Manny's Blog of Awesomeness

I’m posting on my iPhone 3G hopefully fo the last time. My birthday was on Friday and I pre-ordered an iPhone 4 for myself. I totally deserve it. Brax has turned on me about the Owl City thing. I’m rather shocked. For such a self proclaimed fan of electronic music and a hater of autotune, I thought he would be with me in disliking something so mediocre in comparison to other acts he champions on a constant basis. Maybe I’m starting to get more bitter now that I’m another year older. Either way, I know I’m right.

I guess I kind of suck at this blog thing.  Hey, Brax isn’t so great at it either.  We’ve been busy going to shows, working on new material, and cleaning up after that filthy slug, Bernie.  He’s all right, I guess.  I’m still kind of freaking out about this whole Comic-Con debacle.  Thanks to Travel Planners I now have to choose between the touch tank at Sea World and the wilds of Mission Bay.  Either one leads to certain doom.  Hopefully a third option will present itself soon.

Brax went on vacation.  He left that freaking plant here.  She is really giving me the creeps.  Maybe I could sell her on Craigslist, but then we’d have to find a new drummer.  Decisions, decisions.

I’ve been meaning to post about this but I guess I’ve been so mad about it, I forgot.  Coachella is only selling 3 day passes this year.  There are no one day tickets.  So If I want to go to only Day 3 to see Pavement and Gorillaz, I have to pay $269 freaking dollars.  That is insane.  I really hope this new venture will fail miserably, but I know it won’t because concerts are no longer for actual music fans, they are for rich people who don’t even care what show they are going to.  I have seen more evidence to this fact when I do actually make it out to a show and I see more and more people talking and not even paying attention to the set, getting completely drunk so they won’t even remember the show, and other ridiculous displays of non-cool show behavior.  I am aware I probably sound like an old man ranting about this, but I really don’t care.  Live Nation and the big promoters are ruining live music as we know it.  I guess I’ll stick to the small local shows, but I really do miss the big concerts.  Perhaps if the fans stop handing these crooks their money by the bushel they would be forced to change.  One can dream.

manny the manta ray

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I don’t know who this guy is but he’ll be hearing from my attorney.

Brax dragged me to this stupid convention, insisting it would be cool. It turned out to be quite the opposite. Most comic conventions at the very least have artists, collectibles, and some form of washed up celebrities to take pictures with and/or laugh at. This had none of those. Just a bunch of dudes selling old comics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I sure as heck wouldn’t pay 10 bucks for it. Then they had the audacity to yell at us for asking for our money back since we were only there for like 5 minutes. So yeah, I’m a liitle ticked about that.

Brax interviewed Jason Martin of Starflyer 59.  I don’t know how he did it.  He sure as heck didn’t tell me about it.  Someone please tell Brax I am mad at him because I am not speaking to him right now.

So someone got to this site by searching for “does owl city use auto tune.”  I would respond by searching for “does brax talk to that plant way too much?”  Of course Owl City uses auto-tune, dude (or dudette)!  Just because the guy doesn’t sound like T-Pain doesn’t mean he isn’t using it.  Most of its worst offenders are actually quite subtle.  And now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

So I used to think that Auto-Tune wasn’t that big of a deal, just a silly gimmick artists used to make their vocals pop or to prop them up during live performances since they couldn’t actually sing.  Folks have been using it for years.  Lately there seems to have been a resurgence thanks to hip hop artists such as T-Pain, Kanye West, and Black Eyed Peas but other folks such as the previously ranted against Owl City make liberal use of it as well.  Then I was talking to some dude about Imogen Heap and he said she sucks because she just uses Autotune and I nearly lost my mind.

Not Auto-Tune!

Imogen uses a vocoder.  There is a big difference.  While Auto-Tune uses vocoder technology, it does not require the use of a musical instrument to sound good.  A vocoder requires a musical accompaniant to sound good and tremendous musical knowledge to sound great.  It is a huge part of good electronic music and it is a sad day indeed when the overuse of freaking Auto-Tune has caused it to be dismissed.  So please, the next time you tell your engineer to turn on the Auto-Tune, think twice.  You’ll thank me later.

I seriously thought this was a Postal Service song the first time I heard it.

So apparently now everyone is an “electronic music fan” or something.  Don’t believe me?  Look at the iTunes charts and you’ll see that Owl City is selling like hot cakes.  “So what, Manny?  Shouldn’t you be happy that an electronic act is doing well?” you ask.  I would be happy, if Owl City was any good.  But good does not seem to sell albums.  Catchy sells albums.  Watered down versions of good bands sell albums.  Some dude puts auto-tuned vocals to Garage Band quality tracks and suddenly he is a huge selling Electronic artist.  Meanwhile few know who Ohm’s Law are and countless other electronic artists who can actually make a decent track are struggling just to pay the rent.  This is what is wrong with music today.  I honestly have no solution besides support your local artists, don’t buy into the hype.  I mean, really, this dude sounds like Savage Garden but gussied up for a new decade.  Also, he totally ripped off The Postal Service.  Yeah, think about it.