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I just noticed they had an older Radiohead Knives Out Download (3 songs) for $1.87. For a single where you aren’t going to see them lower than $5.97 in physical format this is extra-great.

or Radiohead Knives Out Download ($1.87)

I was just checking out the Amazon MP3 Downloads service and so far its two thumbs up. You get high bit-rate MP3s (256-320kbps) with no DRM protection and prices that range from $.79 to $.99 a song. Even better they often discounts if you download a whole album. EMusic is still less expensive, but Amazon expands the mix quite a bit by carrying major label artists.

Two new albums have come out recently that I’m really enjoying. The first is from Black Francis who apparently has gone back to his Pixies era name along with quite a bit of its sound on his new album Bluefinger. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Pixies. Its not the same as any of the specific Pixies albums, but if you like them you will probably like it.

The other one is the self-titled debut album from A Place to Bury Strangers. Tons of noise and feedback and it certainly gets compared to the Jesus and Mary Chain for good reasons. Also reminds me of some of the Raveonettes stuff. But pretty cool and nice high energy. It can be an interesting trick to prevent the sound from becoming washed out with all that feedback but they manage it.

Yesterday I placed an order with Amazon. I ordered a couple of older CDs, the new album from M.I.A. (which is only $7.99- its cool to see the prices of music coming down), and a spare battery for my camera. I’m a Prime member so its all free two day shipping, but I think I missed the cut-off for shipping yesterday so it should all be here on Friday.

Today a package shows up from Amazon with the $13.30 battery. It appears it was delivered by “WRX”, which I assume is their same-day service for stuff they have in the Seattle warehouses. Pretty amazing.

Cool!

The BBC has posted videos of most of Glastonbury 2007. This link should take you to the Hold Steady show but it looks like they are all online there.

I’m still looking for a better way to manage my music collection. I currently have several copies of my collection on a server in my house. All the music I buy on CD I rip to WMA-lossless, and I also get a fair amount of high-bitrate MP3 files from eMusic. These files tend to be fairly large so I like to transcode them into 3 other directory trees- one with WMA variable bitrate that is about 192kbps, one with WMA variable bitrate that is around 64kbps for small capacity mobile devices like my phone, and a last directory with 128kbps MP3s for devices that don’t like WMA.

Currently I use the “Windows Audio Converter” that was part of the XP Plus Pack to do the conversion. It lets me specify a source directory, destination directory and audio configuration and it goes off and converts the whole thing (skipping already converted files). The only problems with this scheme is that this is only a GUI-based app and I’d really prefer a command line version that I can script and trigger automatically every day. So far I’ve been unsuccessful finding anything that meets this goal so email me if you know of something or leave a note in the comments.

Another year, another trip to the great Coachella music festival. Kat and I rented a place again but unfortunately many of the usual crowd didn’t show up so it was just the two of us going to the shows (although some friends did come out to enjoy the sun).

When we got to the place I cut my foot open running to turn off the alarm- there is this strange raised area in the kitchen area made of metal and I was wearing my Chacos. For a bit I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to walk and go to the shows at all but Kelly was able to patch me up enough to limp around.

This year they added a third day and between how tired we have been from work lately, how overwhelming a 3-day thing starts to feel and maybe just becoming a bit jaded we didn’t get to the first day until fairly late. Also there was my foot thing although its amazing how much faster I managed to move as we were getting close to the shows. I was a little disappointed that we missed the first half of the Jesus and Mary Chain set but the second half was really good and it was cool to see Just Like Honey and Reverence live, loud and with the appropriate piercing feedback.

After that we saw Jarvis Cocker. Jarvis is the Austin Powers of Britpop. He was funny, dramatic, and shook his butt at the audience. Overall a really fun set, and while it was slightly disappointing that he didn’t do anything from Pulp, his new material is really good.

Finally we saw some of Interpol. I thought they were good last year at Pitchfork but here on the mainstage I thought they were pretty boring. The stage was all black, there wasn’t much going on and the songs just seemed to drone. With two more days to go we headed out on the long hike back to the car.

Bloc Party has a new single out and I went to look for it on EMusic. All their mainstream albums are no longer available on there. Not cool!

Daft Punk are playing Seattle July 29th 2007! Last year at Coachella Daft Punk were the highlight of the show. Presale just started- the code is “robots”. I just got my tix with a little full-blast Discovery “ticket buying” music.

I don’t have anything especially enlightened to say about this album other than that it arrived today and I’m listening to it for about the third time and its great. Its pretty solid- its not like there are just one or two tracks that stand out, although there are a few phrases that really stick out- “Some day you will die somehow and somethings going to steal your carbon”.

I wish I’d managed to get tickets for the Seattle show tomorrow (I was on Ticketbastard but they sold out almost instantly) but I’ve got to assume they are going to have some more shows here over the summer given the size of their local fan-base. If you like any of their other stuff this one should be a great addition to your collection.