circumstance
she said 'maybe' but meant 'no' but the sparkle in her eye told me 'yes'...


Ha, I think this may be the first (and possibly only) time this blog has ever devolved into a "personal" blog. I tend to view that sort of thing with a bit of distaste. unless I do the two separate blogs thing, and just not tell anyone where the "personal" blog is...
- posted by vcmc @  5/27/2006 03:18:00 AM  |  2 comments

 
*sigh*
I found a posting for my dream job online. And I'm perfectly qualified. But it's in...Florida, 1600 miles away.

*sigh*
- posted by vcmc @  5/19/2006 08:41:00 AM  |  0 comments

 
I saw me some ex-Unicorns
So...even though I made sure to whore out last night's show on pandas, none of y'all bitches came out. Suckers. It was an awesome show.

To recap, there were 5 bands playing - cadence weapon, busdriver, sunset rubdown, frog eyes, and islands (in order of appearance). Doors apparently were at 630, so I'd missed the first two bands when I got in just before 9.

So Sunset Rubdown is setting up their shit. if you're familiar with how first ave is run they have a big projector playing movies etc on a screen they lower in front of the stage. Tonight it was old-school batman (with tights, superimposed "smack" "kapow" "smash" in fight scenes, fully made up joker, the whole bit). Irrelevant, really, but I thought it was fun.

...So Sunset Rubdown plays. If you're not familiar, this is a side project of the keyboardist from wolf parade, with some other musician-y people from montreal/toronto area I guess. I...um...streamed their album a bunch in the last month or so, and I kind of really like it. More like - I like certain parts of certain songs a whole lot, but am ambivalent about a good chunk of the record. Something like that, anyway. They're good in concert, I think mostly because they only had time to play their better stuff. Oh, and the second keyboard player was super cute. go here and scroll to the bottom. or here. or here from her old band. (I think that may be too much looking at her on the internets already - I may already be in the realm of borderline stalkerdom.)

Anyway...If my cousin was there he may or may not have told her she was...

"Bright."
"Oh...thank you, but how do you know?"
"I guess what I mean is that you just... exude light."
"Thank you, that means a lot to me..."*

I think the band lead/keyboardist had a mustache too, but it was kind of hard to see because he was more or less making out with the microphone. I'm a fan of mustaches, as you may have seen before.

So that was a good show. Frog Eyes was up next - but I took off after sunset rubdown finished their set to go grab some Luce (hadn't really eaten since lunch at this point, had to work late). Had some delicious chicken/jalapeno/tomato pizza. I got back about halfway through Frog Eyes' set...which ended up being a good thing, as I couldn't stand them. Before I go into more detail, I should probably say I rarely get into bands by seeing them live - I have to know their music first, then see the live show. So...attempting to search for adjectives here...frog eyes was somehow simultaneously restrained and spazzy. As in - their frontman had a very specific stage persona, and it was obviously very well rehearsed, but it was out of control without being physically so. Very....twitchy, maybe. I guess my biggest complaint aside from that was the music didn't seem structured enough

and the guy from wolf parade/sunset rubdown was in this band too, on keyboards as usual.

So then it's Islands' turn up. Since the Unicorns' show way back when was pretty sparse with just the three of them on stage, I kind of expected the same from Islands despite some denser production on the album... nope. seven people on stage, complete with matching (ish) outfits. Somebody posted a bunch of pics to flickr already...see for yourself. It seemed like everybody played more than one instrument; I saw the violinists playing keyboards, recorder, and oboe at various points during the set. They were both pretty impressive, lots of energy on stage (both of them in the background here) in addition to their talent - it was obvious to me they both had extensive training on the violin. The bassist, however, really didn't seem to fit - he was one of those guys who probably came from a funk background, and hadn't really gotten used to the concept of the bass not being a core instrument... definitely too much showmanship from him. Didn't work well with the rest of the band. And his bass was ugly...who buys a bass that looks like this? oh - right - bassists in a funk band. Do me a favor and slap the next person you see with a bass like that, ok? Trust me, they deserve it. though...not as much as this guy. an 11-string bass? is he serious?

Nick Diamonds had quite the stage presence, as well as some very...colorful hi-tops. he even rolled up the pants to show them off. Curious. I'm not going to bother recalling the song order, or even the number of songs they played - although I was completely sober (I think I enjoy shows more that way)...

Notable moments were "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby", which sounds like it might have originally been conceived as a song for Th' Corn Gangg - Cadence Weapon and some other guy made guest appearances, and made me wish I hadn't missed their set - just blew me away. I gotta hear me his album too...

They finished the encore with Swan though, which ended up stretching to 10+ minutes.After the band finished the "normal" song, they all kind of filed off stage and left Nick with his guitar sitting (dejectedly?) strumming the three chords of the last part of the song. He kept this up for at least 2-3 minutes before the "multi-talented asians" decided to return and accompany him with some improv violin parts, which ended up fitting perfectly. a good end to a good show.


*Actual snippet of conversation (not verbatim, but close) between my cousin and a good-looking girl at a restaurant in Uptown.
- posted by vcmc @  5/17/2006 09:54:00 PM  |  1 comments

 
by popular demand
...the flickr set* from cinco de mustache. I know, I know, this is almost two weeks late...better than nothing though. Now go, and be satiated! No more bugging me! No more!



* for the uninitiated, this means PICS!
- posted by vcmc @  5/17/2006 03:41:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
The Internets Are Big, But People Find Obscure Shit On My Blog Anyway
I don't check the email address I set up just for my blog very often, but I figured I should today, for whatever reason. Anyway, aside from an invitation code for Google Analytics which I signed up for like six months ago(as if habitually checking my blog stats wasn't enough, now I can have pretty graphs and loads of mostly-useless information), I got a random email from this guy:

Sorry for the mass email, but I need to get this out all of you as quickly as I can. [record label] is going to start doing servicing to Blogs and Online magazines. We are about to service the [band name] record and I want to make sure you all get a copy.

All I need from you is a few piecies of information to get added to the list:

Name of site
URL
Average Viewers / Month
2 or 3 line description
Address to Send records

If I have already hitten you up about reviews, then please just send me the other information. The viewers and description are key to getting added for the list. Hit me up asap so I can set aside [band] promos.

Word
Greg

At first I'm thinking - spam already? Even when I set up this email address masking script so it wouldn't get read by spambots? Then I look a little closer and realize he's offering to send me a cd of a band I wrote a three-sentence mini-review of earlier this month. Free cd? Hell yeah. Wait - is that going to put me on some direct mail marketing list? Probably. Am I ok with that if it's for indie(ish) bands? Sure. Am I going to lie about my monthly traffic (wow, six hits this month already?) to get this cd? Yes. Will I whore out my blog to do promotion for this band? Um....I'm not going to commit to anything there.

It's also kind of funny the way he worded things. Who's going to be able to tell if he threw a few hundred email addresses on the BCC line, or if he's emailing you directly? And why not just start off with something like "Hey, I noticed you mentioned this band on your blog recently..." before jumping straight into promoter-speak douchebaggery. Are you sure you want to "service" my blog? And what exactly do you mean by the word "hitten"?

Anyway, I've probably spent too much time thinking about this already, and it's really not a big deal. I think that means I need to do some more album reviews, or revisit some earlier ones... I should have time later this week, I think.
- posted by vcmc @  5/16/2006 02:42:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
on the "forever stamp"
A lot of bloggers seem to be commenting on the "forever stamp" concept introduced today, with responses ranging from "dumbass idea- fire the intern" to...well, I'm not sure quite what this guy actually said, but he sounded smart.

I think it'd be a benefit to the average consumer, but there are a lot of factors to consider from an econ standpoint which make this a much more complex issue than most of the media make it out to be.

First, to keep things as simple as possible, I'll make the assumption that the USPS would not impose (and would do its best to prevent) limitations in availability to minimize supply and demand effects and prevent a secondary or gray market from arising. Note that even absent limitations in supply, such a market may still arise depending on market conditions in the future...

Here's the biggest thing the USPS needs do to do make sure this isn't a failure:

Resale of these stamps would need to have limitations imposed on it in some way. The most obvious arbitrage opportunity would be buying stamps in bulk, then reselling them in the future when they've increased in value. This arbitrage would primarily be at the USPS's expense, indirectly, in effect discounting their actual received revenue per stamp by a small percentage.

If we use the example of 42c versus the current 39c rate (if I read the article correctly, they'll initially be introduced at 42c so this isn't entirely applicable), that's a 7.7% difference. Not huge, but by investment terms, that's higher than the current return on government bonds and most CDs on the market today. But it is huge if you're talking about the USPS revenues, which the article quotes at $69 billion - 7.7% of which comes to $5.3 billion.

But that's only an accurate long-term comparison, where stamp owners would in effect be earning interest on these items. It's another matter entirely if the USPS schedules a yearly rate hike, enabling arbitrageurs to make their 7.7% over the short term, buying right before the rate hike and selling immediately thereafter.

So, to counter this, I'm imagining the following:
1. USPS increases the frequency of their rate hikes. Once a year seems reasonable enough; I see these stamps obsoleting standard first class stamps for the most part, so this shouldn't place excessive strain on consumers or small businesses. The primary reason for this is to minimize the amount of increase for any particular rate hike, simultaneously miniming arbitrage opportunity.

2. Stop selling "forever stamps" to resellers at the existing rate some time before a new rate goes into effect. I'm thinking something like three months - this will help to minimize the short-term arbitrage I mentioned earlier. It'll still exist; once the existing rate is no longer available for sale, the grey market will dictate a new interest-adjusted value for the old stamps.

In this particular scenario, using three months as an example timeframe, 5% as current interest rate, and assuming the same increase of 39c to 42c, we'd probably see something like the following on the grey market:

Cost 4 months before rate change: 39c
Cost 3 months before rate change, immediately after old rate no longer available: 41.475c
Cost 2 months before rate change: 41.65c
1 month before rate change: 41.825c
etc.

My math is probably off here - it's been a while since I had to do interest calculations like this - but you get the general idea.

Two things of note in this example:
First, the immediate change from 39c to 41.475c is still a significant arbitrage opportunity. I suspect it'll be difficult if not impossible to eliminate (or even minimize) arbitrage between the two price points. Second, this is overstated; 7.7% is much higher than the likely actual yearly rate increase - estimated at 2-3%, or equivalent to the rate of inflation (barring unusual price changes in sectors that disproportionately affect the shipping industry i.e. fuel costs). Which brings me to my next point.

3. Rate hikes need to remain below interest rates. This isn't entirely controllable by the USPS, but they have a certain amount of flexibility to minimize the impact of that sort of thing by underpricing their services for the short-term (a year or two, I'm assuming). Again, this is intended to minimize long-term arbitrage; if a more accessible investment yields a higher return there's no incentive to choose the lower return (though there are other factors that may come into effect here, one - liquidity - does not seem to be an advantage if one has thousands of dollars in stamps).

4. The final thing the USPS would need to do is combat the grey market - for example, prohibiting bulk purchasers from reselling to anyone except the consumer, either via law or penalties to bulk buyers found abusing the system.


One final note here. All of my thoughs depend on one assumption - that there is minimal cost associated with acquisition and storage of stamps in volume - a bank for stamps, as it were, which we may see come into existence if the USPS does not take adequate steps to prevent arbitrage.


Anyway - enough geeking out for today. I'll probably have some more records to review for my next post or something.



"I don't rap for free, I'm a capitalist" - Jemini
- posted by vcmc @  5/04/2006 01:26:00 PM  |  2 comments

 
20" rims with the chrome
I should point out that two of the bands in my last post - Islands and Sunset Rubdown - have scheduled a date for First Avenue, May 16th. It's only $10 at the door for five bands. I'll be there...

Sunn O))) - Black One

I was expecting a drone/minimalist record along the lines of maybe rafael toral or keith fullerton whitman, and I got a horror/sludge metal/doom/noise hybrid. lots of indecipherable screaming. wtf? I don't think I can call this "good"...


Hot Chip - Coming On Strong

I saw these guys play live with Four Tet sometime last year, and they put on a pretty good show - lots of energy, pretty danceable. So I was expecting this album to capture that - instead, it comes across as kind of...cold. Most of the songs are either too slow or not "bouncy" enough to be danceable, and don't seem to be as catchy as I remember live. It feels like some songs lack focus, but there are a couple of solid tracks, though - particularly "The Beach Party" and "Playboy".
- posted by vcmc @  5/03/2006 11:45:00 AM  |  0 comments