“Detroit area record labels, poster artists, t shirt printers and more will be at the Loving Touch in Ferndale, selling their goods. Pick up new releases from current Detroit bands, or find rare out of print stuff you may have missed. Admission is free. Bring friends. Buy records. Support Detroit’s music community!”

I’ll be there selling Suburban Sprawl and Quack goodies, and everything will be marked down for the occasion. The Warehouse Sale will be in full effect with the option to buy individual releases for $1. Don’t want 10 CDs? Just buy one for a dollar. What a mad deal.

I won’t go on and on about this, but I will say this is a relevent and healthy event for musicians and labels in Michigan. While everyone is going out of business and the world seems so horrible, people are still trying to make jams and sell them. The Michigan Music and Merch Swap is a fun way to support local artists and businesses who choose to function in Michigan.

Details:

The Loving Touch is located at 22634 Woodward Ave in Ferndale, MI 48220

Check out their mad dealz here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattlunsford/help-us-save-our-office

1) Warehouse Moving Sale!
We’re moving our warehouse and much like when moving apartments, we’re using this as an opportunity to get rid of a bunch of stuff. Who does this benefit? It benefits you. Yes, it benefits you. For 10 bucks, you get 10 CDs that clearly sold very well. Go to the Quack Store for more details!

2) The Word Play Tour!
The Word Play are hitting the road. Very exciting news, no doubt. Here are the tour dates:
Jun 11 2009 @ The Berkley Front - Berkley, Michigan
Jun 12 2009 @ The Tree House - Columbus, Ohio
Jun 13 2009 @ Jupiter Room - Alliance, Ohio
Jun 14 2009 @ Annabell’s - Akron, Ohio
Jun 15 2009 @ The Bug Jar - Rochester, New York
Jun 16 2009 @ The Westcott Theater - Syracuse, New York
Jun 17 2009 @ Larry’s - Danbury, Connecticut
Jun 18 2009 @ TT the Bear’s - Cambridge, Massachusetts
Jun 20 2009 @ The Annex - New York City, New York
Jun 25 2009 @ The Melody Inn - Indianapolis, Indiana

3) Javelins Tour-ish Dates!
Javelins are heading out to New York City to play a few shows. They are also playing The Word Play’s tour kickoff show. Details? Why sure:

Jun 11 2009 @ Berkley Front - Berkley, Michigan
Jun 26 2009 @ Southpaw - Brooklyn, New York
Jun 27 2009 @ Bruar Falls - Williamsburg, New York

4) Crass Commercialism!
The Pop Project were recently brought on by the fine folks at Dickies to make some hott music for 5 of their commercials. If you happen to watch the Versus network, they’ll be primarily airing there, starting a few days ago. If you combine the music from all of the commercials, you get 2 and half minutes of new music composed by the band. That’s almost like a new song!

5) Desktop!
We’ll be releasing a 12 inch, 3 song record by Desktop in the coming months. Desktop is an electronic music collaboration between ME of The Pop Project and Keith Thompson from Electric Six and Johnny Headband. We’ll let know when that’s for sale. Duh.

I got a package in the mail the other day with the Javs session and interview. Thought it might be worth posting here on this internet blog.

Dudes did 4 songs:

“The Pounding”
“Out On The Sand”
“Heavy Meadows”
“Red Handed”

They also recorded a hilariously awkward interview.

Download it here, or listen to that shit right here:

Here’s the song for reference:

Here is THIS GUY doing THIS (watch until he hits the ride cymbal on his right):

Yesterday evevning I was planning a blog post about Auto-Tune, and this morning I see that our friends at The Post-Rockist have a new podcast feature up about auto-tune and “Blame It.” It’s everywhere.

Anyway, I’ll get to my point. I read a really good piece about auto-tune yesterday here.

A choice quote:

“Rather than novelty or some warped mimetic response to computers, Auto-Tune is a contemporary strategy for intimacy with the digital. As such, it becomes quite humanizing. Auto-Tune operates as a duet between the electronics and the personal.”

But there’s more crazy interesting stuff in the piece. Specifically, how T-Pain and Lil Wayne record with Auto-Tune using live-input processing. Meaning, the tracks aren’t “auto-tuned” during the mixing process. This speaks of the awesomeness of technology and improved computing POWER. This also explains how some singers will use it in live performance. T-Pain knows what vocal runs are going to sound great with Auto-Tune, because he sings them through the effect as he records. In my experience with the plugin, vocal runs that sound “good” without Auto-Tune sound “bad” when the effect is placed on the track. You have to adopt a different style of singing. The Frieze Magazine piece also mentions this:

“Vocal runs that would sound bizarre without Auto-Tune have become necessary to create somenow-common effects.”

Check out Jamie Foxx live on Jimmy Kimmel’s show recently. That’s live-input working it’s magic:

Those chord changes that the band makes at the start of the second verse are THE BEST

Another thing I learned about Auto-Tune in that essay is the omnipresence of the effect in contemporary Rai and Raggada music of the Arab world. Sure enough, a cursory search on YouTube reveals a shit-ton of awesomeness:

Also, check out the Rai section of musicmaroc.com, the playlist is fucking awesome. Lamine’s “Mon Bled” is a monster.

My favorite thing about this video is the weird sexual curveball at the end. Reminds me of TEAM KOTU’s Celebrity Apprentice “viral video” for All laundry detergent. Did Clint Black fuck the laundry detergent?