Music

SF Chronicle: Felakat is part of a thriving underground music scene, wh… (04-16) 04:00 PDT Tehran – — In a cozy soundproof recording studio housed in a decrepit downtown building, the rap musician known as Felakat lounged on a chair, surrounded by sound mixers and other sleek recording equipment. Sporting a tousled black shirt, a slick fur-lined jacket and spiky hairstyle. the Iranian rapper might well pass for an Western punk singer. “I devoted my life to rap when I…

Here’s what I’m reading today: Iranian fundamentalists preach in cyberspace (The Guardian Newsblog) DC’s Best Embassies (Washingtonian) The Legend of Barack Obama (Washingtonian) The Demise of Hyphy (SF Weekly) Oops: Columbia j-school dean sends self-evaluation to class (Romenesko) Here’s what I did today: Cover the GDC for the CBC.

Rolling Stone: David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he’s not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud. Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology…

More music tourism news, but this time, from my alma mater. Santa Monica Daily Press: The Santa Monica High School marching band will be marching over the Atlantic to London, England in 2009, ringing in the new year by performing in the city’s holiday parade. The 130-member marching band and colorguard will head to perform in the New Year’s Day Parade in London, the entertainment unit’s first trip out of the country since the 1960s when it performed in Mazatlan.…

The New York Times: The Philharmonic, led by its music director, Lorin Maazel, has been considering the visit since an invitation arrived by fax in August. It was a typed letter from the North Korean culture ministry, in English, accompanied by a cover letter from a private individual in California who said he was acting as an intermediary. The orchestra had the invitation authenticated by the State Department, which has provided advice and help in negotiating the terms of the…

The first piece that I ever heard by Percy Grainger was “Molly on the Shore“. Its tick-tock opening of the lower clarinet and bassoon voices provide an amazing support for the rapid-fire but flowing melody for the first clarinets that remains as captivating now as it was the first time I heard it. That melody became one of the few phrases that I can easily play on my own clarinet with joy and ease. I was a freshman in high…

As promised, here’s the 47-minute unedited interview with MC Hammer. Interview with MC Hammer (47:21) – MP3

Big ups to NPR’s Nate DiMeo for this awesome story explaining ringtones and the tech behind T-Pain, a rapper that I’d never heard of. Apparently he makes up for one in three of this week’s Billboard Top 10 tracks. Listen to the piece here. (No, seriously. This piece works best as a piece of audio.) The money (har) quotes: “It’s his signature vocal sound, maybe more so than his actual voice, that has become one of the defining sounds in…

Kennedy pointed out that the sweet new video to “Joe Metro” debuted this week on MTV. You guys are coming on December 16, right?

The interview went awesomely! MC Hammer was a gentleman and was happy to let me monopolize his time for the better part of an hour. After the interview, we totally geeked out, comparing our iPhones — he was giddy over the Labrnyinth game for the iPhone. He was cooler than I ever could have imagined.