Sent from an iPhone that is not mine

Sent from my parental unit's iPhone

I'm driving my new vehicle from Seattle down to Los Angeles. We're now about 2/3 of the way through Oregon and have stopped to get dinner at a Shari's restaurant. Shari's is one of those outposts of incredibly American cuisine; they not only serve hash browns, but they also offer "stuffed" hash browns. Apparently those contain not just potato but also sour cream, cheese, and a gift certificate good for a preliminary visit with the next town over's prized cardiologist.

Sent from my Dad's iPhone

   

I went to the Freezepop show at The Knitting Factory in Los Angeles on 9/4/08. As you can see from the photo I shot with my Treo 650's wonderful camera, the show was awesome. Apparently Freezepop's current level of popularity was helped by the inclusion of a couple of their songs in the Rock Band and Guitar Hero video games, and lead singer Liz Enthusiasm expressed surprise when the crowd repeatedly asked for and was excited by a song not included in any video game. I've attached that song, "Duct Tape Your Heart", to this post on my posterous blog.

After the show, Liz autographed CDs purchased by fans. Because I've already bought all of their CDs, and have loaded the music onto my iPod, I asked her to sign the device with her sharpie, and she obliged. I didn't expect the autograph to remain permanently, but I'm impressed by how fast it disappeared. It lasted less than 3 days.

I've become a little obsessed with the band Freezepop for the past week. It's one of the bands I've recently discovered using the internet radio application Pandora, which combines streaming internet radio with the music genome project in order to suggest and play tracks it thinks the user will like based on a minimum amount of information about the user's musical tastes. I used the Pandora Radio application on my iPod Touch, it's a nice, simple, and free killer-app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Since discovering Freezepop, I've bought 3 of their albums and plan to go see them when they perform in Los Angeles next month. If I were a rational thinker (an indistinguishable quality from naïvete when considering the music industry) I'd expect that the powers that be would notice the promotional power of streaming internet radio, and would want it to let it grow and develop.