Tag: mission of burma

Messing with Tidal

After reading a little about how much artists make per stream from the various streaming services I started messing with Tidal. Jen and I had an account when they first launched but, despite the focus on audio quality, it wasn’t quite up to speed enough to make us want to switch away from Apple Music.

They have a free account now, and I don’t think they did before. What the hell, let’s play with the free account. Spotify’s free account is obnoxiously add heavy, might this be a little better? I know artists get a bigger cut (though it’s still insultingly small) so let’s try it.

I created a new account through the iPhone app. I played around with UI mostly, not really getting into the music at first. That was two days ago. Yesterday near the end of the work day I started listening through the web app. I picked one artist, Robert Cray, and shuffled the catalog. I got three plays before an add. I guess all of their adds are actually adds for Tidal’s paid services rather than paid commercials, but whatever. It’s still an add. After the first 30 second add I heard two songs before the next add. Then I heard one song before the next add. Oh for crying out loud.

Today I tried changing my password. I used something generic to start with but I wanted to change it to something more random. I opened up my account settings and changed the password to something my password manager generated for me. It seemed to work. I then went into the iPhone app to re-log in and it told me my password was incorrect. Sigh. It then took me about four tries to get my password reset. The web app kept acting like I was actually signed in. It wasn’t kicking me out even though I had changed my password, had the password change fail, and was clearly logged out. The iPhone app kept me logged out fine.

Finally I got through the password reset process and tried to log in and the log in failed. Not because of the password, it just failed and said to try again later. I tried a private browser window and it told me I was blocked. Come on, guys. What the hell. I went back to a normal browser window and it finally worked. What an ordeal.

I picked one of their auto-generated user-specific playlist things and the first song it gave me was Pekin Spring by Mission of Burma, so I guess that was Tidal’s way of appologizing.

So far I have gone three plays, a 29 second add, now another three plays. This time though, the second of the three songs was an artist I don’t like so I clicked the little block icon and it skipped to the third song. Does Tidal have a limit on the number of songs you can skip like some of the others do? I don’t know. Does blocking an artist from an auto-generated playlist count as a skip? Did I just break the internet?

We’ll see.

After the third song I got another 29 second add. I have to go do something else soon, so I’m going to have to stop this dumb experiment, but the next song is Mission of Burma again, That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate. Arguably the best 2:05 in rock history.

Another thing to mention for the web app. Coming out of commercials it has a REALLY hard time getting into the next song. It plays the first fraction of a second a few times before righting the ship and fixing itself. When I skipped a track it was even worse. It did the same thing when I was listening yesterday. I think we need to submit a bug for that one, kids.

Okay. Burma’s ending. Time to go find the elusive glass punch bowl that is somewhere in the cellar. Talk to you later, New Years kids.

Nothing Constructive

I didn’t play guitar tonight. I did play about an hour and 10 minutes of World of Warcraft and with the exception of the last five minutes or so when I died repeatedly I had a nice stretch of slaughtering bad guys and monsters so I guess it was okay. I know we said we weren’t going to play World of Warcraft anymore, but it’s still my wife’s all time favorite, and it is also the only game I have on my PC and my subscription hasn’t run out yet so… yeah.

Star Wars: Old Republic is downloading, so there’s that.

There’s a Pixies song in the soundtrack to The Suicide Squad. Hey, off of Doolittle. Yeah… that set off the old Boston rock fan zaniness in a big way. I had already started listening to a lot of Throwing Muses prior to watching the movie but now we’re just up to our eyeballs in the music of the city of Boston from the late 80’s through the late 90’s. Pixies have been the soundtrack to tonight’s video game violence. I’ve blown through Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa and I’m about 3/4 of the way through Doolittle. For my money, Pixies Doolittle, Throwing Muses House Tornado (or the first record), and Mission of Burma’s Vs are enough to justify the entire god awful decade of the 1980’s. Throw in a handful of Rush records and just dump the rest of the decade down the crapper and you’re good to go.

Did I mention that Betwixt is getting back together for a few shows soon? There’s your 1990’s justification right there.

You know, I wish I had something constructive* to add to the electronic conversation tonight but I just don’t. Go give Doolittle a spin and you’ll feel better. Try Betwixt’s Moustache album too. Also, if you can find Smackmelon’s Space Shot play that too. Trust me.

*Twice through the course of this post, once in the title and once in the body, I have misspelled constructive as constructed. I blame society for my spelling short comings. The Pixies playlist just moved on from Doolittle to Bossanova. We should be Digging for Fire shortly.

Addendum: When I logged out of World of Warcraft, the Steam app said I had 10 seconds to wait before I could play Star Wars: Old Republic. Groovy, thought me. Then when I hovered my mouse over the Start button it changed to 8 seconds, and then to 4 hours and 50 minutes. It’s currently reading two hours and 56 minutes. Okay. I guess we won’t play tonight. It’s all right. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be a Jedi or a Sith to start with anyway.

Addendum #2: We watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory tonight while we ate dinner. In it, Sheldon played a Theremin. Did anyone else completely forget that there is a Theremin in the Pixies song Velouria? The world is a small place, and music makes time travel possible.

Live at the Bradford Hotel

Okay, I went to youtube looking for more Mission of Burma and found these two.  The anniversary is in a couple of weeks so it’s fitting.

The two farewell shows at the Bradford Hotel, March 12, 1983.

The afternoon show:

The evening show:

Here it Comes

This just came up in my this-day-in-history thing and I’m re-posting it because it’s awesome, even if it doesn’t sound all that perfect.

This song ended up as a B-side.  I would have made it an A-side and track one on the album because it is awesome.  I think I said that already.

Mission of Burma doing Here it Comes, about 10 years ago…..

https://vimeo.com/9373377

One Final Burma Thought

I figure it’s only right that I post something from the 80’s pre-19 year split up Mission of Burma.

Leave it to the douchebags in the pit to pick the quietest song in the set to stage dive. Bunch of dumb asses. If you’re gonna do it, at least wait for Funworld.

Speaking of Burma

Speaking of Mission of Burma, remember this?

9/23/07 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Far and away the coolest stage I’ve ever seen. They were out of this world that day. The opening act was horrible, but Burma was sublime.

563

Billion Dollar Bracket

I have never watched more than a few seconds of a division one basketball game.  I did watch a couple of division two games back when I was a student at UMass Lowell.  My radio show did a weekly segment with the men’s basketball coach and DJ Dina and I went to maybe two games to show support.  I remember one game in particular because I left at halftime to drive in to Boston to see Mission of Burma’s reunion show at the Paradise.  Brunch with Burma.  What a show that was.  Unreal.

Anyway.  I just signed up for the Billion Dollar Bracket challenge over on yahoo sports.  I only picked a few upsets, and generally I did it just to suck up to New England schools.  In the end I have Duke beating Virginia 82-79.

Of course I know absolutely nothing about college basketball (see the first paragraph of this post).  Nothing.  Nada.  Nuttin, honey.  Zip, zilch, zero.

But, to paraphrase Geddy Lee on the Bob and Doug Take Off album, a billion bucks is a billion bucks*.

Logging in to yahoo sports also reminded me that I have a free fantasy hockey team out there.  I forgot all about that.  I decided to check in.  Turns out I’m in the first round of the playoffs and I’m the number three cede.  Now that is pretty funny.  I stacked the team with Bruins.  Krejci, Iginla, Bergeron, Rask.  Yeah, I can pick ’em.

Speaking of the Bruins, they beat Minnesota last night.  The win streak is at nine.  Tonight they play New Jersey.  A ten game win streak would sound nice, eh?  Even nicer if they beat the team responsible for removing AHL hockey from the city of Lowell, MA.  Yeah, Devils.  I haven’t forgotten about that.  You jerks.

Go Bruins.

 

*Geddy Lee’s actual line was more like, 10 bucks is 10 bucks.  There’s a subtle difference, you see.

Two Songs Done

The false ending thing… it was a good idea at the time. Mission of Burma does stuff like that, only when they do it it is Incredible and Jaw Droppingly Amazing. When I do it it’s stupid.