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well-produced videos
Sunday, September 28 2008
In recent years I've been struck by the quality of the videos put out by relatively unknown bands. Back in the day, a well-produced video was evidence of a band's success, but with video production capabilities in every Macintosh, anyone can have a great video. The other day while tracking down the music available on the web from the band Lowgold, I found that there was absolutely none except in the form of videos on YouTube. Bittorrent was useless and, as a telltale indication of obscurity, the Gnutella networks had nothing except files with names like lowgold.exe. In terms of legitimate download opportunities, Amazon only seemed to have MP3s for one of Lowgold's albums. (I don't use iTunes.)
Initially Lowgold had sounded to me exactly like Guided by Voices. As with Guided by Voices, the Lowgold guitarist lays down a regular pattern of distorted chugging guitar chords (a technique borrowed directly from early heavy metal) and, also like Guided by Voices, the Lowgold vocalist sings with a pure, serene, and largely untroubled voice (in a style completely unlike heavy metal). On listening to the songs a few times, though, I've come to realize that Lowgold's musicians are more talented, and their song structures more elaborate and traditional, though (as with Guided by Voices) their lyrics make no sense at all. My favorite songs are "Beauty Dies Young," "Mercury," and "Just a Ride," and "The Same Way," "Counterfeit," and "Burning Embers," but that list contains nearly all of the videos I could find, so it's possible there is a lot more of their music I would also like.
The annual Saugerties Garlic Festival was happening today, and for various reasons, neither Gretchen nor I went. Originally Gretchen was going to go with Penny, but then those plans fell apart and both of us ended up staying home. I spent most of the day knee deep in web development and Gretchen spent much of it watching women's basketball. It was still fairly rainy today and there isn't much else I can do on my greenhouse project until we get a properly sunny day.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?080928 feedback
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