Fanatical Pupil

How is it that Hellcats appears to have more music videos per hour than MTV these days?

Tinashé – Zambezi

I don’t know much about Tinashé, and I haven’t really been able to find much, but he does have a website and an album coming out 9/13. (We’ll pretend like the whole album concept is still relevant even though artists can have their music heard all over the world through the magic of the internet.)

From one of my new favorite sites: Pigeons and Planes.

The Chuck producers must totally read my blog. In Part 2 of the Frightened Rabbit on Chuck series, I criticized their use of Backwards Walk and suggested that they should have saved Frightened Rabbit for when their new album came out (which happened just a little while ago, as of this writing).

Well, they went ahead and followed my advice anyway, using the song Swim Until You Can’t See Land in the latest episode of Chuck. I was literally laughing out loud (though there was no one around to hear).

If you’d like to hear the song in it’s entirety for free, I’d recommend heading over to Lala.com. If you like it, you can get it for only 89 cents, or the whole album on MP3 is only $7.49. I’ve listened to it once through so far, and it seems like it will end up being every bit as good as Midnight Organ Fight.

Are you a man or a bag of sand?

In Part I of this ongoing series, I was shocked by the seemingly magical appearance of Frightened Rabbit on Chuck. I had never heard of them before, and loved Twist so much that I bought their album and listened to it many times.

The first time it was on, Frightened Rabbit got the coveted spot of an emotional montage scene near the end of the show. The emotional montage scene near the end of the show is like striking gold for a musician who sells their song to a TV show. It’s like headlining a national arena tour. I know this simply based on the number of hits I got (and still get) from people searching for some combination of Chuck, Music and/or Frightened Rabbit.

Unfortunately for Chuck (note the italics), someone in charge of the music for the show fell in love with Frightened Rabbit as much as I did, and lo and behold, a year and a half later, here comes another Frightened Rabbit song in the season premiere of Season 3.

Oh, woe.

Woe.

Woe.

Why so much woe? Let me tell you.
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or: What Will/Has Become of The Mixtape in The Digital Age?

I’m working on a playlist for NYE. I also just recently watched Season 1 of (the excellent) How I Met Your Mother, in which (not ironically at all) Barney brings his “Get Psyched Mix” along for the NYE ride. His mix is on a CD. That was 2005.

While I firmly believe that giving someone a Mix CD was never even in the realm of romantic… what are the choices these days?

“Guys, I’m going to make her a mix SD card?”

I suppose if you wanted to make a “Mix iPod Shuffle”, that might say something since the cheapest Shuffle you can get is $59. Spending that kind of cash on a girl or guy when you’re in high school or college (or just out of college) means there’s some seriousity involved.

Now, sure, there is some coolness involved in this product (which, okay, might actually work):

I like that you can hand write the track list on there and make notes and put smiley faces, stars, and hearts in the margins. Still…

So much of the romance left when the mix went from tape to CD. Any chump can bring up iTunes, pick 14 songs, and click Burn. But do people even use CDs any more even to transfer music to someone else?

Back in the analog age, when you made a 90-minute mixtape, it actually took 90 minutes (at least) cause you had to dub each song over to the new tape. There was an obvious investment of time in the end product that was created.

Muxtape had it going until the Crushing Boot of Legal smashed them like infant flower. At least there you had to upload all the songs you wanted, so it took a little bit of time and patience.

My favorite site, Lala, lets you embed playlists on a website, but that requires that you have a website, or else you basically have to send it as a Facebook message. Of course, youngsters these days might think that getting a playlist sent in a Facebook message is the height of romance. I mean, there’s some that think that sending nude cameraphone pictures is a good way to seduce someone, right?