FilteringCraig

The band got together today to record in a real live studio with our good frient Guggie producing in his studio in lovely Warrensville Heights, Ohio.

Click here to read about how it went over at The Company Line Rocks Dot Com

“The glitzy series came to an astonishing finale when an enormous herd of ravenous peccaries invaded the stage. Scott was just reaching the de rigueur crescendo of a tear-jerking song when tragedy struck. His singing suddenly turned to screams of terror as the snarling pigs devoured the unlucky contestant in a mere matter of seconds.”

Jimmy Zero of The Dead Boys on Idol Finalist and Clevelander Scott Savol

I was so happy to read this that I figured I would just post the letter. This is why CNET is one of my destinations for geek stuff on the web.

Dear Downloaders,

When it comes to fighting unwanted adware and spyware, CNET Download.com has always been in your corner. During the past few years, we’ve brought you the best tools and tips in our Spyware Center, and we’ve maintained a strict policy toward adware by allowing only software that discloses advertising partnerships during installation.

This week, we’ve upped the ante: we’re launching a new zero-tolerance policy toward all bundled adware. That means every time you download software from Download.com, you can trust we’ve tested it and found it to be adware-free–period. (See how we test.)

Why are we taking this extra step? In your letters, user reviews, and polls, you told us bundled adware was unacceptable–no matter how harmless it might be. We want you to know what you’re getting when you download from CNET Download.com, and no other download site can promise you will.

Can we guarantee you’ll never get adware or spyware on your computer? Unfortunately, no. For that reason, we strongly encourage–no, make that beg–you to take extra steps to keep your computer free of all unwanted adware and spyware. Download and install a reputable antispyware scanner today. For a list of the ones we recommend, please visit our Spyware Center.

I welcome your feedback on this important change.

Happy downloading!

Senior vice president and chief downloader, CNET Download.com

Scott Arpajian

I am 26 years old now, but apparently it is still funny to ask if I am at work with my daddy today. Ahhh HA HA HA.

That’s just terrific.

But not as terrific as as asking my co-worker if she has any grandkids coming in today. And then for the other coworker, I left a voicemail asking if “he was ok, because I had heard that he had broken his hip and was using a walker now. I know it is cheesy humor, but really you can’t be much more edgy at work.

Better not start something you can’t finish.

This wasn’t just any snow. This was about 10 inches of snow.

AND A PERFECT WEATHER HOME OPENER FOR THE INDIANS!

Now my back is sore because the snow was all watery and heavy.

If I start eating dinner at 4:30 PM and shaking my fist at those damn neighborhood rapscallions with their rock music, I will officially be old enough to be a senior citizen at age 26.

The Mega Millions Lottery has jumped way up over $200 million dollars. At work, we got together in a pool and put in some money to all play it together. I know the odds of winning are ridiculous and everything like that. I figure I am buying a night’s worth of dreams about what I could do with all that cash. But then a more nefarious thought slipped into my mind. Of course I discussed it with a co-worker because it is funny.

I have a printout of all the numbers that we are playing here at work. And because I am greedy, I was thinking of a way to make more money on the win. No, I wasn’t planning on offing anyone if that is what you are thinking.

What I was thinking was pooling with my other co-worker to purchase all the same numbers as we have on the first sheet.

If, by chance the lottery hit and I was playing it straight up with my 16 co-workers and the pot was exactly $200 million, I would get 1/17th of the money, or $11,764,705 before taxes, or 5.88% of the entire pot.

If my co-worker and I buy up the same numbers, we would get end up getting a much larger percentage, 27.94% of the pot, for a total of $55,882,352.94 apiece. We would also be reducing our co-workers’ take from the nearly $12 million to $ 5,882,352.94.

And boy would they be pissed. This is why the Lottery is fun.

It has been quite a long time since Trent Reznor and his moniker Nine Inch Nails had a proper release. In fact, The Fragile was released in September of 1999. All the die hard Nine Inch Nails fans remember that release without any problem, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that it was largely ignored in the music mainstream, at least compared to the level of attention and success that was reached with The Downward Spiral as measured by radio airplay and videos. Not all could be blamed on the music as The Fragile was as intense and beautiful as all the other NIN releases, if a bit different and (gasp) mature.

The climate had changed in 1999 since The Downward Spiral blew a generation of kids’ real and imagined wounds wide open with Reznor’s brand of self loathing and confusion in 1994. On top of the fact that Reznor packaged his artistic triumph in the less commercially viable form-factor of a two-disc set, the odds were stacked against him as Napster had opened the world up to many new types of music. Modern rock radio had become as limited and formulaic as Carrot Top’s stand-up. A video as cool as Closer might have been produced, but who would have seen it at 4:17 AM on MTV2?

Not that a whole lot of people listen to the critics, but some were still on board.

Rolling Stone said of The Fragile

“. . . Trent comes on like an avenging disco godfather returned for the big payback. The Fragile is his version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, a double album that vents his alienation and misery into paranoid studio hallucinations, each track crammed with overdubs until there’s no breathing room. The stun-volume guitar riffs, intricate synth squeals and interlocking drum-machine patterns flow together as a two-hour bubble bath in the sewer of Trent’s soul. . .”

Not all the critics were believers, like Brent DiCrescenzo at Pitchforkmedia.com. His review speaks almost as much to the environment as it does to the music on NIN’s release.

“Sometime over the last decade, music that is intrinsically meant to be menacing (i.e. Nine Inch Nails) has become a banal syndicated- action hour soundtrack. It’s easy to imagine the overproduced grind of “The Wretched” blaring through a TV screen as Nightman kicks a henchman off a roof. This stuff could be the score to “The Crow 4: In Space.” And this time around, Trent has unanimously failed to shock anyone above the age of 15 and under the age of 54. I mean, have you listened to old Judas Priest lately? Now, this is not to say music must be confrontational, although the best of it typically is. However, in a pop society that has become numb to industrial sounds through ESPN2 and Surge commercials, it’s no longer interesting or tolerable to base one’s entire output on volume and amplified cliches.”

(But, really. are the people at Pitchfork ever happy?)

So, now in 2005, Trent Reznor is ready to release the follow-up to The Fragile, entitled With Teeth. Gone is the two-disc opus with movement-like sections, but the environment is more confused than ever. With the advent of ITunes, IPods, and the further degeneration of rock radio and MTV it is difficult (dare I say impossible) to predict what will happen with anything that is released nowadays.

The internet has become more powerful, and while there have been great stories of success infused with help from the internet, like Wilco finding themselves a success and the continuing saga of Fiona Apple’s unreleased disc, but not including the internet-born William Hung debacle, we have yet to see a serious musical success outside of hip hop in this newest iteration of music culture. Certainly it is tough to think of anything that approached the level of success reached by The Downward Spiral.

So as the release date, May 3rd approaches, we will have to see if Trent Reznor can appeal on the wide level above and beyond his core party of fans who think in terms of halos.

(This also appears at Blogcritics.org)

Nobody has been a bigger supporter of Iron and Wine as I have been on this site. I reviewed a bunch of their music, and concerts. Todd and I drove all the way to Detroit to see them when they decided not to bring their tour through Cleveland. I have seen Iron and Wine 5 times now and own all of their albums, not to mention some rare b-sides and unreleased stuff that I have found on the various corners of the internet.

With all that in mind, I think their show on Saturday night really stunk. It wasn’t due to the huge audience, which was a complete and utter sellout at the Grog Shop. It wasn’t because the band was making technical mistakes onstage, because they were reasonably tight. It wasn’t because the sound man had the band improperly mixed, because I could hear every part very well.

It is because they changed the songs too much.

I am guessing that Sam Beam has gotten bored with the original arrangements of his songs and needed something fresh to tour on. Trust me, I never want my favorite artists torturing themselves by playing the same damn thing night in and night out. But in the case of this latest Iron and Wine show, the arrangements and changes were too drastic and really just ruined some of the songs.

Passing Afternoon changed and came off just fine with a different drum beat, but some other songs were just massacred. Specifically, Bird Stealing Bread sounded like the original through a really bad filter. It was a little faster and more rhythmic with the two percussionists playing off of each other while Sam harmonized a more poppy sound with his sister. The original version of the song is dark, brooding, seeming that much more meaningful and emotional just by its delivery. The new version sounded like Bird Stealing Bread as covered by Jimmy Buffett.

Not good. Not good at all.

I am sure I will continue to support the band because I love their material so much on CD. Also, I don’t want to come off as that guy who doesn’t like it when the band changes anything live. I am not that guy. I just didn’t like these specific changes to the songs and the arrangements. In my view, they took away from the originals rather than adding to them.

This also appears at Blogcritics.org

The only thing more fun than baby-sitting someone else’s kid for an afternoon, is getting that kid (a two-year old named Noah who is Todd’s God Son) to help you pick up all the sticks in the backyard. Oh, and to make it absolutely perfect, convince the kid that this game of picking up sticks and piling them up is called “Checkers” so that when he tells his parents what he did this afternoon, it will not sound anything like forced manual labor with a child under the age of five.

(What? We threw the ball around for a while too!)