So I was sitting at a jazz club in Minneapolis watching Anoushka Shankar. Something about that is really kinda cool.

For those who have no idea who she is, Anoushka Shankar is Ravi Shankar’s daughter, and Nora Jones’ half-sister. Like her father, she is a virtuoso sitar player.

The sitar being one of the more insane musical [...]]]>

So I was sitting at a jazz club in Minneapolis watching Anoushka Shankar. Something about that is really kinda cool.

For those who have no idea who she is, Anoushka Shankar is Ravi Shankar’s daughter, and Nora Jones’ half-sister. Like her father, she is a virtuoso sitar player.

The sitar being one of the more insane musical instruments known to man. At first glance it seems like any other (really ancient) string instrument. In that it has strings, frets, tuning pegs and a resonance chamber. However, the resonance chamber is basically a hollow gourd, the frets are movable and there are over 20 strings. Most of them provide sympathetic resonance, and only a few (six or seven) are playable. Half of those are drone strings, and the rest are used for the melody. To top it off, there’s no standard tuning on the thing! They usually get tuned according to whatever piece is playing at the time.

Oh, and sitar pieces are usually 10-25 minutes long.

Being able to play the thing competently is an achievement in and of itself. Anoushka Shankar is one of (if not THE) best players in the world.

A few words about the venue before I go back to actually writing about the show.

The Dakota Jazz Club is an interesting concert venue. They usually feature, believe it or not, jazz acts. In recent years they’ve been expanding their horizons a bit, which is why I was able to see Nellie McKay (who is a BIT jazzy at times), Suzanne Vega (who’s not really jazz at all) and Judy Collins (a mainstay of folk) there over the past few years.

It’s basically a restaurant – during the show you get to sit at the restaurant tables/booths/bar, and the full menu is available. It’s a bit pricy and sadly very fish-heavy (though they’ve recently become accommodating to vegetarians). You can basically get dinner along with the show.

What I like most about it is that it’s not loud. I don’t know why concerts at ‘real’ venues, even small ones, tend to be so unbelievably loud. The Dakota is a very small place and they use the bare minimum of amplification. After all, it’d almost be possible to hear the music with NO amplification.

Being a small restaurant-ish place, you also get to sit pretty close to the action. We’ve gone to a couple of shows there where we literally had our feet on the stage.

They also seem to be pretty much OK with cameras. Most shows I’ve been to had people taking photos (with the flash on!) all night long. I hate being intrusive so I tend not to do that. Today I actually brought the REAL camera, which should be able to take decent photos without a flash (50mm f/1.4 lens, high ISO, this should be on the other blog).

And of course today they ask people to please not take photographs. I’d have tried to sneak some anyway, but it’s hard to be subtle with a huge camera. I did take one ‘photo’, and yeah, that’s it up in the corner. Great photo if you’re a ghost hunter.

Oh yeah, there was a concert in there somewhere, too.

The first thing you notice when Anoushka Shankar walks onto the stage is that she’s tiny. Really tiny. I had no idea. And sitars are HUGE, and played whilst sitting cross-legged (did I mention THAT up there?).

She had an ensemble of musicians playing other traditional Indian instruments. Two percussionists, a guy playing various flutes, and a guy playing a… uh. A drone instrument that’s very similar to a sitar (stop me if I’m getting too technical). They all got to feature their own solos (except for drone-guy) and were all amazingly talented musicians in their own right. The vocal percussion demonstration was especially impressive.

Anoushka was definitely headlining the thing, though. It’s always great to watch someone who’s just so good at something that they make it look easy, and this was no exception. Oh, another thing about the sitar, you play it while it’s basically facing away from you so you can’t actually see the strings or frets. Not that it really matters, since she had her eyes closed for a lot of it.

They played some of her own compositions, one of her father’s (though re-arranged by her), and a couple of traditional tunes.

One of her compositions was a collaboration she did with a flamenco pianist who’s name escapes me even though I was going to look him up when I got home. There was no piano in this show (The Dakota usually has a near-ubiquitous grand piano on stage, but sadly did not this time) so the composition was rearranged for the current group of instruments, and is apparently still evolving. It was very interesting to hear recognisable flamenco strands coming out of a sitar!

Another composition was a collaboration between Anoushka and the two percussionists. That was the one that had the vocal percussion. Vocal percussions is exactly what it sounds like, and yet it sounds nothing like you’d think. It was presented almost like a musical discussion between the two.

They played for a bit over an hour, and I think they only played five different pieces!

If you enjoy sitar music, or even if you’re not sure you do and are curious to find out, and this tour ends up anywhere near you, I highly recommend it. Or you can buy some of Anoushka Shankar’s CDs (her “Live At Carnegie Hall” album is my favourite). Or look her up on youtube!

I figured I’d listen to it for [...]]]> Laura Veris’ latest album, “July Flame”, was released in January. I’d been meaning to check if she’d released a new album because I figured she was about due (in more ways than one, actually, she’s expecting her first child soon) but kept forgetting till a couple of weeks ago.

I figured I’d listen to it for a while before reviewing it, which I have now done.

And then realised that I actually haven’t got the faintest idea how to write an album review.

Most reviews I’ve read go into great detail comparing each track to every other piece of music ever written, speculating about influences, and labelling the hell out of everything (“This track is rockabilly with some ska influences and a slight degree of Cambodian Folk Music influence coupled with funkadelic chocolate frosting and a parrot.”)

I don’t have the ‘expertise’ to do that, and frankly I’m happy about that. So lets start over.

I discovered Laura Veirs back when I used to troll around music stores and get interesting looking CDs. I bought “Year of Meteros” because of the photo of her on the cover – she looks like a total nerd, and I loved it.

Laura Veirs’ music has been described as “folk rock”, “acoustic rock”, and the ubiquitous “indie” made even worse by adding a “pop” suffix. I don’t know why people are trying so hard. It’s rock, plain and simple, R-O-C-K rock. Sometimes it’s just a girl singing with an acoustic guitar, sometimes it’s electric guitars that can even get loudish, and drums, and everything else that, you know, what rock music is.

Most of the new album is pretty quiet. Not “acoustic” – there are clearly electric guitars and effects – just quiet, in a laid back, relaxed kind of way. This is really what Laura Veirs does best. Her voice lends itself to “relaxed”.

Speaking of her voice, it does seem occasionally more processed on this album. Not “auto-tune” processed – it’s still very much her voice. Just that vocal effects like compression and reverb and that thing where it almost sounds like you’re talking on a phone are more prominent on some tracks. There are also a lot more harmonies with the rest of the band, rather than just Laura Veirs singing on her own.

It doesn’t have any tracks that’ll take the place of my favourite Laura Veirs song, which is “Cast A Hook In Me”, from her previous album, Saltbreaker. That’s hardly a fair contest, though, since that’s just an excellent song and is one of my overall favourite tracks by anyone.

It does have some really good tracks, and is a very solid rock album, which is rare to see nowadays. No BS, no gimmicks, no shock-for-sock-value, no selling out (I’m looking at you, Liz Phair). Well worth the wait, and I hope that Laura Veirs doesn’t take too long to record a new album, new baby notwithstanding.

Oh, when I bought her album off her website, it arrived with a hand-written Thank You note. Take that, major labels!

Yup, we got a ukulele. K has always wanted one and I’m not one to say no to getting another musical instrument.

While we were trying them out, someone at the store asked us if we play the ukulele. I said “No, why would we want to get an instrument we already know how to play?” [...]]]>

Yup, we got a ukulele. K has always wanted one and I’m not one to say no to getting another musical instrument.

While we were trying them out, someone at the store asked us if we play the ukulele. I said “No, why would we want to get an instrument we already know how to play?”

I think I should get a T-Shirt that says “That was rhetorical.”

This wasn’t the first album I bought. The first album I bought was a cassette! by the time we started switching to CDs I had quite a collection of vinyl albums, too. Well, quite a collection for a 16-year-old at the time – I [...]]]> TThe first CD I ever bought, which was Rubber Soul by The Beatles.

This wasn’t the first album I bought. The first album I bought was a cassette! by the time we started switching to CDs I had quite a collection of vinyl albums, too. Well, quite a collection for a 16-year-old at the time – I think I had about 15 of them.

And I sold every single one of them in order to be able to afford that ONE CD.

Which, incidentally, is juuuust above 35 minutes long. I sold 15 albums (at least one of which was a double album) for 35 minutes of music. Luckily, 35 minutes of the best music ever recorded (ok, maybe 33 minutes. I really can’t stand the last track, The Beatles’ Abusive Relationship Songs would be a totally different topic).

It makes more sense when you know that both our record players broke about the same time and my mom decided to just go ahead and get a CD player.

CDs cost a fortune back then (imagine paying $50 for an album!) so it was quite some time until I got another CD. Luckily I really liked this one!

Before I start, though, I have to mention that, yes, there are some advantages to buying music online. Being able to select tracks, for [...]]]> Yup. I still buy CDs. I have several hundred of them, and I have no plans to stop anytime soon. Since this seems to be rare nowadays, I thought I’d explain why.

Before I start, though, I have to mention that, yes, there are some advantages to buying music online. Being able to select tracks, for one. Albums might end up cheaper. You can always download album art and lyrics (plus album art really hasn’t been the same since we moved away from vinyl).

Stealing Doesn’t Count

Figured I’d put this one right up at the beginning. Yes, we all know you can download whatever you want online, but contrary to popular belief, that’s still wrong.

Now I’m not morally opposed to a… shall we say, try-before-you-buy kind of experience. Download some music, but if you like it, you really should buy it.

It’s A Physical Object

I can hold a CD. I can pick it up, move it around, put it on a shelf, or put it in a box in the attic. Which is what I actually do. The music gets copied to the computer, then the CDs get put in a box in the attic. More on why that makes sense later.

DRM

Yeah, you can buy DRM-free music online, but it’s still not ubiquitous.

Freedom

Say you buy a track in iTunes. It’s not really super easy to ditch iTunes and go somewhere else. Yes, there are other online music stores, but lets face it, iTunes is pretty much the top dog.

When I buy music, I want to be able to listen to it in my living room, in my car, in the gym, while walking the dog, while kayaking, wherever. I want it on the CD, on CD-Rs, on my media center computer, on my MP3 player, on a USB thumbdrive, on my cellphone, etc. I want to be able to copy and move my music around to wherever I want. I don’t want any restrictions.

Lossy vs Loseless

I mentioned earlier that I copy all the music from my CDs to the computer. Lossy compression is the reason that makes sense. It’s also the most nerdy.

Raw data on a CD takes up a large amount of disk space. An MP3 file (or a WMV file, or an AAC file, or an OGG file) is a compressed version of this file, and so it takes much less space (on the order of a 90% less space). The compression scheme these files use is what is called “Lossy” compression – which means that the content actually CHANGES. If you uncompress an MP3, you don’t get the original track. You lose some data, and therefore quality.

Compare this with loseless compression, like you’d get with a ZIP file. When you uncompress a ZIP file, you get the exact same file (or files) back.

There are loseless compression formats available for music. FLAC is the most popular one nowadays. The data in a FLAC file is exactly identical to the original music track. The downside is that these files are much larger than an MP3 file (about 50% smaller than the original track rather than 90% smaller).

The value in this is that, with loseless compression, you have a 100% complete copy of your CD. You can always uncompress it and burn it back to a disc with no data or quality loss.

Data formats tend to change over time. MP3 may be ruling the roost today, but there are other, superior formats. Perhaps some day we’ll want all our music files in a different format, for whatever reason. You can uncompress your MP3 files and recompress them in the new format, but doing so definitely results in data loss. Not so with loseless algorithms like FLAC – you can recompress your music into whatever format you like, as many times as you like, with no data loss at all.

I’ve seen albums for sale in FLAC format online, but the prices have been exactly the same as a CD!

SACD

I’m only half-serious about this one, but there are other music formats available on CDs, or CD-like media. SACD and DVD-A both provide much higher sound quality, and (optionally) full 5.1-channel surround sound, as opposed to CDs plain-old-2-channel stereo.

I’ll have to write more about those some other time.

That happens to me with music sometimes. Neko Case is a good example.

I’ve heard of Neko Case a good while ago, of course, but never actually heard her music, since I don’t really get exposed to new (as [...]]]> Have you ever met someone new and really, really wanted to like them, but you just can’t?

That happens to me with music sometimes. Neko Case is a good example.

I’ve heard of Neko Case a good while ago, of course, but never actually heard her music, since I don’t really get exposed to new (as in recent) music very often. A few months ago, I heard her on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! which is not a music-related show, but it sparked my interest.

They did play a snippet of her music, so I did get to hear that she has an amazing voice and is obviously very talented. Even more important, she was a smartass. And not only was she a smartass, she was the same kind of smartass I am! And she’s, uh. A redhead. So what’s not to like?

So I went and got a couple of her albums. Yes, I actually buy CDs when I find someone interesting enough. Yes, physical CDs. I got Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and her latest album, Middle Cyclone.

Neko Case’s music has been described as… well, about a thousand different ways, most of which involve the words “Alternative”, “Fusion” and “Indie”, which technically mean “we have no idea”.

Now I’m not saying I have a better description, but sadly I just can’t really get into it. Despite the voice and talent, I just can’t get into it.

She does have some good tunes that I do like. Although off the top of my head I can only think of one (Margaret Vs Pauline, which is strangely the first track I listened to!). Most of them, though… I just have to hit Skip a minute or two into them.

I’m sorry, Neko. It’s not you, it’s me. I think you’re crazy talented, but we’re just not right for each other. I’ll put your CDs in the same box as Indigo Girls, Patty Griffin and Jorge Drexler. And I’ll keep an eye (and ear) out for your next albums, because I’ll be happy to give this another change… some day.

Pete Townshend is the guitar player for The Who.

I’m writing this down because normally I can only keep one of their names in my head at the time and drive myself nuts trying to remember the other guy’s name.

Strangely I have no problems remembering John Entwistle and Keith [...]]]> Roger Daltrey is the frontman for The Who.

Pete Townshend is the guitar player for The Who.

I’m writing this down because normally I can only keep one of their names in my head at the time and drive myself nuts trying to remember the other guy’s name.

Strangely I have no problems remembering John Entwistle and Keith Moon. Although I DO occasionally confuse them with John Paul Jones and John Bonham.