Musicwhore.org

I can blame learning a new programming language for the dearth of content on this site.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded Visual Studio Express on a lark. I’d always casually thought about experimenting with developing desktop applications, even though my bread and butter is web development. I didn’t anticipate the rabbit hole through which I’d be falling.

I knew it was bad when I saw news about a new Cocco single, and I was too busy coding to post about it.

I think I’m starting to come out of that obsessive haze, if the fact I’m posting again is any indication. So here’s the release news I’ve missed since then.

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When I first subscribed to Facebook way back in 2007, I created a group for this site. It didn’t really go anywhere because I would never visit any of the groups to which I subscribed, mine included.

Facebook launched Pages not long after, and the tight integration between Pages and the News Feed — or whatever they’re calling it this week — gave them much more presence than Groups. I became more inclined to become a fan of a Page — or "like" it, as the current parlance goes — than I was to join a group.

With that in mind, I created a Facebook Page for Musicwhore.org. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it just yet, especially since I don’t really update this site very often.

But I think I might be posting a lot more short-form content there than here. Making two-sentence posts here seems like a waste of page real estate, and the interface is a lot easier to handle than my clunky Movable Type 3.33 installation. (I could probably upgrade, but that might break a few hooks I have into this application.)

So, we’ll see what happens. I already notified group members that I’ll be shutting it down but probably not until I see everyone — all nine of you — have moved over. If you’re a regular commenter with a Facebook account, please consider stopping by and giving it a thumbs up. (It feels weird for me to ask you to "like" it.)

I turned 38 this past weekend. I am now — and have been really for the past three to five years — the target market for reissues and catalog.

When I was young, I had a chip on my shoulder about people who would buy up reissues and special editions. Pfeh. Living in the past. Why don’t you all man up and listen to something new? That was my foolish, youthful thinking.

Then I reached a point where that old Battlestar Galactica proverb reared its head — all this has happened before, and it will happen again.

I program my TiVo to catch this music video program on LOGO called NewNextNow. It’s not a bad survey of what’s bubbling under the floundering hit-making machinery of the media conglomerates. (Although most of the music featured on the show is made by major labels.)

But I’ll listen to these so-called new bands, and I inevitably rattle off comparisons — ah, that’s Echo and the Bunnymen fronted by Ben Gibbard. Oh, look, a guitarist who idolizes the Edge. And those 8-bit blips and bleeps are so post-Kraftwerk, pre-Nick Rhodes.

The new isn’t really new, now that I’m knocking on the door of 40. But here’s the thing about the past — it can be every bit as unexplored territory as the new. And even the familiar sounds different at 38 than 18, let alone 28.

So bring on the reissues and the catalog. I’m a grown-up now.

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In my early days of music collecting, Eurythmics was one band I filed under "must-own" — if the duo released an album, I made sure to get it. My enthusiasm for them, however, petered out before the release of We Too Are One in 1989. (Nor did I manage to get the 1984 soundtrack. In the Garden hadn’t been released in the States at that time.)

In reality, Eurythmics was a far better singles band than an album band. Of the vinyl albums I purchased in my youth, only two made the leap to CD — Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and more recently, Savage.

Savage holds a strange position in the band’s discographic history. They went back to using synthesizers after having made a big effort to ditch them two albums earlier, nor did they tour in support of the album. The singles don’t have the chart-ready catchiness of their previous hits.

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Among the pundits contemplating the fate of the recorded music industry, the idea of the economics of scarcity has come under scrutiny. The Internet provides such fast access to content that providing more material sooner is becoming the conventional wisdom for newer artists.

All this talk of business, however, doesn’t factor in a fairly persnickety detail — the muse.

Just because you ought to hose listeners with content, content, content doesn’t mean you should. Or even can.

Sade is the extreme opposite example of such emerging conventional wisdom. Back in the ’80s, it was easy to feel Sade fatigue because she and her band produced prodigiously from 1985 to 1988. The lag set in with 1992′s Love Deluxe, and after that … nada.

Eight years passed before Sade resurfaced with Lovers Rock and another ten before Soldier of Love.

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Waterloo Records usually schedules its springtime storewide sale on the first weekend of April, but this time it was pushed to the second weekend. I wonder if Record Store Day the following weekend has anything to do with it? After having a somewhat disastrous Monday, I can’t wait for Thursday to get here so I may exercise some retail therapy.

Unfortunately, most of the albums I was anticipating for March have been rescheduled after the sale. I have to wait till May for those Duran Duran reissues? Well, I still have a shopping list.

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I’ve been lazy with posting the release news — well, posting in general, really — but a few items popped up on Bounce last week that caught my attention.

• Kicell is releasing a new album on June 2 titled Kaze. Members of SAKEROCK and tico moon make guest appearances on the album. The duo tours behind the album starting in July. It’s been 2 1/2 years since Kicell released their previous album, magic hour.

• PE’Z is set to release another album on June 9, following the February release of 1-2 MAX. No details of the album are yet available.
• Original SUPERCAR member Ishiwatari Junji and Sunahara Yoshinori have teamed up for a single to be released on May 26. The single will be featured as the ending theme for the anime series Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei.