Quick rundown of recent news:

New Hot Hot Heat song posted from their next record, Happiness, Ltd.

Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, Sports Night) to Write Flaming Lips Musical via Punknews.org

Slint are touring. But only in Europe. Please, someone send me to Europe. Maybe on or about May 29th.

Good Clean Fun to Make Feature Length Film via Punknews.org

Paint It Black will have a new record, and Dan makes it sound good. Also watch the video from The Fest.

Some damn fool Councilmember from DC wants to ban anyone under 21 from the city's clubs. The Black Cat and the 9:30 would be affected. The DC music scene would certainly be affected as well. Ian Mackaye has a response. Don't let DC go down.

Catlick Records released a benefit CD for Callum Robbins, son of AJ from Jawbox. It has 32 songs. One is by Jawbreaker. It is not an entirely new song, though. Just a demo recording. Still, it is a worthy cause and I love Jawbreaker.

Labels: Hardcore, Hardcore Music, Indie, Jawbreaker, Music, Slint

Back in August, Sean Bonner of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (a blog, not the seminal Jawbreaker record) posted an article titled MySpace Can Eat a Bag of Dick. It is a scathing indictment of MySpace based purely on the site's usability.

I keep getting e-mails from them that some skank named Jennifer has invited me to join her group "Hot Videos" but since I can't do anything with the e-mail I have to go to the site to take action on it. Except even though I was on the site hours ago it's forgotten my cookie and I have to login again. Except it says "you need to login to do that!" I need to login to login? OK, now, 3 pages later I'm logged in. And then I have to go home. And then I have to go to the mailbox. And then I have to go to the message. 6 pages later I finally get to this message and hit deny, to which I'm treated to a "sorry, you can't do this because we suck and are having errors or the atari 2600 box this whole site is running on just got unplugged or something" bullshit error message.

Read the whole rant here.
If you use MySpace at all, then everything in this article has happened to you. What's sad is that Bonner wrote this back in August, and if anything, it's gotten worse. The other day it took me six login attempts just to get to the stupid ad page. MySpace, if you're listening, fix your site. Oh, and I will never click one of your ads.

Facebook has problems of its own (maybe too much access given to friends, certainly too much to look at on a much prettier page than MySpace, useless things like Gifts, etc.), but at the very least, users can log in and see what happened while they were gone with very little trouble. Elements of pages can change without having to reload the whole page (a lá Google Calendar, Couchville, Yahoo!). And more than anything, it just looks better. Of course, you have to have a school email address to be a member.

Myspace's default pages are almost unreadable and their home page is so cluttered that if they ever moved the login box, no one would ever find it again. These are all problems before you get to the behavior of the people on the site. Pedophiles, murderers, stalkers, etc. I don't think it's completely the fault of MySpace, but it sure isn't making them look any better. I'll let the Attorney General of Connecticut handle all that, though. My problem is that there really is no other good alternative. There are other social networking websites, but many are a little too social for me. I don't think anyone really needs to know every single thing I am doing. I don't want to have to choose some dumb little icon to demonstrate how I am feeling. I don't want everybody to know what band I am looking up. It's not so much an issue of privacy as it is annoyance. I wouldn't want to see all those things as my friends did them.

One of the reasons MySpace is so popular (and say what you want about pageviews ) is that it is still a little private. Your space there is your own, and others can only access it or alter it (with comments) as you see fit.

I would really like to see a startup with this idea bring something new to the table. MySpace minus the overbearing greed. If anyone knows of a better MySpace (or wants to design or program one), leave a comment below. Let's start something better. Something where this never happens.

Soon I will check out Orkut, Google's MySpace equivalent, and Virb, which seems to be all about music. I will follow up and let you know what I think. In the meantime, let me know what you think about any of these sites, or any others.

Labels: Dumb, MySpace, Rants

There's nothing better than free music. Well, not much better, anyway. Here are some more places to find it. Read the first part of this article here.

MP3 Blogs

• The Sound of Indie is a great blog run by someone I don't know who apparently has access to my record collection. I'm serious. It's like they break into my house in Tampa from their place in (I think) Minneapolis. Actually, now it's LA. Check it out. We have lots of good stuff.
  
• Said the Gramophone. Lots of good indie rock.
  
• I Guess I'm Floating. More good indieness.
  
• 1.168. Indie rock with beautiful, if slightly annoying, archive section.
  
• Metro Distortion. More. MORE!
  
• Dasp. Punk and stuff. In German, but who cares? You don't read anything anyway.
  
• Exit Fare. Lots of good stuff. Curiously, there is a picture of the DC Metro at the top of a page from Boston MA.
  
• fak3r. Shellac, Explosions In the Sky and Elliot Smith on the first page, which is all I have seen so far.
  
• Hobby Box at The Larry Page. Interesting stuff.
  

Labels

• One of my all time favorite labels is Kill Rock Stars. It's been the home of a lot of great bands, my current favorite of which is Deerhoof. Their looklistenwatch page has a few songs and videos for download, as well as a nice collection of posters and fliers (wish more labels, bands, etc. did this). At the top of the page you can click on each category to find more stuff. If you click "Sound," you're going to find some Born Against. You have been warned.
  
• Second Nature Recordings, the home of Rocky Votolato, These Arms Are Snakes, The Blood Brothers and Reggie and the Full Effect, as well as the final resting place of Anasarca, has a ton of songs available for download. Just click the audio link at the top of the page.
  
• Touch and Go Records is the label Kurt Cobain wanted to be on. And it is the label that Arcwelder, Blonde Redhead, Calexico, Don Caballero, June of '44, Man Or Astroman?, and a million other bands are on. Their Songs and Videos page has a lot of stuff available.
  
• WARNING! I don't know a single other person anymore who can listen to this stuff. So go check out Stonehenge Records Their Media page has stuff you cannot handle, the likes of which you have never heard. Unless you have. Listen to the Fingerprint song first. Then Jasemine. That's the singer's next band. Also check out Amanda Woodward.
  

If you're going to download from labels, I suggest dragging the songs into a new playlist in iTunes. Name it for the record label, and when you find what you like, you will know where to go to buy it.

Google

There is a really simple way to find songs on Google using Smacki's Google Search. Just click the link, type the name of a band, and hit enter. Great for finding stuff you think lots of other people may have heard of.

Labels: Hardcore, Hardcore Music, Indie, Music