No Dice

Caught School of Seven Bells opening for Fujiya & Miyagi the other night at the 9:30 Club. I can't remember the last time I commented on a lack of musicianship, but 2/3 of School of Seven Bells seems to need lessons in playing their instruments and in stage presence. They sounded like the same beautiful, noisy, dreamy pop from their debut record Alpinisms, but I might as well have watched my ipod since there was nothing to watch on stage...except their guitarist Ben Curtis who played and fiddled with enough sampling gear for a couple of people. The mix didn't do them any favors either since it buried the interesting bits and contributed to the sameness factor of a lot of their set. *Sigh* Baby bands...they get better and then they get their own soundperson.

Fujiya & Miyagi weren't overly endowed with stage presence either, but they were pros and they could play and had this cool animated backdrop. So I liked them, if only because they were so much better than their openers. They'd be ripe for remixing, too, so I want to see what I can dig up.

In other news: Muxtape is back and not like it was. Wish I'd gotten a chance to talk shop with Justin Ouellette when he was a panelist last week.

Comeuppance, please come in. Why should my rinky-dink non-profit have to bear all the burdens of accurate and transparent accounting?

Need more ways to make your cassettes obsolete? Options include converting and recycling.

Speaking of obsolescence, John Strohm explains the legal issues surrounding selling used MP3s. Legalities aside, I doubt Bopaboo has a viable business model - you'd need such massive buy-in from the public to have a database of used MP3s worth searching - but the issues around the concept are sadly evergreen...which is why I dug it out of the old starred items.

Move over, Charm City Cakes for this really cool Darth Vader cake. I love you still though because you would never unintentionally do this.

No Jazz Flutes

Ah, Syracuse. Depending on whether you're feeling charitable, Worcester, MA or Hanover, NH come to mind. I was there for a 36-hour trip this past weekend to have meetings and check out venues for a seminar we're doing there in April. It wasn't a bad time, but 36 hours was plenty. While there I got to listen to lots of suits talk shop about the intricacies of the FCC and communications law. A bit brain-numbing. On the upside, I got to sit in on a lecture by Pandora's founder Tim Westergren. He's a very cool former musician with a business model that will hopefully continue to make money and introduce people to new music as long as Soundexchange doesn't do them in. Since they need people to listen to all that music and categorize it in umpteen ways, they actually hire those poor, starving, non-touring, Berklee College of Music grads who had to take all that music theory! Drat. If I'd know that I would've stuck with ear training and contemporary harmony...that is, as long as it never involved listening to the jazz flute.

I tie my brain in knots regularly over FMC's finances: how to pay for things, how to justify them, how to pay just enough - not too much but not too little either - for what we need, and how to explain it all. Funny, I never thought about its innate alternate-universe-esque weirdness until I read this article in the Non-Profit Quarterly. If you work for a non-profit or are considering it, this article should be required reading.

Alas, non-profit accounting is not as amusing as Chad Vader (courtesy of the dude from Innova I met in Syracuse).

The Long Tail's Chris Anderson has a free preview on the Wired website from his new book called, in case you miss the point, "Free".

On the political front: Harold Feld considers how Clinton's constant style vs. substance charge is more about campaigning style and how Obama and Clinton are using the Internet differently. Can't finish this without asking why? Seems Nader can't properly answer that question either.

Well, at least I only got a few points in the Dork category...