Posts from May 2005
May 31, 2005
Swedish Mopeds
A Ring Tone of a Moped Outsells a Hit Song
By THOMAS CRAMPTON International Herald Tribune
Published: May 30, 2005
PARIS, May 29 - A mobile phone ring tone based on an imitation of the sound
of a Swedish moped is expected to become the leading music single in
Britain.
Through Friday, the ring tone "Crazy Frog Axel F," the first tune created
for mobile phones to cross into mainstream music charts, was outselling the
new single of the group Coldplay by about four to one, the Official UK
Charts Company said.
The original sound for the ring tone came from an imitation of the
high-pitched revving of a two-stroke motorcycle recorded by 17-year-old
Daniel Malmedahl in Sweden nearly a decade ago, said Sue Harris, a publicist
for the song.
The single was expected to sell 150,000 copies in the seven days ended
Sunday. In many weeks, 50,000 copies can win the top place on the charts.
The singles chart, begun in 1952, is based on sales at 5,600 retail shops
across Britain.
Sales over the Internet via digital download have been included since April
17, but almost all sales of the "Crazy Frog Axel F" came from retail stores
selling the CD single, said Paul Clifford, operations director of Official
UK Charts, a joint venture of the British Association of Record Dealers and
the British Phonographic Industry.
The story of the song is a tale of Internet collaboration over time and
across international borders among people who have never met.
About five years after Mr. Malmedahl sent an e-mail message containing his
moped MP3 recording to friends, it reached another Swede, Erik Wernquist.
Mr. Wernquist used the noise as a sound track to a cartoon that featured a
blue frog with a goofy grin, motorcycle helmet and leather jacket. Nearly
two years later, the sound was picked up by a company specializing in ring
tones, Jambal, and became their most popular download, known as the "crazy
frog" ring tone.
This year, two German club disc jockeys, Reinhard Raith and Wolfgang Boss,
mixed the noise with "Axel F," the instrumental theme from the 1984 Eddie
Murphy film "Beverly Hills Cop." They released it last week as a CD single.
May 30, 2005
Summer Jazz
This is quite cool.
I'm playing with David Sanborn, Kenny G, and Spyro Gyra in Thailand.
Well, sort of.
May 27, 2005
Consumer electronics
I've been trying for at least 6 months to eek out enough time to transfer, mix, edit, and master the stuff I've recorded for some bands at the Living Room. And I'm not even that anal about it. Levels sound about right? No annoying eq glares? Doesn't hurt my ears? Finished. Done. Next. So finally I've made some headway, and today was the big get-it-all-transferred-to-CDs-so-I-can-pick-out- the-best-tracks day to whittle down each performance to one CD. This takes a lot of listening time, so I usually end up doing it on trains, in parking lots, waiting for my wife to buy groceries, whenever, and have to pack a bunch of CDs with me to get through it all.
Simple solution. Just buy a huge stack of CDs, and burn them. Yeah right.
It turns out that my boombox won't play the same CDs that my club CD player will. And my car won't play whatever the boombox plays, and the home CD players don't read the ones that can play in my car. This was infuriating enough, until I tried to isolate what type of CDR to buy to actually work on all players. Ha. I've tried over 20 brands with different surfaces by different manfacturers, and the results are as varied as my moods. I had to even map out a matrix to work through the permutations:
Now I know why they call it consumer electronics. It doesn't work, consumes all your time and patience, and eventually you go out and buy new electronics.
TDK yes no no
Mitsubishi yes no yes
Ricoh yes yes no
Sony yes yes no
Cursor no yes yes
Foxen pro no yes no
R. Data yes no yes
Imation no yes no
Melody yes no no
Phillips no yes yes
So since this was obviously getting no where, I was convinced it was my software. Different software, same result. Aargh. So it must be a hardware thing....so 30 seconds before I was about to run out and buy all new gear, I remembered that there were about 12 different speeds to try.
Experimentation, coffee, lots of swear words later....
It turns out that CDs burned at speeds which includes a "6" in it (36x, 16x) do not work on Panasonic boomboxes for some bizarre reason, but sometimes will work on Sony boomboxes. And it also turns out that the club's CD player will only accept CDs burned at 12x, but only some of the time, for some types of CDs, so basically it's all completely random.
So, screw it, I decide to re-burn everything at the lowest possible speed to bypass all this compatibility BS, which on my machine is 4x, and screw trying to make it cross-platform. As long as it works on one damned CD player consistently. So, a bajillion hours later, the CDs are all finally burned, and I'm duping them on a dedicated duping machine so other people can also listen to the same stack and give their feedback. Then the duping machine starts rejecting CDs. C'mon this is impossible. I can draw zeros and ones faster than I've burned them. So I go back and spot check, and the entire stack is corrupt. [long complicated expletives deleted]. They're all screwed up. Total digital crackle. Won't play on any machine, even on the computer drive that burned them [.........].
It turns out that I can't burn CDs at such SLOW SPEEDS. So I've just wasted another day, and have to start all over again tomorrow.
Sigh.
May 21, 2005
Steps
Steps define my day
Up subway stairs no problem
Today will be fine.
May 19, 2005
Buttcracks
Buttcracks, so ugly!
Women should show more cleavage,
Most men will agree.
May 17, 2005
The pace
A numbing feeling
Waking up to jump the gun
Will the pace stop soon?
May 13, 2005
Rainy Season
Sheets of rain in May
Washes all the sun away
Night's the same as day
May 12, 2005
People in Taiwan
I just think it's so cool that in the course of 6 hours, I've gone shopping for mattresses, had a conference call with a tech company in Beijing, was given a box of handmade chocolates from a friend who studies culinary arts in Switzerland, mastered some punk and ska bootlegs I recorded live at my club over the weekend, got interrupted by a young Chinese/Japanese hip hop DJ promoter from East LA to ask for advice on the music biz, played some drums in a jam session with a reggae band composed of a Chinese guy from Belize and a Japanese guy who grew up in Kenya, got interrupted again by someone who wants me to invest in a club with him, introduced a yoga instructor who wants to sing to a Canadian jazz guitarist, mixed a few drinks, got a call asking where to find an African djembe player for a last minute gig, had a brief conversation with an arts administrator about arts funding sponsorship in Taiwan, interviewed a newly arrived Belgium guy for a bartender position, and chatted for a while with a French guy about the beauty of the French language in popular music.
No wonder I have no time to blog.
May 06, 2005
Sleep
The bar is closing
Sleep will soon be my reward
A lucky dreamer
May 02, 2005
Elevator
Just keep pressing, Jerk
Elevator will still move
Technology...ooooohhh.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
