Wired Minds

David Hyman on mog.com re-launch

Welcome to the new  MOG : the ultimate online music destination.

The impetus to our latest evolution was the realization that, perhaps due to our own ridiculous and overwhelming love of music, we attracted thousands of others like ourselves. These people are compelled to express their music-related thoughts through words, videos, and song uploads – in other words, you, our moggers.

A few weeks after MOG launched, I asked Lucas to create an RSS feed for me that showed every post by every mogger in chronological order so I could see what people were doing on their MOG pages. This feed was so engaging to us at MOG headquarters, we decided to make an area on the site called the MOG -O-SPHERE. A content-aggregation point. What a concept! We realized we had to develop more aggregation points and make it even easier for people to access all this good stuff that everyone’s creating. So, we went aggregation-point-hogwild.

In the physical world, we discover music from listening to the radio, watching music videos, reading about music, and getting peer recommendations. We decided to replicate these virtually on MOG as our core aggregation points: Listen, Watch, Read, and Recommendations.

This created a big opportunity. With so much content being created, it’s good to have filters and sorting options to help you get to the good stuff you care about quickly. This led us down the path of developing … The Magic Button. Now, we’re leveraging MOG -O-MATIC not just as an enabler for self-expression, but also as a fantastic enabler for content filtration. Not everyone has the wherewithal to read 300 posts per day. When The Magic Button is turned on, we are filtering content based on artists in your collection, the moggers we’ve algorithmically determined to be most like you, and your top 10 Trusted Mogs. All rolled up into one. Outside of The Magic Button, you can also choose to filter by just your Trusted Mogs. You’ll notice we made it much easier to add and remove them. You can do it right from their posts. Also, you can open up the Compose window anywhere on MOG using the “add post” button.

“Sort by most recent” is no longer the default (which is what the MOG -O-SPHERE has always been). We’re now sorting mp3 posts by “most listened,” video posts by “most watched,” and all other posts by “most discussed.”

Miss the old MOG -O-SPHERE? Just go to the Read section (which is, remember, all posts) and sort by “most recent” – voila! You’re got the MOG -O-SPHERE back.

In the Watch section, you’ll see a link near the top that takes you to perhaps our coolest new area (also accessible from the new home page): MOGtv. MOGtv is the ultimate mash-up of technologies. We took 400,000+ music videos from YouTube and mapped them to MOG .

You can go to MOGtv, choose the filter “from my collection” and watch hundreds of music videos from songs in your collection. Crazy, huh? Amazing, no? When you watch MOGtv with The Magic Button on, you get a combination of videos from your collection combined with videos from moggers most like you, based on what MOG -O-MATIC tells us are their top songs this month. Music programming is nice when there’s a combination of the known and the unknown, and we think MOGtv achieves that, especially via The Magic Button.

MOGtv was the brainchild of our lead web developer, Lucas Carlson. He just sent us a link one day and blew our minds. To me, the biggest problem with YouTube is that there are no intelligent filters. Now there are. (Also, wouldn’t you agree this is really what MTV should have – and could have – become?)

via http://mog.com/

Josh Atlas

Kai has me learning his home grown slap technique that he says is derived from Marcus Miller, Larry Graham, Bootsy and Victor Wooten. It involves first knowing where the major and minor pentatonic scales are in all 12 keys all over the neck. THEN we can move to actual slap technique. Ascending it is PLUCK, thumb, hammer, pluck. For the pentatonic in E, the notes are (there are 9 of them) E>F#>G#>B>C#>E>F#>G#>B. So that's, root, second, third, fifth, sixth, octave, ninth, tenth (third), twelfth (fifth). It is the same notes going down, but a different series of right hand movements. I think its, Pluck, Pull Off, Hammer, Thumb, then repeat the Pull Off, Hammer, Thumb. Not sure about this one, I will have to check my notes. Just a little bit of this technique will go a long way to big funkyness. It's exciting to be learning something new again, something that I never really got into in the past. So many folks slap and pick on bass that I never really thought it would be necessary to learn it but the opposite has been true. It has little to do with shredding and technique, rather it's a vehicle for developing the musical voice on the instrument of choice. Just like knowing more words (and how to use them) an musician or artist can express more of what they are feeling. More brushes, more choices. Ah, but therein lies the difficult part, when and where to use the musical brushes. The more they are used the less they are needed.

via http://5ivestrings.blogspot.com/

Thomas Claburn

Shooting at the Zune

Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

via http://www.lot49.com/

Adam Powell

David Weir

As you probably know, I once was a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. My stories appeared from 1974 to 1977; later on I had another assignment, but I didn't deliver on it. I can no longer remember what the story was, exactly, but it was an investigative piece that some colleagues and I were pursuing from the Center for Investigative Reporting, the non-profit organization I co-founded after I parted ways with Rolling Stone in 1977.

Saturday nights are always weird for me. One of the strangest in my memory was back when I was on staff at the magazine, and my partner Howard Kohn and I had published the first of our stories about the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst; called "The Inside Story."

My boss, the irrepressible Jann Wenner, lived in a Victorian mansion on California Street in those years. He had a bunch of us over for the evening -- a night that was laced with drugs and alcohol. Jann had an early version of a large-screen TV, and we all watched a new show called Saturday Night Live. It featured something never before aired by network TV -- fake ads, and I remember that Jerry Rubin was in one of them.

I'd known Jerry for several years, since my SunDance days, and in fact I'd edited a book of his, "Growing Up at 37," I think it was called. Through a drug and alcohol induced haze, we watched the show and to our delight, Howard and I were mentioned as some sort of off-screen characters -- those two guys from Rolling Stone.

Annie Liebowitz was there, and late in the night she broke into tears as she discovered her cameras had been stolen out of her car parked in Jann's driveway.

A few years earlier, all of the antiques Alison and I had brought back from Afghanistan had been stolen out of our van parked in an alley right near where Jann lived. I'd wandered through the pawnshops of the Fillmore for weeks but I never found our lost items.

Annie never got her cameras back, either, but Jann just bought her new ones.

***

Jerry Rubin, meanwhile, transformed himself from Yippie to investment banker -- one of the more remarkable transformations people I knew made as the collective '60s died away and the greedy '80s emerged. Later still, Jerry was killed trying to race across a street in LA one night. Two other friends of mine were with him when it happened. They didn't dart out, he did. He died instantly.

via http://hotweir.blogspot.com/

Josh Atlas

So, uuhhhh yea, its been a while since my last blog. Been busy.
Kai has me learning his home grown slap technique that he says is derived from Marcus Miller, Larry Graham, Bootsy and Victor Wooten. It involves first knowing where the major and minor pentatonic scales are in all 12 keys all over the neck. THEN we can move to actual slap technique. Ascending it is PLUCK, thumb, hammer, pluck. For the pentatonic in E, the notes are (there are 9 of them) E>F#>G#>B>C#>E>F#>G#>B. So that's, root, second, third, fifth, sixth, octave, ninth, tenth (third), twelfth (fifth). It is the same notes going down, but a different series of right hand movements. I think its, Pluck, Pull Off, Hammer, Thumb, then repeat the Pull Off, Hammer, Thumb. Not sure about this one, I will have to check my notes. Just a little bit of this technique will go a long way to big funkyness. It's exciting to be learning something new again, something that I never really got into in the past. So many folks slap and pick on bass that I never really thought it would be necessary to learn it but the opposite has been true. It has little to do with shredding and technique, rather it's a vehicle for developing the musical voice on the instrument of choice. Just like knowing more words (and how to use them) an musician or artist can express more of what they are feeling. More brushes, more choices. Ah, but therein lies the difficult part, when and where to use the musical brushes. The more they are used the less they are needed. That's deep brah...

via http://5ivestrings.blogspot.com/

Adam Powell

Tonight we are going to see The Know It All Boyfriends, a supergroup that tends to get really hammered and mangle 60s and 70s pop songs. I have seen a fair percentage of their shows, and they are always sloppy, ill-rehearsed, drinking heavily on stage--and it's terrific fun. It's sort of Garbage fronted by Freedy Johnston, except the band really has roots in Spooner and Firetown. They have fabulous vintage gear and are totally crack, pro musicians--Butch Vig has time like God--so even as they are stumbling through "Band On The Run" without ever having played it, it's pretty great. These guys love and respect the Trans-Am joint-in-mouth, drink-in-hand, shifting into fifth aesthetic, and they bring it.

I'm pumped.

images from http://www.garbage.suite.dk/kiab.html

Freedy Johnston Guitar and vocals

Duke Erikson Bass, Guitar and vocals

Butch Vig Drums, Guitar and vocals

I saw their first show ever, which I was similar to this one:

December 14th 2002
*** Set 1 *** Somebody to love -F# Hard Days Night - G Draggin The Line F# Bus Stop - A- Band On The Run *Lawyers, Guns $ - A Love Grows - A Baby I'm A Want U -G Joker Passenger Satisfaction - E *Lights - C *Bang A Gong -E Daydream Believer -A I Want You To Want-A Suspious Minds - G We Got Beat/Sedated-E American Band	*** Set 2 *** Hello There- A Substitute - D Aint Seen Nothin Yet -A I Saw the Light -C Yummy, yummy - G Dyer Maker - C Happy Together -E Waiting For My Man-D My Best Friends-E Smoke On Water -G Close To You American Girl - D Shook Me Allnight- G Cinnamon Girl - D Rock & Roll All night Sweet Jane, Rock'n Me Everybody Knows Grapevine, Go Your own way, Girlfriend, Mandy, Do you Know

---------------
In addition to being the drummer for Garbage, Butch Vig produced seminal 90s records like Nirvana's Nevermind and the first two Smashing Pumpkins LPs. His studio, Smart Studios, is 1 1/2 blocks from my house, so he's a neighborhood fixture despite being in L.A. much of the time. Sessions at Smart have hosted U2, Killdozer, early Nirvana demos just post-Bleach, and many, many more.

Butch produced early Tar Babies records as well; careful readers will recall I play music with former members of that band. In fact, Tar Babies singer/guitarist Bucky Pope is babysitting the kids tonight with his girlfriend while we attend the show.

David Hyman

new dylan video

with scarlet johansson, the preferred muse for old scraggly guys like bill murray, woody allen, and now… dylan! (and btw, she’d be my preferred muse – MOG video?)

link to premiere is here

via http://www.mog.com/david_hyman/

David Hyman

lollapalooza – day 2
Posted August 8, 2006

calexico – seen them before and thought this one was good, not great. their big problem is abandoning the tex-mex, mariachi, tumbleweed blowing sound that makes them so awesome. clearly, their new record was/is an attempt at the alternative/pop crowd and it just doesn’t cut it. they’d intersperse these new songs between the high powered mariachi and i dont think it flyed with the crowd. wolfmother – they just don’t do it for me. feels the jets for summer 2006. in other words, here today, gone tomorrow. none of their songs hit me. it’s all surface level shnaziness gnarls barkley – fair – band came out in all white fila tennis gear, complete with rackets and headbands. nice. funny but kind of lacking. mix was pretty shitty. like the album way better. common – pretty good, high energy, stuff. i’m not a huge common fan but after swimming in a sea of indie rock, i loved being in front of this sound/crowd. kanye west – S-T-E-L-L-A-R. what else can i say? late registration was an awesome album. for me, up there with doggy-style, chronic, blueprint, and the black album. kanye is in the upper ranks. and there is little better in music, period, than the upper ranks of hip hop. it was the best sounding/mixed live hip hop i’ve heard. wasn’t all hand waving, woah, woah, woah, with too heavy bass boominess that drowns out everything else you normally hear on the record. and the guy just killed it. it’s the kind of hip hop you’re psyched to hear the bootleg of, much like the roots or jay-z unplugged, which is so so rare. kanye pulled out all the stops. i’m re-hooked. made most of what else i heard at lollapalooza seem elementary. (eels, raconteurs excluded).

via http://mog.com/david_hyman/

David Hyman

the inside of wolfgang’s vault

this video is insanely riveting for anyone who cares about classic or psychedelic rock. (thanks stereogum) – the video is a guided tour through bill graham’s collection of rock memorabilia and more. some rich dude bought the whole thing for $4million bucks and it’s worth at least $50million.

via http://www.mog.com/david_hyman/