There was an article the other day about the majority of the most influential rock bands being mostly British: Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Sex Pistols, Iron Maiden, Oasis and of course, U2 (actually Irish). The US has only Nirvana, Metallica, and to a lesser degree, Pearl Jam and Guns’n'Roses, to show off at that level. US has many more big bands collectively, but few stand out as much as the British ones.

In fact, if I was to pick the most important bands in the past decades of rock, it would look something like this:
60s: Beatles, Rolling Stones
70s: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd
80s: U2, Iron Maiden
90s: Nirvana, Metallica

Now, here’s the interesting thing: I can’t find for the life of me a single band for the current 2000s decade that I personally find important and influential. Green Day, Coldplay, and The White Stripes are coming close, but no cake. Green Day are just alt.punk (heard it all before), Coldplay are more pop than rock, and The White Stripes sound just like a more modern version of the Led Zeppelin. But none of these bands actually offers a new, fresh, and innovative sound like any of the bands I mentioned above.

Some will say that the decade is not out yet, and so I haven’t felt their impact to new artists just yet. But I don’t believe that this is the case here. I really don’t see any grass root innovation in rock anymore. The last one was in the early ’90s. Since then, the UK hasn’t had any new big bands, and USA just plays the “maintenance game”. I feel that I have heard it all before.

Let me be clear that there are bands out there that ARE innovative, bands like the Cloud Cult. But I can’t outright call them influential, since only few people know their existence. Even MGMT, who do sound different and have a major contract, only have had moderate success in the grand scheme of things.

I would go as far and say that most of the 2000s is governed by that folk indie-rock sound, like the Iron & Wine, The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes. Problem with this is, by being mostly indie (both as a genre, and as a business model), they don’t reach a lot of people — especially not worldwide, like any of the bands of the previous decades have done. Most of Europe couldn’t care less about folk-sounding indie rock, for example. And yet, they were taken as with a storm by the Nirvana!

So, what’s wrong with rock? Why this decade hasn’t produced brand new sounds to inspire the generations to come? There are two schools of thought about this, from two different people that I will indirectly quote below:

1. Eric Earley, the singer/songwriter of Blitzen Trapper (a band that plays ’70s-sounding folk rock), said in an interview a few months ago (on the podcast interview here, and on another similar interview) that everything that can be done with rock is pretty much already been done and that rock might fade away. Also, for him, it doesn’t matter if something sounds modern or not, only thing it matters is if the song is good or not — no matter the sub-genre.

My take: If that’s true, then why people don’t buy old, traditional songs anymore? I know for one, I can’t stand them, even if I realize that some of them are actually good. And, is it enough for an artist to rehash something others did 30 years before him?

2. My husband, Jean-Baptiste, a software engineer, and someone who doesn’t believes in stumbling blocks. He is a problem-solver at Google — that’s his job. JBQ believes that there are always new possibilities, and new things to invent. For him, there will always be that open-minded musician that will surprise us all with a completely new sound, when we least expect it.

My take: if that’s true, why this decade had not had a single major Rock-God band? What if there is indeed a finite number of rock genres and melodies that can sound good to the human ear?

Finally, my opinion: As most of the times when I present controversial food for thought, I think the truth lies somewhere in between. I believe that you can only re-invent something so many times before it still feels old. At the same time though, music software gets more powerful and allows for more experimentation and research: this allows for previously independent genres of music to merge, blurring the limits of what is rock and what is not (e.g. MGMT’s electro sound). Adding to this the upcoming death of the entertainment industry at large, there will be fewer people choosing the profession (although this might prove a good thing, since too many cooks…).

The pessimist in me believes that “rock” (and music as something more important than just a random song playing on the background while eating dinner) had a golden era between 1960 and 2000. We are currently living towards the decline of the multi-billion industry and the highly innovative musical times. I know that for some people this is something that they can’t grasp since they grew up with this status quo, but I can tell you that priorities do change in society faster than you think. Music will never die, but our investment level in it can change dramatically on different times of the human history.

Look no further!

After spending over a month hunting for the best pieces of (legally free) music online, I have now compiled a top-100 with the best of the best promotional tracks for you! I sampled over 4,000 songs from official label sites, band sites, promotional & serious music magazines sites. I ended up downloading 500 songs, and below I present you my top-100 (in my own music taste, of course). To save you the trouble, 95% of the music below can be classified as “alternative”. I wish more bands would offer 1-2 free mp3s per album for promotional purposes, as the idea totally works (and an editorial on the subject).

Disclaimer: No songs are stored on this server, and no copyright infringement is intended. The sole purpose of this article is informational. I did my best possible to make sure that the songs linked are legal, stored on official sites or on music/promotional sites that have the required distribution rights. If you represent one of the labels or artists found below and would like me to stop linking to your songs for some reason, please contact me.

Now, back to the meat. Have a careful listen on my No 1 song. You will either “get it” and fall in love with it, or you will outright loathe it (since it’s pretty experimental). The rest of the songs are much more conventional, and definitely “catchy”. If you like some of the artists below, don’t forget to support them by buying their music. Anyways, happy listening!

1. Cloud Cult – The Tornado Lessons
2. Fleet Foxes – Mykonos
3. Cloud Cult – Everybody here is a Cloud
4. Blitzen Trapper – Gold for Bread
5. Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer
6. Band Of Horses – The Funeral
7. Jane Vain and the Dark Matter – C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang
8. Tokyo Police Club – Nature of the experiment
9. Loquat – Swingset Chain
10. Midlake – Roscoe
11. Wiretree – Big Coat
12. Matti Paalanen – Here comes the rain
13. Blitzen Trapper – Furr
14. MGMT – Time to pretend
15. Malbec – Pictures In Magazines
16. People in Planes – If You Talk Too Much
17. Seabird – Rescue
18. Peter Bjorn & John – Let’s Call it Off
19. The New Frontiers – Black Lungs
20. Sin Fang Bous – Catch The Light
21. The Coral Sea – More Than You Know
22. Rock Kills Kid – Paralyzed
23. Blitzen Trapper – Wild Mountain Nation
24. The Verve – Lucky Man
25. Great Northern – Houses
26. Longwave – No Direction
27. Ag Silver – Can’t You See
28. The Hives – Hate to Say I Told You So
29. Ratatat – Wildcat
30. Paper Route – Empty house
31. The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
32. The Strokes – Last Nite
33. Aberdeen City – God Is Going To Get Sick Of Me
34. Ag Silver – Now Or Never
35. Blitzen Trapper – Crushing the Wheat
36. Alibi Tom – Fire
37. Anberlin – A day late
38. Anna Ternheim – To Be Gone
39. Aqualung – Brighter Than Sunshine
40. Band Of Horses – No One’s Gonna Love You
41. Barcelona – It’s About Time
42. Beat & Path – Goodbye beautiful day
43. Malbec – Home
44. The Sounds – Painted By Numbers
45. Early Day Miners – All Harm
46. Blind Divine – Something Magical
47. Seabird – Let Me Go On
48. Bloc Party – Signs (Armand Van Helden Remix)
49. Bowerbirds – In Our Talons
50. Cage the Elephant – Tiny Little Robots
51. Calexico – History of lovers
52. Chad VanGaalen – City of Electric Light
53. Chance – Independent
54. Cloud Cult – When Water Comes to Life
55. Bat For Lashes – Horse and I
56. Blonde Redhead – 23
57. La Rocca – This Life
58. 13ghosts – Beyond Door
59. The Whip – Trash
60. Art In Manila – Set The Woods on Fire
61. Asobi Seksu – Thursday
62. Malbec – World Cup
63. The Coral Sea – In This Moment’s Time
64. El Goodo – Feel So Fine
65. Elk City – Los Cruzados
66. Faunts – Memories of places we’ve never been
67. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
68. Living Things – Let It Rain
69. Longwave – There’s a Fire
70. The Starlight Mints – Inside of me
71. Orenda Fink – Bloodline
72. Panic at the disco – The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide
73. Malbec – Story Of A Broken Heart
74. Cold War Kids – Hang me up to dry
75. Morning State – Oh Yeah
76. My Robot Friend – Robot High School
77. Halomobilo – Shallow
78. Band Of Horses – Is There a Ghost
79. The Rosebuds – Get Up Get Out
80. Station Victoria – All In Your Head
81. The A-Sides – Diamonds
82. The Raveonettes – Dead sound
83. Ben Skoglund – I Won’t Tell
84. The Cloud Room – Hey now now
85. The Comas – Come my sunshine
86. We Are Wolves – Fight and Kiss
87. Woodhands – I Wasnt Made For Fighting
88. Peter Bjorn & John – Young Folks
89. The Rantings of EVA – Infrared
90. Danger Is My Middle Name – Heroes and Underdogs
91. David Vandervelde – Jacket
92. The Republic Tigers – Buildings & Mountains
93. The Rosebuds – Leaves do fall
94. Quiet Company – Seal My Fate
95. The Voyeurs – Things People Say
96. Portugal. The Man – People Say
97. Vanderveen – Weekend Full of Weekends
98. We Are Scientists – Inaction
99. The Submarines – You Me and the Bourgeoisie
100. The Rosebuds – Life Like

And a last one for the road: Transplant’s “Diamonds and Guns“.

Updated January 2010 with new (and legal to the best of my knowledge) findings!

1. Arcade fire – Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
2. Blitzen Trapper – Sci-fi Kid
3. Phoenix – 1901
4. Portugal. The Man – Shades
5. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home
6. Paper Route – Empty House
7. Living Things – Mercedes Marxist
8. Low vs Diamond – Heart Attack
9. Metric – Gold Guns Girls
10. The Dark Romantics – Another Song for Another Night
11. Dead Man’s Bones – Pa Pa Power
12. Portugal. The Man – And I
13. Run The Red Light – Brave New World
14. Scissors for Lefty – Nickels & Dimes
15. The Decemberists – Engine Driver
16. El Perro Del Mar – God Knows
17. TV on the Radio – Staring At The Sun
18. Great Northern – The Middle
19. Laura Veirs – Wide Eyed, Legless
20. Scissors for Lefty – Ghetto Ways
21. Friendly Fires – Jump in the Pool
22. Denison Witmer – Life Before Aesthetics
23. TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me
24. Vampire Weekend – Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
25. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

And one more for the road: Fever Ray – Keep The Streets Empty For Me

I just stumbled against a band called Art in Manila, for whom their label give away 2 free mp3 samples. I heard the songs, I liked what I heard, and went to iTunes to check the rest of their songs. I liked 4 more of their songs via the iTunes preview, which I purchased. Looking around for more info, I found that Orenda Fink is their singer. I checked her 2 free promotional mp3 songs, and I also liked what I heard. So I ended up purchasing one additional song from the singer’s solo album (“Blind Asylum”). Snooping a bit more, I am now looking at the O+S band, which is the singer’s latest project and they also have 2 free songs. If I like what I hear again, I will be buying once more tonight.

Moral of the story: 1-2 free mp3 samples (e.g. your 4rd or 5th best song) of your album should be given away for promotional reasons (and make absolutely sure you have tagged them correctly). However, this will only work if your songs are actually good. If you only have 1-2 good songs in the whole album, then you should get another job anyway.

Update: Bought a song from O+S too just now (“Lonely Ghosts”).

“[Lost]It’s going to be one of the last huge television shows in terms of size of cast and scope of production… Given the fact that network television is changing, it may be one of the last great rides of this kind of big epic storytelling.”

This is what the resident director/producer of Lost, Jack Bender, said to journalists recently. Of course, I know all about TV going back to being episodic (and cheaper, as the whole entertainment industry is getting sized down), but this just sucks every time I read it anyway.

I just want my EPIC shows back! I want complexity!

I can’t stand country music. However, I like Blitzen Trapper, a lot. The “Trappas” sound country at first listen, but they are not exactly it. They are somewhere between ’70s folk, country, americana, bluegrass, and rock all mixed together. There’s even a bit of electronic in there! They are known as the band that can’t be placed musically in any genre. And yet, I would never consider their music and give them a fair chance if it wasn’t for a single song that I happened to stumble upon about two years ago: Sci-Fi Kid (legal download).

The song somehow strikes a cord with me as I am a huge fan of science fiction (although the lyrics also feel like it’s all about drugs). It represents the more alternative rock side of BT (which I prefer). I wish I could direct the music video for that song.

Sugar’s got a space ship tripping over dusty stars
Keen cars, living large, playing big guitars
Hackin’ in, making holes, and it’s not so hard
It’s just a extra part in a kid like me
Me
A Sci-fi kid like me

Since that song, I purchased most of their music, and I enjoy most of it. I still can’t easily get used to the songs that use the banjo and the harmonica, but overall, I love most of their tracks. And of course, having such a weirdo, multiple-personality (musically) guy as a front man, helps. He has peaked up my curiosity.

Watch below their biggest hit so far, the music video for “Furr”, and download one of my favorite songs of theirs, the rare “Crushing the wheat”.

Maestro is a nice short movie, shot with a Canon HV20 and a Twoneil’s 35mm adapter. The plot: a young musician stifled by the modern day schooling system tries to find his way to make his mark. HD version & download here.

I had a great time at Cafe du Nord tonight, watching the Malbec live giving a great show. A very energetic band with melodic songs. I chickened out at the Cafe’s rules to not use a real camera but only cellphones, so I had to use JBQ’s Android phone to capture the following pictures and video. It was great meeting for real and talking to Mark, Malbec’s drummer — and also a great HV20/HVX200 filmmaker. Download Malbec’s latest EPs for free.

View official music video for this song

The Malbec were great, so were the local Loquat. Their singer sure can sing loud. I was positively surprised to see Loquat using two HV20 videos (downloaded from Vimeo) through a projector. Nice to see that our little community’s hobby proves useful to some people out there. I won’t say whose videos they used, I’ll keep that a secret.

There are those who say that by 2011, all music will be free, and the labels will offer artists 360 contracts in order to survive (meaning, putting the artists under more financial pressure than they are now). There are those who say that RIAA/MPAA will eventually win, and convince world governments to draconian laws about piracy. And there are those who say that indie/CC art will eventually take over and make RIAA/MPAA irrelevant.

I think that the truth lies somewhere in between all this. There will be 360 contracts, some of the major-label music will be free (but not all), some music will be streamed for very cheap/free in exchange for ads, more laws will take place, indies will become more mainstream via the internet, advertisement will be more evident in art projects, and piracy will continue to exist.

Today, making music is cheap. Mixing isn’t as expensive as it was even just 10 years ago. Making an indie movie is also cheap. When costs go down, more people jump into the bandwagon for the opportunity, over-saturating the market. Currently, the indie music scene is super-saturated with wannabes (and only about 5-10% of all that music is actually good). There are so many indie bands in the Bay Area alone that is not even funny. I stopped counting at around 600. And I personally like only about 20 of them. Don’t even let me start at the thousands of albums released every week on sites like eMusic.

Put all that together, and you will see that all these happenings will weaken the industry. I believe that the last super-star is already being born, and the last Box-Office movie (meaning, $100 mil or more of sales) will be out in less than 15 years from now.

Maybe I am wrong. But maybe I am right. It’s inconceivable for us to think that there won’t be any new super-stars to gossip about, or a new super-expensive movie. But like with any other profession, they all have their time limit, as the circumstances change (in this case, the digital age). For example, being a clock maker back in the 17th Century was something! Being a clock maker today doesn’t even get you laid.

Basically, what I am trying to do with this blog post is to answer to all these other blog posts and analysis articles found on the web that the future of music/movies will be with this or that. In my opinion, the future will be a mix of all these things, which will eventually weaken these professions, and downgrade them to just normal jobs.

This doesn’t mean that music and movies will be dead. That kind of art will never be dead. But they won’t be multi-million products anymore, but smaller projects from smaller groups. It’s not that the digital age killed the industry. It’s just that it put it back in its place. Before the digital age, Hollywood over-capitalized on the whole thing — because they could. Now that they can’t anymore, they will crumble under their own weight. They will still exist, but their golden days will be over. And this is true for the indies too.

Now, some will say, “does this mean that we will never see again an artistic masterpiece?”. And the answer is “we will”. There are many masterpieces in our history written by people who don’t have 10 assistants and millions of dollars in the bank. I am looking forward for these kinds of masterpieces again. All these thousands of wannabe artists will go back to flip burgers at MacDonalds, and the ones who really can deliver will stay alive in the (now crumbled) industry and make a basic salary. But don’t expect super-stars anymore.

That’s my take on the thing, and I am good with such an outcome. The same thing I believe about my old profession btw: developers. The good developers will continue making some good money, but I don’t expect super-stars anymore (e.g. Havoc, Linus, Miguel etc). The vast majority of the programmers of the future will just “write C# for food”.

So we finally watched the new Star Trek movie (on a digital screen). It was extremely entertaining, the CGI were perfect, the subtle references to all things Trek were very nice. The new Spock was fantastic too. The new Star Trek movie was not about the normal social commentary stuff found on many Star Trek episodes, but for a franchise reboot, it needed the action and visual awesomeness to attract the young generation. I am willing to give Abrams the benefit of the doubt this one time.

Where I do find myself in disagreement with JJ Abrams’ vision is in the alternative timeline route he took. To make a franchise or show believable, it should not have prop errors, it has to be consistent, and it has to be true to its timeline. Without these, you lose in believability (like “Lost” lost points this season too). Sure, there have been many alternative timeline and mirror universe episodes over the years on the various Star Trek incarnations, but well, I never liked any of them. Especially when it comes to such an important movie that’s supposed to re-launch Star Trek.

Let me be clear: altering the timeline to have Spock and Uhura together, Kirk & Spock’s father and mother respectively dying, and Pike becoming an admiral is one thing. But destroying a whole planet, Vulcan no less, is a whole another thing. Vulcan is a constant in the Star Trek universe, it’s inspirational. Removing it from the new Star Trek is like removing Yoda from Star Wars. It doesn’t work. At least not for us older Trekkies, who have spent 30+ years in that universe. The destruction of Romulus was equally unneeded.

I don’t believe at all that JJ Abrams needed this alternative timeline thing to tell his story. He could have fit a similarly impressive story within the realm of the existing timeline. Undoing 45 years of Star Trek history was just disrespectful of the franchise and the fans.

Pay attention: I wouldn’t mind at all if he had rebooted the Star Trek franchise completely. Meaning, rebooting it in the same way Moore did for Battlestar Galactica, which he “re-imagined” it. This way, we the fans, would know that the director is going clean slate and he re-starts the franchise from the beginning. Re-designing and re-architecting the whole Trek universe! And that would be fine. That would be honest. But not doing exactly that, is like toying with everybody feelings and expectations. Believe it or not Mr Abrams, we, the older Trekkies, are not dead yet.

To me, it felt like someone taking my left-over pizza, removing my toppings, adding new ones, and re-heating it, instead of simply either re-heating it as is, or redoing the pizza from scratch (including a new dough). Therefore, I felt that this movie was a cheat.

The sad part is that Paramount will continue having my money for the upcoming Star Trek movies, because as I said above, that was some good sci-fi. And it was a good Star Trek in its absolute value. But it wasn’t the Star Trek I wanted. Star Trek is much more than a 2-hour movie. It’s a universe with a grand history. You either delete the history and re-write it from scratch (if you have the chops), or you play within it. But you don’t mess with it like a child messes up his vegetables during dinner. You don’t do dat.

Two more blog posts by others, saying the same thing as I do here.

- Flash Forward (ABC)
The whole population of the planet blacks out for 2′:17″.

- V (ABC)
A re-imagining of the 1980’s miniseries about the world’s first encounter with an alien race.

- Day One (NBC)
It’s the story of life on earth following a global catastrophe that has devastated the world’s infrastructures.

- Past Life (FOX)
A psychologist and a former NYPD detective who have to unravel mysteries in the present and the past.

- Human Target (FOX)
The new series is more of an action thriller with a few brushes of sci-fi.

- Eastwick (ABC)
The series is based on the popular movie “The Witches of Eastwick”. Fantasy.

- Vampire Diaries (CW)
A young woman is torn between two vampires — one good, one evil. Fantasy.