The underground music scene in New Brunswick, I’m sorry to say, is a feature of the city I’m not all that familiar with. Excepting a few momentary and inebriated sidetracks down to basement parties sporting live bands, my experience with that particular underground has been limited at best. Enter the Screaming Females. Over the weekend, I was afforded the opportunity to be educated on the matter by two members of this three-person punk ensemble: Marissa Paternoster and Jarrett Dougherty. Third member King Mike wasn’t able to make it. What follows …

Once a week, the Johnsonville Press staff gets together to drink wine and discuss the business of putting out our little publication. We call it the Johnsonville Symposium. We talk about and critique each others’ articles, work out any technical issues, and keep each other up to date as to the progress we’ve made in our respective capacities. But also, in keeping with the spirit of a traditional Greek symposium, we hold a general discussion on a broad topic, usually towards the end of the night after we’ve all had plenty to drink. During last week’s discussion, I asked my staff members to pick one musical performer, group, or band that everyone should know about, that would be indispensible to you the reader as a fan of music, and to justify that selection. I wrote up my five favorite. Here’s what we came up with:

I sat down to write an email to myself one day recently because something struck me as so… befitting… to nearly every moment that I could imagine. I needed to write it down- elaborate on it for the benefit of my creative memory; and the easiest device at the time was my computer. What struck me brought back those good, old memories, the kind that we can all sometimes dwell on to keep us steadfast and grounded.

Ahh the breeze coming in through the window hitting me gently in the face, the sun staring down with a bandit smile, the sugar cane fields to my left, the imposing Andes mountains to my right with a couple of cows ruminating on the bloody grass where they stand, a lonely highway that seems to lead nowhere, and a soulful voice in the background that cries: “excuse me while I kiss the sky”. The reminiscence of the many times after school that I would drive south right past my house …

In My Image
Last week Robert Tarantino wrote an article about the widespread conversion to digital music and the resultant poor sound quality. Reading his article, I was inspired to address some of the more cultural (and less technical) consequences of this popular technology. While I cannot deny the convenience of having every song you could ever want to listen to in the palm of your hand, I do feel that the current trend in music distribution takes away from the integrity of the medium, thereby encouraging the decreases in …

The MP3 is the new standard for recorded music. Portable MP3 players like the Apple iPod are fantastically convenient, providing a simple system of stuffing dozens of albums onto a palm-sized electronic device in a matter of minutes. Anyone can purchase and download albums and individual tracks from the comfort of their own home using online vendors such as the Apple iTunes Music Store, Amazon.com or Napster in MP3 format for less than ten dollars. The MP3 shift may sound like a dream come true… but it sounds terrible.

Correspondence from an American Poet Abroad:

This past Sunday, the 21st of June, while party goers and pagans alike were celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge, there was a different kind of celebration in Paris- where I am living- a celebration of music. Sunday was the day of “la fête de la musique,” an annual tradition which began nearly 30 years ago.

By Josh Baker

In recent years, as our computer technologies have become more sophisticated, many functions which were once performed exclusively by trained workers (e.g., those of the cashier, the bank teller, and even the family doctor) may now be accomplished in large part through the use of automated online systems. Online shopping sites, commercial banking sites, and health information sites (such as WebMD) allow consumers to access and use a formidable number of services without the direct aid of another person. Even many occupations which previously seemed impervious to computerized outsourcing (as with the aforementioned family doctor) may ultimately face just such a fate.