How To Download the Best Live Music On the Web

It's pretty damn easy.

1. Get Bit Torrent - the app that provides you access to most of the good live music.

2. Go to Sharing the Groove

3. Go to Bit Torrent Download Section at Sharing The Groove. The people that hang here have the best shit there is. My trick is to do a search for "soundboard" and find all the excellent sounding stuff. Lot's of Dylan, Neil Young, Radiohead, Beck, Phish, and friggin everything else under the sun. When you click to download the files, a little Bit Torrent window will pop up on your screen. Minimize the sucker because it usually takes a least a half a day to download a show!

Bear in mind, you're downloading an entire concert at once and NOT in mp3. Most of the files are in lossless compression codecs such as Shorten or Flac. If you don't want to mess around with getting plug ins for winamp or QCD to playback these files, just Download the DB Power Amp Converter app and it will convert the files to whatever the hell you want. .Wav, MP3, etc. If you find anything you really like, lemme know in the comments post.

Supergroup Redux

Snoop, Warren G, and Nate Dogg are back in a new group entitled "213." Think kick ass old school parliament/funkadelic. If the rest of the album is as good as this pre-released mp3, the world is a funkier shizunkier place.

Steal This Preamplifer

The Wavac ATT-S is THE passive preamplifer if you want an unhampered audio signal sent from your line source (cd player, dvd player, tuner, etc) to your amplifier. I'll spare you my diatribe on why i think active preamplifers are bullshit, but trust me, if you can run a short cable run to your amp from your preamp, this is the one you want. Can you get the same quality sound cheaper? Yes. Can you get one cheaper with a remote? Yes. But who wants a remote when you can TOUCH this work of art (sharper photo). Volume control and input select, that's it. What more do you need? $4 grand too much for you? Don't be silly, you're smart, you can borrow the money and you'll always have a job to pay it back.

Auto-Magically Delicious

Get this. You buy an Alpine car stereo (pretty much any unit that's come out in the last few years), then you buy this little adapter. Now you can put the ipod in your glove compartment where you've wired a firewire cable from this adapter. You can now completely control the ipod from your car stereo! The artist, album, track and playlist data all easily accessible through headunit display and headunit controls. The firewire link simultaneously powers the ipod in the glove compartment. The adapter maximizes display for each type of headunit. This is soooo superior to the bmw/ipod announcement, in which the bmw headunit can basically control jackshit. And any adapter that requires you to have the ipod tangling from a cord to control funtionality generally sucks (and most likely, you're not going through the line-in jack so your sound quality sucks too.) Do i buy one now or take the gamble that next Alpine units won't require this seperate adapter? I bet if i wait until after 2005 CES, this will happen, along with 80-100 gig ipod. Then i can do all .wav files too. I'm a gambling man. Just more waiting...waiting....always waiting.......

Cozzzzam!

Did you know that Quincy Jones was the musical director of "The Bill Cosby Show" from 1969-1971? Did you know that Jones assembled a killer group of jazz/funk musicians for it and often kept the tape recorder running during jam sessions? Did you know these jam sessions were just discovered in a vault (now 30 years later) during an office move. ILL !!!!!

Best Loudspeaker Award....

Okay, I'm going to get all my favorites out of the way as this is my first day posting and I need to purge my audio obsessions to the world. The TAD Model-1 Audiophile Reference Loudspeaker is something you should buy for me. I am truly worthy of this. I've paid my dues. I assure you I would enjoy it immensily and think about you all the time. You will become my best friend and I'll definitely be there by your deathbed, thinking about my speakers.
tad

Out With The New, In With The Old

Why does it take this man to teach Loretta Lynn how to make a great album? I mean, shit, a twenty-something has to inform her that what she did "back in the day" was what she should be doing now? How do these artists get so lost? Can't they just listen to the stuff they did when they were popular and go "Oh, okay, this was good. My last album, on the other hand, was an overproduced piece of shit and didn't sell any albums. Therefore I should do that older thing again?"

Clearly, he needs a gig with The Stones to fix the horror they've done to themselves over the last (two?) decade(s). And on that note, Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck producer extraordinaire) needs to produce the next Bowie album.

For some, Farenheit 911 was THE groundbreaking, thought provoking, button-pushing film of the new millenium. Well for me, it had to Dodgeball. Can anyone remember laughter?

I Want a Woody

Wooden audio equipment is bad ass. Why can't all audio be made of wood? Something about the contrast between electronics and wood gets me HOT HOT HOT. This beloved DIY'er is clearly a great man. For some more DIY audio porn, check it. If you have no interest, please never come back here again.

Meta Size Me

If you're not going to Metacritic, for movie and dvd reviews you're missing out. Get this... Metacritic assigns a numerical average score by assigning rating scores to hunreds of reviews (NY Times, Entertainment Weekly, Ebert, Etc). Never see a shit film again by seeing only films with 65 score or higher. Every purchase opportunity needs a system like this. Check it.

Viceland's Do's and Don'ts

Make sure you check it this month's "do's and dont's" and please make sure you check out the "don'ts." Does this offend you? If so, please get off my blog quickly, before i ask you what color panties your wearing.

here it is

since this site is just a narcisstic exercise....

i'm obligated to put up a picture of burning man. no real reason aside from the fact that i'm PSYCHED! this site is basically a place i go to look at stuff i like. so, there you have it. the playa awaits......

Ha Ha Ha

My wife, she's nice.

Good guide to Ali G slang dictionary here. Nice NPR piece here. Best of all, video of Ali G segments.

Nice Friggin' Table

The Nordic Concept Turntable From Sweden wins my award for best looking table. Pictured with Linear Tracking Arm, pivots can be mounted as well. If i owned one and you came to my house, you would never be allowed to touch it.

Music Fans - This is the Shit

www.audioscrobbler.com is one of the most kickin sites around. Get this... download a plug-in for Itunes, Winamp, or QCD that monitors your listening behavior, and find people with taste like you. then go to http://www.last.fm to check out personalized radio based on your music listening profile generated through audioscrobbler. simple, powerful.

Big Orange Cans Inside of Amps are Kewl!!!!

God I love this Amp. It's all about short signal paths, oodles of bandwidth, fast slew rates, and big ass capacitors to give what you need, when you need it. I covet this. More here

The Hy Phi Blog - You Can Relax Now

Make sure you check back here regularly if you care about anything important in the world. That's right, yeah, uh huh.

for instance....

Ali G
Reno 911
Dylan
Radiohead
Bill Evans
Monk
Wilco
etc. etc.