Plex is a beautiful OS X-based media center that seamlessly pulls content from your iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture libraries in real time, has plugins to included additional content sources like Netflix and Hulu. Plex will also import metadata for the music and movies in your library,
The inclusion of iOS apps enables streaming to iPhone, iPads and iPod Touches and allows those same devices to act as remotes for the media server.
Plex »
August 31, 2010 -
Reinvention Through Transformation
April 2, 2009 - 4 Comments
As with so many popular forms of media, after a time another artist decides to take a crack at it. They may rework the piece in tribute, or perhaps they feel they could do it better than the original. The motivation isn’t important to me. What they create on the other hand, is important. You see, I hate covers that sound just like the original. I don’t want to hear a cover band, I want to hear an artist laying their heart out for all to see.
Sometimes you come across those transformative pieces, where the new work is not necessarily better or worse than the original – it stands on it’s own.
I recently stumbled upon Chris Cornell’s live acoustic cover of “Billie Jean”, which blew me away blows me away every time I listen to it.
“Billie Jean” is one of the most recognizable songs of the 80′s, serving as a defining point in Michael Jackson’s career, and it’s one of the few pop songs from that era that I still enjoy. I won’t provide a deep analysis of the song here, let’s just keep it at “I really like it”, although I’m not a big fan of Michael Jackson or the vast majority of pop. So this is one of those tricky areas, where I
- like the original
- like the artist producing the cover
- am both intrigued and worried by the possibilities
I like the cover a lot, as much if not a bit more than the original. Chris Cornell provides a level of emotion not seen in Michael Jackson’s version and the story isn’t subsumed in a dance beat. These are powerful attractors for me.
Don’t settle for imitation in your work, or the product of others. Step up and make it your own and expect the same form the world around you.
Here’s what kickstarted this post:
Chris Cornell’s Live Acoustic Cover of “Billie Jean”
Side Note: I’m not blown away by the official version on Chris Cornell’s album, it lacks the raw power evident throughout the live take.
Other Examples
There are some other transformative works that I love:
- Rusty Cage and Hurt by Johnny Cash, and so many other songs in his “American” series, which he recorded at the end of his career. He managed to make each and every song his own.
- …Baby One More Time by Fountains of Wayne, who took the utter pinnacle of manufactured pop and made it interesting
I know there are many more. What are some other amazing transformative works?
The Beatles, Radiohead and Our Musical Tastes
February 26, 2008 - 6 Comments
Michelle has posted a great wrap up of Tim Westergren’s speech at Pandora’s Get Together here in Austin. Pandora sent me a number of reminders about the event, but I chose not to go, which is a shame because it sounds like it was fun.
Michelle’s post reminds me of the Ultimate Music Recommendation Smackdown panel I attended the last day of SXSWi ’07, which added a lot of interesting pieces to my understanding of music consumption on the Net as well as how the comparisons and matches are made. The most interesting takeaway from that panel was the fact that four of the five services (Pandora, Last.Fm, iLike and I believe Bryght (site may be down)) had to add filters to their systems after discovering that their services were recommending The Beatles and Radiohead for almost every other song or artist. “We see you like Hank Williams, we think you would like Creep from Radiohead”.
That’s pretty damn interesting if you think about it. People are naturally ranking Radiohead at a level of interest as high, or higher as The Beatles by their natural listening habits. Some of this should be attributed to the average age of people using their services, which I assume skews to the younger side, but that’s still a major point when you think about the popularity of the two bands, and the legacy of Radiohead.
The other interesting point I took away from that point of the conversation is the fact that in order for those two connections to be made listeners included the two artists amongst a wide variety of bands and genres. A quick view of my own listening habits and those of many of my friends provides some reinforcement, but I can’t wait to see the types of connections being formed world-wide. It would be amazing to have a “map” or some other form of visual analytics of these musical connections.
Thanks for sharing the experience Michelle!
Where Should I Start?
January 9, 2008 - 4 Comments
As my themeword for 2008 is Explore (other people’s choices are interesting too), I am kicking off a new series: Where Should I Start. The premise is a simple one, ask or answer a question that starts with “If I wanted to [read/listen to/watch/learn about] something where should I start?”
There are so many amazing things in this world to experience, yet it can be hard to figure out where to begin – luckily the LazyWeb can help out.
To start things off, I’ll give a couple of recommendations and ask for some in return:
If I wanted to read a book by Leo Tolstoy, where should I start?
Well, I assume War and Peace is as good a place as any. In fact, I recently picked up a copy as I have never read this epic depicting Napoleon’ invasion of Russia and some of the lives impacted by the war.
After going through a ton of reviews on Amazon, I believe I found a translation that will be both accessible and close to the original in terms of narrative flow and rhythm.
If I wanted to experience Miles Davis, where should I start?
Kind of Blue, recorded in 1959, is by far his best album, the highest selling jazz record of all time and one of the most beautiful jazz recordings ever made.
Kind of Blue tends to be near, if not at the top of many critics’ lists of best albums of all times and is definitely one of the most influential Jazz albums ever released.
Over to You!
- If I wanted to listen to music by Django Reinhardt, where should I start?
- If I wanted to introduce a non-geek to science fiction which books should I recommend to them? Yes, I know non-geeks reaf sci-fi, but I’m looking for interesting sci-fi.
If you have answers to these questions, or would like to add your own to the series, please leave them in the comments!