Manny's Blog of Awesomeness

manny the manta ray

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

My favorite local band, The New Limb, is in contention for The OC People’s Choice Awards and you can help them out by voting for them here.  Just put The New Limb in the band name field and vote away.  I am SUPER excited for their full length album which drops soon, I hope.  It will definitely be in serious contention with whatever Jason Martin puts out for my album of the year for 2010.

So I was listening to this streaming radio station the other day called Class of 1998 Reunion and it was pretty awesome.  Yeah, they play some crap in there, but there was some crappy music back then, just like there’s always been.  Even the crappy music can take me back though.  So anyway, they played the song “There She Goes” and it said it was by The Boo Radleys.  I am very fond of the movie So I Married an Axe Murderer so I am surprised at myself for not realizing the movie contained two versions of the song, the original by The La’s and a cover by The Boo Radleys (great name btw)!

Now I am kind of torn about which version I like better.  Never mind the Sixpence cover, which is decent, but it doesn’t have the nostalgia factor for me like these other two versions do and that is really what makes this song affect me so deeply.  The Boo Radleys version is a bit more poppier (is that even a word?  Spellcheck says no, but what does it know) but it has the horns and the handclaps which I kind of dig.  I’m really starting to wonder why they would put the original and the cover version in the same movie.  Did they not think the original was good enough?  If I were the La’s I would be kind of offended.  What do you think about this whole situation?

I just read that Rolling Stone named Radiohead’s Kid A their Best Album of the Decade.  I can’t believe I’m saying this since their writing has totally gone downhill in recent years, but I agree with Rolling Stone.  The other day someone (their name will be withheld to save them from embarrassment and possible stoning) told me that Britney Spears was the artist of the decade.  After withholding the urge to hurl, I quickly told them that if anyone deserved that moniker, it is Radiohead.  In addition to dropping some amazing albums in the last 10 years, they’ve also managed to turn the entire industry on its head with their digital release of In Rainbows and paved the way for tons of indie folks to follow suit.  For that alone they deserve serious props but their music is also awesome.  Great job, guys!

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.