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Strokes, copy protection, AMG

I picked up the new Strokes CD, Room on Fire, yesterday. I won’t
bother reviewing the album here because everyone and their dog has;
it’s basically the continuation of This is It inexplicably
delayed by two years. It’s a great album, but it’s not a historical
album at all; just another bunch of tunes like the first bunch.


This combined with the Strokes’ propensity to release very short albums
got me thinking, and I did a bit of math, and I have concluded that
both Is This It and Room On Fire can fit on one CD
(1:08 total). They sound similar enough to be one CD, and when
I bring Room On Fire back up from the car, they will be
one CD, dammit.


The Strokes are a great band, but I don’t get the mythology, and I don’t
get why it took three years and two discs to release one CD worth of
material.


In related news, I also picked up Van Morrison’s new album,
What’s
Wrong With This Picture?. It’s a good album if you like Van
Morrison, although it’s pretty obvious that both he and his fanbase have
mellowed out a bit since Moondance. The interesting part is
this: The Van Morrison album was copy-protected (although cdparanoia
ripped it without any complaints at all), and the Strokes album was
not. Something seems amiss here.


ObPetPeeve: Why does All Music
Guide make it so difficult to link to specific albums? All of
their links are Javascript. For your reference, the way to link
to specific albums is to take the argument passed to the javascript
and pass it in as the ‘sql’ parameter to amg.dll — if you have

javascript:z('Bigke4j371waw')

then you will link
to 

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=Bigke4j371waw

The ‘p’ argument is required. I’ll never understand why a site that
presumably makes money off of people reading their reviews and then
buying the CD through their referral links does not want people
deep-linking, though.

Rich

7 responses to “Strokes, copy protection, AMG”

  1. I picked up the new Strokes CD, Room on Fire, yesterday….I don’t get why it took three years and two discs to release one CD worth of material.

    Are you also a fan of The Shins? Their second CD, released 21 Oct 2003, brings their total on-CD record time to 01:07:12, easily fitting on a single 74 minute CD as well. Even with one of their EPs, three tracks from a radio interview and three tracks that I haven’t a clue as to the source, I have a whole 86 minutes of their music.

    I also treasure most every moment. (There are a couple of tracks on the new disc I’m not completely sold on, but even those songs are fantastic in their own right….)

    I’ll never understand why a site that presumably makes money off of people reading their reviews and then buying the CD through their referral links does not want people deep-linking, though.

    They may just be dumb! I think the tendency to inadvertently shoot self in foot is inherent to all humans. I konw I make a few dumb mitsakes every day.

  2. i love van morrison. i didn’t realize he had a new album out. i followed your link and the first thing i thought after seeing the album design (which i love) is hey, that’s a blue note cover if i ever saw one! haha where have i been, he’s on bluenote now?! yay! that should prove pretty interesting.

    mark this date on your calendar and see how much you and your fanbase, er friends have mellowed out thirty+ years from now. haha, damnit, it happens to all of us! i desperately like to think of it as becoming older and wiser. ;)

  3. I’ve heard of the Shins but have never heard them. They’re sort of lo-fi pop punk, right? I’d expect something like that, or, say, the Minutemen maybe, to have EP-ish albums. But The Strokes aren’t exactly an indie band. Write a whole album, dammit!

    I mean, how could they put on a live show after their first album — four opening acts? They must have had more material.

  4. I had exactly the same reaction. Also, “Is this the latest? It doesn’t look like the latest.. ah, 2003, ok, guess it is.”

    It’s apparently his first Blue Note album, too.

  6. Perhaps. Perhaps they act just like the CD does in your player – play over and over and over and over…

    …if the album’s good enough, it doesn’t always matter. ;)

    The Shins’ Oh, Inverted World is my favorite album of the past few years. I’ll make sure you have a chance to hear it some time.

  7. I bought Chutes Too Narrow last night. I’ve only had one chance to listen through, but I like. Thanks for the recommendation!