Free Candy For Everyone

It rocked! Ok, but seriously. I really enjoyed the Police concert last night. I went out and checked for reviews of the show to see what other people thought and found this stinker. But don’t listen to that jerk. Here’s what I knew going in: the first show was a disaster, at least from the words of drummer Stewart Copeland it was. And I’d seen a YouTube video (which I can’t seem to find now) of a performance from that opening night show and they sounded bad - Sting wasn’t even trying for the high notes (and seemed bored), Stewart stumbled, and it was just not tight at all.

But I’m a fan and so I was excited anyways. And the complaints of the early shows weren’t a problem at this one. I think Sting sounded great. I couldn’t believe he could still hit some of those high notes, Stewart was awesome, and Andy was doing fine. They were coherent and together and seemed to be genuinely having a good time.

The song selection was not my perfect set list, but contained their entire greatest hits album, so I guess that appeals to most people. It’s that a lot of their non-greatest hits selections baffled me. But really, the only song I wished they’d played that they didn’t was “Bring on the Night” (from Reggatta de Blanc). They played “So Lonely”, “King of Pain” and “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” which are some of my favorites.

Looks like the set list is consistent from what I’ve seen out there, it all matches what I heard last night. I post it here for your edification:

1. Message in a Bottle
2. Synchronicity II
3. Don’t Stand So Close to Me (sort of a mix of the original version and the 1986 version)
4. Voices Inside My Head/When the World is Running Down
5. Spirits in the Invisible World
6. Driven to Tears
7. Walking on the Moon
8. Truth Hits Everybody
9. Every Little Thing She Does is Magic (Could I love this song anymore?)
10. Wrapped Around Your Finger
11. The Bed’s Too Big Without You
12. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da (vapid song)
13. Invisible Sun (I was getting a bit sleepy here, too many songs I didn’t love in a row)
14. Walking in Your Footsteps
15. Can’t Stand Losing You (aha! I woke up again)
16. Roxanne

ENCORE 1

17. King of Pain
18. So Lonely

ENCORE 2

19. Every Breath You Take
20. Next to You

The reviewer I linked above complained that they’re not an arena band like some others. Well, I’m not an arena fan. I’ve been to many concerts in my life but this was my first arena show. It was at a baseball stadium and there were maybe 20,000 - 30,000 people there. I don’t know how many people exactly, but I’ve never been in such a large crowd. The Police didn’t set off any big fireworks or come out into the crowd on raised platforms, but they performed their songs honestly and with heart. I felt like they were glad to be there with us and they gave and we took it in. Sting gave us lots of opportunities to sing along and we did. The sound of thousands of voices raised in song is a powerful thing. Most people can’t really sing, but together we sound amazing. I don’t really understand it (maybe it’s another facet of the wisdom of crowds, on average, we’re hitting the right notes), but it was great to get caught up in it.

All thumbs enthusiastically up. I loved it and if they came back next week I’d upgrade my ticket from the stands to the floor without qualms.

I am super excited! I’m off to see The Police in concert tomorrow. I’m a big fan and have been for years. I own all their albums and most of Sting’s as well. I haven’t been to a concert in way too long, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. They haven’t toured together in over 20 years! And who knows if they’ll tour again, after all.

Getting myself in a Police-filled mood… Will return soon with AIIDE notes.

I love to sing, as anyone who works with me can aver. I tend to sing while working, whether I mean to or not. And maybe a bit louder than I intend to. So when a co-worker found a cool karaoke website, he sent a link along to me.

SingShot lets anyone with a microphone and an internet connection record songs on their site. Then you can mark them public and anyone can listen, comment, give feedback. I recorded a song today. Not a great job, I messed up a bit, my microphone had the gain up a bit too high. But I’m not shy, here you go, give it a listen.

Not only do I buy a lot of music, I listen to a lot of music. On a good day, I might actually spend more than 4 hours rocking out with my music. Ever since I ripped all my CDs to my computer and was able to listen to anything I have at any time, I found that I’d get tired of particular songs way faster, since it was just that much easier to put them on repeat until I couldn’t take it any longer.

I’d say that I have an above average musical knowledge. Some degree of training on four instruments factors into it. But the amount of time I devote to music listening is a part of it as well. So reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell was very interesting. The idea behind the book is that snap decisions that we make on first impression are frequently backed up with all sorts of data and can be way more informed than you might think. There’s a chapter in there about a musician named Kenna. His story is something about how before he was signed, all the industry pros who heard his demo were totally wowed and loved him. He played some small clubs to packed houses and rave reviews. The industry people thought he was going to be the next big thing. But when his songs were sent out to be consumer tested, to see what people thought of it on a first impression, it didn’t fair that well.

Now, this was all even more interesting to me, because shortly before reading Blink, I’d been over at my brother’s house. We were playing poker and listening to music. We’d been listening to music for several hours when a song came on - a song that immediately prompted me to ask “Who is this?” It was Kenna - I was someone for whom this was music I loved on first listen. My listening habits put me into a similar mind set to others for whom music is their life.

Soon after that, I was hanging out with my friend Anu, who works in the music industry. We had a long talk about music and our favorite albums of the year and what we were listening to now. He played his fave of 2006 for me and it was strange, so very strange. It was so different, with all sorts of sounds that weren’t quite standard music to me. Which made me wonder, maybe the more music you listen to, the more it all sounds the same. You start to see the connections between everything you hear, until you realize how similar things are. And all that’s left is to find something dramatically different than the norm.

I think that was why Kenna stood out for me. He sounded different than what I was listening to. He’s not really all that out there - his music makes sense to me. But it was different enough for me to actually take notice, in a good way. The trouble is that for the average listener, they don’t want to hear something unexpected, or at least they don’t think they do. So they hear something new that they don’t quite get, it’s jarring and uncomfortable and they say “I don’t think I like this.” But for people like Anu and me, that’s what we’re looking for. And he’s taken that to an even more extreme level so that I can’t quite follow what he’s hearing other.

That’s not to say that people cannot appreciate music like Kenna unless they’re uber-music nerds or anything. It’s just that our first impressions of the music are different…

I buy a lot of music. I can never quite get enough, and walking into a music store can be a dangerous proposition - I’ll frequently leave with a giant stack of music and a lighter wallet. With all that music buying, I tend to listen to them all a time or two, and if they don’t grab me, they quickly become forgotten. This results in a very large music collection with a lot of music that I haven’t really listened to - not enough to really know, at least.

My brother recently pointed me at an application that can help me to find new music in my own library. It’s called MusicIP Mixer. The basic idea is that it has a profile for every song, built by doing some sort of crazy mathematical analysis. Unlike other music services out there that I’ve tried that require users or experts to hand create profiles of each song, this is based purely on an analysis of the music itself.

With this cool data, it makes mixes for you. And it’s so nifty. You can make a mix based on one song, an artist, a collection of songs - it tries to find other songs in your own library that are like the songs you selected (based on crazy mathy formulas, I’m sure), and there you go. You can create “moods”, which you define by selecting some songs. For example, I made an exercise mood with fast paced songs, and then told it to make me a mix based on it. And voila! Lots of upbeat, energetic music to workout to.

I made some mixes to workout to, and some mixes based on my favorite songs to find other songs like them. It pulled up lots of music that I don’t usually listen to, and I got to hear some new-to-me stuff. Very neat.

My second method of finding “new” music was way simpler. It was to just make a smart playlist in iTunes. The rules? Select songs that I hadn’t listened to in the last two months, with a rating greater than 1 star. It’s been a pretty great way to listen to the less fortunate songs that haven’t been getting my attention.

I haven’t “discovered” anything really unexpected, but have found some old songs that haven’t made it into rotation recently, and got to hear some songs that might just earn a place on my faves list someday.