

October 19th, 2007

Posted In:

Music

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An article in the Financial Post reports that “The Copyright Board of Canada has approved new taxes on digital MP3 music files“. This new tax will apply to all legally downloaded music and will cost 3.1 cents for individual tracks and 1.5 cents per track if you download an entire album.

"The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), which collects money on behalf of musicians and redistributes those funds to songwriters and bands, had called for the levies."

SOCAN has traditionally dealt with collecting money from radio stations and re-distributing that money to musicians. They’re also responsible for the Blank Tape Levy attached to the sale of blank tapes/CDs/MP3 players. So far it’s all been justified (the Blank Tape Levy is questionable) but this new tax is just a tax meant to pay musicians more money after you’ve given the musicians money by buying their music. Sounds great, right?

"Meant to compensate artists for the reproduction of their songs, the charges follow similar levies that add 21 cents to the price of every blank CD sold in Canada. And they are retroactive to 1996, when Canada’s music industry first began pushing for tariffs on transmitted music files."

Really this will just work like everything else works with SOCAN, the rich artists get richer and everyone else gives up and gets day jobs. On top of everything it’s retroactive 11 years! Puretracks says they’ve been putting money away over the years in case this ever happened but I bet other companies aren’t so lucky.

Is this how we fix the music industry? Blatantly rip off fans buying music legally and maybe bankrupt some companies selling music legally? Nice, dicks.

So Much Good New Music This Month

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

October 3rd, 2007

Posted In:

Music

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I’d like to bring your attention to 3 albums coming out this month that I’m very excited about.

Saves The Day - Under The Boards

Under The Boards is the second in a trilogy of albums about self-discovery that began with last year’s Sound The Alarm and will conclude with a third album, Daybreak, to be released next year. Says frontman Chris Conley: “Sound The Alarm is an expression of discontent. Under The Boards is reflection and remorse. Daybreak is acceptance.” All of that nonsense aside, the tracks already posted on MySpace sound amazing and I just read that this album comes with a 75 minutes DVD. I highly recommend you buy this album on October 30th.

Listen to 2 new Saves The Day songs on MySpace.

Get the latest Saves The Day news at PunkNews.org.

Say Anything - In Defense of the Genre

The main songwriter is actually crazy and it took me a super long time to get into this band because of the abrasive yet “girly” nature of the songs. But now that I’m in, I’m in for life. This guy is a lyrical genius and each song is amazingly diverse, but you still know instantly that you’re listening to Say Anything. Their new album In Defense of the Genre is a double disc concept album and comes out October 23rd. The album also features guest vocals by a bunch of other bands including Saves The Day.

Check out their new songs on MySpace. They’re releasing a new song every week (usually on Monday) until the album comes out.

Armor For Sleep - Smile For Them

I have been a moderate fan of Armor For Sleep since their first album in 2003. After hearing how good the first single off their new album is on MySpace a couple of weeks ago, I can’t wait to hear the rest. Smile For Them comes out on October 30th, get it. Apparently I look a lot like the guitarist, weird.

Check out the song on MySpace.

UK Hardcore is Bullshit!

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

September 10th, 2007

Posted In:

Music

Comments:

1 Comment

For the past few months I had been hearing nothing but praise for Gallows, a hardcore band from the UK. I decided to have a listen and see what all the hype was about. Turns out Gallows are just a shitty hardcore band that might have fit in with the hardcore kids here 10 years ago. I spoke up about how shitty this band was to a few people and their response was “oh but the singer is crazy on stage” and “you should see the wild hardcore dances the kids do”. Weak. Hardcore bands with singers who are crazy live, and fans who hardcore dance are old news. Everytimeidie and Kid Gorgeous were doing it 10 years ago. I was pissed.

V-Fest came to Toronto this past weekend and the band I hear the most about is Enter Shikari. Another hardcore band from the UK that sound like local hardcore 10 years ago. Seriously, just because a band is from the UK and has an English accent doesn’t make them good. Stop worshiping bands from the UK just because they’re from the UK. These bands are horrible. Support your own.

The Internet Is One Giant Radio

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

September 3rd, 2007

Posted In:

Music

Comments:

1 Comment

Since the dawn of streaming audio on the internet major record labels have been trying to sue the internet out of existence. It’s no secret that rather than embrace the internet as the promotional tool it is, major record labels blame it for all of their problems.

When it comes to artists getting paid the internet is just one giant radio. Radio is a medium as is the internet. Radio stations make money by selling ads around engaging content (music/talk). Artists get paid when their songs are played on the radio because SOCAN and BMI collect stats from radio stations about how many times each song is played. SOCAN and BMI also collect a percentage of the ad revenue from the radio stations which they then distribute to artists based on how many times the artists’ songs were played on the radio. This system is the law!

When you consider how exact the internet is at tracking plays by artists you’d think that it would be obvious to apply the radio system to the internet. Websites like MySpace, Purevolume and MP3.com all make money by selling ads around engaging content. But for some reason these websites never have to pay the artists for using their music to sell ads. Did SOCAN and BMI miss out on this opportunity for a huge amount of extra cash?

Maybe it’s due to the fact that most things on the internet these days are user generated. For reporting to work properly it has to be exact and all audio files have to contain the proper meta data. What’s to stop someone from putting up MP3s that aren’t by them but tagging them with meta data that says they are?

This is where last.fm comes in. Last.fm seems to have a handle on gathering stats for music from around the web. They know when a track has incorrect meta data. Last.fm is now so popular that they work with 2 major record labels to stream every song in their catalog on their website. Last week it was announced that Last.fm will be providing internet music charts to actual print magazines. Now you’ll be able to see who’s hot on corporate top 40 radio and who people are actually listening to on their ipods. It’s exciting. I think it’s a step closer to artists being paid for helping MySpace sell ads.