Archie Powell & the Exports "Moving to the City" (16.8 MB) from Loose Change EP High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 24, 2009

This is the lead track off the Exports' debut EP, which is available for free download at Bandcamp (and since I'll probably not get the chance to feature them before the podcast ends, you can get Direct Hit! there as well). The band had a set at this year's Summerfest and should be putting together a full-length album pretty soon, to go with upcoming shows around the midwest.

Archie Powell & the Exports "Enough About Me" (13.3 MB) High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 24, 2009

This is another late-model Box Social holdover, and it's one where you can really hear the difference between the two bands. Last time I heard this song it was a lot more raucous and careening (also it was in Madison's loudest venue), now it's got a distinct, new tone. In fact, if you take this band and the other post-Box Social band (the Nick Woods-fronted Direct Hit!) and combine them, you'll get something that sounds a lot like the Box Social. Which sort of seems obvious, but trying combining Angels and Airwaves with (+44) and see if you get Blink-182.

Archie Powell & the Exports "All Tuckered Out" (12.6 MB) High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 24, 2009

I believe this is the first instance of someone's new band being in the podcast, when that someone's previous band had also been featured. Indeed, I even recorded this song as performed by the Box Social (well, two of the Box Social in an acoustic set) last fall. So hey, milestone!

This is actually a pretty old Box Social song -- it was originally on their 2004 EP, then they started revamping it as they prepped new material last year. Much of that new stuff has transitioned into the Exports' set, in slightly modified form as keyboards have replaced the second guitar in the previous arrangements.

Pictures from Testa Rosa's Summerfest set. Archie Powell and Spoon videos to come!

Pale Young Gentlemen "Our History" (19.2 MB) from Black Forest (Tra La La) Marquette Waterfront Festival Madison, WI June 14, 2009

Even though, to be frank, we never went to a lot of Madison's many summer festivals, I was always really glad that they were there and will miss them when we move. They're great outlets for local music and give bands a chance to get in front of different audiences than they see in clubs. If anything I think this one might be growing -- it's the first time I've seen such a big-time stage setup for the Marquette Waterfront Festival.

Pale Young Gentlemen "Coal/Ivory" (19.2 MB) from Black Forest (Tra La La) Marquette Waterfront Festival Madison, WI June 14, 2009

This one provides a nice opening to the PYGs most recent album, and apparently it's also great to dance and spin around to. A section of newer stuff came up in the set starting with this song, but overall the set seemed to be mostly first-album stuff that maybe works a little better live.

Pale Young Gentlemen new song? old song? (18.5 MB) Marquette Waterfront Festival Madison, WI June 14, 2009

OK, Pale Young Gentlemen, I give up. My iPod has your two albums and your cover of "Paper Planes." If you have some stock of secret other songs that includes this one, I don't know about it. I do like this one, though.

Pale Young Gentlemen "Up North" (11.4 MB) from Pale Young Gentlemen Marquette Waterfront Festival Madison, WI June 14, 2009

Experiment time! Since the Marquette Waterfront Festival is an outdoor event, I decided to try out shooting a clip with my Nikon D90, knowing the dissipated sound wouldn't overwhelm its little mic. The potential advantages to this: 1) it shoots in HD, though I realized later that I hadn't actually set it to HD, and 2) I get the visual benefits of shooting through a nice SLR lens, with all the options that implies. But the disadvantages were many: 1) it's a lot heavier than my camcorder, 2) autofocus doesn't work for video, which limits my ability to alter the zoom angle very much, 3) can't really fiddle with any of the other options while shooting, either, 4) no image stabilization. But that said, I really like how the picture came out -- the detail's good enough to get a sense of how many little gnats were swarming around the lakeside -- and I think if I'd brought a tripod and thought about how I wanted to shoot in advance the weaknesses could've been overcome.

Once I get settled into my job I'll be blogging about mass comm and new media topics more frequently, but I saw something the other day that prompted me to get ahead of myself a little. Ezra Klein had this note about the RSS feeds at his new Washington Post blog:

I don't mean to pick on Ezra at all here, since this is a notion you see frequently and his post was just the thing that made me remember I wanted to write about it. But isn't this expression of the open secret that online advertising is just noise interesting? This is one of the long-term issues with ad-supported online media that no one's really thinking about much in corporate accounting offices: People tune ads out. There's this idea among advertisers and media orgs that simply showing people ads -- for example, getting them to use the ad-interspersed RSS feeds -- is worthwhile. But even apart from tools like AdBlock Plus, people have been conditioned to use internal ad blocks. What happens when, at some point in the future, advertisers begin to realize that their magic isn't working?

Locksley "The Way That We Go" (16.5 MB) from Be in Love Majestic Theatre Madison, WI June 13, 2009

Thanks again to my tipster, I've got the name of this one and now know that yesterday's song is, in fact, called "21st Century." Just in time to correct them for YouTube!

As I noted previously, I was kind of surprised by the low-ish turnout for this show. The balcony was closed off, which I've never seen at the Majestic before, and I assume it's because they didn't need the room -- a few people wound up sitting up there during the Locksley set, but no more than half a dozen. But meanwhile, those people who were down on the floor went crazy pretty much the whole time. And for almost exclusively new material! I'm actually really excited for the new album (due this fall, supposedly), as there have been a number of follow-up albums lately that haven't really done much for me.