Modern Minstrels

Blog Archive

This is an archive of the music blog I kept from 2003-2006.

Sonic Living Invites

I've got 7 invites to sonicliving.com, if you'd like one let me know. It's a pretty sweet site for finding and keeping track of concerts and other events. I previously blogged about some of its features here.

Welcome to Modern Minstrels

Welcome to my new site dedicated to music. Since nearly half of the posts on my personal blog fell into the music category, I decided it was time to have a dedicated space for my music related ramblings. For a bit more about what this site is meant to be and some insight into my musical tastes visit the About page.

I copied over all the posts from my previous blog that fell into the music category. I may cross post my concert reviews to both sites, but otherwise all my music related posts will be on this site.

To get the site up and running, I just used the same style as my personal site, but as soon as I get some time, I intend to fancy this site up a bit to give it it's own feel.

I'll definitely be continuing making music recommendations, reviewing CDs and concerts, and posting other bits of music news. Let me know what other things you'd like to see on this site either in the comments or by emailing me.

Upcoming.org

Buzz recently told me about Upcoming.org, a social software site for keeping track of concerts and other live performances. There's over a thousand people registered for the San Francisco "metro", so it's got a decent user base. You can see my personal page here. I added all the shows mentioned in the previous post to my events.

The site has some cool features including RSS feeds, subscriptions for iCal, and "badges". I've added a Upcoming Concerts RSS feed for the site. You can subscribe here and I also put a link to it in the sidebar. I updated my concerts page to use their badge to generate my list of upcoming shows. I'm not taking advantage of the iCal subscription yet. The events are all listed as "all day events" rather than listing the event start time and they also don't show the venue. I'm not sure if that's a limitation in the webcal format or if they just didn't set it up to use those pieces of information.

I was hoping Upcoming.org would also be a good place to find out about new shows. There have been far too many times that I've found out about a show either after it's already sold out or after it already occurred. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how useful it's going to be in that respect though as the only event of the four I'm currently attending that I didn't have to create was Death Cab for Cutie. If anyone knows of a good central site (or better yet RSS freed) that gives listings of concerts (especially for indie shows) in the Bay Area, please let me know.

Update:
Buzz hooked me up with an invite to Sonic Living. It's a site similar to Upcoming.org, but seems to have fixed a lot of the problems I listed with Upcoming. First, they populate their show database on their own in addition to relying on users to add shows. All 4 shows I have tickets for in November were already listed on the site, so that bodes well. In addition the iCal subscription includes the show's start time and the venue so I should be able to use that as my concert calendar rather than keeping my own manual one. The site is currently in an invite only beta. I don't have any invite codes yet, but I imagine some will appear in my account soon, eventually so if you're interested let me know.

Also thanks to Jeff for pointing me to EVDB, I'll have to give that a look too. And thanks to Chris for reminding me of Pollstar. I wasn't aware of Pollstar's abilities to track up to 10 bands for you.

The Mixed Tape

In honor of the recently released single The Mixed Tape by Jack's Mannequin, I decided it'd be a good time to add a new section to my site where I can post the various mix cds that I've made / will make. Eventually I'll probably add some descriptions about each of the CDs, but for now it's just a track listing.

Where are you now?
As I'm swimming through the stereo
I'm writing you a symphony of sound
Where are you now?
As I rearrange the songs again

And this is my mixed tape for her
It's like I wrote every note
With my own fingers

Last.fm

I recently set up a Last.fm page, so now anyone can see the shear magnitude of my current Death Cab obsession. . It's a great way to share your musical interests and discover new bands. There really wasn't much to setup. I installed the iTunes Audioscrobbler client set up on both my Powerbook and my work computer and then just listened to my music. It uploads the current track and then as you get a large track listing built up it computes charts of top artists, top songs, etc. Then it links you to "neighbours" who have similar musical interests. Finally, everyone has a personal radio, so you can stream your music, or someone else's. Great for the occasional day when I forget to take my iPod at work. The service is completely free, though they request a donation for using the radio after 30 days of use. I definitely recommend giving it a try.

Yay Lyrics

Woohoo! Songmeanings.net is back up after well over a year of downtime. It is by far the best place to find song lyrics. This also means the links on my Recent Tunes page work again.