As some of you may know, we organized the Gigdoggy Showcase last Saturday in Montréal with six bands on the bill to test-drive our fanteraction™ service. The event was a total blast and everything went well. This was the first time we put up such a show and learned a lot in the process. Next week I’ll write a post recaping our little doggy adventure to explain how we got it all together. We tried to apply most of what we talked about in this here blog to promote gigs, so you’ll have a glimpse of what worked and what flopped for us. I would take the opportunity to start this write-up now if I didn’t have to head back to France on Thursday. Needless to say we got lots of things to take care of, and the Gigdoggy blog will go on hiatus until Friday.
Until then, here’s a video Ayoub, a very good friend from Montreal, produced for us. He took up most of his Sunday editing the whole thing without us knowing about it and put it on Youtube. Great work – thanks Ayoub! Here you”ll see some bits and pieces of the Gigdoggy pre-party, of me discussing t-shirt costs with Greg’s girlfriend and doggy helper Yslane, of Greg presenting our service, and of us, The Gigdoggies performing one of Greg’s songs.
If you actively manage your band’s profile through different social networks, and if promote your gigs on more than one gig listing, chances are you’ll find a service like ArtistDataquite helpful. Its concept is to automatically update websites you use to promote your music. ArtistData seems to focus particularly on concert listings, which is a good thing seeing how boring it is to place your gig info on the many sites that allow you to (mostly when you are planning a tour) but it also allows you to update other profile data helping you save time. For users in the US, ArtistData can automatically send out a band’s gig listing and information to local media.
From their home page’s description:
ArtistData tirelessly works to give musicians more time to be creative. We’re building solutions to automate the monotonous updating of artist websites, social network profiles, concert databases, Twitter, official news feeds, iCal, local press, fan newsletters, and even tour books. When an artist updates our site, we update all their sites. Our current users save hundreds of hours, giving them more time to do what they love: creating music.
ArtistData looks promising in a world where bands get easily overwhelmed by the many web 2.0/promotional tools at their disposal. The service is still in beta and its founder Brenden Mulligan is hard at work adding features and perfecting the system.
I tried it out with our Gigdoggy Showcase that’s taking place in Montreal (on the 18th of April – six bands and lots of doggies on stage!) and it works great.
So if you’re band is well versed in the social-networking arts, ArtistData will certainly come in handy. Thousands of bands have already signed up including international acts like Amy Winehouse and Jack Johnson.
You would have to have been born in a cave in Afghanistan to have never heard of Radiohead and you surely wouldn’t need me to tell you about the British rock legends that they represent. I was quite young when they released their first single in 1992 but it didn’t manage to miss my small meandering 9 year old mind, probably due to the fact that that single was Creep
However I didn’t run out and buy “Pablo Honey” upon its release in ’93 nor did I even jump when the successful ’95 album “The Bends” got out. It wasn’t really until ’96 when I watched Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and the release of “OK Computer” in ’97 that I started really paying attention. This was also the part of my youth when I was starting to explore music, I’m not sure exactly what I was listening to but I think I was moving on from Guns n’ Roses and Metalica and wandering towards Nirvana and the grunge scene, blame an 11 year old for being ass about. The grunge scene was taking hold and looking back it seems weird, Kurt Cobain had been dead already for a couple of years.
It was my obsession with Romeo + Juliet and a tape I got from my inseparable best friend that were the real reasons why I became a fan of Radiohead. I fell in love with the hyper stylization of Romeo + Juliet – it was with this film that I realized my love for theatre, literature and film. Two Radiohead songs were featured in the movie, Talk Show Host
almost a center peice, and Exit Music (For a Film)
over the closing credits.
Would the film be as dramatic and modern if it was not for the inclusion of these songs? I mean the somber tone of the film the audience is left with is undeniably affected by the searing voice of Thom Yorke. So obviously the first Radiohead album I bought was “OK Computer” which was so deservedly dubbed “One of the greatest rock albums of all time”.
Unfortunately I didn’t really stay with Radiohead after “OK Computer”. Though it wasn’t because I was part of the backlash to their new sound on “Kid A” and “Amnesiac”. I actually liked everything I heard from them. It was just me moving around and listening to other music, I think Korn then Marilyn Mason and a slew of non descript metal before I moved on to hip hop, and every time I saw Radiohead records on the shelf I thought about buying them, but it was always “next time”, and that time just didn’t come. I also missed out on the 2003 release of “Hail to the Thief”.
It wasn’t actually until Thom Yorke’s debut solo “The Eraser” in 2006 that I really got into Radiohead’s musical universe. That was a fucking great album.
In 2007, when Radiohead decided to radically releases “In Rainbows” on the internet allowing punters to pay what the thought an album was worth, I was too lazy for this preferring to wait for the CD release. The cool thing was that one of my favorite radio stations, Triple J, played a copy from the internet in its entirety as soon as it was online. From that moment on I love Radiohead and everything they stand for.
How fucking expressive is that man’s voice so come 2007 and Radiohead vocally against the tired and recalcitrant “Music Industry” and
So what do I think of “In Rainbows”? Incredible. How do you go about topping albums when they are “One of the greatest”? You don’t – you keep progressing and you achieve an album like “In Rainbows” to rival the old ones. And Radiohead still sound like Radiohead on this one. They are soft and melodious, emotionally charged rock, expressive and laden with a symphony of great beats.
Recently I had been deliberating as to what songs to include – the album is just so strong as a whole. When I was chatting to a friend and mentioned I was writing about “In Rainbows”, without hesitation he asked 15th Step
or Faust Arp?
But I was sure my highlight of the album was Jigsaw Falling into Place
I love the intensity on this track. It’s got that raw emotion that I was attracted to since “Creep” I guess. And this is not to say that my friend’s picks weren’t equally as good.
I’d also really like to mention Nude
a moment that really reminds me of R+J and O.K Computer but also another film I really liked at that time, “Stealing Beauty” by Bernardo Betrolucci. It had a good soundtrack that included Portishead’s “Glory Box” whom I also listened to at the time (to me these two bands definitely share some similar qualities). Such a sweetly haunting sound. Also All I Need
yet another seductively slow emotionally charged killer tune.
Recently I watched Choke, the film adaptation of the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It is only the second adaptation of a Palahniuk novel after Fight Club, which is quite weird when he is quite prolific putting out a novel almost every year, all of high literary caliber. While the film stayed true to the novel I felt it was not really displaying the verve of Fight Club. But it was the use of Reckoner
another truly great moment on this album, in the closing of the film that just goes to show the influence people still find in Radiohead to stir feelings in people. If you are making a lackluster film or T.V show and you really want to pull that melodramatic punch just before the credit why not just use Radiohead to force out those tears.
One of my best friends to this day that I met through film school, whom I think is fashionably and musically backward clinging to some hay-day of who-the-fuck-knows-when, finally saw eye to eye with me on this one. Though I think the comment upon hearing “In Rainbows” was something like “There is just so much good music coming out now. I have been waiting for this” (also referring to Portishead’s “Third” and Battles’ “Mirrored”). This album’s music is clearly sumptuous, beautiful and purely breathtaking.
I can’t praise this album enough. I can’t recommend this album enough.
Enough said.
See also; “Rabbit in Your Headlight” by U.N.K.L.E feat. Thom Yorke a great track made even better by the correspondingly violent music clip.
If you actively manage your band’s profile through different social networks, and if promote your gigs on more than one gig listing, chances are you’ll find a service like 
You would have to have been born in a cave in Afghanistan to have never heard of Radiohead and you surely wouldn’t need me to tell you about the British rock legends that they represent. I was quite young when they released their first single in 1992 but it didn’t manage to miss my small meandering 9 year old mind, probably due to the fact that that single was
