First Look: Monster iCarPlay FM

New in iProng Labs: a first look at the new iCarPlay 800 and 1000 FM transmitters for iPhone and iPod from Monster, priced at $79 and $99, respectively…

by Bill Palmer

Monster’s latest FM transmitter solutions for connecting your iPhone or iPod to your car’s stereo system come in two models with different prices and vastly different looking interfaces, but the functionality of the 800 ($79) and the 1000 ($99) is largely similar on paper. In addition to charging your iPhone or iPod and and offering three programmable FM presets, both products scan the FM spectrum to automatically find the emptiest frequency while promising to block out any cellphone signal interference (a relief to iPhone users).

Aside from the styling, the primary difference out of the box appears to be that the 1000 sports a USB that allows you to charge a second USB-based device while in your car, which could be handy for those users who also need to keep GPS and bluetooth devices, etc., charged up while on the road. Monster also claims that the USB port on the 1000 can be connected to your computer and used to broadcast your computer’s audio to an FM stereo in your house.

FM car transmitter products require significant road testing to determine signal quality, so our full hands-on review will be posted in one to two weeks.

*****

Learn more about the iCarPlay FM 800 and iCarPlay FM 1000 at MonsterCable.com

*****

Review: Comply NR-10i for iPhone

When it was realized that soft rubber tips could be slid securely into the ear canal as opposed to traditional earbuds that merely sat beside the ear canal, listening to music through earbuds suddenly took a huge step forward in terms of audio quality and the ability to block out external noise. Hearing Components thinks it’s found the next breakthrough in earbuds, in the form of squishy foam that’s even softer and fits even more comfortably into your ear canal than rubber. And having spent the past week using their Comply NR-10i earbuds, I’m left to conclude that they’re right.



You squish the foam in your fingertips (much like you would with foam earplugs), insert them into your ears, and the foam immediately re-expands to fill your ear canal. In my experiences, the foam tips are better at blocking out external noise, and better at creating an intimate listening experience, than rubber-tip earbuds.



The letdown comes when you realize that the foam tips are the star of the show here; beyond the foam, the NR-10i is basically just standard fare. It sounds fine for its price, but even with the better noise-blocking and the more intimate feel, the NR-10i doesn’t quite produce the same overall level of audio quality as, for instance, the Ultimate Ears MetroFi 220 – which is priced ten dollars cheaper.



The cables on the NR-10i are thin, and the design is lightweight overall. One oddity is that the play/pause button is up around your chin, leaving you reaching around for a button whose exact location you can’t really see out of the corner of your eye.



Basically, these are 3.5 star earbuds that get upgraded to four stars due to the foam tips. A few other earbuds also come with foam tips (Westone 3, Ultimate Ears 700, etc), but not typically at the sub-$100 price point. If you’re wishing you could keep your current earbuds but switch to foam tips, you’re in luck – Hearing Components sells the foam tips for use with various third party earbuds for $15-$20. Based on my experiences using the foam replacement tips with some of my favorite earbuds, they’re worth their price.

Learn more at ComplyFoam.com

review by Bill Palmer

The Roxy’s Nic Adler

Nic Adler is having a busy day. So much so that a few hours after announcing the lineup for September’s Sunset Strip Music Festival, the voicemail inbox on his cellphone is full. After growing up in and around the world famous Roxy, Nic has taken over the reins of the club from his father Lou Adler, who first opened the Roxy’s doors the same year Nic was born, and now Nic is building the history-laden venue a decidedly twenty-first century presence on social networking sites across the internet. Nic and I chat about everything from how he first found his way to those sites, to how he’s used the worldwide feedback to improve the Roxy experience, to the fact that the Strip itself will be closed to traffic for the first (officially sanctioned) time ever so that some of the festival’s performers, which include artists from Chris Cornell to LMFAO, can perform out in the street.



“I literally grew up with The Roxy,” Nic says of his childhood in Los Angeles. “That’s where I went after school. I’d literally get picked up and dropped off at The Roxy at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I’d run around with the different crews and jump on stage. And then as I got older I did come clubs, I used the Whisky as an all ages club when I was fifteen, and then I became a band manager and found my bands out of The Roxy and The Whisky. So for me it’s in my blood, it’s in my DNA. I can’t seem to get away from the Strip, or at least very far from it.”



After a period of mid-teen rebellion against The Roxy and rock music in general, even going so far as to dismiss an early Guns ‘n Roses demo tape of Welcome To the Jungle when Izzy Stradlin’s girlfriend tried to play it for him, Nic was eventually handed the keys to kingdom by his father. “My dad was getting these calls, I think it was a Black Crowes show that we had at The Roxy. There was all these questions from the agents, and my dad just looked at me and he goes, ‘I’m done. It’s time. Get down to The Roxy and take care of this.’”



“And for me it’s been great because I’ve been able to manage bands and do other projects, and still always have that home base in the middle of LA, and I have great relationships with the managers and bands, so it’s good for me too, it puts me in the right place. But at the moment it wasn’t something that I was dying to do.”


After taking over the club, Nic’s first order of business was to redefine what The Roxy was supposed to be in the face of the rise of competing music scenes in other LA neighborhoods. At the same time he began finding his way into social media after his girlfriend chided him over the sorry state of not only his MySpace page, but The Roxy’s official website as well.



“In the next couple days I met this girl Kyra Reed, and she was introduced to me as Blog Woman, ‘this Blog Woman is going to come and talk to you.’ And I was in an open place where I was kind of looking for the next way for The Roxy to excel, and she comes in and sits down and says ‘Do you know about community?’ And I’m like yeah, I guess I know about community, where I live, my neighbors. Then she started explaining to me the importance of community and paying it forward and doing things to help your neighbors, but in an online networking space.”



The Roxy’s stale website was promptly replaced with a WordPress blog template which saw two new blog posts per day. “People would comment and say ‘I don’t like The Roxy because your drink prices are too much.’ And I could be like ‘Wow, okay, thanks for pointing that out, just so you know, the average price in LA is this, but you’re right, we should bring our prices down.’ And we were able to have an honest conversation.”
That kind of interaction set Nic on a path toward helping establish a social media presence for not just The Roxy, but the entire Sunset Strip. In addition to announcing his own club’s shows on Twitter and giving away free tickets to his followers (the latter of which more than paid for itself through the resulting free publicity), he decided to use The Roxy’s Twitter feed to retweet an upcoming concert that was taking place at The Viper Room down the street. Ten minutes later, The Viper Room retweeted one of the The Roxy’s shows. The Comedy Store and others soon followed.



“We went from a closed door community,” Nic says of the Strip’s various landmark venues, “and it probably had that feeling on the outside too. Like red carpet or the velvet rope, or you have to be somebody. And we’ve just opened that up to anybody who wants to participate in it.”



Of course promoting a local venue through the internet, even one as famous as The Roxy, means interacting with people around the world, many of whom might never be able to make it to the club one way or the other, but Nic still sees value in that. “As long as people are talking about it, it’s relevant. And I think that’s something that The Roxy had lost, and the Sunset Strip had lost, with some people, was that it just wasn’t relevant today. So the fact that people are talking about it every day.”
“We even target tweets in the middle of the night, we schedule tweets that are whatever bands that would hit in those different time zones. So in the middle of the night we’re tweeting about German bands that we might have, or a French DJ that’s coming up, so that we try to get some involvement from people over there. It’s definitely in our minds when we write our tweets: at two in the morning, who are we talking to?”



“We’re also trying to reach the bands and the agents and the managers. And when they go onto Twitter and they see that The Roxy has sixteen thousand followers, and they believe in Twitter and they know the relevance of Twitter, they’re like ‘Wow, The Roxy must have their shit together, because why do they have all these fans, why are people following them? They must understand what’s going on.’ And with what’s going on in LA, with the competition with forty different venues, to have any kind of leg up is what we’re looking for right now. And the bands too, the bands love Twitter. So when they know that we’re gonna retweet them, and we’re gonna help promote them, it’s just an added bonus.”



He’s even gone so far as to cut his local print advertising to one third of what it was previously, in favor of funding the man-hours spent promoting The Roxy on Twitter. The club has come out ahead financially in the process and seen no dropoff in results, leaving him feeling more satisfied that he’s able to see tangible results in the form of his club being discussed publicly by social network users on a daily basis.



The upcoming Sunset Strip Music Festival will include LMFAO, who started off performing at The Roxy’s smaller club upstairs before eventually gaining enough of a following to begin playing in the main club, and recently sold out both the House of Blues and The Roxy in the same week. Former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell brings something different to the festival (“We want that rock band that people are gonna be excited about,” as Nic puts it) along with other acts like Shwayze and The Donnas, as well as a number of other acts yet to be announced.



“Just to walk on the street, and to see bands playing on the Sunset Strip, I can’t even believe that it’s happening,” Nic says of the fact that this year’s festival will include outdoor stages on the street. “I come outside of The Roxy every night, and I’m literally looking up and down the street and going, ‘What’s it going to be like with ten thousand people on this street?’ And that’s one of the things we wanted to do, and that’s why we put two stages on the strip and we have alternating bands between the two stages, because something when I was a kid was people walking up and down the strip, and we’ve lost that a little bit. We’ve become more of a one-destination street where if you’re going to The Roxy you drive your car there, you park it, you go to The Roxy, you get back in your car and you go somewhere else. We want people to go up and down the street, walk back and forth and talk about what they did on this corner, or who played in that club. We’re trying to bring back that authentic Sunset Strip experience.”

The Sunset Strip Music Festival will take place in West Hollywood on September 10th-12th. Follow The Roxy on Twitter. Follow Nic Adler on Twitter. Learn more at TheRoxyOnSunset.com

interview by Bill Palmer

Review: Incipio Tribal Case

Some cases fall into the category of just plain strange looking, and Incipio acknowledges this with its Tribal case by branding it as part of its “LAB” series of “experimental concepts and ideas.” The Tribal starts off as a fairly standard thick soft silicone rubber slip-on case but owes its uniqueness to the series of swirling “tribal” grooves carved into its back and sides. And these are no mere surface grooves, as the non-carved portions of the case are about twice as thick as the carves themselves.



The result is a case that looks vaguely as if vines had started growing across the back of your iPhone, and has a three-dimensional feel in your hand. It does a nice job with the corners and the cut-outs, including play-through coverage of the volume buttons and top button, keeps the rubber plenty thick on the corners where it’s most needed for drop protection, and comes with thin clear film for the screen. Even the screen itself is nicely recessed within the body of the case.



In other words, once you get past the initial “what is that all about?” reaction, the Tribal turns out to be a well-done case. The only real caveat is this is one thick case – in fact it’s as thick as Mophie’s Juice Pack Air which has a built-in battery. But if you find the odd styling to be attractive, and if you’re willing to accept the thickness of the case in exchange for the impact protection it provides, the Tribal is a solid option.

Learn more at MyIncipio.com

review by Bill Palmer

Podcast Spotlight: Sly Crooner

What can listeners expect from a typical episode of Sly Crooner of Swanktown?



Sly Crooner of Swanktown is a weekly half hour radio show and podcast of modern urban fairy tales and swank jazz tunes.  Think of it as a new jazz cabaret each week.  I write the stories and tell them as Sly Crooner who is the lounge singer and raconteur of the Royal Palm Court Lounge.  The main characters are the mayor Mr. Lucky, the hotel physician Dr. Peculiar, the resident florist and romeo Cosmo d. Gigolo and the lobby fortune teller Slow Kitty.  It’s martinis, fashion, jazz and whole lot of attitude and the motto every week is “living swank is the best revenge”.



How did you come up with the idea for such a unique premise for a show?



I was always a big fan of Garrison Keillor and his News from Lake Woebegone and really admired his story telling.  I’ve been a songwriter all my life and have a huge catalogue of material and putting the two together just seemed to make sense.  The art of storytelling, live radio storytelling has faded somewhat now that every event in modern life is attached to a video. Delving into that world has been the biggest challenge for me.

When you first launched the show as a podcast, did you have the goal at that time to eventually get it onto the radio?



Yes. I always thought that this format, unique as far as I know, could work both as a podcast and on radio and I always wanted to pursue both avenues.  The interesting thing is that it was immediately picked up by KYOU in San Francisco, a CBS station that broadcast all podcast content.  So right from jump street I had confirmation that it could work both as a podcast and on radio.

How did your show end up launching on SiriusXM last month?



That was a three year odyssey that ended only when I happened to write to the Program Director of Book Radio and ask if they’d like to get a CD of the show.  It was about the 50th email I’d written (there are no phone numbers I could find) and somehow it got through, got read and got a response.  I sent them a CD and 2 months later they got back to me.  As usual, when work or good news comes, I was out of town.  Actually I was in Helsinki and they wanted to talk before we put the show up.  I wasn’t scheduled to be back in Los Angeles for a month so I had to gut it out waiting to close the deal.  It was well worth the wait.

Since Sirius is a paid subscriber service and you’re presumably making revenue from Sly Crooner now, why continue to give it away for free as a podcast?



Good question, bad assumption.  The revenue I have and continue to receive for the show is easy to total up at the end of every month . . . zero.  It seems to be widely assumed that all content on SiriusXM is paid but I can assure you that is not the case.  I look at it as a golden opportunity to build an audience for the show and so I am thrilled to continue to give it away to SiriusXM and as a podcast.  And I hope to continue giving it away for a long long time.

Learn more at SlyCrooner.com

Review: Phiaton PS 200 for iPod

Two hundred and fifty dollars for earbuds for your iPod is quite a sum of money, particularly considering that you probably didn’t spend that much to buy the iPod itself. But for those discerning users who can’t stand the audio quality of the iPod’s included earbuds, and who aren’t even satisfied with any of the several excellent third party options in the $100 range, Phiaton’s PS 200 earbuds fall into an exquisite category of earbuds whose audio quality is so expansive, so three-dimensional sounding, that you almost start to believe you’re wearing full cup-style headphones instead of tiny earbuds.



The first thing I noticed with the PS 200, beore I even turned on the music, is that they made probably the tightest seal with my ear canals that I’ve encountered with any rubber earbuds. I never have a problem with earbuds falling out of my ears, but these in particular stood out as being so secure I thoought maybe I could go on a roller coaster while wearing them (not that I tried that particular stunt, nor should you).



Generally speaking, the sound quality is everything you’d want in super high-priced earbuds: while listening to your favorite music with the PS 200, you start to notice new details in that music that you couldn’t even hear with measly $100 earbuds.



The trouble comes, however, with the bass-to-treble ratio. Usually it’s a matter of the earbuds having more bass than treble, and it becomes a matter of whether the bass is too amped up to be considered a mainstream product. But this is converse, where the bass on the PS 200 is the feintest I’ve ever heard on high-end earbuds. Not to be mistaken with cheap, crappy $10 earbuds where there’s literally no bass; in this case the bass is there, and it sounds great too, but there’s just not enough of it in comparison to the upper ranges. I honestly don’t know how many people are going to pay $249 for earbuds whose bass is this feint in comparison to nearly every other option on the market – but I’ll leave that up to each of you. That leaves the PS 200’s quality very high overall, but its market appeal questionable, hence the four star rating out of five. You’ll each have to make your own call on this one.

Learn more at Phiaton.com or buy now.

review by Bill Palmer

The Atomic Love Bombs

Portions of your new album, and I mean this as a compliment, feel like they could be from forty years ago. Is that an accurate indication of where your influences come from?

Like any band, we have a wide range of influences. There’s a touch of Love & Rockets and The Church in our sound, and you’ll also find bands like The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Warlocks (and other contemporary groups) influencing us. Our biggest influences, however, are those mid to late 60’s psychedelic and punkadelic scenes from and San Francisco, and to a lesser extent, New York.

The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, and The Beatles are all part of what we listened to growing up (and as adults), and lesser-known bands like The Del-Vettes, The Count Five, and The Strawberry Alarm Clock are in there, too.



So if you’re hearing the 60s in our music, we managed to do something right during the recording process.

The title track, Let It Burn, is listed as being “for Anton Newcombe” of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Why him in particular?

This is one of Joe’s songs, and while I can’t speak for him, I think that BJM inspired Joe to write Let It Burn. I think he wanted to pay tribute to Anton by including him in the name of the song.

You and bassist Tim Rye are both lead vocalists. How do you divide up those duties?

Tim and I took over lead vocals last year when the band went through a lineup change. Most of our songs are written by Joe Mitch (the band’s founder and main songwriter), and we try to match them up in terms of style and feel to whichever of us has the most appropriate voice. Some songs bounce back and forth between us until we settle on who’s doing what, while some songs are just obvious from the onset. 

You guys have three guitars in the band – how do you manage that sort of arrangement?

It’s funny you should ask that…When I found out the band was looking for a third guitarist, I went to listen to them and thought they really didn’t need a third. I talked to Joe, and from that conversation, I understood that the third guitar part is intended to be another layer, not another lead.


That got me pretty excited, and I really like the way we craft those layers.

For instance, Ben plays all our leads, but he is also responsible for a lot of the feedback you hear. Joe and I share (or split) most of the rhythm work, but that third guitar, whomever is playing that role of “the third guitar” for a given song, takes on a role that is often more akin to a keyboard. 

On the songs where I play through a Peppermint Fuzz to get that really fuzzy sound, I often feel like I’m more Second Bassist than a guitarist in terms of my role. On songs where I am playing the main rhythm part, Joe is either doing accent parts or laying down feedback.

It’s all about the layers for us, especially with the guitars. On those occasions where we are shy one of the guitars during a practice, we find that if the song sounds empty, it affirms what we’re doing with that third part. If it sounds OK with just two of us, we re-examine the parts and the arrangements.

Butterflies is more than ten minutes long, which is rare for an album track. What was the process like in capturing a song like that for the album?

Painstaking? Difficult? Fun? Our running joke when someone asks us about having a song that’s more than 10 minutes long is to apologize and say that the other 8 minutes were accidentally erased. (Musicians always laugh, while non-musicians usually look a little confused.)



Seriously, though, we worked on that song more than any other before we went into the studio. It was the one song we were recording that simply couldn’t be played to a click track, and needed to be captured live. Those basic instrumental tracks were captured in one take, and then we did a couple of tracks of just feedback and Joe and Ben. Getting the vocals down and mixing it took far more effort than recording the rest of the instruments. There is a LOT of mixing on that song.

You’re also the Executive Vice President of The Mac Observer and Co-Publisher of The iPodObserver. Being a musician and being a journalist both require traveling, sometimes working odd hours, and so on. How do you go about balancing the two careers?

Well, at this point, The Atomic Love Bombs is definitely more of an expensive hobby than a career, and I love The Mac Observer, which is my career. It’s funny how many Mac writers, journalists, and editors are also musicians — just look at The Macworld All-Stars, for example!

When I was young, I had dreams of being a “rock star,” and there’s definitely an aspect of writing for a popular Mac site that kinda-sorta fills that same need. Perhaps that’s part of why the All-Stars are possible, you know?

In any event, when you can take your laptop with you anywhere, writing for a living gives me a lot of flexibility some other folks might not have. So far there haven’t been many conflicts, and until we go on a serious tour, that’s likely to remain the case.

Now, if we can just get a gig playing at Macworld Conference & Expo, I can bring the two worlds together, if just for a few hours! You hear that Paul?

Let It Burn is available in iTunes now. Learn more at AtomicLoveBombs.com

interview by Bill Palmer

iProng Magazine #44: Our Lady Peace, OT3P, Brian Head Welch, Ewan Spence, The 88, Myst, Nic Adler and more

Our Lady Peace interview

iProng Magazine sits down with Raine Maida and Jeremy Taggart, singer and drummer of multi-million selling Canadian alt-rock band Our Lady Peace, whose hit songs like Somewhere Out There and Superman’s Dead have earned them a loyal following worldwide, and have just released new album Burn Burn…

interview by Bill Palmer

It’s launch day for their first new album in four years, but if Our Lady Peace is feeling any stress or apprehension over it, then they’ve fooled me. In fact the environment backstage at the Fillmore New York couldn’t be much more relaxed as we sit down for a launch day interview. I sheepishly admit to lead singer Raine Maida that the last time I interviewed him, by phone, I’d woken up that morning with a cracked filling and had been trying to hide the fact that I could only speak out of the left side of my mouth. Raine manages to spin my admission into a light-hearted joke about drummer Jeremy Taggart, who’s sitting next to him, minus his signature thick-rimmed glasses. I point out to them that Burn Burn has just debuted at #1 overall in iTunes in their native Canada, and #3 in its genre in the U.S., and when they express pleasant surprise at the numbers it occurs to me that they themselves haven’t yet bothered to check them.



It’s a far cry from the band that nearly busted itself up during the tumultuous process of slowly grinding out its previous record in the middle part of this decade. “It was a long recording process,” Jeremy says of 2005’s Healthy In Paranoid Times. “We recorded some songs three or four or five different versions, and some of the life got lost in translation, and we kind of got a little spaced out. We didn’t really know exactly which way to go, and we were just a little bit lost – and that’s kind of where we ended up on the last record. It was almost like we were trying to save an album. And it didn’t really work, you know? And on this record we just never wanted to do that again. And by making six albums with a lot of great engineers and producers, we figured we should be able to do this by ourselves.”



That meant stripping Our Lady Peace down to literally just the four of them for the creation of Burn Burn. No producer. No record label. And a recording studio inside of Raine’s house. But would the tension of the previous sessions still need to be worked out amongst the four of them before Burn Burn could commence? “I don’t think we really knew what we were in for. We just kind of got together to work on some stuff,” Raine says of kicking off the recording sessions. “We put up some mics, pressed ‘Record.’ I don’t know if any of the first three songs made it on the record, I can’t remember, but it just felt good, and it was easy, and it was inspired – and that was the most important thing for us. I think everyone in this band at some point before that was sitting in bed, wondering at night, is this thing gonna keep going? And then in a matter of like, a day really, I think we all realized, yeah, this is amazing. Let’s do this ourselves.”



While the last record saw the creation of dozens of songs, most of which never made the light of day, this time around there wasn’t much fat to cut. “We recorded fourteen,” Raine says of Burn Burn, “and ten of them pretty much made themselves apparent of what should be on the record, and that’s it. There was so much drama and other bullshit attached to the other record, this is the complete opposite. It was so easy.”



As the two of them would make a point of doing with each other so many times during the course of our conversation, Jeremy points out that he agrees: “There wasn’t really anything happening on this record other than writing songs in the studio. And on the last record, there was a lot more other stuff going on other than just recording music. And that just isn’t in the cards for us to be productive. We work best with momentum. Once we hit a wall, that’s where things start to spiral for us.”



Although Burn Burn took two years to make according to the calendar, that was a result of the long periods of separation in between each recording session; the sessions themselves were swiftly paced. “We were recording a song a day,” Raine says of the sessions. Adds Jeremy, “The coolest thing about it is no matter what the idea and how great we thought it was, we would always just move on. Even though certain songs that we recorded got really personal to individual people in the band, we would just move on and let it go. There was no fighting for ideas or any of that bullshit, it was just recording and let’s move on. And the end of it, you kind of forgot how the songs were recorded, so the songs just spoke for themselves. Escape Artist, I know that that song came super, super early, but I don’t know exactly when. We just know that we were really happy and we had a couple of pillar songs like that and Monkey Brains, to know that we had the bulk of a really good record.”
Working from home can lead to a certain degree of distraction, particularly when the work is a collaboration with old friends. So was that the case here? “I guess there was,” Raine says. “But we worked so quickly that the distractions were good. If we wanted to take off and see a movie, go to the beach, or go golfing or do whatever, we felt like we could do that and there was no pressure because it wasn’t like oh my god, we’re leaving some fancy studio that we’re paying fifteen hundred dollars a day for.”



When Raine released a solo record in 2007, he had told me back then how important it was to him that he owned that record outright, which at the time he said was something he didn’t think could happen with an Our Lady Peace record. And yet the record label listing for Burn Burn in iTunes is “Our Lady Peace, Inc.”


“We went through our record deal. It was a natural progression,” Raine says now of the fact that this new album belongs solely to the four of them. “The best thing was the timing, the way it happened. We got to own a record when we chose not to use a producer, and didn’t really know what was going on with our career in terms of going in to make a record. I think looking back on it, we were really fortunate that those things lined up the way they did. Because one or the other, if we would have been on a label still and chose not to work with a producer, I don’t know if that would have happened, or vice versa. So the fact that we didn’t have either gave us the perfect circumstance to make this record.”



At this point the atmosphere of the room is so sufficiently laid back that Raine is pouring glasses of wine for us, and as we toast, the opening act begins its rather loud soundcheck downstairs, which no one flinches at. Later a fire truck takes so long going slowly past the window that we can’t help but laugh at the siren that just wouldn’t die. But at this point Jeremy begins speaking increasingly passionately in defense of songs and bands that sound good live, a theme that he continues throughout the rest of the conversation.



“It’s so obvious where the spots are that felt really good in the songs that we’re playing from this record live, and the ones that we’re gonna play. Pretty much all of them, they have a sense of reckless abandon in them because they kind of got tracked so quickly. But at the same time they feel like performance songs, they feel like a live show. This record feels like you’re listening to us live, and when you come see us it’s just gonna be a different interpretation of that, as opposed to us trying to achieve our album.”



“And the last couple records were impossible to achieve, because there was just too much going on. I think when you see a band live and it’s not cutting the mustard, like, what’s the point? You should be that first, and that’s kind of what happened. In a sense it’s easier for us to just be like a power trio with Raine, and have really simple parts defined, as opposed to one part and then a complementary part, and then some piano to try and give it something else.”

“On our first record Naveed, that’s what it was,” Raine says of the band’s 1995 debut. “I remember saying to the producer, we do not want any fucking keyboard on this record. Don’t even bother bringing a piano or a synth up, or whatever.”
“Because we wouldn’t be able to do it live,” Jeremy adds.



“Yeah, and then we got away from that,” Raine continues. “And we loved experimenting. We really embraced the studio as this tool for adding sounds and textures. But then we always had a friend of ours tour with us, to be able to accomplish all that shit. And this time we just wanted to be able to get back to just the four of us.”



“We knew they weren’t going to be on the radio,” Jeremy says of album tracks like Monkey Brains and Paper Moon, “so we just had fun with those arrangements. We pushed them into whatever they were, whether they were long or odd or weird, it didn’t matter.”



Raine points to the two minute guitar solo at the end of Paper Moon, saying that they never previously felt like they could get away with something like that on a record. “It was always like there was a hesitation to go there. We did it on Superman’s Dead [from 1997’s Clumsy], that was a great example that we should have probably put more virtue or value in, because that was a song that was a single down here that did really well, and it had like a whole other ending.”



This time the band felt sufficiently free to go with whatever they were feeling that they yanked a song called The Right Stuff from the record prior to its release, despite having shot a video for it and considering it single-worthy at one point, simply because it didn’t fit in with the rest of the material. “One song had that little odd color,” Jeremy says of the omitted track, “and it’s the only time I’ve heard, after the fact, people go ‘I’m glad you didn’t have that song on the record.’”



Soundcheck is growing even louder at this point, and so there’s time for just one more question, this one from iProng reader Sherwin Smith, who wants to know if the band has any advice for other musicians who are starting out here in the digital age of music. Raine’s answer is the direct opposite of what you currently hear from just about all other circles: “Stay away from fucking MySpace and Facebook, and practice your instrument and learn how to write songs. You have to go back to what the real artists were able to do. And these days I feel bad for new artists because they have to be like Jay-Z, they have to be a brand. But that shit doesn’t work if you don’t have great songs and aren’t a good musician.”



“That’s what’s getting lost these days, unfortunately. We find ourselves fighting with it as well. But this record is a real shining example for us of if you just get in there and play well, and treat your art like an art, great things come.”



The interview is over, the recorder has been turned off, Raine has had to step away to check on something, and the soundcheck downstairs has grown so loud we can barely hear each other, but Jeremy’s not finished. He’s still trying to convince me that the great bands, the ones that stand the test of time, are the ones that sound great live in concert.



And he’s right.



A few hours later, Our Lady Peace takes the stage with a thundering version of Monkey Brains as an opener, with the energy coming from the packed crowd in the Fillmore continually growing throughout the first half of the set and building to such a crescendo by the end of Somewhere Out There that an overwhelmed Raine says “I don’t even know what to do up here” and then proceeds to sit out the entire first half of 4 A.M., allowing the crowd to sing the song instead. Later in the set he climbs up into the balcony and hangs off the outside of the railing while singing to the crowd, then filming the crowd with his cellphone, then thanking the crowd for “one of the top ten moments in OLP history.”

*****

Our Lady Peace is touring the United States in August. Burn Burn available in iTunes now. Learn more at OurLadyPeace.net

*****

Ewan Spence on the Fringe

First of all, for those offlanders who shamefully aren’t familiar with it, what is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival all about?

Quite simply it is the largest arts festival on the planet. The raw numbers have 265 different stages descend on the Scottish capital, putting on a shade under 2100 shows performed by over 18,500 people. Over the three week period (August 7th to August 31st) that takes up 34,265 performances. That’s a lot – and when you consider that’s over multiple disciplines, theatres, drama, comedy, music, dance, stand-up and everything in between it’s just a smash of human nature that’s happened every year since 1947. It’s an open program, no curation – if you want to put on a show, you just find a stage, pitch up, and away you go.

What led you to start releasing your Fringe Festival content as a podcast back in 2005?

Podcasting back then was still less than year old (if you count Coverville as one of the first podcasts, which started in September 2004) so part of it was the challenge… a heady mix of the fringe itself being a place for experimentation and new ideas, but that podcasting was such a new medium that nothing like that had ever been done before. Could one man take on a festival of that size (both in terms of shows and time, three weeks plus change) and capture enough of it in audio to make a compelling show?

The answer, five years later and with a mailbox full of people checking that the coverage will be returning, means the answer is a confident yes.

How has your coverage of the event evolved since 2006?

Not by a huge amount to be honest. I’m a believer that the audiences out there, on the whole, can take one or two major changes in a format, but not much more than that, before they start to think something is too different. By switching their listening to a podcast, as opposed to a radio station, that’s already a major change, so I want to make it as comfortable as possible.

The show format is modelled closely on the night-time chat shows, a nice familiar introduction, some news and views at the top of the (half) hour, into the interviews and then finish with a number from one of the countless musicians playing the Fringe.
What has changed is my style. Going back to listen to the shows from 2005 and I sound like the announcer in a TV commercial running in the fifties. The best note I ever got was from someone who was a fan of the Fringe podcasts that year, meeting me in real life. They asked why the bundle of energy in front of them wasn’t coming through in the audio?

So I loosened up a bit, brought a bit more of me out, but always keeping the focus on the guests.

One thing that is new-ish this year is that throughout July is a weekly highlights show, looking back at some of the interviews from previous years to get everyone in the mood for this year’s Fringe. They’ve gone down incredibly well, and done the job of priming everyone (and all the RSS feeds!) that the show is definitely coming back in 2009.

What are you most looking forward to at the 2009 Festival?

September the 1st!

There is such a rush at the start, with all the press previews, and while I do have some interviews booked ahead of time, it’s the process of going through the previews and the buzz of all the reporters and people on the ground to try and find the small shows that are going to be big. While it’s great to interview the big names I much prefer being able to point to Fringe shows from previous years and seeing that I did get the names that are now big, when they were much smaller and struggling to pull in audiences of ten or fifteen people.

So it’s a process of discovery. And there’s also a huge extended “family” of people that gather once every year, so we all catch up in the bar, find out what’s been happening, much as you do at any festival or conference, but the scale of the Fringe makes it amazing. For comparison, SXSW Music has around 1800 20 minute slots through the event… the Fringe has the aforementioned 34,265 slots, generally running an hour long.

You’ll be releasing new podcast episodes daily during the Festival. How do you find the time to get them recorded, edited, and uploaded on a daily basis while attending the festival?

Haggis. And caffeine…

And a lot of planning! The honest answer is I’m not quite sure, but there’s a schedule to keep to, the clock will never stop ticking and you just have to get it done. There’s no time to spend hours on an edit for an interview, so you need to be able to nail the structure and the flow during the actual talk with the guests… there’s no time to do a massive re-ordering in post production, so planning out the interviews, with notes, biographies and press releases is a must. A lot of my time in July is spent planning the coverage, when to see shows, when are the time slots to book interviews, when can I edit…

After that it’s mostly trust in the planning process, make sure to write everything down (the Fringe is the only event I attend where I carry a second Filofax diary just for the Fringe details), and then just go on instinct, do what seems right, and never turn down an interview just because it sounds difficult. So what if the Japanese Samurai master doesn’t speak a word of English and has a katana on the table between us – it’ll make a great interview!!!

Tell us about iFringe, the iPhone app.

Well I have to be focussed one hundred percent on the audio show, but the iPhone App junkies should be looking for an app called iFringe. Put together by the Fringe Guru team, it’s going to pull in the huge amount of data from the Fringe, including reviews and recommendations alongside Fringe news and more touristy information such as the best places to eat. Oh and with so many venues expect some GPS goodness to go alongside the usual search features.

The Edinburgh Fringe Podcasts are going to be available inside the application as well, so there’s no excuse for the iPhone Art Loving fans to not know what’s going on at the Fringe this year!

Learn more at edinburgfringe.thepodcastnetwork.com

App review: Birdfeed

Twitter. It’s the hot thing these days. Along with your iPhone (or iPod Touch), it seems that these two make a perfect couple. And that’s why there are countless Twitter apps in the App Store. However, a new one has come out recently that brings back the phrase K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Enter Birdfeed, a new contender in the ever growing world of iPhone Twitter apps. What makes it different from most other apps though, is that it keeps everything simple (perhaps TOO simple, in some aspects).

Birdfeed does not follow the traditional twitter apps that feature a bar at the bottom that separate your regular stream, your mentions/replies, your DMs, and your favorites. Instead, all of these are featured on a separate screen that is labeled with your account name at the top. While this may not suit everyone, it certainly is a way to keep focused on what you want to look at without getting distracted with the other stuff. If you do have new mentions or DMs though, it will show the count on the main screen.

One of the main things that Birdfeed does that most others do not is that it keeps a local cache, so it remembers your timeline spot and will allow you to catch up on tweets even when there is no network connection. Most of the other apps require a connection to load tweets, so this is a nice change.

The app also has an infinite timeline, where it will automatically load and display more tweets once you reach the bottom of the screen. So if you’re the kind that likes to completely catch up with all your friends and news, then this should attract you. There’s also the ability to go back all the way to the top of the screen by tapping the status bar at the top. But if you go to a different screen and then come back, you’ll have to load all the tweets again, since the app will only display the most recent ones.

Scrolling on the app is like butter, extremely smooth and not jerky like some other twitter apps on the iPhone. In fact, it is similar to that of Tweetie, which still seems to be one of the top apps for tweeting on the iPhone.

When composing a new tweet, the screen is also simple and not overcrowded with features that not everyone may need. Simply a trash icon to clear the tweet, a display of 140 [that goes down once you start typing along with a neat color-coded indicator of how close you are to the 140-character limit], and a camera icon for pictures (no video yet). The whole screen for composing a tweet is simple, just like the rest of the app.

When you view someone’s tweet, you will also see what app it originated from (sometimes missing in other apps), you can view each tweet in part of a conversation, and of course, reply/favorite/retweet (called “Forward” in the app, since you can post a link to the tweet or email a link of it as well).

If you tap anywhere at the top of the screen where it displays user info (avatar, name, etc) or just the blue arrow button, you will view that user’s profile. View how many following/followers (although you can’t view the users oddly enough), updates, bio, and can send a DM (if they are following you back). Amongst other stuff is the ability to view their most recent tweets, favorites, search results with their @username, and even some Services are integrated for fun: Twitter.com/Favrd/Follow Cost/DoesFollow. There’s even that awesome little follow/unfollow button if you need it, but be warned – as of this writing, there is no block/unblock.

If you get lost in the midst of viewing specific tweets, there’s a button in the top right that takes you right back where you started. Simple and convenient!

There is an in-app browser (although what twitter app doesn’t nowadays) that can support landscape viewing (but not landscape tweeting, if you’re one of those landscape fans). Unfortunately, the in-app browser is also the only way to view integrated image sharing services as well (yfrog and TwitPic). Even though these two services are supported by Birdfeed for uploads, when viewing images from these, you don’t get full-screen support; you get to view just the webpage. For shame, and hopefully this will be addressed at some point in the future in an update.

From the main screen, you can look at your own profile and tweets, although there is no point since you can’t view who you follow and who follows you. There is also a Search tab that will let you view results from All or Nearby, also allowing you to view saved searches, recent searches, or trends via the bookmark icon. Though it may just be me, but it seems like it’s quite a few taps to just view Trending Topics – it would do better as its own separate tab.
And many users will find this feature handy – View User, just like the Go To User option in Tweetie, allows you to quickly enter a username and jump to their profile page. Not all the twitter apps have this quick jump feature, so it’s very nice to see it included in Birdfeed.

Birdfeed also has options in Settings to integrate with Instapaper and tr.im if you use those services, and also lets you choose what site to upload photos to (yfrog and TwitPic) and what image quality.

Overall, this app is a great contender in the ring of iPhone Twitter clients. One of their mottos is “We’re as proud of the things we left out as we are of the things we put in,” which is nice to add to the simplicity, but taking some essentials out (fullscreen picture integration, viewing following/followers, etc) does knock it down a notch, despite it’s simplicity (EVERY Twitter app should have these things). If you want to have a simple but smooth Twitter client and don’t mind some missing things (that may be addressed in the future, who knows), then Birdfeed may be a good option to consider looking into.

Birdfeed for iPhone and iPod touch in the App Store

review by Christine Chan

iProng Magazine #44: Our Lady Peace interview and more

iProng Magazine has released its 44th issue featuring a cover story interview with Our Lady Peace and app reviews of Myst and Birdfeed. Also interviewed: Otep Shamaya, Brian Head Welch, Ewan Spence, The 88, Geoffrey Tozer, The Atomic Love Bombs, Cupero, The Roxy’s Nic Adler, and much more.

Tap here to read this issue

Review: Monster iCarCharger 1000

Featureless iPhone and iPod car chargers are a dime a dozen, and even those users with a line-in/aux-in port on their car stereo who are looking for a car charger with a built in line-out cable have plenty of options to choose from. But Monster’s new iCarCharger 1000 stands out from the pack with two distinct additional features.


The less immediately apparent (but probably more widely useful) of the two is that the line-out cable, which deceptively appears to be very short in the photo above, is actually wrapped around a spool inside the head of the charger. Slide the head open, unravel precisely how much cable you need for your car setup, lock it into place, and you won’t have one inch more cable running from your charger to your stereo than necessary. In a word, it’s a brilliant concept – and it works as advertised.



The second feature is flashier but may or may not be of practical value to you. The front of the charger includes basic playback features that allow you to play or pause the music and jump to not only the next or previous song, but also the next or previous playlist. This can come in super handy if your car setup is such that your iPhone or iPod isn’t easily available to you while driving (or if you find trying to operate it via the screen while driving to be a distraction).

The problem, though, is that far too many cars have their charging port in a position too far away from the driver for the buttons to be easily reached. In my own car I could barely reach it with my fingertips, and I’ve owned other cars in which the buttons would have been completely unreachable. The fact that the head of the charger can be rotated upward or downward can help, but the usability of the buttons is a crapshoot based on your particular car layout. So while the whole product is brilliant, the fact that too few users will actually be able to comfortably reach the buttons prevents me from being able to give the iCarCharger 1000 five stars, depending on your car it might be a perfect product for you.

Learn more at MonsterCable.com

review by Bill Palmer

Interview with The 88

The 88 is a band from Los Angeles. Their upbeat brand of music has been featured on The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother. Recently, they have made headlines by being the first band to record a single, the song “Love is the Thing,” directly onto an iPhone. I recently spoke with keyboardist Adam Merrin.

First of all, to jump right into it: you recorded a song using an iPhone. What made you decide to do that?

It all started when we were on tour and we were driving in the van and Keith [Slettedahl, vocals/guitar] was browsing through the app store and he came across the Four Track application. He brought it up and said “oh this would be cool just to record ideas when we’re away from home. Something to have fun with” so we downloaded it. And I decided it would be interesting to try to experiment and record the full band onto the iPhone to see what it would sound like. So we just made a plan when we got back to set a day aside and record and we knocked it out in a day.

We recorded everything in a couple of hours and then I took it home and mixed it on the computer, and that took a couple hours. We actually filmed ourselves during the whole recording process and I edited the making of film in iMovie and we put that on the website and got it on iTunes. It actually spread a lot more than we had imagined, which was really cool.

How hard was it to using an iPhone as opposed to a more traditional way of recording?

It was super easy. Everything on a Mac and on an iPhone is very user-friendly. It was just like you’d imagine. Everything is very self-explanatory; you don’t need any manuals or to be a recording engineer genius to figure it out. Anybody can do it. And we kept that theme of “anybody can do this” and did it very simply with cheap instruments – the drummer used a toy drum set, the bass player ran his bass through a practice guitar amp. I played keyboards on a cheap $150 keyboard. We didn’t use any microphones at first and just used the built-in microphone to record everything. I did a mix of that and it sounded cool but the lead vocals sounded a little bit distant. It still had a very unique sound and I thought it was pretty cool, but we also thought it might make it even more intimate to try to use a microphone going directly into the phone to do the lead vocal. So we did a little more research and I found a thing Alesis called Pro Track. And with that you hook your phone into it and you can hook a microphone into that. So we re-recorded the lead vocal into that to get a more close up feel. And I think it came out really great. But all the other tracks were recorded using the built-in mic, which actually is a decent mic. It picks up everything really nicely. It’s a lot better than I expected.

Was it hard to get the levels right on the different instruments?

Four Track doesn’t let you control the input level, so in order to get something to not overload the phone you basically just move the phone further away from what you’re recording. So for the drums, which would be the loudest thing we were recording, we put the phone on the other side of the room, put some pillows around it. We also covered the drum with a sheet to help quiet it. So that’s pretty much how you have to do it until they come out with an update that has an input level, which I’m sure they will at some point. But again this was pretty cool to do it in that style. I thought it had a pretty unique sound.

Do you think the iPod or iPhone has changed the way that you listen to music?

Well, the thing that’s great is I have my whole music collection in the palm of my hand so when we’re on tour so instead of having a huge notebook full of CDs it’s very easy and convenient. It definitely makes touring a lot more fun. I have different ways of listening to music. I have a record player at home so when I’m at home I’ll listen to vinyl. But definitely when I’m away from home it’s great to have an iPod. That other great thing is that when you put it on random, stuff will come up that you wouldn’t normally put on that is nice to listen to, so I really like that feature cause you’ll get some stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily think to play.

Do you feel that, as a member of a band, that iTunes and online availability of music has influenced you in the way you think of songs or put together albums?

No, it hasn’t. We still come from an old-school way of thinking when putting together an album. I know that topic has been brought up when we’re finalizing everything– the songs, the album cover– and it’s definitely a question of whether it looks good on the iTunes store. Even coming up with a sequence of songs on the album. You hear some people say it doesn’t matter now since people download [individual] songs but to us we still come from the thinking of making a proper album with the sequence of songs.

I’ve noticed from comments about the band is that your live shows are described as being “high energy.” So what do you aim for in a live show? Do you try to recreate the song the way it was recorded or do you try to experiment? What’s your goal when you’re performing?

We like to try out new things when we’re performing live. To me it’s just such a special moment. There’s so much energy and time and work that goes into planning the live shows and we take it seriously and also have a lot of fun at the same time. But when I’m on the stage, I cannot take that for granted. I know that it’s a once in a lifetime moment and I think that this could be the last we play, for whatever reason, so I just give it my all. And I think the songs are fun to play, so we have fun and I think the audience likes to see a band that’s having a good time, cause they’re there to have a fun time too. We usually get a good reaction. I think we get a lot of new fans at our live shows too. We just got off the road with the B52s and I think we got a lot of new fans from those shows, people that had never heard us before and so we really enjoy recording but we really enjoy touring too.

You mentioned that you were on tour with the B52s. What was that like?

It was an honor touring with them. Before we went on tour with them I was listening to some of their albums and I was thinking “I cannot believe we are touring with them.” They are so original and definitely have their own thing and their own sound so it was really an honor to be playing with them. It seemed to be the right fit with their audience. People who go to see them go to have a good time and I guess they noticed the older influences in our band. It was just perfect. So every single night we’d be selling a lot of CDs and meeting a lot of new people. It was the best touring experience that we’ve had.

What type of influences do you have as a band?

We kind of listen to a little bit of everything, but we lean towards a little bit of the older stuff from the 60s and 70s: the Beatles, David Bowie, the Band, the Kings, that kind of thing. I definitely listen to more of that stuff than modern music. But then there are some bands that I do like, such as Sigur Ros, Matt Costa, Radiohead. So it’s not like I listen to only the older stuff, but I enjoy the way that was recorded and the older sound is more appealing to me. Even the song structures too. I like the way they were written back then.

One last question: what do you see in the future for The 88? What’s next?

We’re continuing to record new music. That’s what we’re working on this summer. We’ve tried new ways of recording and different producers and a variety of studios around LA. After all that we’ve found that we love recording on our own so we just want to continue doing that. Any good touring opportunities that come up we’ll take. We also want to try doing things differently than the standard way that bands have recorded music and released it. We just want to record music and get it out as quickly as possible instead of having this long waiting period and then a build up to a release. That’s the old way of doing things and I don’t see how that’s worked for us. And I can’t see releasing a new album every year or two because we’re always writing and recording. We just want to capture that and get it out there as soon as possible and not have that album cycle that people are used to. I think it’ll work best for us.

There’s something to be said about not keeping people waiting two or three years for an album. That can get frustrating for fans.

Yeah. And for us too. In the past we’d record a song and it wouldn’t come out for six months and by the time it comes out we’re sick of it and not excited to play it live. It’s not fun for us and people can tell we’re not into it. We want to write something, record it, and play it live as soon as possible to keep it fresh and exciting and fun for us. Otherwise it’s not worth it. The whole point is to have fun. We’re really excited about things now, especially now that we’re not with a big label anymore. We’re free to do what we want. LIke this iPhone thing. We wouldn’t have been able to do that on a major label. What’s really funny is that it’s sold more downloads than when we were with a label. It’s been a great learning experience learning that we don’t need that– that bands can do it better, in fact, than having a big label behind them. Especially the way the state of the business is right now I think it’s better for bands to do it themselves. There’s so many outlets for getting music out. And there are so many inexpensive ways to record your music and still make it sound really good.

The 88 is currently on tour with the B52s. Their albums Not Only but Also, Over and Over and Kind of Light, as well as their recent single “Love is the Thing” are available on iTunes.

Learn more at The88.net

interview by Matt Saye

Review: Altec Backbeat 903

With the arrival of iPhone 3.0 comes stereo bluetooth, which means that you can now listen to music wirelessly through both ears without having to attach a snap-on bluetooth component to the bottom of your iPhone. With regards to Altec Lansing’s Backbeat line, it means that iPhone users can now skip the Backbeat 906 and its $129 price tag in favor of the Backbeat 903, which is just the 906 minus the snap-on piece and minus thirty dollars in price, plus the same wall charger.



At the risk of oversimplifying things, the 903 almost like having a pair of Voyager PRO bluetooth earpieces for phone calls (made by Altec Lansing’s parent company Plantronics), minus the boom mic, with a soft rubber cable connecting the two behind your head. And that’s mostly a good thing, as the Voyager PRO is our highest-rated bluetooth earpiece on the market: good audio, stylish (at least compared to a lot of other bluetooth headphone products on the market), and comfortable all at the same time.



While the 903 is clearly intended primarily for audio playback, you can of course take phone calls on it as well. A button on one ear allows you to answer phone calls or hang up, and the button on the other ear allows you to play or pause your music. The controls for next and previous track don’t work, but that’s Apple’s fault for limiting the stereo bluetooth controls internally (you’d need to buy the 906 and live with the snap-on piece for that). Of more concern is that the volume controls, which increase or lower the volume in single steps, just aren’t that intuitive if you’re turning the volume up or down several increments at a time.



The audio quality won’t be mistaken for wired, in-ear earbuds in the same price range, but it’s strong as far as bluetooth earbuds go. I think I’ll stick with my iMuffs for now, but for those who don’t want the kind of relative bulk that comes with the iMuffs, the Backbeat 903 is a strong option. But as with all wireless audio products, the compromises are such that it’s only worth buying if you plan to take advantage of the wireless functionality on a regular basis and really want to eliminate the cabling.

Learn more at AltecLansing.com or buy now.

App review: AudioBoo

We all have a voice, and we all want our voice to be heard. Combine that desire with an iPhone, and you have quite a few apps to make that happen. The one that’s in the spotlight this time is AudioBoo.

What is AudioBoo? It’s an audio microblogging platform, much like Twitter, but with audio. Posts are kept to at most three minutes long, though for most of us, that’s all we need.

To use AudioBoo, you’ll need to register an account on audioboo.fm, as it’s not just something like TweetMic or FaceMic, which just let you publish audio directly to Twitter/Facebook. AudioBoo is a full fledged audio blogging platform for the iPhone, and a social network on it’s own that offers integration with the standard social networks (aka your favorites, Twitter and Facebook). You will need to have set up your account first before you can use the app (and make sure to set it to post to Twitter and Facebook if you desire).

The iPhone app is a bit simple for the time being, since it’s only in its infancy stages at this point in time. When you launch the app, you’ll be presented with the Recent Boos screen, which is the default screen it will launch on. Here, you’ll be able to see the most recently uploaded boos that people from all over the world have done. So if you care about random strangers blurbs, then you can listen away to your heart’s your heart’s content. If you need more than what is on the screen, you can always refresh with the button at the top.

The Record screen is where you should be spending most of your time with in the app. Simple tap-to-start-recording that gives you a countdown on screen so you can prepare yourself 3 seconds prior to actually talking. You can pause the recording and then pick up exactly where you left off, so if you need time to think about what your next thought is, this will be especially handy. You can even listen to your recording as you make it, so if you’re not satisfied with it, you can start over sooner rather than waste your time finishing and then hearing it, only to want to start over.

What’s great about AudioBoo is that if you have to exit the app for any reason while in the middle of a recording, it will save your progress and your recording will still be intact the next time you open the app. When you’re ready to publish it, you can add a title, a photo to go with the recording, and tag it with appropriate terms. Also, the recording quality of the app using even just the iPhone’s mic sounds quite exceptional and comparable to decent standalone microphones for computers.

Publishing your recording to AudioBoo.fm is actually pretty quick, regardless of what connection you’re on. It’s a beautiful screen that accurately displays your upload progress, and once that’s done, you can create a new one or go back to listen to worldwide boos.

While you may think this is just another social networking site, there is one thing about AudioBoo that is extremely nice compared to other audio sites – you can subscribe to someone’s boos by iTunes RSS. So in a way, these can all be considered mini-podcasts.

There is much more good than bad for AudioBoo, but it does have its own flaws (as does anything, really). Currently, there is no way to leave a comment about someone’s boo from the app – comments can be made on the website, though. This is a poor implementation of what is considered a ’social networking’ app, and hope it will implement a commenting or replies feature in a future update. And while the current three minutes may be enough for most, some might want to use the app to make podcasts (the iTunes RSS makes it easy), so upping the time limit or removing it completely would be a plus.

If you’re looking for a good audio blogging app, then AudioBoo is definitely one you should consider picking up. And at the price of free, there’s nothing to lose!

AudioBoo in the App Store

review by Christine Chan

Brian “Head” Welch interview

After leaving his band KoRn four years ago, Brian “Head” Welch released his first solo record late last year. MyMac’s Tim Robertson spoke with Head about the musical direction of the new album, how he found his way into the iPod and Mac universe, and how making a solo album is different from making a record with a band.

Tim Robertson: I checked out your new album Save Me From Myself, it’s really rocking. I’ve got to say though, it’s not what I was expecting. I was expecting more of a sound like your old band, but I think this is more heavy than the old sound was. This really, really rocks. Was that your intention?

Brian Head Welch: I love heavy music. And I’ve heard that a lot, by the way. A lot of people are like, “I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t expect this.” Because of my spiritual awakening and everything, people thought it was going to be more spiritual sounding or something. But I love heavy music, and that’s what I came up with.

I’m listening to it, and it’s not really a young man’s opus, Rage Against The Machine type of album. It’s more of a rage against the bad things in life. Do you think your fans are ready for that kind of a lyrical change?

We’ll see. You know, I think there’s a lot of people out there that are stuck in a rut, and they’re sick of the same old, you know, but we’ll see. It’ll speak to some people, and I’m just talking about real life stuff that I went through, and people always like a good story of someone overcoming drug addiction, because everybody is affected by that in some way. You’ve got a friend, a friend of a friend, or a family member that’s an alcoholic or a drug addict, I mean everybody does. So we’ll see.

As a member of a hugely popular band KoRn at the time, going off on your own now, there’s really no one to answer to, there’s no one to point a finger at and say “that song didn’t work because of so and so.” This is just you. It’s not you playing every instrument, but this is your music. How do you feel about stepping in front of the microphone for yourself?

It’s more laid back, cause I know that I just can let things happen on their own timing and stuff. But then on the other hand, I’m in charge of it all now, so it’s more work and more hands-on. Because in KoRn I used to just get drunk and do my guitar tracks, like woo, hang out and party. I do that now, but I do it without drinking. I just have fun but there’s a lot more organization I’ve got to be involved in and stuff. It’s a lot more fulfilling, I’ve got to tell you, because when you’re just goofing around all the time and letting everybody else do the hard work, you don’t really feel the payoff at the end of the day. When you work hard and you’re involved in everything, it just feels like you’re more proud of it and you get more fulfillment out of it.



Do you think the new technologies that are out there, the new distribution such as iTunes, is really gonna help you sell this album, compared to if you had come out with a solo album ten years ago?

Yeah, I think so. Music is crazy. As far as getting your music out there, obviously everybody knows that the business is suffering, but music is at an all time high with consumers, as far as listening to it. I think that’s what everybody should want as an artist, is to have their art heard by people, and the money and the fame and stuff shouldn’t be number one. That’s what I’ve learned, because we’re given a gift of music, and really our job is to make people connect and make them feel something, you know?



So tell me, what are Head Homes?

I donated some money to an orphanage, and I built a Head Home in India for some neglected and rejected kids. It was just a little something I did back in 2005. I’m not connected to them really anymore, but it was an experience, that’s for sure.



What made you get involved with that?

I quit KoRn and I was sitting at home bored, and I read in the Bible that Jesus helped poor people, and I ran into somebody that said “I’m going to India in a month.” I said, “I’m going with you.”



Are you scared about this new album? KoRn sold over thirty million copies, that’s a lot to live up to.

It’s just a fresh start. I’m going at it in my own way. If I wanted to stay and sell a million albums or whatever they sold, over half a million albums the last album, I could have stayed in KoRn and do that. I wanted to share what I went through in the last few years in my songs and stuff, and whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. I’m not looking for that. I battle with it sometimes though, cause that’s inside all of us. You want to be successful and stuff. But I’m trying to just keep my frame of mind down to it’s not about that right now, cause I left that. If I wanted that I could have stayed there.



A lot of people say that there’s a halo effect around the iPod. They buy an iPod, they like it a lot, and that makes them buy a Macintosh. That was what happened with you, wasn’t it?

I think I hit it at the same time. I got a laptop with the iPod. It all came at once. I was addicted to it, man. I was like this is awesome, you don’t gotta carry around CDs. And when you do, you just put them in your Mac and on the iPod, and then you can get rid of them and then store them somewhere. It’s pretty cool.



What do you use your computer most for?

I use my computer for music ideas, obviously. And I recorded all my vocals, this is funny, I recored all my vocals on that album that you heard, in GarageBand. And then I had my engineer transfer it some high-technical way out of the computer into ProTools, and then we mixed it through the board and all that. But I use it for music, I use it for all my bill filing, email and all that stuff. My whole life’s on it.



Do you have just the one machine?

I’ve got a G5, a 17 inch, I’ve got an iMac for my daughter. I’m a nut, man.



How old is your daughter now?

She’s ten years old, and she’s got the Mac down already too.

Brian “Head” Welch has tour dates in the U.S. in July and August. Learn more at BrianHeadWelch.net


interview by Tim Robertson of Mymac.com

Review: Speck QwickDraw

The iPhone’s comparatively durable external surfaces and frequently accessed touch-screen have put a damper on the iPod case craze of a few years ago, back when you could scratch up your classic iPod by doing little more than breathing on it. But while many iPhone users don’t want a full body case, nor do all of them want to just toss it into their pocket either. Speck’s QwickDraw (their spelling, not mine) is an increasingly popular example of an iPhone quasi-case, one that isn’t really a case but provides partial case functionality, in this instance a secure belt clip.



Generally speaking, this is a well done product. The clip rotates so you can wear your iPhone vertically or horizontally, along with the option to rotate it in either direction so you can wear it on your left or right hip and still have the headphone port facing front (or backward, if you prefer). The spring-loaded top latch ensures that the iPhone isn’t going to fall out even if you are wearing it sideways on your waist, but allows you to easily push it aside and slide your iPhone out of the holster. Well, easily enough if you’re wearing it right side up; I found sliding the latch up and pulling out my iPhone to be a bit more complicated while wearing the iPhone sideways on my waist when a call came in that I wanted to answer.



The only other thing not to like is its price, which at $29 makes the QwickDraw more expensive than some full-blown cases make of similar material. But those users who are simply looking for a secure and adjustable way of keeping their iPhone clipped to their belt will find that getting their iPhone free of the product and into their hand is generally a lot quicker and easier than if they were to carry it in a full-blown case simply for the belt clip functionality.

Learn more at SpeckProducts.com

Podsafe spotlight: Cupéro

You’ve been singing since you were for four years old. At what point did you get the idea that you wanted to make a career of it?

Singing has always played a major role in my life! I even attempted to write songs on a coloring pad around 7 years of age. They didn’t necessarily make the most sense, but I had a love for it! I have a passion for music and I always wanted to pursue it since I started bopping to cassettes around my house. I picked up a guitar at 16 and haven’t stopped playing since then! So I would say I’ve had the music bug inside of me since I was a little girl and knew that I always wanted to pursue it as a career.

Tell us about your new self-titled EP.

My self-titled EP, Cupéro, really pours out an introduction to who I am as a person. “I’ve Got Your Number” shows my no nonsense, down to earth side, “You’ll Never Be There” shows my emotional side, “Life is a Moment” expresses my love for life and “I Thought I Knew Love” lets off a sense of how I can accept realities and move on happily. Recording at The Cutting Room studios in Greenwich Village, NYC was such an awesome experience! It was my first time in a professional recording studio and the process amazed me! But then I decided to make a leap and cut two Spanish songs onto the EP, “La Sombra” and “Quiero Tu Amor,” and I’m really pleased with how they came out. There is so much more I want to share musically and this is just the tip of the iceberg…

How have audiences reacted to your mix of English and Spanish lyrics?

I was concerned at first as to how Spanish-speaking people would react, but as I started playing out more and more with these new songs, the reaction has been very favorable, even with English speakers. I am not a native speaker nor do I have anyone in my family who speaks Spanish, but I have such a passion for the different cultures and the language that I intend on continuing to make bilingual music in the years to come. I absolutely love Colombian icon, Juanes! He has been such a wonderful influence throughout my three years of writing songs and I admire his activism and I’m obsessed with his guitar playing! He is definitely an inspiration for me to keep writing and singing in Spanish. Plus, I feel that I have more emotional freedom in Spanish than I do in English. Though challenging, I keep writing where now I feel I am ready to start performing with brand new Spanish songs that I am eager to bring to the stage!

How are you balancing college life with your musical ambitions?

I have always been a good student so academically I have been very successful to balance school and music. But mentally and emotionally, it takes its toll sometimes because I am majoring in Spanish/Secondary Ed. while pursuing a full-blown music career. It’s not the worst dilemma to have but it does become draining sometimes when you just want a clear answer as to where your life is going…I guess that’s what makes it interesting! But the experiences I’ve endured have helped me grow in so many ways and I’m enjoying myself, working hard and continuing to write songs!

You’re a NY Giants fan. What do you think of their chances this season?

I am a huge Giants fan! My first concern for this season would be our new wide receiver. Burress made a wonderful grand exit so he has my thanks. Next time he should switch the safety on! Anyway, I think Eli is hot and cold and we will have Osi back so we will be a little stronger again. I will miss Derrick Ward, but I’m eager to see how Danny Ware is going to do! The new “wind” to our Earth, Wind and Fire perhaps? You never know what the end result will be, but I’m confident they will do very well. Now I just need to get tickets somehow! I am also a die-hard NY Rangers and Mets fan but that’s a whole other discussion!

Learn more at CuperoMusic.com

Review: JayBird Tiger Eyes

Most headphone companies offer the same set of earbuds for iPod and iPhone users, with the only difference being the in-line controls built into the latter and a modest price hike to go with it. But JayBird has gone in another direction entirely, as its two earbud products are substantially different beyond just the iPhone mic and button.



As previously reviewed, the company’s $99 Endorphin Rush earbuds for iPod are a full-on bassfest, with the bass so booming in relation to the treble that they’re likely to evoke love-it-or-hate-it reactions from anyone who tries them. But the Tiger Eyes for iPhone, in addition to having the iPhone-specific features, physically smaller buds, and a cheaper $89 price, also have a noticeably different sound to them.



Do the Tiger Eyes sound as crisp overall? Not quite, and nor would you expect them to, considering they’re less expensive and offer more hardware features. But their bass-to-treble ratio, while still probably still outside the mainstream, is less pronounced here than with the Endorphin Rush. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preferences, but I expect the Tiger Eyes will be the more widely appealing of the two as a result. You’ve still got to like a ton of bass (these are still more bass-heavy than the more mainstream bass-heavy options like the vibe ii and IDR600, for instance), but you don’t have to be a bass freak to love the Tiger Eyes.



But the Tiger Eyes have another trick up their sleeve, one that we see on far too few iPhone earbuds: in-line volume control. Even the relatively few earbuds that do offer it tend to do so in an overly bulky and clunky manner, but the Tiger Eyes nail it with a simple slider that hangs chest-high during use. Of course the slider isn’t controlling the iPhone’s actual volume, instead just reducing it by percentage, meaning you’ll have to start with the slider somewhere in the middle to be able to turn it up later.



For bass-loving iPhone users, the Tiger Eyes are a phenomenal sub-$100 option. But be warned: even though these are a little more mainstream than the Endorphin Rush, they’re still not your father’s bass-heavy earbuds, if you know what I mean.

Learn more at JayBirdGear.com

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