Dear Pandora listener,

Today we have some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora's streaming service from Canada. We began blocking access from almost all countries outside the U.S. last week and had originally hoped to maintain access to Canada. However, it has become clear in the last week that we just haven't been able to make enough progress to continue streaming.

It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us. Our vision remains to eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but for the time being, we can no longer continue as we have been. As a small company, the best chance we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as the licensing landscape allows.

We show your IP address is 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX', which indicates you are listening from Canada. If you believe you are seeing this by mistake, we offer our sincere apologies and ask that you please reply to this email.

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music - we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global licensing organization to enable any webcaster to legitimately offer its service around the world. The volume of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing and performance royalty payments for every song we play.

Until last week, we have not been able to tell where a listener is based, relying only on zip code information provided upon registration. We are now able to recognize a listener's country of origin based on the IP address from which they are accessing the service. Consequently, on May 16th, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from Canada. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We will be posting updates on our blog regarding our ongoing effort to launch in other countries, so please stay in touch. We will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you. We deeply share your sense of disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.

Tim Westergren

I am of two minds on the subject. On one hand, I'm fairly upset, because I love Pandora. It is a fantastic service that provides exactly what I want, which is a customizable jukebox type of service. On the other hand, I really understand where they're coming from - if they don't do this, they could potentially be sued for millions upon millions of dollars. I certainly don't begrudge the CYA nature of what they're doing.

What's my solution? Well, there's a couple, but they're all variations on a theme. I could use TOR server to mask my IP address and then just argue that I'm in the states. I could just acquire a US-based IP. Or I could stop listening to Pandora.

It's all up in the air right now... at the very least, I would like a record of the activity on my account up to now.

The Video formerly found here, is still available from YouTube.

I would happily write more, but Paravonian says everything worth saying. Of note: I have made several of these jokes before but I was never able to string them all together like this guy.

First off, let's talk about bass players. I play bass, and I play it very well, but I don't have a double bass, so I'm already behind Sickboy from the Creepshow. He's got a great big black double bass with a skull on it, and he plays it about as well as I've ever seen one played. And I've seen Jim Creegan multiple times as well as the Reverend Horton Heat's bass player, and they're both amazing. Sickboy's a little better, possibly because of his pork pie hat and jazz shoes, or possibly because sometimes his hands moved so fast I couldn't see them.

Reverend Ginty plays keys and sings and looks like he's going about 160 miles per hour. His organ skills are very slick, and every once in a while he breaks into one of those hockey-game organ bits where everyone yells "Charge!" It's wildly entertaining.

Matt Pomade is an intensely good drummer. He plays a simple four-piece kit with a high hat, crash and a ride and that's it. My sentiments can be summed up by the observation of one of my co-enthralled friends: "That dude ain't human." I've rarely seen drummers move as fast as he does or do so much with so little.

Now, I'd been looking forward to meeting Hellcat, the lead singer of the band, but I was informed shortly before arriving at the gig, that Hellcat has got herself in a family way (congrats to her in June) and she has been replaced for the nonce by her younger sister, Sarah.

Sarah is a tiny, tiny little blonde girl. She's five feet tall, and maybe 95 pounds. She is exquisitely beautiful and somewhat frail looking. I must be honest and say that I was at first a little disappointed - she was not what I was expecting - but then she took the stage, and boy did she ever take the stage. She's got a powerful voice and plays a great big blue Schecter Corsair hollowbody guitar that's about as big as she is, and she plays it exceptionally well. Her greatest asset, though, is her stage presence. She easily has the best mass-to-stage-presence ratio of anyone I've ever had the luck to see.

Overall, the band was exceptionally tight, with lots of great hooks - bass solos, organ solos, lots of crowd participation, exhortations to the crowd to start dancing and more. They're a great mix of swing, horrorpunk (à la Misfits) and rockabilly, and I can't wait to see them play again. If you get the chance, and you don't mind the idea of a swing song about Des Vampyrs then you should certainly check out The Creepshow.

For those keeping score, we've got iTunes solidly scrapped and uninstalled (I still use it on my Mac, but mostly to play CDs). WinAmp is running a strong game, but the rating thing isn't as intuitive as I'd like it to be. I'm working on that. Right now, with an ever-so-slight lead is the dark horse; Windows Media Player. However, right now I'm barely listening to my own music library, because I've been enjoying Pandora.

For those who do not know, Pandora is a customizable internet "radio station". It's not really radio - what happens is that you pick a couple of songs / artists that you like and use them as "feeders" for your station. For instance, I have a Dark / Prog / Metal station which I fed with Tool and Rage Against the Machine for artists and a couple of songs by other hard rock artists that I particularly enjoy. Once given this feed information, Pandora will play a song to establish that it's in the right sort of genre, and then it will start to suggest other music, which you can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to. The idea is that it will "learn" what sort of music you want in your station and will play songs that you enjoy. Also, if you give a song a thumb-down, it will skip the song and not play it on that station anymore. I have, in addition to the aforementioned Dark / Prog / Metal station, three more:

Alternarock based on Nirvana, Audioslave, Thornley, Pearl Jam and The Tea Party, to scratch the alternative rock itch that I grew up trying to scratch.
Electric Blues and Awesome Shredders based on a number of musicians including B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan because you can't have enough awesome guitar.
A bit o' CanCon which is fed with ten Canadian bands, across a number of genres. That one's more experimental than anything else.

If you're interested in starting up with Pandora, it's free (as in beer, not speech), and entertaining. If you don't want to sign up, I think you can just listen to my radio stations at my Pandora profile. I thoroughly recommend all the channels except the last one - I'll have to spend some time listening to it to tune it up.

Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886), was the Elvis of his day, which is to say he was a bit of a sex symbol. He gave autographs; he performed in front of thousands at a time; he slept around. He started out as a pianist (and is probably most renowned for his work as such) and was, quite possibly, the best pianist there has ever been. Many of his compositions reflect this - one must be a very skilled technical player to even attempt to play most Liszt pieces, and to play them well, one must be intensely passionate.

Huge hands help, too.

My introduction to Liszt was The Mephisto Waltzes, specifically numbers 1 and 2. The story of the waltzes (that is - the accompanying program that the music is said to describe) is Faustian - Faust and Mephisto come to a country wedding, and, eventually, make sport with maidens. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but it is one of the most interesting points of the piece - there is actually a musical representation of sexual climax in the piece. This was a bit surprising at the time it was composed (somewhere close to 1860, if memory serves), but is conceptually typical of a Romantic-era composition; very strong emotion acted out in music.

Liszt also wrote The Transcendental Études, which are playable only by people of transcendent skill - hence the name - and the Hungarian Rhapsodies. There are 2 revisions of the Études, with the easiest / last being the most popular to play. Robert Schumann, another great pianist and composer, said that the Études could be played by less than a dozen pianists at that time, and that was the time of great pianists. The Rhapsodies incorporated music that was common with the Romani people of Hungary, Liszt's home country.

Skip to the end - in later life, Liszt abandoned his wild ways and settled down as a serious Catholic. He almost married a princess, then took vows as an Abbé, and saw his daughter convert to protestantism, which he found intensely distressing. He wrote more chorales and passions that were quite beautiful, but far less virtuosic than his earlier works. His later works are quite beautiful, but lack the passion that his earlier pieces have; some of them, I could conceivably play myself which ironically means my interest in them is much decreased.

If you are interested in listening to some virtuoso piano music, I'd recommend spinning up some Schumann first, then listening to some Chopin. You should build up to Liszt, because otherwise the rest will leave you wanting.

It is difficult to know where to start when discussing Tool. They are often categorized as progressive rock which is code for very difficult to classify. They are most certainly a rock band with a fairly standard set up; a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer and a singer. They definitely fall more towards the heavy end of the spectrum, and one would also classify them as experimental. Other words that come to mind are strange, angry, difficult, and intense.

Maynard James Keenan is the singer / lyricist of the band, and his powerful and unique voice is probably the first thing you'll notice. Maynard's voice ranges from sweet to dark to screaming; the fifth track from Opiate features one of the most intense and bonechilling screams I have ever heard from a human voice, but "The Pot" from 10,000 Days is started in a sweet, moderate tenor. His subject matter channels anger from many sources - disaffectation from religion, childhood trauma, hypocrisy of media and politicians, etc - and may make you squirm on hearing them. For instance, "Prison Sex" from the album Undertow talks in detail about acts of abuse to children, and how abuse begets abuse. It is not an easy song to listen to.

Adam Jones is Tool's guitarist and is also the artist behind many of their videos. He's classically trained in string instruments, and taught himself to play guitar, learning by ear. Jones is one of those elusive animals that often fail to get their due recognition: a fantastic rhythm guitarist. You are not likely to hear any blistering guitar solos in his work, but he has such an amazing sense of timing and harmony that you may be surprised that there aren't more guitars playing. Although, sometimes, what you're hearing is actually Tool's bass player, Justin Chancellor.

Chancellor frequently plays bass as if he were actually a lead guitar player, and I would be remiss if I didn't say that he is one of my personal main sources of inspration in how I play bass guitar. The interplay of Chancellor's bass with Jones' guitar is one of the keys to the unique sound of Tool; the two are so tight that it seems as if they play with one mind together. Chancellor's bass riff in "Forty Six & 2" from the album Ænima is a fantastic, percussive riff that is one of the best examples of his ability to grab the reigns in a song, which is extraordinairily hard to do when one of your band mates is Danny Carey.

Danny Carey is where my essay is going to fall apart, because I really can't tell you much about him. It's possible that he thinks of drumming as an occult experience. It's possible that he thinks he has summoned and contained a demon, which makes it possible for him to do what he does. It's possible that he's just a great drummer that started off learning jazz and then took the polyrhythmic bebop that he had learned and applied it to rock. It's possible that he's the greatest drummer of our time. The greatest single act of technical instrument mastery that I have ever heard was a Danny Carey drum solo, during which he sustained rhythms in at least 4 identifiable non-multiplicable time signatures (a 3-4-5-7 polyrhythm^†), and somehow let the polyrhythm dissolve into a pattern that was recognizable as the beginning to one of Tool's songs. I was thoroughly dumbfounded.

Tool is made up of four musicians who individually are among the best at their instruments. Together, they create a whole that is disturbing and strange, often very primal, angry and interesting. Their live show is among the best that I've seen; one time they incorporated gymnasts who performed à la Cirque de Soleil.

It's also interesting to note that quite a few classical musicians are interested in Tool. There have been at least two String Quartet tribute albums to tool, wherin Tool is arranged and performed by string instruments, without percussion. It certainly highlights how the most important aspect of their music is rhythm.

The best Tool album is Ænima, so if you have never heard Tool, start there. You could also listen to Lateralus and try to tap your foot along to "Schism." You may end up with the strange problem that the music makes you want to move your body, but confounds your feet. And keep an open mind - you may learn something.

† - I'll try to explain: music is made up of small units called "measures" which have a certain length according to the number of beats. Rock music frequently has 4 beats in a measure; a waltz normally has 3. A polyrhythm is playing two measures at the same time, of the same length, that have a different number of beats in them; you end up with beats crossing and being played in and around each other. Carey played 3, 4, 5 and 7 beat measures all at the same time, which means that each hand and each foot were all tapping at slightly different paces. To get an idea of how difficult this is, try tapping your right foot and left hand at consistent speeds that are not the same. Or set 2 metronomes to different speeds, and try to tap along with both of them.

Please note that tomorrow's 5✭ Friday may be a little late, as the problems I'm having with MusikCube means that all my music ratings and metadata are gone (on 8000+ songs), so I no longer know what's in my 5✭ category.

Stevey, though, sometimes gets things right. Wander on over to Thoughts on Music at Apple.com and give that a read. I can boil it down to one thought:

90% of music is sold DRM free, in the form of CDs^‡. Why do music companies insist on selling their online music crippled by DRM?

Well, Stevey. You've get one hell of a large lever there. Why don't you push on it and see what happens?

† - sorry 'bout the rendering bug up there! [Edit: rendering bug fixed!]
‡ - as long as you don't buy from Sony

Wow.

Turns out it was a promotional stunt for a concert that he was playing later that night at the River Run Centre. We managed to procure for ourselves some tickets (to a sold out show, because we're well connected), and attended. It was an absolutely brilliant concert featuring the artists from his most recent recording; here they are as listed in the liner notes of "Flamenco", his most recent album.

Jorge Miguel • flamenco guitar
Paul Donat • double bass
Daniel Stone • percussion and palmas
Eliana Cuevas • vocals
Ilse Gudino • dance
Pam Briz Guijarro • castanets

Daniel Stone (pronounced "eh-sto-neh") is probably the one most responsible for making your hips want to move, and they will definitely want to move. I am certainly not a dancer, but listening to this music makes me want to become one; dance is an integral part of the experience. Paul Donat is a fantastic double bass player, keeping up with Jorge and the dancers with ease, even in the few songs that he uses his bow. Jorge surrounds himself with top quality musicians, but he is still the one who amazes me most.

I am a fairly accomplished musician, and I've played the guitar since I was 14; I could probably make a fair wage as a session guitarist if I wanted. Next to Jorge I sound like a 5 year old who has picked up a guitar for the first time. He has an incredible understanding of latin tonality, and his fingers are just so much quicker than I think mine will ever be, transitioning through scales and chords with blinding speed. His movement up and down a fretboard makes me weep a little bit. Listening to his album, you get an idea of what his hands are doing, but seeing him play live you come to understand the mastery that he has over his instrument.

I cannot end this without mentioning that his name is the hispanic equivalent of "George Michael", so I think it would be interesting and entertaining for Jorge to do a tango cover version of "Faith".

If you've never heard Jorge Miguel, track down some of his music. Plaza de Asdrubal (Bulerias) and Torontorías (Tangos) are personal favourites of mine, but all his songs are great. You can find more information about him at JorgeMiguel.com.

If the title looks broken, you should Get Firefox. It's the simplest way to fix it.

So, in the spirit of thievery Open Source Ideas, I'm going to implement something similar. Right now it's called "5✭ Fridays" and I'm going to tell you a bit about what I'm listening to... and at this moment it's the Misfits (warning: the Misfits may be offensive).

The Misfits are a great punk band. I'll tell you right now that, even though I'm in a punk band, it's not a genre of music that I listen to regularly. Punk's great, but I tend to want a bit more, um, music in my music. There's often a wall of sound and some yelling, and lots of double kick drum riffs, and a bass player that rakes the strings constantly, and it gets old quick. Also, even though I have a lot of rage, it's mostly a quiet, vitriolic, smoldering rage that lends itself more to Metal or Franz Liszt. I'm not "anti-establishment" either; the man's not keeping me down and I don't have a yearning for anarchy. The Misfits carve right through all the problems that I have by using angry but harmonic guitars and establishing strong melodic vocals singing B-movie themed lyrics that are as apt to make you laugh as to incite anger in you. Here's "Resurrection" (beware the mild sacrilege)

Complications inside of me reminds me that my heart won't always beat
The ugly face of death that's smiling at my rotting teeth

I will die here in this sorrow
I was waiting for tomorrow
Palpitate the pulse until you feel my heart explode against the wall

Talk about me, Laugh about me cry about me... nail me to the cross
I'll be a martyr for the hated, the weak, the ugly, the lost

I will die here in this sorrow
I won't wait for tomorrow
Palpitate the pulse until you resurrect my soul from the wall

Zombie much? To go with this, they have an astoundingly catchy melody and a powerful guitar riff, which is one of the most used chord progressions in history - but it works. It's got a beat that's hard to, well, beat, and it gets my head bobbing along every time I hear the song.

The Misfits have this tendency to eschew writing lots of lyrics, which may be a biproduct of the fact that their songs tend to be under two minutes in length. "Resurrection" runs 1:29 and goes all-out for the duration. Another Misfits song that is amongst my favourites is "The Haunting" which clocks in at 1:27 and is basically a 40 second song with a repeat. It's not a complicated song, but they're not a complicated band, and sometimes it's not about complication; the gestalt is more than the sum of its parts. There are only five chords in "The Haunting", but they're the right five chords, and they're supported by the powerful melody and the intense energy.

If you are interested in trying punk out for a spin, but want less noise and more melody, as many people often do, you would be hardpressed to find a better package than the Misfits. Besides, if you don't like them, the song will be done in just a minute.