I had the opportunity to see Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds at Massey Hall yesterday. Just wow. I’ve been to many an Oasis concert, to the point I’ve actually been bored with the show if I happened to see them twice on the same tour. Oasis has been pretty notorious for the fact they play the same show every night, but I have to say Noel’s gig felt quite fresh.  Sure there were a few Oasis classics smattered in with a healthy amount of B-Sides.  They seem to mesh pretty effortlessly with the tracks from his new album, which is a pretty big accomplishment.  This was the first solo Noel gig I’ve ever seen, and all I can say is the man just knows how to put on a show.

The band sounded very tight and Massey Hall was just an amazing venue to see this gig. I managed to get tickets 6th row, left centre which was pretty awesome. I didn’t bring my good camera, so the few shots I did take with my iPhone 4 were pretty blurry.  It just couldn’t cope with all the light on the stage.

I saw someone say about this album that if this were the debut album for a new artist people would be falling all over themselves to blog about how great it is.  But this being the notorious Noel Gallagher the accomplishment will probably go pretty much unnoticed by the world at large outside of the Oasis community.

I posted a few videos I found on YouTube of the gig from Saturday, where Noel played the same setlist at the Mod Club in Toronto as they seemed better quality than the ones I found of the Massey Hall gig.

Setlist

1. (It’s Good) To Be Free
2. Mucky Fingers
3. Everybody’s on the Run
4. Dream On
5. If I Had a Gun…
6. The Good Rebel
7. The Death of You and Me
8. Freaky Teeth
9. Wonderwall
10. Supersonic
11. (I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine
12. AKA… What a Life!
13. Talk Tonight
14. Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks
15. AKA… Broken Arrow
16. Half The World Away
17. (Stranded On) The Wrong Beach
18. Encore:
19. Little By Little
20. The Importance of Being Idle
21. Don’t Look Back In Anger

Here’s a video I happened upon of Keane covering Oasis’ Cast No Shadow from the album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory. Very cool video and good pick of a song to cover.

Cast No Shadow – V Festival from keaneofficial on Vimeo.

I don’t care how many of these Hitler mashups I’ve seen, they never get old. Though I will correct the video that The Verve have split up again now too.

News broke this afternoon that Oasis’ leader and chief songwriter Noel Gallagher has left the band. My first inclination upon hearing the news is that this has all happened before. By my count Liam has left the band at least once, and Noel on 2 different occasions. Oasis has long been a volatile mix and frequent target of rumoured breakups. It just goes with the territory.

Although it is pretty early at this point, it does seem like this could be the end. I’ve heard the rumours of how Liam and Noel hadn’t been on speaking terms for almost a year, and at this point it seems there is some credence to those rumours. But this time it seems a little different. Here’s the quote from Noel as posted on their official website.

“It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.”

Maybe it’s just the fact that Oasis finally started leveraging social media and properly utilizing their website since their last dust up, but there seems to be some finality to a statement like this. Previously Noel just stormed off the tour and wanted to get away from things. Now we’re getting official postings on their website 2 hours after the fact.

I was out at ribfest in Guelph when this happened and had the news relayed to me by a couple friends who knew my affinity for Oasis. Aside from my first thought about this having happened before, I’m almost happy about it. Happy you say? That seems pretty odd given I’m probably one of the bigger Oasis fans you’ll ever meet. Hell I used to run the website OasisCentral.com I was that big of a fan. Why I say happy is that it’s something that is almost long overdue. When bands are around for a long time people tend to take them for granted as you start to see diminishing returns with regards to album quality. Sure I’ve enjoyed the last 3 or 4 albums of material they’ve put out, but at some point the general public just loses interest and the band is left essentially making music for the diehards. It isn’t until a band breaks up that people tend to eulogize and celebrate a bands past material.

The main reason I’m happy about Oasis splitting is the fact that Noel has long wanted to put out solo albums(in 2007, in 2008) but had been threatened by Liam that it would lead to the dissolution of the band. Over the years there have been constant rumours of Noel having solo material at the ready, but having shelved it so as to not to rock the boat and piss off Liam. Liam has long been opposed to the band experimenting with new musical directions and trends, wanting to stick with a straight ahead rock sound that made the band famous. To me this seems like it could just be a new day dawning for Oasis and its fans. Noel is finally free to let loose years of solo material. Liam has become a songwriter in his own right and can now do his own thing, should he choose. And Andy and Gem are both talented performers and songwriters as well and can either be involved in new projects or reunite with their old bands.

And the reality of music in this day and age is, if a band doesn’t break up, how can they do a big money reunion tour?

iTunes Top album chart the day after Michael Jackson died

I felt inclined to write a blog about Michael Jackson and his passing yesterday. It feels weird even typing the fact that Michael Jackson is dead. He was a music icon and even though he was one of possibly the weirdest people in the world, he still left an indelible mark on the world as whole.

I remember as a kid, probably no more then 5 or 6, having a red leather jacket that was my Michael Jackson jacket from the video Beat It. Sure it had plastic zippers instead of metal ones, but it did the job. I was a white kid from Ottawa, without MTV or MuchMusic, yet still Michael Jackson managed to be a factor in my life even at an early age. MJ was everywhere in the 1980′s. The album Thriller on cassette was one of the few albums my parents had that I was actually interested in listening to out of their collection. As I got older and got a portable cassette player for my birthday the first album I can ever recall latching onto and listening to inside out was Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. I was 11 when it came out. I remember that the video for Black and White premiered during primetime. This was after both the US and Canada both had a devoted music video stations and still MJ had enough clout to make it a primetime event. As someone who was born in 1980, Michael Jackson was the biggest musical icon of my generation. As big as The Beatles or Elvis were, they never had nearly the effect on my life that MJ did.

I’ve seen many people trying to tear MJ down, but I’ve found I’ve always had sympathy for the guy. I know myself I started to become conscious of the world and remember things starting when I was about 4. Michael Jackson at 5 was already in a band and by 8 he was one of the lead singers. Even without the side factors that were involved, Michael’s childhood was practically non-existent. We’ve seen so many childhood celebrities crash and burn, yet Jackson persevered and built himself into the biggest selling artist of all-time. From that perspective, how is it possible to be normal when you never even had a chance to know what normal is?

I know myself I’ve been as guilty as the next person of letting the media crucify Michael Jackson. The media has a long history of creating heroes only to tear them down as monsters at the first opportunity. In a bittersweet way I’m kinda happy Michael passed away young as opposed to having to experience another 10 or 20 years of the media dissecting his idiosyncratic life and continually casting him as a societal boogie man instead of the music giant he was. Given the reaction from much of the general population it seems that many people aside from me had lots of fond MJ memories lying just under the surface waiting to come out. I know since MJ had announced his 50 date shows in London I had been crossing my fingers he would put all of his legal and medical troubles behind him and be able to mount a proper goodbye tour. If MJ was playing in Toronto I would have been there in a heartbeat.

Rest in peace Michael, you will be missed.

George Carlin on Michael Jackson

Apparently Sirius XM are preparing to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. I have long been an interested party when it came to the ups and downs of satellite radio. The whole concept seemed interesting, but never enough to push me to actually to buy a receiver. The issue I had was the value proposition of spending $12 a month that I never felt I would get full value for. The biggest barrier to adoption I ran into was the fact I had to make a choice for the longest time. Both XM and Sirius had things that appealed to me, but since they were competing it meant choosing one or the other. It seems now that the 2 companies have merged its just a case of too little, too late.

I listen to all sorts music from varying different sources, be it from my iPhone, commercial radio and streaming music websites like thesixtyone, last.fm and blip.fm. To a big music consumer like myself trying to shoehorn another music source into my daily life just seemed cumbersome, let alone something that required a monthly fee to use.

Even if Sirius XM manage to get up off the ground and dust themselves off they truly face a momentous task against becoming obsolete. As technology progresses and the whole concept of “internet everywhere” takes hold it will they be able to evolve and stay relevant? I want radio to truly make the jump into the new millenium. I want functionality like what is used by last.fm, where I can love a track and it’s saved to my online profile. I want radio to become a 2 way street instead of just a simple broadcast. To me this is what would make radio worth paying for. Make it an actual killer app instead of something that really hasn’t changed in concept since the 1950s. Making it a pay service and using satellites to broadcast really isn’t revolutionary.

Mozilla’s Songbird 1.0 has finally been released after years of development. I’ve been using the Songbird 1.0 Release Candidates lately and have found it definitely quite usable as an iTunes replacement. It’s still not enough to fully replace iTunes, but it is getting there. I first tried the application back in 2006 when they released a Mac client. It definitely has come a long way since then.

I really like the ability to browse music sites and services just like you would through Firefox. Since there are so many different music services that can be listened to through a browser it’s cool to be able to view and listen from the friendly confines of your media player. If you frequent mp3 blogs the browser will display a playlist-style panel that shows all the downloadable tracks available on that page. This allows you to easily listen to and download new tracks, which is awesome. It’s especially handy this time of year for all the best of lists that are popping up.

Another aspect I really like about it is that Songbird is the social media integration. Last.fm scrobbling is built right in and there are plugins to it to integrate with Twitter and MSN as well. I just like have everything I do on my computer be interconnected these days, so having those features built right in is pretty awesome.

I think my biggest beef with Songbird up to this point is the lack of file organization. That is something that Apple nailed. Keeping a nice and tidy library file structure is important. Going back to the Winamp, one folder free-for-all approach just doesn’t work for me. The lack of compatibility with my iPhone is also a stick in the mud, but overall I’m quite happy with the product they’ve delivered. And as more plugins get developed it will only get better. iTunes’ days as my primary media player are definitely numbered.

I’ve been really hooked on a new site recently that I wanted to share. It’s called thesixtyone and it pretty much turns listening to new music on its ear. The whole premise of the site is to gain points by listening to and discovering new music. How you get points is by “bumping” songs, which is pretty much your endorsement to other users that the song is something worthwhile to listen to. Bumping costs you points, anywhere from 5 for popular tracks to 50 points for undiscovered new music. As a song gets more bumps from other users, the more points you get, so even though it costs a lot more points initially the rewards tend to come back to you ten fold if you get in on the ground floor with a good track. As you accumulate points you level up, opening up new functionality to the site. As well there are accomplishments, where you get little awards for hitting listening milestones, bumping tracks to the frontpage, getting people to listen to your favourites radio and a bunch more.

The best thing about this site is how well designed it is. You can listen to music and browse the site at the same time. You don’t have to worry about the music stopping when you go to another page on thesixtyone, it keeps playing the whole time with a collapsible control console accessible on the left-hand side. And on the right-hand side it shows you notifications when you get new points from previously bumped songs, or sometimes just quirky info about the song you are listening to. It just makes the whole experience very engaging.

The music on the site is very indie-centric, but the site does actually feature pretty much any genre you can imagine. While most of the music found on the site is decidedly underground, bands like Radiohead, MGMT, Stars and Beck have lent their tracks to the service. I recently got one of my faves Plajia to put their music on the site too. So if you know any bands who want to get exposure, get them on the site too. I’ve been using the site for about a month and have already noticed an increase in the quality of music that is available, so it will only get better the more bands that get their stuff on it.

And as an added little bonus, someone even made a last.fm Firefox extension for thesixtyone for those of us who can’t bear to have any music we listen to go undocumented. It’s very cool to have my 2 favourite music services work hand in hand like that.

Since muxtape is no more services like Mixwit now fill in the gap that it left behind. What I like about Mixwit is the fact you can assemble a playlist from pretty much anywhere on the web. It uses a couple different music search engines to find mp3 tracks that you can just add to your playlist, or you can just point to an mp3 URL you’ve found elsewhere on the web. It’s quite handy. And the old school tapes just give it that authentic feel that makes up for the sterility of mp3s.

Oasis announced awhile back that they were having a covers contest to promote their upcoming album, Dig Out Your Soul. This is actually a pretty innovative idea. They released the songbook for 4 songs and basically told people to go nuts, record a video and upload it to YouTube. It seems like a pretty good way to build up awareness for the album and get an online buzz going. For a band that had such an awful online presence for so many years, it’s cool to see them actually jumping into the online fray in a clever new way.

Get Off Your High Horse Lady – Next Tribe

The Shock Of The Lightning

I’m Outta Time – Andy Vitali

This video was from the New York City launch of the album, where various bands were hired to perform some of the new tracks at subway stations around NYC.

The Turning – Dagmar