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January 4, 2008
Interview with Allee Willis of Bubbles and Cheesecake
I first met Allee Willis in the mid-nineties when we worked together on "Willisville", a virtual world of 19 or so wildly amusing fictional inhabitants of a town by the same name, accessible only through the Internet. It was a grand experiment, funded by Intel, and like so many things that Allee creates, years before its time. Allee is one of the bravest, truest artists I know. Brilliant ideas come hurtling out of her faster than most of our brains can process. She seems to thrive teetering on the edge of either disaster or brilliant success, ready to leap fully into the next thing, forging ahead wherever her creative juices take her.
Recently Allee teamed up with recording artist Holly Palmer to create and publish their own music, skipping the established record labels all together. Their video It's a Woman Thang was featured on YouTube and has had over 800,000 downloads to date. Allee is a grammy award winning songwriter, over 50 million songs sold, used to write a lot for Earth Wind and Fire, wrote a lot of the music to Beverly Hills Cop (remember Neutron Dance?). She co-wrote the music to the Broadway show "Color Purple", produced by Oprah, based on the book by Alice Walker. I've always been awed and amazed by Allee Willis and am delighted that she agreed to be interviewed about what motivates her and the latest stage of her career:
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September 29, 2007
Christine Kane Live - Right Outta Nowhere
Found this great video of Christine Kane performing live "Right Outta Nowhere". I wrote about meeting Christine and BlogHer a few months ago. She performed a week ago at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, but unfortunately I was too sick with a cold to go see her. :-(
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September 2, 2007
Imogen Heap - Goodnight and Go
Here's another great Imogen Heap video. Gorgeous dress. Beautiful color scheme in the photography. I wonder who art directed the video. Anyone know?
Here she is doing the same song live on David Letterman. From the Speak for Yourself album.
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August 9, 2007
Christine Kane at BlogHer
All day Friday at the BlogHer conference in Chicago I kept running into an interesting seeming woman named Christine Kane, who mentioned that she blogged about music. Christine's eyes are penetrating; you don't easily forget her once having met her. But I had no idea who she was. And then, on Friday night, at the BlogHer party on the rooftop of the Navy Pier, there she was, alone on a small stage with a guitar. And when she started singing, holy shit, that woman could sing. She has a gorgeous voice. Not what you expect when someone you've been hanging with off and on during the day picks up a guitar.
Then I remembered that there was a music CD in our shwag bag and the light bulbs in my brain finally turned on. I looked for her all the next day to thank her for the CD and for playing for our rather inattentive group, but didn't see her anywhere. According to someone, this was a marketing experiment for her. Did it work? I have no idea. But if you are reading this and are remotely curious about Christine's work, listen to a few bars at iTunes, and if you like it, buy it. More people should hear her. And Christine, if you are out there somewhere reading this, thank you.
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June 23, 2007
Imogen Heap - Just for Now (Live Acapella)
Check out this amazing performance of singer Imogen Heap, layering tracks over each other live.
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September 23, 2004
Sting and 2000 Investment Bankers
Bank of America investment conference 2004. Last night, San Francisco. Big, very big tent. "I'm Sting. I sing for money." Thank God for that. How much do you think they spent on this conference? 5 million? 10 million? The food alone could easily have been half a million. 2 hours of Sting including a 20 minute encore. Best behaved and cleanest cut audience in history. Roxanne, Whenever I say your name, Dead Man's Rope, Everything She Does is Magic (twice), Fragile, Englishman in New York, Sacred Love, Fields of Gold. Wow.
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August 29, 2004
Sharlene Hector - I Wish
Coca-Cola Company has scored a winner with a new feel-good ad that's been playing these Olympics. When I first saw the commercial I was riveted. Who was that woman? What a gorgeous song! The answers lie, thankfully, at the Coca-Cola website. Her name is Sharlene Hector; she's a UK singer. The song is I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, popularized by Nina Simone in 1967, composed by Richard Lamb and William Taylor.
The Hector version is not yet available on iTunes (What a missed opportunity Coca Cola!!!). You can buy the imported single from Amazon.com. The Nina Simone song is available at iTunes, plus several other artists' versions.
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January 25, 2004
iTunes RSS Generator
Apple iTunes just released a generator that creates RSS feeds based on genre. You can get separate feeds for new releases, top sellers, etc.
What's RSS? Click here for an explanation.
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April 29, 2003
iTunes store arrives
Just paid for and downloaded my first album from Apple's new iTunes Store. For years I've been arguing that the main justification one has for copying (illegally) MP3s is that you're pissed that you so often pay 18 dollars or so for an entire album and then only end up liking a couple of songs. All of that overhead into manufacturing and distribution and the artist is lucky if she gets more than 50 cents back from your 18 bucks. So now I get to put my money where my mouth is, and that I am happy to do with this service. The quality is awesome. Also, usually to find new music I go to Amazon.com and play the Real Networks clips with crappy sound quality. The clips on iTunes are high quaility and stream very quickly. Bravo Apple!
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April 7, 2003
1 Giant Leap
One of the benefits of being somewhat home-bound for a year has been to explore what's been happening in the music world lately. "Lately" meaning since I got out of college - 20 years ago. I learned while working for Warner Music Group that 80% of all CDs are sold to people between the ages of 14 and 24. (No wonder they are so worried about MP3 sharing. This is the same demographic who knows more than anyone how to share files on the net and who cares more about having access to new music than they do about copywrite laws.) Warner found that people generally keep listening to the same artists and same genre of music that they did in college. Once people start having babies it is just harder to keep up with the music scene.
Music is getting much harder to classify - when world, electronica, hip/hop all merge into one, waddaya call it? Check out 1 Giant Leap and see what I mean. Great music, and a great story.
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