Blogcritics Author: Claire Marie Blaustein

Book Review: Japanese for Busy People Kana Workbook by the Association for Japanese-Language Teaching

Claire Marie Blaustein — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:01:10 EDT

Learn your Japanese alphabet fast!
The Japanese for Busy People series is a well respected standard - and the name really says it all. "Of course! I'm a busy person! I want to learn Japanese! Why wouldn't this be for me?"I received my copy of the Kana Workbook while struggling through an elementary Japanese class. I was using a different series of texts, and...

Music Review: Helen Money - Helen Money

Claire Marie Blaustein — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:50:20 EDT

Rock out on the cello - not a contradiction in terms for Helen Money.
The image of the cello is one of classical poise and grace – an instrument of deft technique and impressive technical skill. All of that comes to play on Helen Money – but not for music of the renaissance, but rock. Alison Chesley is the musician also known as Helen Money, and on her first self titled solo album she lets it all out. Her...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Technology and Intellectual Property Policy Day 2007 - Washington, DC

Claire Marie Blaustein — Wed, 9 May 2007 10:13:35 EDT

May 2nd was Technology and Intellectual Property Policy Day – a conference sponsored by the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) and the American Constitution Society (ACS). Most of the day centered on a single question, posed by Lisa Brown of ACS as she kicked off the event: “What happens when a century old body of law like copyright is applied to new technology?” Simply put, all hell breaks loose. The Internet is wrecking havoc with traditional understanding of how music can be distributed, and therefore how it can be legislated. And this isn’t just about the few evil, evil folk who get their music from less-than-legal sources. Downloading took a back seat to bigger challenges that face legitimate outlets for music – both terrestrial and digital. Most of these challenges stem from the nature of the way that copyright interacts with music. There are a number of different royalty structures in place for music – those to the songwriter, to the artist, to the record company. Some of them only apply when you’re dealing with an actual copy of the music – a CD or record or whatever. Some of them apply to the broadcast of the music. But there are catches. First of all, terrestrial radio has for a long time been exempt from paying some of these royalties. And these days, while radio likely has a URL instead of a number on the dial, figuring out where the webcasters and satellite fit into the big picture is causing some problems. With the new set of fees just handed down from the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), the rates that non-terrestrial broadcasters were paying are going way up retroactive to January 1, 2006, and with no change for normal everyday broadcasters. Since this news was handed down just days before the conference, it colored most of the discussions. But the panels and speakers covered a wide variety of issues beyond broadcasting. These included Net Neutrality and intellectual property and the web, as well as the roles of copyright and consumer electronics in the world of music and music policy. The panel discussions alternated with keynotes from Congressman Mike Doyle, Gary Shapiro of the consumer Electronics Association, Jenny Toomey on the FMC’s initiative Rock the Net, and David Carson of the US copyright office, and gave attendees an incredibly diversity of points and opinions, and enough information to make one’s head explode. Panel One - Radio Waves In a panel on broadcasting, the disparity between terrestrial radio, satellite, and web broadcasting was obviously the centerpiece of the discussion. It was one of the more diverse panels during the day – Mike Holden topped the billing with the title of “musician”, while he was flanked by Joe Kennedy of Pandora, Eric Logan from XM, Patricia Polach as the lawyerly presence, Dick Huey from Toolshed digital media marketing, and John Simpson from SoundExchange. With this group, the moderator was ready to rumble. SoundExchange is an organization that collects royalties on behalf of artists for web distribution, and so it’s not surprising that a higher royalty rate would be attractive to them. “Yes, I’m happy with the CRB rates – I think they recognize the value of music.” Whether or not that’s true, he did make a valid point when comparing the startup and maintenance costs between companies. He talked about the differences in investments that needed to be made (running and operating a terrestrial station as opposed to webcasting from a PC) and the potential for subscription services to turn a profit. The question becomes – should that matter? Certainly some of the other panelists didn’t think so. Eric Logan who is a VP from XM satellite radio said, “Listen…I wish we were a profitable business, believe me!” Given that XM pays 90 million dollars for their FCC licensing (while terrestrial radio gets theirs for free) and also launched a huge infrastructure of satellites, their costs are already astronomical - with changes in legislation they are only going to get higher. And while it might be hard to have great pity for a group that provides a service that seems somewhat narrowly luxurious like satellite radio, the future of all broadcasting on the web also hangs in the balance. Of course, smaller broadcasters like the ones featured on live365 are in big trouble, given that many small broadcasters are often in default of any attention to procedures and royalty payments. But even larger groups like Pandora could be affected. Joe Kennedy, the CEO and President of Pandora said that even a business like theirs, which boasts 6 million listeners, might have troubles paying up. “We’ve gone from being nothing 18 months ago to probably being the 3rd or 4th largest payer of royalties to SoundExchange. With our economics, under the proposed CRV rates, we can’t continue to exist. We will go out of business… so it is an absolute crisis for us.” In all of the discussion here, and throughout the entire day, it was easy to forget that the point of higher rates wasn’t necessarily to penalize broadcasters, but to benefit artists. And this is a noble goal. But musician Mike Holden got a chance at the end to express the disconnect between fees that benefit artists but destroy the outlets for their music. “The questions I ask myself when I look at the new rates is, will as many people be hearing my music? And I think the answer is a definite no. Pandora shutting down alone would take me very close to zero people playing my music. And I ask myself – will the revenue that allows me to record my music go up or down? And if no one is playing my music, the answer is definitely down… I think if businesses like Pandora or live365 are going to shut down because of new rates, then we have a serious problem.” Panel Two - The Net Effect Of course, the debate goes far beyond broadcasting. The idea of Network Neutrality, or Net Neutrality, offers a whole new issue for the potential of music on the web – being able to hear it at all. The basic issue is this: ISPs have control over the bandwidth that users receive. Proponents of Net Neutrality want it to be legislated that ISPs cannot discriminate the resources given to one site over another. The ISPs and those that represent them feel that strictures on their ability to operate constitutes infringement on their rights as a business, and that these restrictions discriminate against them and their ability to compete. The discussion was heated, though hard to determine the point being made. It devolved fairly quickly into a tennis match of sound bites between Scott Cleland, who is the president of netcompetiton.org, a site that supports the business rights of ISPs, and Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a group that supports Net Neutrality. The writers and musicians who also sat on the panel had a chance to speak at the beginning. The basic message on their part was this - there has never been a time when artists of whatever variety have had more access to more people quite so easily. Duncan Black, writer of the blog Eschaton spoke of it this way: “If people in power had realized what was going on with the Internet, they probably would have tried to stop it. The Internet as we know it is not a logical infrastructure development – it was a combination of genius and chance. "What has evolved is that barriers of entry for self-publishing and self expression have declined. In the old days of the Internet you could just express yourself in text – now you can express yourself in audio and in video. It’s not only inexpensive, but practically free – anyone can do it. "Now, what happens is that in all these areas the gate keepers have been going away… with any social change those gate keepers will try and rise up and reassert their power. The Internet has been extraordinarily resistant to that, and it would be very dangerous to let them reassert themselves.” It was this idea of gate keeping that finally made all of the legal and business aspects make sense. This idea that certain people control our access to information – the way newspaper editors deciding what news is important, or a website writer deciding which facts are most necessary for their readers – can potentially extend to ISPs. If the ISP has control over bandwidth, they can make the decision to allow faster access to one site, while effectively restricting access to another. This could compel users to use one fast site by reducing the speed of a competing one, thus affecting users’ ability to access information from particular sites of their own choosing. So if the stream from one Internet radio station keeps breaking up, you switch to another one. If that second choice happens to be from a service that belongs to the same corporation as your ISP… well, isn’t that just peachy? Much of Scott Cleland’s defense centered on both the legality of competition in a free market and also that user choice would prevent companies from doing anything so stupid as to prevent their customers from accessing certain pages. There may be some legitimacy to ideas that companies that don’t provide the direct services, like Google, Microsoft, and others, should have to pay for their greater use of bandwidth. (Though advocates of these open market might hurt their cause through creepy websites like Don’t Regulate) The problem, as Gigi Sohn articulated, was that if legislation changed so that companies could control the speed of information at their discretion, there would be less question of whether or not they should. And that potentially slippery slope could be avoided with a clarification of the legal protection of neutral networks. The basic idea was best put by Bertis Downs, who is the manager of R.E.M. “We’re trying to create policies to make sure that those who control the distribution pipelines don’t control the content that goes through them.” Hard to argue with that. Panel 3 - Stocking the Celestial Jukebox With any discussion of music and copyright, there are a handful of acronyms that come to bear: ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), NMPA (the National Music Publishers’ Association), and HFA (the Harry Fox Agency). These guys are the ones who manage the various rights and regulations on music, and who collect the royalties paid by the broadcasters or distributors of the music. Though they are not-for-profit agencies, their mission is to collect the largest amount of money owed for the products they are responsible for. This money largely goes to the artists, which is a beneficent enough goal. But as was discussed in the first panel, that may not always be a good thing. There are a lot of problems facing smaller broadcasters right now, compounded by the confusing nature of copyright classifications come into play. For royalty purposes, music is divided into two categories – broadcast and distributed music. As it is now, that’s the line between what you hear on the radio, and the stuff you buy in a store. It would seem like this should be pretty simple to apply to Internet technology – streaming, the stuff you hear but can’t keep, is broadcast, and downloads, the stuff you hear and can keep, is distributed. But technicalities complicate the issue. With streaming, small packets of information are downloaded to the computer to make the stream flow more easily. This also makes it so that it could be defined as both broadcast and distributed, and makes the broadcaster liable to pay a whole host of different organizations. Similarly with downloading, the music is received over a period of time, and could be considered a broadcast. As Jule Sigal, attorney for Microsoft put it, discussions boil down to “Is it a download, or is it a stream? Is it a particle, or is it a wave?” And that’s precisely the problem – it’s both… sort of. It’s only in taking a practical look at the application technology that the divide becomes clear. And since the interests of the royalties organizations lie in collecting money from every resource possible, it’s unlikely that that will happen soon. But besides the interactions between artists, companies and broadcasters, the royalty collections occasionally extend to users directly. Michael Petricone, from the Consumer Electronics Association was brandishing a new toy for XM radio, one that allows users to locally record songs off XM. He compared it to “taping songs off the radio 10 years ago.” That might work if listeners had to sit at the ready, finger on record to catch their favorite song. But this thing lets you pre-program the songs you want recorded, and as soon as they go out over one of the hundred station, it gets it for you. And that makes the other boys upset. It’s these kinds of devices that have been mightily protested as copyright violations by all of the royalty groups and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) alike. And so the debate over what is individual fair use begins – can we copy music for our own use exclusively? Broadcast from device to device within our own homes? Or will these, like most new technologies, fall within the gray areas of royalty laws? The answers are still being decided. After Party Questions upon questions were the rule for the day. And as always, the party after any conference was where a lot of the real discussion happens – people have a chance to put away their notebooks, grab a beer, and start sorting through what they actually THINK about what was said. I was lucky enough to encounter Michael Bracy, policy director for the Future of Music Coalition. He had been the moderator for the Net Neutrality panel, and helped answer some of my questions. And there were many of them, of course. But one that I couldn’t shake was: “why are we even asking these questions?” Not that issues of policy and neutrality and copyright are unimportant. But some of the basic understanding of what the Internet is and how it is used by people of a certain age seemed to be lacking. Downloads are downloads, streams are streams, music should be available instantaneously and through a huge variety of sources. What was the problem? The accord we came to was that, in about a decade, half of the issues we discussed simply wouldn’t be issues at all. Not that anyone would actually reach a sensible conclusion. It may just end as the generation that will be stepping up and taking control is one that has the Internet as a central part of their life. They accept the “new media” as simply “media”, and current media as archaic. The issue becomes not allowing regulations and controls to get out of hand to the point where real barriers are being placed on artists ability to distribute their work, and listeners ability to hear it. And even in the conference, for all that the core issue is always cited as being the welfare of the artists, they were sorely underrepresented. It was a meeting of gate keepers of various positions, strengths and sizes. And their position is important to the flow of information, as long as a balance is created so that the flow remains steady and doesn’t slow to a trickle. The fact that you’re reading this on a web-based publication, and that I write for one probably puts us both on one side of this debate. Internet good, companies bad. Free access good, limits bad. But what the conference did do well was to present a variety of views and viewpoints within each panel – people who were or represented artists, the industry, the broadcasters, the law. Whatever your opinion on the issues, it gave a real picture of the debate going on outside that small conference room. The information flowed freely, and listeners were given choice to make up their own minds. Isn’t that what technology and intellectual property should be all about? For more on the conference, and streaming video of all the panels, head to the Technology and IP Policy Day 2007 site.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

Music Review: Ozomatli - Don't Mess with the Dragon

Claire Marie Blaustein — Mon, 9 Apr 2007 08:59:59 EDT

Don’t Mess With the Dragon, the fifth full length release by LA-based Ozomatli makes the concerted effort to do two things. One, smooth out their songwriting process so that every track was a collaborative effort between band members (yay). Two, bring in producer KC Porter to help give the sound a more packaged, radio-playable spin (ummm….).Both of these are very audible – the songs blend and flow into one another despite the shorter track lengths (again, radio) that shows cohesive planning from song to song. “City of Angels” tears out, extolling the virtues of probably the only place on earth where these guys could have gotten together – a city of brilliance and smog, congestion and movement, beauty and terror in equal measures. Title track “Don’t Mess With The Dragon” goes at the personal demons of the band members themselves, trying not to stir up the many ills that can come with a stressful existence as a career musician. “Magnolia Soul” goes way funk, but doesn’t get lost in the movement – it also is a pretty scathing denunciation of the post-Katrina mayhem. Ozo is, as ever, a instrumental atom bomb compared to most pop out there – the disc burns with their unique energy and soul.But just not quite as much as I’d like. They haven’t lost their edge – the political message is still there, the artistic movement that makes them Ozo. But the thing to love is a sense of energy that leaps out of every note, every movement. Don’t Mess… leans towards a smoother package, but the veneer of palatability and even polish has rubbed off some of the spikes of brilliance and energy that have inspired the rabid loyalty of Ozo-ites everywhere. I certainly appreciate the desires of a band that’s been running on half-tank popularity wise for the last decade to take it up to full throttle and actually make it. It’s a natural desire. Everyone’s doing it. But, but, but… I want MY Ozomatli. The guys whose every word makes me burn to move. Where even mentioning the band makes me smile, start to sway, and whisper “Dip, dive, socialize…” They set the bar so high for themselves that it’s hard to not miss that extra edge that populated their earlier discs. So my solution? Give them the fame they deserve – get the album out, on the radio, on the streets. It is worth every second of airtime. Let them get the spotlight, so they can show off what they can really do – every beat, lick, hit, and shout of it. It'll wake this dragon up and get it roaring.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

Music Review: Oreskaband - Ore

Claire Marie Blaustein — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:18:31 EDT

Ebullient is the word that comes to mind when listening to this sextet of high-school girls – the poppiness of a girl band mixed with the happy celebratory nature of ska. Oreskaband got together back in 2003 as middle school classmates who wanted to start a band. They played around their hometown of Osaka for a couple of years and after an appearance at Fujirock – one of the biggest rock festivals in the world – they’re heading this way. With the proliferation of teens getting together to lip-sync and gyrate in front of bright lights, it’s exciting to hear a group of girls who put themselves forward not just as pop stars but as instrumentalists – and decent ones at that. The horn section is really tight (Leader, Saki and Moriko), the wailing guitar and bass players are also the equally rockin’ vocalists (Ikasu and Tomi) and there is no half-assed tapping on that drum set (Tae-san).The disc I got was billed as a demo, but is the same as their March 2006 EP release Ore. A six track disc, with track one being a one minute screaming intro, it encompasses about as wide of a musical spectrum as ska is going to. “Knife and Fork” is more instrumental, a great showcase for the horn section, and with a switch of texture - a sweeter line and slower groove. The last track “The Boy – S” just tears a new hole in the whole thing – frenzied bouncy rebounding from word to word and lick to lick. As of this month, their single “Pinnochio” is available for download on iTunes. It was a good choice for release – the vocals are interlaced with punchy hits from the band, and it really shows off the breadth of talent in the group. And it’s amazing how the littlest details can get you – the end is punctuated by a set of soaring “la la las” that are at once wickedly wonderful, and a little hilarious, coming out more like a cheerleader’s “ra ra ra” They appeared first in the states just a few weeks ago at SXSW (South By Southwest – a music festival in Texas, for those of you who are sick of puzzling over what in the hell ssschxssswaaa is) and moved on to tour dates in the LA and San Francisco area. No clear dates on a full release yet, but I’m hoping that it’ll have a bit more of a dynamic audio mix on the next release to bring out the richness in the many layers of sound these girls are constructing. They may not have taken your local scene by storm yet, but hopefully these girls will be around more often. They’re tons of fun. You can hear streaming samples for yourself on their Myspace. Visit their Oreskaband - Sony Homepage for news and information.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

Music Review: Mira Mira - Midnight for You

Claire Marie Blaustein — Wed, 7 Feb 2007 08:31:23 EST

The package that contained a press kit and this album by Chicago-based Mira Mira also included a note from songwriter and pianist Charlie Williams. It said, among other things – "I'm excited to share this album with you – it's best heard, I think, on the 5th listen." It could have been playful hyperbole… but I was intrigued. So I took it to heart and listened to the whole album the prescribed five times.On first listen, it's an odd conglomeration of songs. Perky exultations to Atlas merge into meandering instrumental movements. A line or two erupts with expletive force from the webs of sounds and sound sources – echoed piano lines, vaguely organic computerized strains, and the untrained but heartfelt vocals of Williams and others. It seemed somewhat simplistic at times, others, bemusedly complicated. But with each pass through, the classical training that Williams enjoyed… or endured… comes through in the sense of layering and textures that permeate the album. It's an orchestral dynamic, parts overlapping and intertwining, creating their own map of sound. The topography of the album becomes more evident with each listen – peaks and valleys of text, texture, emotion, empathy. The title track, "Midnight for You" draws us into the valleys – a simple premise of love lost and gone far away, and a dynamically repetitive piano line. The layers of sound are painted watercolor style, each translucent to those underneath, giving way to a new shade, fading to a radio buzz of static remaining in the wash at the end. The instrumental "Nikita's Ghost" is creepily wonderful, strumming guitars moving with something like sirens, and voices appearing and disappearing in the murk. There is catharsis in the listening. Each time draws you further into Mira Mira's emotive process, hearts like blood-red stains on the sleeve, and makes their ability to take pain and pleasure and make music of it your own as well. You say goodbye to the good, the bad, and the just gone, and feel it all just fade away with a final buzz into sonic darkness. To hear more from Mira Mira, try their website or you can buy the album from CD Baby.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

Music Review: Teitur - Stay Under the Stars

Claire Marie Blaustein — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:05:26 EST

I first saw Teitur (pronounced tie-tor), when he was touring with the Young Troubadours in 2004. I was struck with his soulful, puppy-dog eyed songs, describing perfect, fleeting moments with what I’m sure was an appropriately pretty, waif-like and hipster girl of his fancy. Stay Under the Stars is pretty much more of the same – actually, a little too much of the same. I found myself drifting into personal fantasies of sleepy Sunday mornings, and the homogeneity of sound wouldn’t startle me out of it for three or four tracks in a row. It’s incredibly sweet and poetic songwriting, and my fantasies were far more colorful for it. Teitur can always be relied upon to bring up these wonderful heartrending images, but one doesn’t turn to him, say, for an upbeat dance tune. It’s simply not what the windswept Faroe Islands native does. But he does toss in a few to draw me from my comfortable lethargy – particularly a awesome and slightly bizarre cover of “Great Balls of Fire” which adds slightly seasick string arpeggios, rather than the burning sexuality of Jerry Lee Lewis. Then there’s “I run the Carousel” which is positively headbanging in it’s gritty guitarness, after the restfulness of the other songs. Then the moment passes, and I can return to my daydreaming. After all, according to the title track, he doesn’t want me to wake up, either. A definite listen, but mood music in the best sense of the word. A few notes: TEITUR FULL ALBUM STREAM NOW ONLINE (November 20th, 2006) Teitur’s latest release, Stay Under The Stars , is now available as a full album stream on Altsounds.com’s online radio destination Altsounds.fm. The British folkie’s latest record was released in September 2006 on Equator Records, and is slated for a US release to coincide with a December tour of the East Coast (details below). For more information on Teitur check out their official website and their Myspace Profile Page.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

Music Review: Amos Lee - Supply and Demand

Claire Marie Blaustein — Tue, 3 Oct 2006 04:42:21 EDT

The first self-titled album by Amos Lee was a kind of archival discovery – a total nakedness, heart on the sleeve, exposed blues of past generations. This second release, Supply and Demand, is more fleshed out – more produced, instrumentally intricate, bigger. Not necessarily better, but bigger. Some of the songs feel like they would work as well or better without all the accoutrements of second-album-syndrome. But even when it seems to go a bit overboard, there are plenty of tunes that use the extras well - “Sweet Pea,” with its backup ukulele, the Wurlitzer on the title track of “Supply and Demand."In all of the songs, and really both albums, what is most attractive is the fantastic storytelling. Lee’s sweet voice with the husky undertones tones perfectly reflects the emotive nature of all his songs. And each one draws the listener into a different place, projecting feelings that are not our own, but so familiar that they could be. In “Skipping Stone” the improvisatory and varied pace of the voice gives the tune a gospel quality, a prayer for help and forgiveness. The voice cries out to the organ backup, and has a holy feel – a voice crying out to an empty church. And “Freedom” brings the topic away from personal heartache to global, imploring for peace without resorting to violence – “freedom is seldom found/ by beating someone to the ground/ and tellin’ them how/ everything is gonna be now.” With this second album, the musician has grown into a bigger shell, expanded his boundaries. But the same soul lives inside, and that is where the listener is really drawn – deep down inside the voice of Amos Lee.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

Music Review: Women and Songs, Volume 2

Claire Marie Blaustein — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:47:55 EDT

Back in college, my friends and I had a constantly rotating set of CDs we had burned – compilations of our favorite hits, happy tunes, and general wish lists of pop. When I stuck the Women and Songs CD in, I honestly checked to make sure I hadn’t gotten it mixed up with one of my Sharpie-labeled “Great Girls” discs.It’s a random mix of tunes – a lot of 90s, a lot of singer-songwriters, and of course, all by female artists. It was a good skipping CD – one where I keep one finger on the 'next' button of my remote, ready to re-live a 30-second clip of Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want To Wait” for its Dawson’s Creek purposes, but not prepared to listen to more. If you want to delve into deeper levels, there are some definite flaws. There isn’t much rhyme or reason to the choice of artists, besides their shared anatomy. The ordering wasn’t even particularly well set up – Janet Jackson, Joss Stone, and Brandy all lumped together in the middle, and surrounded by a lot of the same Jewel-sounding boy-missing songs. And with the negative sentiment that was surrounding the first volume of Women and Songs for being almost entirely comprised of blond women with guitar, there is a little bit of tokenism going on in a selection of a slightly more diverse cadre of artists (although I note that none of them made the cover). It also has the feeling that it’s not a collection of music that women really lean toward, but of music that men think that women like – Madonna for inspiration, The Cardigans to dance to, Natalie Merchant to mend a broken heart, and Enya to take a nice hot bath to. But it’s so limited -- sure, as a woman, I have listened to these songs, and all of the people singing are women, but there is so much great music by women, for women, about women. The choices here are extraordinarily suspect. As a side note, there could be the charity angle, since the liner notes also print a small ad for The Breast Cancer Site (a fabulous charity that turns your mouse clicks into funds for mammograms for uninsured and underinsured women nationwide – please take the three seconds out of your day) but there isn’t any real information about whether the profits from the CD actually go to them or not. So, that’s out. With no ulterior motive to buy this, I can say that it was fun to listen to, but managed to bother me enough that all it’ll ever do is end up dispersed through my iTunes. If any of this music appeals to you, you probably have all of it already. It seems more of a moment to discover the wonder of a playlist than shell out for a new CD of the same old songs.

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."

CD Review: The Rough Guide to Urban Latino

Claire Marie Blaustein — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 03:00:22 EST

Urban Latino is a broad genre, and this new release from the Rough Guides is an attempt to bring the concept of world music beyond the folk side of things, and bring forward music of urban areas, and especially artists who otherwise wouldn't otherwise get attention here. It does a fair job touching on styles from all over, and is a good introduction to a variety of styles, with some great features, particularly data tracks including an interview with Chris Moss, who compiled the music and wrote the liner notes for the CD. Of course the tracks are a mix, and what you like all depends on personal preference. I'm not a huge reggaeton fan, but the cumbia tracks are really wicked, and the songs that bring together multiple styles, from salsa to western pop, are diverse and interesting. The sounds vary from what a listener might immediately identify as "urban" to things that do sound more traditional to our ears, but it's all music of the streets of these cities and towns, and hopefully broadens ideas about what urban music means, as well as Latino.In the whole package, the only thing I found really problematic was actually in the liner notes. "Apart from savvy virtuoso who tout their arts in Europe, most Latin Americans don't think of their music as world music or ethnic music. It is just music, and it's simply a question of choosing a disc from the many genre on offer at the local disquer�as."Of course it's just music. It isn't music of the rest of the world - it doesn't come from anywhere else, it came from there. The presumption that the music that westerners deem to be "world" (a term with enough problems because thinking about it, pop from North America is really part of the world too) would be considered that by those making the music as anything other than their own is just silly. The CD begins with such a positive and broadening message of introducing westerners to popular music from other countries - helping them to understand that it isn't folk, that isn't all bouncy and happy, and that it can even be dark and dangerous - but by drawing a line that says that their pop music will be somehow intrinsically different from ours, besides the obvious differences in styles and musical content, doesn't do much to forward real understanding. Close your eyes and listen, and the CD brings new sounds and ideas about what is out there in the world. Just don't expect it to be quite so far from home. See more of my thoughts on these CD's and other musical musings at "I Dig Music.." Edited: [!--GH--]

For more of my reviews and general musical ponderings, visit my blog - "I Dig Music..."