how i geek out

mm....sometimes when i'm in a really good mood, like today - i kind of geek out.

here is how:

i discovered several new artists:
malicious, reppin' montreal - the ill mtl and you should check out 'heavy mtl' off his playlist

dead celebrity status - not sure where they're from but the videos for 'we fall we fall' and 'turn the lights out' are pretty sick

sweatshop union - holding down the left coast. check out the video for 'broken record'

and there are a couple of videos from dresden dolls.
dresden dolls vs. panic! at the disco
backstabber by dresden dolls

you'll notice that i'm not embedding videos at the moment.
it all has to do with the fact that myspace is currently, apparently beefing with a whole bunch of folks, to and including youtube.

and well, youtube is getting sued so it's kind of hard to figure out and i don't really like thinking too hard about it.

all of the above artists have links to either myspace videos or youtube videos which is great. i'm a child of the 80's and while i like a good song to listen to on my mp3 player - a well made video is better. sorry to be like that, but it's the truth.

and no, a 'well made video' doesn't have to be worth millions of dollars. check out the funny videos that amanda plummer did or the 'china invitation' of from malicious. those, really are worth their weight in gold to me as a fan because, well it didn't go through any sort of number crunching machine to 'target it to the right demographic'.

on the whole myspace thing - beefing with youtube isn't necessarily the best thing.
most of the 'target demo' seems to have abandoned myspace for facebook anyways.

i remain 'social networking neutral' and use whatever i feel like using at the moment. for now, finding new music is related to trolling the pages of the myspace pages of the artists that i do like and checking out their 'friends' to see what new music i could find.

i mean, if it wasn't for the internet i doubt that i would know 70% of the music i know.
and for the record, i despise p2p networks.
i have a friend who is a struggling musician and think of him when i see someone bragging on how they found this or that on whatever the flavour is version of p2p network.

on the flipside - myspace, facebook, youtube etc are doing a nice job of eviscerating the wall between the fan and the artist and hopefully (as chuck d opined would happen way back in 1999) cut out a good portion of the middle man.

or at least trade the a&m men from the sole monopolists left to apple for a while.

and then again - many artists are tired of the old regime - they know they're getting ripped off as courtney love does the math in a napster era salon.com article.

or as kinnie starr talked about when i flat out asked her why she put embedded youtube videos on her page - perhaps it's a combination of pragmatism and philosophy for some.

as for me - i see a paris hilton album and i want to run out and give money to folks like shad k (who's iq is so high you fly to it) or juanna molina (who's simply the most unique artist since i first heard bjork) or baba brinkman, who went and invented his own genre, and 'blind faith' is a song that gives me hope as an asipring novelist.